Bravado and Bluster
AS HER PARTNER DROVE to police headquarters, Dorothy touched the pokerwork rendering on the cruiser’s faux wood dashboard. She wondered if that art was actual pyrography, shrugged, and then returned her focus to the forms she was completing. There’d be no respite at home.
Her strategy of not engaging her brothers in work talk had failed. When she interacted with them, emphasizing their lives, not hers, they grew miffed. Those fellows meant to be vicariously macho. The oldest among them was a scriptwriter. The youngest was a creator of pulp fiction. The twins, in the middle, were visual artists.
Those siblings constantly demanded knowledge of Dorothy’s endeavors. Two were revanchists, who desired, above all, returning New Orleans to France. Two “merely” wanted to thwa
