It was early Sunday morning. We were sitting in Café Du Monde, something I rarely do these days. I’ve lived in New Orleans now for almost nine years. I used to come here for the beignets and coffee with chicory every Sunday morning. Now, I rarely come unless an out of town guest visits. If they haven’t made a stop at Café Du Monde, they feel like they haven’t been to New Orleans. But my business partner and good friend, Dylan, called the night before and suggested we go. “I’m meeting Edie. She wants to go to mass at the Cathedral.” I get up early on Sundays anyway, so I met him there. 

We shared a few beignets over coffee. We both sat facing the other diners. “Hey, Casey, check out this woman at the next table.”

“What am I looking for, Dylan?” I asked.  I raised my head and looked. “She’s not bad looking, obviously out of your league.” The woman, about 45, with long blonde hair, was chatting with two friends. 

“No, no, man, watch her trying to get the powder off of her.” He was talking about the powdered sugar the café sprinkles so liberally on their beignets. As if on cue, the woman stood and began wiping her black jeans with her hands. Then she took a napkin, dipped it into her water glass, and applied it to the front of her jeans, hoping that would eliminate the problem. She had no way to see she had transferred a good bit of powdered sugar to her back pockets.

One of her friends said, “Jenny, you’ll never get that powder off like that. We can go back to the hotel after breakfast. You can change there.”  

“Jenny frowned. “Maybe we should do that, Wanda.”

“I’ll bet this is her first time in New Orleans,” Dylan said.

“No doubt. She should never have worn black if she knew she was coming here,” I said.

“You’re dressed in black, head to toe,” Dylan said. I shrugged and took a sip of coffee.   

The woman sat down and took another healthy bite of her beignet. Now that I was really paying attention, I noticed that when she took a bite, the powdered sugar flew from the beignet and descended onto her lap again. I laughed and turned back to talk to Dylan.

He grinned and said, “I think she just gave you a dirty look. One of her friends pointed at you and said something.”

I looked in her direction again. Jenny was staring at me. “Did you get a good look?” she asked.

“I did.” I turned back to my breakfast and took a deliberate bite of my beignet, leaning well over the table top to make sure no powder reached my slacks.   

Dylan tapped my hand. “She’s still staring,” he said. I returned her stare and waited. She looked away then and said something, perhaps unkind, to her companions.

We stood up, about to leave. I decided to stop by their table. “When you leave, show your friends the back of your jeans. Then we’ll all know what I was looking at.”

“She has powder on her rear end, doesn’t she?” one of the woman asked.

I smiled and nodded slowly in agreement, mimicking the way she wiped her backside. Jenny looked at me, clearly irritated. Dylan spoke up. “I think she’s expecting you to say something crude, like ‘I’ll be happy to help you wipe it off,’” he said.

“That seems to be his speed,” Jenny said.

“Have you been to St. Louis Cathedral yet?” I asked. The three women turned away from me, determined to ignore me now. “I don’t know if you’re Catholic, but if you plan to attend mass this morning, I would love to have you join me. I’m Father Casey.”

The woman turned back my way. As if we’d planned it, Dylan smiled, pointed in my direction and made the sign of the cross.

“Oh, no Father. We’re sorry. We thought you were trying to pick Jenny up, or worse. You can’t be too careful these days,” Wanda said.

“No harm done. I’ll be saying the ten o’clock mass. I’ll look for you.”

“He’s hearing confession before mass, if you’re interested,” Dylan said. His smile was a bit too broad.

“Are you really a priest?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah, he is,” Dylan said. “Stand up right now and ask him to exorcise that powder off your pants. He does it all the time.”

“Always helpful,” I said, sotto voce.

Jenny gave both of us a cold stare. She reached for the tiny plate that had held their beignets and threw the sugar on my shirt. “Think of it as holy water,” she said.

I crossed myself and said, “Peace be with you.”