Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 01 - Blood on White Wicker Read Free Page A

down the hall. He caught me by the arm and whirled me around.
    “Is that any way to treat old Dave Boudreau?” he said.
    Marty, very gently, uncurled Dave’s fingers from around my arm.
    “Let her go, Dave. You’ve had too much to drink, and you don’t want to mess everything up, do you?” she said.
    To my surprise, he turned and, without a word, walked to his own room.
    That was my first day and night in New Orleans. I had my first drink, went to my first nightclub and almost got raped again. Boy, was I ever that young? Of course, this was before I built up my street-smart muscles.

    CHAPTER 3

    The first few months in New Orleans were easy for me. Dave didn’t make any more passes at me, the girls continued to be kind to me, and my “job” was very easy. For this job, Dave wanted me to dress like I was dressed when he first met me, including the pigtails.
    He would give me a paper bag that I had to take to Audubon Park, sit and watch the birds and after awhile someone would come and sit down beside me and switch bags with me. This was usually someone around my age but a couple of times it was an old man. Dave told me to never look in either bag and I didn’t. I did that two or three days a week and every time I did Dave gave me a hundred dollar bill. I couldn’t believe how much money I was making.
    The other girls slept most of the day and had dates most every night. I mentioned to Dave that the other girls sure were popular. Dave sort of chuckled and said before long, I would be popular too.
    It was during this time that I started having the repeating dream that I had been having since I could remember. I had thought that I had outgrown it, but I started having it more and more, after I moved to New Orleans:

    I am in a large bedroom. Everything is yellow and white. There are twin beds but they are not ordinary beds. They are round and look like daises. The petals are curved to the floor, and the center is a round mattress and is covered in yellow material. There are matching white wicker dressers and night stands with crystal lamps on them. There is a white wicker rocking chair. A Spanish-looking woman of middle age is sitting and reading a book. There are two little girls sitting on the yellow carpet playing with Barbie dolls. They look to be about two and three. There is a young woman standing near the window wearing a long black strapless evening gown. She is holding up her hair and a young man is fastening a silver necklace around her neck. I realize that the woman is me, but older. Like maybe me when I’m older.

    The first part of the dream was always very pleasant but then, all of a sudden, the whole tone of it changed, and it seemed to speed up:

    Everyone is screaming, and things are out of focus. It’s like I’m behind a video camera and I’m swinging the camera back and forth trying to capture it all but there’s too much going on. I can’t get it all. There are loud popping noises and suddenly, everything is red. There’s a silver slipper on the floor. It has blood in it. Lying next to the slipper is the silver necklace I saw earlier. I focus in on the necklace and notice that it’s a chain with a unicorn. The unicorn is very unusual. The horn on the unicorn is curved instead of straight.

      This is where I always woke up with my heart going a hundred miles an hour and drenched in sweat. Since coming to New Orleans, I’d been having this dream at least once a week and I wondered if something here was triggering it.

    CHAPTER 4

    Amazingly, for a girl like me from Georgia, Jesse and I became good friends. I loved her personality. She was funny even when she wasn’t trying to be. She believed in the supernatural and voodoo and things like that. She taught me a lot about makeup and hairstyles, etc.
    She told me one day, “I do hope you get out of those pigtails soon, girl. Your hair is so mighty fine and soft. You’ve seen how I can style it. I was going to be a hair stylist at one point