A Little Purple Book of New Orleans Stories by Poppy Z. Brite

Author:Poppy Z. Brite [Brite, Poppy Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gothic horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2021-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Wound Man and Horned Melon Go to Hell

Dear Jesus,

I never thought I’d be writing a letter to You, but then I never thought one of my favorite restaurants would be in Kenner, either. You know how fashionable it is for New Orleanians to bash the suburbs: Chalmette is full of rednecks; Metairie is nothing but wall-to-wall strip malls; Algiers is where that dragon-lady city councilwoman and all the rich snots who think they’re too good to live in the real city reside. You get the idea.

However, Kenner has always seemed a little different to me. I’m sure You know about the Procession of St. Rosalie, where they parade a statue of a sweet little Sicilian girl through the streets because she saved their cattle from anthrax over a hundred years ago, when it was still a cowtown. Plenty of New Orleanians would say it still is a cowtown, albeit of a different sort. But where is our Procession of St. Rosalie? Where is our meatball cone, that peculiar yet compelling treat invented by Kenner’s chief of police? Where, for that matter, is our Bulgakov’s?

Look. You know I’m the coroner of New Orleans; You see what I have to deal with. Hell—excuse me— sometimes I probably see it before You do. You wouldn’t think I’d have a lot of time to spend reading Internet dining forums. But I do have a certain amount of down time, and as You know, I love restaurants. I maybe love them a little too much, and take them a little too seriously, which is why I’m banned from that one board Humphrey Wildblood runs, but he has the palate of an old sneaker anyway. Whoever appointed him a food critic should be sentenced to a lifetime of Lean Cuisine. Whomever? Whoever. I think. Christ, I don’t read enough these days, let alone write. Excuse me again.

Anyway, somebody calling himself “Bill C. Bubb” (but don’t You believe it; nobody uses real names on these things; I myself go to unusual lengths of verisimilitude by posting as “Dr. B”) posted that there was a new Russian restaurant in Kenner, and had anyone tried it? Of course I was intrigued, as I always am when any sort of new cuisine dares to poke a cautious head over the New Orleans dining ramparts. What did somebody once say about something or other? “The parts that are good are not authentic, and the parts that are authentic are not good”? That pretty well describes the state of ethnic food in the greater New Orleans area in the early twenty-first century, except that most of it is neither. Well, we do have some pretty damn good Vietnamese—excuse me—oh, shit on it, You don’t really care about these expletives, do You? I’ve never been able to believe You were that sensitive, not at this point anyway. I mean, God knows You’ve had time to grow a thick skin.

So I had to try out this new restaurant. I am still separated from my long-term partner, Seymour, though I hope to affect a reconciliation someday.

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