Crescent City Connection

assistant he ever had.”
    “I’d like to, but I’ve missed a lot of school—I might have to make it up this summer.” She turned toward him, and he saw that her nose was red. “I’ll come next year for sure. For JazzFest, maybe.”
    He must have shown his distress. She said, “Oh, no, that’s way too long. Let’s do a family Thanksgiving. Just you and me—and anybody else you want except Mom and Dad. And your dad, of course.” She shuddered a little at the mention of her grandfather.
    He moved toward her. “You’ve been good for me, you know that?” He recognized as he said it how uncharacteristic it was. It probably scared her to death.
    Sure enough, she stepped away. “In what way?”
    You put me back in touch with women. After your mother, I sort of flipped out, I guess.
    He couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t tell her that it was her mother he painted, not her—that he hadn’t known she’d grow up to look like Jacqueline, but that was why the angels looked like her.
    No one knew better than The Monk that Jacqueline in no way resembled an angel. But he was an artist. He could make her what he wanted.
    Jacqueline had seduced him when Daniel left her. He hadn’t at first realized what an enormous thing it was to sleep with his brother’s wife, not until his father caught them and explained it—in fact, made them an example in front of the entire congregation.
    He had tried with another woman, the one he met when he first came to New Orleans, but when he thought about it, his heart wasn’t in it. It was a lot easier to take vows of chastity and silence than to try it again.
    He thought that soon, when his hair grew back, he’d start dating again.
    * * *
    Skip had to go by the office before she went home, to pick up her messages and do some paperwork. It was something she dreaded, since the place would be crawling with media.
    What are you supposed to do, she thought, say “I can’t talk— I’m having a no-hair day” ?
    They grabbed at her, ran at her, stuck metal phalluses in her face. They asked her how it felt to be a hero and what she thought about Jacomine’s disappearance and other nonquestions guaranteed not to lead to a Pulitzer.
    She kept her eyes fixed on a spot about ten feet in front of her so that if the camera caught her, she would look neither blank nor unfriendly, but busy. A person with bigger fish to fry.
    She was so busy with this technique that she missed the people waiting for her in the reception area outside Homicide, and had to be sent back out. They were Dorise and Shavonne, dressed as if for a wedding, Dorise in a royal blue suit with black heels, Shavonne with her hair in braids fixed with pink barrettes, a pink dress and white Mary Janes; her Easter outfit, probably.
    Not long ago it was Easter
, Skip thought, though it seemed a century.
    Shavonne carried a plant with a spike of purple blossoms on it.
    “Hi.” She looked Skip in the eye, not down at her shoes the way kids her age tended to do, and her smile seemed a little unruly, something with a mind of its own, inclined to materialize when its owner was supposed to be serious.
    Skip said, “Hi,” and shook hands with Dorise.
    Shavonne held out the plant. “This is for you. It’s an orchid. Have you ever seen one?”
    “Not one that pretty.”
    The girl looked back at her mother. “Mama, see, I told you. I knew she was gonna think that.” She turned back to Skip. “Can African American girls be detectives?”
    “Sure. Plenty are—would you like me to introduce you?”
    Dorise said, “You don’t have to do that, darlin’.” She seemed diffident, perhaps a little intimidated at being at police headquarters. “We came down because we just wanted you to know how much we appreciated what you did.”
    “It was my job.”
And I owed you big-time.
    “Darlin’, I hope you don’t ever, ever feel bad about that other thing.” Her eyes got filmy. “You gave me back my child. I thought I’d lost her.”
    Shavonne looked as if she hadn’t the patience for any of this. She put the plant on the nearest chair, and put her arms up to be hugged. Skip had no time to bend down, and so it was an unbalanced hug—Skip’s waist and Shavonne’s sweet thin shoulders. She wondered if Shavonne knew who she was—that she was the white po-lice who had killed her daddy—and something in Dorise’s face told her she did, and that the child was hugging her anyway.
    Skip went back to her paperwork.
    Later, on