Yes, Obviously

On Wednesday she's at the corner market on St. Claude, in the cereal aisle, reading the back of a box of frosted flakes like it's scripture.

"Coincidence," she says, without looking up.

On Thursday morning she's at the streetcar stop on Rampart when you get off with your clipboard, sitting on the bench in black sunglasses and a lace shawl, eating a praline out of wax paper.

"I live here," she says.

"You live on Piety Street."

"I live in New Orleans. You're in it. That's not my fault."

At lunch she's on the bench across from the permits building, seven floors under your window, in the only patch of shade on the block, with a paperback and a thermos. When you come down she slides over to make room without a word, and you sit, and she hands you half a muffuletta wrapped in butcher paper, and you eat it in silence like two people on a stakeout.

"You're following me," you say finally.

"Yes," she says. "Obviously."

You wait for more. She turns a page.

"That's it? Just yes?"

"You asked a yes-or-no question. I'm not going to charge you five dollars for a yes." She licks olive oil off her thumb, which takes your brain offline for a moment. "Did you report the stairs?"

You did. You spent two hours on Tuesday afternoon writing up the Louisa Street back stairs: photos of the saw kerf, measurements, a strongly worded paragraph about intentional structural sabotage. You walked it into Clarisse Fortier's glass office, and she read it with her red mouth pursed and then smiled at you and said, Let me look into it, Ethan. These things are complicated. Then she put it in a drawer.

"I reported it," you say.

"And she put it in a drawer."

You turn and look at her. "How do you know that?"

"Because everybody who's ever reported a Castille house puts it in a drawer." She screws the cap back on her thermos. "Or a drawer puts it in them."

"What does that mean?"

"It means eat your sandwich, Inspector. You have a two o'clock on Desire Street and you're going to be late." She stands, collects her things and walks off down Poydras like a Victorian widow who just inherited a lot of money.

You have a two o'clock on Desire Street. You did not tell her that.

Thursday night is Achille's set at the Blue Heron Lounge.

You know this because Achille Arceneaux, unit 2, knocked on your door on Wednesday and told you so, in the tone of a man informing you of a law. He's thirty-three, tall, with a gold hoop in one ear and a gap-toothed grin, and he plays the trumpet so loud at four in the afternoon that the windows in your unit buzz.

"You come," he said. "Nine o'clock. It's on St. Claude. Everybody comes."

"Everybody?"

He grinned wider. "She'll be there. She's always there. She just won't sit with you."

The Blue Heron is long and dark and red, with a pressed-tin ceiling and a bar that's been wiped down so many times the wood is soft as skin. The band is five guys crammed into a corner by the bathroom. The dance floor is the size of a parking space and nobody cares.

Coraline is at the end of the bar in black velvet, nursing a Sazerac. Every man in the place is aware of her the way you're aware of weather. She ignores all of them. When you come in, she lifts her glass a quarter inch without turning her head.

You sit two stools down. She lets you.

Achille plays something that starts sad and turns filthy halfway through, and the whole room laughs. Coraline watches him with an expression you haven't seen on her before: plain fondness, no armor.

"He's good," you say.

"He's a menace. He's like my brother. Don't tell him I said he's good, it goes straight to his embouchure." She swirls her drink. "You've been here two weeks. Why New Orleans?"

You almost give her the short version. Job opened up; you applied. Instead, maybe because of the bourbon, maybe because of the red light, you give her the real one.

"My dad was a carpenter in Akron. Built half the porches on our street. He died last year, and three months later the woman I was going to marry told me she didn't want to be a carpenter's widow's daughter-in-law in Ohio for the rest of her life." You shrug. "I wanted to go somewhere the houses were older than my problems."

She's quiet a long moment.

"That's a terrible reason, Ethan," she says. "I love it."

"What's yours? Why tarot?"

"Five dollars a pop, no taxes, and I get to tell people the truth." She tips her glass toward you. "Nobody tells people the truth, cher. You'd be amazed what they'll pay for it."

"And what's my truth?"

"That you're a man who holds the rail." She looks at you sideways. "That's a good thing to be. Don't stop."

The band kicks into something fast. A drunk guy in a fraternity shirt materializes at her elbow and asks her to dance in the voice of someone who has never heard no.

"I'm married," Coraline says, without looking at him.

"To who?"

She points her glass at you. "Him. Very jealous man. Building inspector. He'll condemn your house."

The fraternity guy looks at you. You look at him with an expression you learned from your father, who once got a contractor to cry about a joist. He leaves.

Coraline laughs.

It's the first time you've heard it. It's not a delicate laugh. It's low and real and a little rough, and she covers her mouth with her ringed hand like it escaped without permission. Achille, across the room, nearly drops his horn.

"Don't," she says, still laughing. "Don't look pleased with yourself."

"I'm not."

"You're glowing. You look like a man who found a level surface."

You walk home together, slowly, because it's still eighty degrees at midnight and because neither of you suggests walking faster. She takes Chartres. You don't argue.

On the shared balcony, she stops on her side of the ferns. You stop on yours. The street below is quiet except for somebody's radio and a cat yelling at another cat.

"Can I ask you something?" you say.

"You can ask."

"What was the card?"

She looks at the ferns. "Not tonight."

"Then when?"

"When I've figured out if I'm crazy." She holds out her hand, palm up, rings glinting. "Give me your phone."

You hand it over. She types fast and hands it back. Under a new contact, she has saved herself as CORALINE (UNIT 4) (PROFESSIONAL).

"Professional?"

"I pull a card for every neighbor every morning. Miss Philo, Achille, Huey, the cat on the corner." She opens her glass door. "You're a neighbor now. You get a card. That's all this is."

"That's all."

"Don't make it weird, Inspector." She steps inside. The door closes. Her lamp clicks on behind the curtain.

You're still standing at the rail when your phone buzzes in your hand.