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operating internationally, and Mann was one of the most successful chicken brokers in the country. A revendeur de poulet, as he snarkily referred to himself. He actually even loved some aspects of the job. He employed his highly evolved decorating skills to create gorgeous, eye-catching graphics for his trucks, packaging, and advertising. He chose two colors: an old red and a beautiful meadowy green—more Martha Stewart than John Deere—stolen from the shutters of the Soniat House, his favorite place to stay in New Orleans. The Valentine logo he designed himself, inspired by an old paper valentine from the 1940s and a cake shop in New York: a cozy-looking farmhouse and pasture done in the green, framed by clover and hearts and a kitcheny checked border in the soft red. Across the top of the logo, in Hollywood newsreel lettering, was valentine chickens and beneath that the slogan from us to you with love . Used on the chicken packages, the green of the logo brought out the fresh pinkness of chicken meat, and made the chicken of rival companies seem to be a sickly yellow. But the trucks were Mann’s magnum opus. The billboard-size flanks of the trucks were done entirely in the lovely green, and the logo appeared in cream and the pinky red that looked vintage even when freshly painted, the whole thing evoking wholesomeness, World War Two, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas as the semis rocketed down the highways with their raw, frozen loads of legs, wings, tenders, breasts, necks, livers, hearts, gizzards, and random pieces-parts for America’s tables and dog bowls.
    In spite of all his money, Mann wasn’t pretentious, or snobby. How could you be uppity about being a chicken man? He didn’t give a rat’s ass, actually; chicken money spent just as well as any other kind. Chickens afforded him a tiny jewel of an apartment, his pleasure dome in the Marais and a charmed life with the occasional lover, clothes from Barneys and Bergdorf’s, good restaurants, and travel. With the exception of a few jerks like Elvers Hartay, Mann was pretty much accepted, in fact, well respected in their town, where he’d chosen to live because he loved college sports, and in Dundee, where he commuted to his office when he had to.
    In spite of the rest of the world’s perception, small southern towns knew how to tolerate difference. There was always an old queer or lesbian couple, or a Boo Radley in town. You just had to not be from away , and stay within the unspoken boundaries, and you would have grown up knowing what those were. There was a place—a role—for everyone, and there actually had to be a few marginal types to provide the entertainment that kept everyone going and feeling that they were what normal was. Your chance of social success was greater if you were somebody’s smelly, addled uncle or transvestite cousin than if you were a stranger from California or Chicago trying to accrete in.
    Mary Byrd loved Mann and she knew that’s who she’d call. Back in the house, she listened for Evagreen, who she thought was upstairs. She was so stealthy, you never knew. Picking up the phone in the study, she yanked it and its cord into the small booze closet and closed the door. She didn’t need J. Edgar Evagreen listening in. She dialed Mann’s number, which always gave her a soupçon of happiness: 328-2449, or as Mann enjoyed telling select people, EAT-CHIX. His head was charmingly miswired, and he got things backward or confused: “chopsticks” might come out “foresticks,” the Longshot Bar might be “The Shothole,” or he might describe a color as being “egg-robin blue”—but he was very smart in ways that Charles and Mary Byrd appreciated.
    Mann answered the phone and Mary Byrd said what she always said when things, for one reason or another, weren’t going well: “Come get me.”
    “What now?” he asked.
    “God,” she sighed. “The worst. Well, of course not the worst, but not good.”
    “Tell me,” he