Alone in the room he nodded, physically reminding himself that he did indeed know where the lines he wouldn’t cross lay.
Marion
The brakes rubbed tight against the front tire, so Marion had to pedal hard as she biked down Frenchmen Street, as though she were going up a steep hill and not steering across the flattest city there is. She gripped the handles tightly with hands oversized enough that she’d known from a young age she was meant to work with them.
As she passed, she noted which bars were closed just because it was morning and which were still locked up altogether. If a place could start over, then so could she. That’s what she was waiting for: the return of hotel spa business, the return of legitimate clients, the return of the career that used to pay the bills. Volunteering do-gooders, on-the-make construction workers, and locals returning to huge repair bills were not interested in what she was trained to do. They were not interested in her, and she had no use for them. Right now her needs and plans were simple: Do the work she could while waiting for the blue bloods and tourists to return and spend money. When was what most people said, not if, so maybe optimism did have its place. Meanwhile she was leaving a résumé at every hotel and day spa that was reopening or looked poised to, trying not to think about the fact that most of the people preaching optimism were those who’d stayed through the storm or come home quickly after — in other words, not actually most people.
Maybe if she could get back her real job it would lead to the return of the other career as well. The vocation. But she wasn’t ready to think about that. The owner of the rubbled Ocean Springs gallery that was to have hosted her first show had told her the story of a famous writer — Hemingway, maybe, or someone like that, definitely a man — who lost an entire novel to fire or theft or because he left it on a train. He then sat down and rewrote from scratch what became a classic. That was supposed to make her feel better, but it infuriated her.
Weeks later, though, the thought of starting over no longer made her angry, just tired. One weekend after a double shift, she’d slept sixteen hours straight, waking up dehydrated and uncertain where she was. Her bedroom had materialized slowly, like an old-style photograph being developed. She no longer even saw the damaged canvases stacked against her bedroom wall except when she swept the floor, which wasn’t often.
On Decatur, two blocks before she reached Molly’s, she noticed two doors newly unpadlocked, two new lights on. There was a woman inside the first, turned sideways to the storefront, scrubbing or sanding a table against the wall. Blond, tall, older than Marion but not old. There was no sign on the door, no clue hinting at what the business might be. Marion hopped off her bike and walked it down the middle of the street. The second new sign of life was on the next block, just past and across from the Mojo Lounge. No person visible, just a light and a sign. A tattoo parlor. A new establishment, as far as Marion could tell.
She locked her bike to a column in front of the bar and breathed in the smell of the Lower Quarter, an experience like standing outside a dryer vent except dirty instead of clean. Not quite sewage but stagnant water. She steeled herself to face the men inside, telling herself to be nice, that their dollars were worth smiling for. She told herself this every time, but usually she just slammed their beers down in front of them. It wasn’t like they had many other women to look at outside those Bourbon Street strip joints that had stayed open or reopened fast, their girls looking more bedraggled than before. And of course some guys are attracted by disdain, determined to win you over, overtipping for rotten service. Anyway, they were glad to be served from behind a bar. In the first days following the storm, the bar had made do with beer bottles stuck into a pile of ice on the floor, compliments of a firefighter who had been a loyal customer. The owner took pride in not closing at all, said the city’s thirst was stronger than any natural disaster.
“Tag. You’re it.” Suzette threw a towel at her before she even rounded the end of the bar.
Marion let it fall to the floor and walked through the ceilingless corridor to the bathroom, stepping around puddles from an earlier rain, to use one of the stalls carrying the warning sign that tourists snapped pictures of: One customer per bathroom or you will be asked to leave.
She retrieved the towel from the floor when she returned, more or less ready to face the customers. High on the wall behind her, above the mirror that reflected a thousand bottles back to those who would drink them, hung license plates from every state — most of them quite old, but a few (Hawaii, South Dakota, and for some reason the relatively proximate Alabama) were newer. When she’d first started working at the bar, Marion had assumed the plates were some sort of tribute to tourists from every state who had set foot in the bar. Now she thought of them as representing not so much those who passed through but those who came and stayed. Despite claiming tourism as its main trade, the Lower Quarter was a place where you could become a local faster than in most places. Or maybe it was because of the tourist trade, not despite it, but Marion knew that other parts of the city were not the same. Uptown you were considered to be of the place only if your grandparents had been born in New Orleans, and there were families who thought even that definition was too generous, that true belonging required the commitment of additional generations.
Coco Robicheaux sat at the end of the bar, where he often sat, wearing an orange fedora with a bright blue band. A clear act of calculated outrageousness. A few stools in from the windows that opened onto the street, two long-haired guys were talking about snakes. Suzette — Marion was pretty sure that was her name, but business was down enough that none of the bartenders ever worked together — had taken care of all of them: tequila shaken with ice in front of Coco and two Pabst longnecks in front of the amateur herpetologists. Sitting farther in, near the taps, was a new arrival. He had a shaved head and brown skin and wore a white sleeveless undershirt showing off a thick torso and arms covered with tattoos.
“Hey there, fully illustrated one,” Marion said. “What are you drinking?”
She could generally tell if someone was a tourist by the answer to this question. Bud light meant yes. Bayou Teche, no. Hurricane, yes, and get the fuck out of here and stumble your way to a tourist bar farther up in the Quarter. Bourbon on ice meant local and okay to stick around all afternoon. But this guy wasn’t a giveaway: vodka with a twist. His accent was slight but present, probably Latino but what kind she had no idea. She made the cocktail, choosing lemon over lime without asking, and leaned back against the bar to watch him drink it. He took two long sips. Not a tourist but not local.
“I’m guessing you and the new tattoo parlor on the next block are related,” she said.
He smiled, maybe pleasantly surprised by her calculation or maybe only polite. Not flirting, she was pretty sure. “You’re the only girl I seen working here with no tats at all.”
His tattoos were botanical, making rain forests of the large muscles of his arms and shoulders. They had less black and more color than she’d seen in tattoos before, multiple shades of green — dozens — and several of blue and red. She searched his neck, but he’d left that alone, passing at least one IQ test. There was a mole just above his left collarbone that made a diagonal with an identical beauty mark on the outside corner of his right eye. The imaginary line made her think of a Da Vinci drawing of a bisected man that she’d seen in an art history book.