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he reminded himself he had to ask for it. “Doodie,” he said, “I need me a Help Wanted sign.”
    “Got two kinds. ‘Help Wanted’ plain and ‘Help Wanted Inquire Within.’”
    Elwood considered. “Dat secon’ one.”

Chapter 3
     
     
    “M AMAN , I’ M not so sure I like M. Avelallemant,” confessed Frenchy to his mother. She sat in an ivory slip at her dressing table, preparing to go out for the evening with this same M. Avelallemant. Frenchy loved to see his mother get dressed up; when she really set out to impress, she was spectacular. Her understated and beautifully cut clothes made any woman who stood next to her look like a painted clown by comparison. Maman rose and grabbed an atomizer from the vanity, then sprayed into the room a mist of the specially resurrected Secrets of Suzanne , an extinct perfume from her grandmother’s time. She waited a second and then walked through the mist. Most of the wildly expensive perfume sank into the Aubusson rug. Maman wanted only a hint on her skin, Frenchy knew.
    “What is so wrong with M. Avelallemant?”
    Frenchy frowned and turned to look out the window in Maman’s dressing room. He could see that oaf Dutch Abbott on his ridiculous orange bike cycling into the curved path bordering the broad parterre of the house next door. Maman came to stand by his side.
    “How beautiful Dutch Abbott has become!” she said. “Remember how scrawny he was, nothing but stick arms and legs and a giant Adam’s apple?”
    “I hate him,” said Frenchy. Just at that moment Dutch happened to look up and saw Mrs. Saint-Paix and Frenchy standing at a neoclassical window framed by green shutters so dark they seemed black. A forest of columns, Ionic on the first floor and Corinthian on the second, flanked the porches that engulfed the huge white pile of a house. “Hey, Frenchy! I mean Pogo. Hey, Miz Saint-P.”
    Frenchy gave a tight smile and Maman waved. “‘Frenchy’? I guess ‘Frenchy’ has stuck.” Maman’s eyes danced.
    “Yes,” Frenchy blurted. “It started in Boys’ Choir. I used to hate it. But I guess I don’t mind it now. Honestly, Maman…. Leo?” He pronounced it in the French way: Lay-o. “No one is named Leo anymore! What possessed you and Papa?”
    Maman shrugged. “It’s a fine name. You will grow into it. But for now, I like ‘Frenchy.’ It’s sexy. Just like you.” She smiled at her son. “So—hate, hate. You hate Dutch. You hate M. Avelallemant.” She gave that piercing look Frenchy hated. “Tell me why.”
    Frenchy didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “Yes, I remember the skinny Dutch. He was so obnoxious in Boys’ Choir. Always goofing around and telling dirty jokes. He goosed me once during my solo. I was glad when his voice broke.” Paule Saint-Paix looked speculatively at her son. She could almost smell the frustrated hormones of recently reached sexual maturity. Oh God , she thought. Was this “hated” Dutch the source of all this? She ached for her son. Dutch fairly screamed “straight.”
    Frenchy watched Dutch dismount and noticed, and not for the first time, that his childhood tormentor had a stunning span of shoulder and a muscular ass. “He has grown, hasn’t he, Maman? Where did he get all those muscles?”
    “He bought them, I think”—Maman wriggled into a sleeveless raspberry woolen sheath, so sheer it looked like a T-shirt—“from a personal trainer named—Gigi? No—Mimi—no—Lily. Oh, I can’t remember! Say-Say Abbott was over the moon about this Gigi/Mimi/Lily and the miracles she could work. Have you noticed how Say-Say has slimmed down? I think that’s the trainer’s work too.”
    “Too bad this Gigi/Mimi/Lily couldn’t give Mrs. Abbott’s closet a makeover too.” Say-Say Abbott freighted her face with foundation overlaid by pancake before appearing in public. And when she dressed up, she was a walking, talking, crystal-dripping chandelier.
    “Wicked! Wicked boy! Say-Say Abbott is a