Million Little Mistakes Read online

  When you fly down to the vibrant, incredible city of New Orleans, you meet your new staff. They wear crisp uniforms and have all worked here a long time. The cook, Thalie, is tiny and shriveled, her rough, wrinkled skin looking older than the branches of a live oak tree. Thalie makes huge dinners fit for a Confederate army. She-crab soup, barbecued shrimp, pork shoulder, red beans and rice, corn bread with butter, pecan pie, tea cookies, sweet tea, and Sazerac cocktails afterward. She serves you silently, always eyeing you with curiosity, but like everyone else, she doesn’t ask questions. You know what they’re all thinking, though.

  They’re thinking you don’t look like a millionaire. You didn’t even bring any of your own furniture and the only clothes you have fit in a small bag. That’s because you’re leaving your old life behind. Nothing of yours would look right here, even your family wouldn’t look right here. The staff looks more elegant than your fat old uncles in their black socks and stained track suits.

  You start making appointments with the city’s top personal shoppers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists. You get a new wardrobe, dermabrasion, Botox, tattooed eyeliner, and liposuction. You’re ecstatic with the results, except the Botox renders you unable to raise an eyebrow or look annoyed, which causes more problems than you’d think. Every time you want to let someone know you’re displeased you have to say so out loud because your face won’t.

  Your aristocrat’s life even comes with a best friend. Your wealthy neighbor, Maribelle St. John, has agreed to show you around New Orleans. She’s a force of nature, Maribelle, you can hardly keep up with her. Cherry redheaded, positively aggressive, endlessly gregarious, and skinny as a stir stick, even though she drinks double gin and tonics at noon. She says, “Every woman should redecorate a house when she steps foot in it, whether it needs it or not.” She knows which decorators to hire and which auctions to attend, even though you hate those auctions, with all that nerve-wracking shouting and competitive tension. You always end up going home with something strange, like a stone gargoyle or an antique writing desk that came over on the Mayflower.

  She introduces you to her friends at the country club, takes you to cocktail parties, theater openings, charity balls, and most important, she gives you all the pertinent social gossip you need to navigate the deep social waters of the South. She tells you “Bless her heart” is what Southerners say instead of “Fuck you.” As in, “She was never good with children, bless her heart” or “You forgot to bring wine again? Bless your heart!”

  You’re having such a good time going to parties and buying anything you want, it’s a total shock when the bank calls and Mr. Deloit, the head of private accounts, asks if everything’s all right. What does he mean? Of course everything’s all right!

  He’s noticed some high-volume spending on your account and suggests you come in sometime and sit down with a financial planner, who can help you budget for your ongoing financial needs. What does he mean, budget?

  You promise to set up an appointment and thank him for calling. Okay, sure, maybe you got a little crazy with the spending at first, but it’s not going to stay that way. Once you get everything you need, you won’t have to keep spending so much, right? It always takes extra engine power to get a ship up to speed, but then it can coast, and coast is what you do, right into the heart of the social scene.

  Your new life comes with invitations from the crème de la crème of New Orleans society and everyone wants to know who the new belle of the ball is. They’re charmed by your social naiveté and newfound resources. Everyone loves you when you’re rich! You’ve never been more thrilled or exhausted in your life. The laughter gets louder and life couldn’t be better.

  Then things start happening.

  The first event was during a party at your house. You’re speaking with the lieutenant governor and his wife when you spot a very strangely dressed woman standing in the corner. She’s staring at you. You excuse yourself from the conversation so you can go introduce yourself, but when you look her way again, she’s disappeared. A week later, you’re in the kitchen and you see what you guess is a new maid in the butler’s pantry. When you ask her what her name is, she’s gone.

  There are sounds. Usually at night. It’s a series of knocks at first. Tiny ones, as though someone was tapping on your door with a pencil. Then doors slamming, and then you exit your bedroom one morning to find five pennies facedown on the floor, all lined up in an orderly row. No chance it’s an accident; as much as you try to convince yourself it is—it isn’t. Then there are the shadows that rearrange themselves along the floorboards, as though a long creeping mist branched along with your steps, evaporating whenever looked at directly. Mind games! Tricks!

  The city has such a haunted history; surely this is your overactive imagination. Maybe your jangled nerves? Your doctor prescribes earplugs and sedatives so you can sleep at night, and sleep you do, so soundly, in fact, you wake up one morning with something heavy and wet on your stomach, soaking through your T-shirt. You’re aware of it before you look, your breath quickens, and your heart cracks up into your throat. You look down and there is a monstrous dead toad on your stomach, his eyes sewn shut with thick white twine.

  The maids come running when they hear your screams and they swear they haven’t seen anyone in the house. No doors are unlocked, no windows broken, everyone is accounted for. When you call the police, they won’t even come to the house, because dead toads rank a notch or two under dead citizens, of which they got a lot. Thanks for calling.

  You don’t dare tell Maribelle what’s happening, you don’t dare tell anyone outside the house. It’s only when you get the idea to visit the library at the historical society that you start to find some answers. Bad answers. LaLaurie has a horrific past. It turns out it was originally built in 1832 for Dr. Louis LaLaurie and his French-Creole wife, Delphine. Delphine LaLaurie wasn’t just known for her lavish parties; she was also known for her well-behaved slaves and what she did to them. It’s all right there in the newspaper stories, eyewitness accounts, and court documents.

  Apparently, on one particular evening in the spring of 1833, Delphine was having a grand dinner. The newspaper says she’d purchased two hundred Spode place settings just for the evening and the dinner menu included poached salmon with mousseline and roast duckling marrow. Guests who arrived early claimed the house looked especially grand that evening, every detail perfect. They enjoyed champagne cocktails while waiting for Madame to come downstairs—she had a habit of waiting for all her guests to arrive before she made her entrance. Nothing unusual about it at all.

  Delphine was in fact getting ready in her bedroom and a young slave girl, Leah, was combing out her hair. As the story goes, the girl accidentally snagged Madame’s hair, sending her into a rage. Guests were still pulling up in carriages, dressed in their finest, as Madame LaLaurie chased Leah around the bedroom and out onto the balcony, where the twelve-year-old toppled over the balustrade and fell to her death on the front stoop.

  Unable to conceal the crime, Madame LaLaurie was brought up on charges of abuse, but received only a minor fine from the judge, a frequent guest at their house. She was made to sell her slaves, but, through a relative, purchased them all back later. Life gradually returned to normal for the LaLauries, the parties and balls began again, the grisly death poured out from general memory as fast as champagne poured into crystal glasses.

  Then, on April 10, 1834, during another party, a fire broke out in the kitchen, which was in a building set back from the main house. (It’s now the garage.) The New Orleans fire brigade responded immediately, as they always did for the finer homes, only to find the LaLauries’ slaves shackled to the oven. They themselves had set the fire in an attempt to bring light onto what was happening inside the house.

  They directed the firefighters to a small room above them, where screams could be heard inside. The heavy door was bolted and locked; the firefighters had to use a battering ram to enter, and when they did, they stepped into a putr
id house of horrors. Before them, locked in cages big enough for a dog and chained to the walls and floor, were disfigured, dismembered slaves, the victims of Madame LaLaurie and her physician husband, who had been conducting crude medical experiments.

  One man looked as if he’d been given a primitive sex-change operation. Another man had a hole drilled in his skull so his brain could be probed with a stick. A woman inside a cage that restricted any movement had all her joints broken and reset at odd angles so she resembled a human crab. Another woman had her arms amputated and her skin was peeled off in a circular pattern, making her look like a human caterpillar.

  As the police were removing these poor souls and dispatching them into ambulances, the LaLauries’ angry guests formed a mob outside and threatened to ransack the house and burn it down. They had no idea their hosts had been running a Grand Guignol theater in their community, a dread stage of gruesome entertainment. Before they could get hold of the LaLauries, however, the family escaped in a carriage and fled to the river. They were never seen again and their fortune, which was hidden somewhere in the house, was never found.

  This is your home now. The bloody LaLaurie mansion. Peering out to the back building, which was once the kitchen and now is the renovated five-car garage, a queer feeling passes through you. You can almost hear the wailing. You grill Thalie about the history of the house until she breaks down and tells you everything. She says there’s a curse here: anyone who owns the LaLaurie mansion is destined to kill or commit suicide. It’s already happened multiple times. She knows, she’s seen it.

  You ask her what to do, beg her for ideas, and she says there is one way, but it’s dangerous. You can try and remove the curse. She knows a lady, a vodoun priestess who can lift curses even when they’re heavy. If you want, she’ll arrange a meeting. You thank her for being so open and honest with you and tell her you’ll think about it. She says, “Yes, ma’am, just don’t think too long.”

  That night you pace the floors all night long and by dawn conclude you really only have two options. Sell the house or face Madame LaLaurie and make her get the hell out.

  If you stay in the house, go to section 18.

  If you sell the house, go to section 19.

  10

  From section 5

  You decide to buy yourself something stupid-cool, something only a millionaire could get, but what is that exactly? Every idea you have on your own seems a little insane, like throwing a pool party with all-midget bartenders dressed up like various children in history (Little Orphan Annie, Spanky, Lindbergh baby) or buying a flock of emperor penguins to live in your apartment. Aidan’s no help, either; he’s not thinking big enough. He wants to put money away for retirement and maybe buy a hunting cabin up north. Well, that’s great, for him. Not for you, though. In need of inspiration, you leave Aidan home and jet off to the “Millionaire Fair” in Kortrijk, Belgium, where you shop around for something deliciously decadent, but the choices are staggering. Should you buy a thirty-thousand-dollar Swarovski crystal–encrusted toilet seat? Rent the private chateau in France where The Da Vinci Code was filmed? Buy cubic zirconium wheel rims for your car? Bid on a “discreet yet primal night” with the sexiest bullfighter in Spain? Commission a Japanese “helper” robot who does windows and performs seven different types of fellatio?

  You can’t make up your mind, afraid you’ll do something stupid, like the lottery winner in Myrtle Beach who won five hundred million, bought himself a solid gold Lamborghini, and died three days later when he crashed it into a tree. Your decisions are made vastly easier by the goddamned Russians. They’re in mass attendance at the Millionaire Fair and they’re dangerous. They’re overnight billionaires with easy-to-influence “new money” whims, and they spend money like Earth might explode into a fine atomized spray sometime tomorrow. In the two days you hang out together, your new friend Vitali buys his girlfriend, Nika, a full-length white mink coat and a helicopter. His pal, Oleg, who already owns the world’s largest collection of Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs, decides to buy a new submarine. His old one isn’t big enough to reach the Titanic, which he plans to visit so he can ram it. You don’t ask for further clarification on this desire. Russians just like ramming things.

  And how.

  You actually have a fling with Oleg in his penthouse suite after drinking several shots of Stolichnaya Elit out of shot glasses made of solid ice. Then Oleg demanded you take a champagne bath, ordering the concierge to fill his tub with warm Dom Pérignon and white rose petals. You could have left, but why? Certainly, you didn’t mean for things to get so out of hand. (After you soaked in the deliriously effervescent water while listening to Oleg recite Russian poetry, he lifted you out of the bath and turned you over, whereupon he Helsinkied your Vologda for such a duration that the next morning you walked as though you’d just gotten off a horse.)

  By the end of your four-day sin-a-thon you’re more than ready to go home. You can’t bear to leave without completing your millionaire mission and picking up a ridiculous gift for yourself. (Maybe you’re feeling a little guilty and you just want to get it over with.) The two standout purchases may be predictable, but they’re classics and you think Aidan would enjoy them, too. You could buy a private island, a sanctuary from the cold cruel world, or you could get one of those deluxe megayachts, which is like a private island that moves. They both involve rest, relaxation, and each cost five million dollars on the nose.

  If you buy a private island, go to section 41.

  If you buy a megayacht and travel the world, go to section 43.

  11

  From section 5

  Paying off everyone’s bills makes you like the mayor of your family. Everyone suddenly respects and loves you. They loved you before of course, they just love you more now. Bills and mortgages overflow your desk and you can hardly write checks fast enough to cover them. Aidan also seems to love you more now. His price? A Harley-Davidson. (Everyone has a price, whether they know it or not.)

  You try to keep up and give everyone what they want; only the money is draining fast. Eventually you seek the help of a financial counselor at your bank, Mr. Jeremy Strothers. He’s just a guy on the client services staff, but he isn’t like the others. (Aidan insists on calling him “Germy Jeremy, the Boring Banker Boy,” however.)

  Jeremy puts you on a financial diet and offers to handle your family. From now on if anyone wants money, they have to call him. He also handles the rest of your financial affairs, suggesting insurance plans, retirement programs, retirement funds, and slow-growth investment strategies. You got really lucky running into this guy. He’s always there to answer your questions, he’s never confused or overwhelmed, and he knows exactly what you should do. Plus, he’s funny and flirtatious. Very well dressed. Not to mention quite handsome. You have a crush on Banker Boy.

  Jeremy keeps things professional, though. You have to ask four times before he’ll agree to meet you “off campus” at a wine bar near the bank. Even then, he wants to talk about your long-range investment goals and starts suggesting various real estate opportunities he knows about. Try as you might, the only passionate response you can get out of him usually is when the topic of flipping houses or redeveloping high-traffic consumer corridors comes up. In the end, after listening to all he has to say about the merits of real estate investments, you buy a small, ten-unit apartment building. You’re hoping it will be the foundation of a new, steady revenue stream (and also that it’ll convince Jeremy to sleep with you).

  Three more property purchases later, it works. You’re celebrating the acquisition of a split-level duplex and you drink too much. You insist you can’t go home until you sober up and he takes you back to his place, where you attack him in the most unladylike manner, releasing what appears to be the other side of this buttoned-up banker. He tears this book off the shelf, 100 Positions You’ve Never Tried Before, and starts on page one, performing the “Bailout Feeding Frenzy” on you while you’re pinned against the wall, the “Snack
-Master” while you’re draped over the couch, and the “Holy Mess” on the floor of the shower.

  In the morning you have 100 Bruises in Places You’ve Never Seen Before.

  After that, you meet Jeremy almost every day at his place, explaining your lengthy absences to Aidan as necessary trips out “property hunting.” Sometimes these hunts require days, if not weeks, in other cities. This part is actually true. You and Jeremy take clandestine trips not only to make progress on his 100 Positions book, executing the “Sticky Igloo” and the “Angry Monkey” on rented hotel beds, but also to actually look at real estate—and you’re not going to sexy places, like New York, Miami, or Aspen, either. Jeremy prefers smaller markets, like Dubuque, Naperville, and Wichita. (“Lopsided Catapult,” “Broken Tacklebox,” and “Funky Lunchmeat,” respectively.)

  You close deals all over the place and Jeremy hires construction crews to renovate the houses and buildings before putting them back on the market. Some pull quite a nice profit and others idle, so you turn them into rentals, which provide a nice, steady, ongoing income. You’re so grateful for Jeremy’s sound advice and hard work, which is considerable, taking into account how boring some of these destinations are and how difficult it is to get certain sexual props through the security line at the airport. (Try explaining to a TSA agent why you have a watermelon, a vibrating collar, and an aluminum rolling pin in your carry-on luggage.) He’s done it all just for you—up until now. Finally, one night at the Indianapolis airport, after some gravy-drowned breaded steaks and a pitcher of Miller Lite at T.G.I. Friday’s, Jeremy asks if you’d be willing to take this relationship to the next level.