Crescent City Connection

beans and called Troy to come over and help her and Shavonne eat them.
    He didn’t stay over that night because Shavonne was there, but when she went off to do her homework, Dorise told him about Mr. and Mrs. Clemenceau and their delightful personalities. She told about the guests and their opinions on crime and the windows without locks and the little canine dustrag, and everything.
    The other way they’d played the game had had an uncomfortable edge to it—a kind of greediness, and longing, a sadness, maybe, that they couldn’t be lord and lady of the manor, no matter how odd the role. This way was just funny—they laughed themselves silly planning a fake robbery of Mr. and Mrs. Sourpuss Clemenceau. She said, “Least you wouldn’t have to worry about that little kitty-cat of a dog. You could just pick him up and throw him against a wall.”
    They got so carried away, Shavonne came out and said, “Are y’all gon’ let me do my homework or not?” and she was so funny saying that, they started laughing again. She stuck out her lip and turned and ran. Dorise knew she was going to cry, so she ran after her. Shavonne had been as fragile as a butterfly since Delavon died.
    Troy was gone when she came back.
    Two days later Dorise did another Uptown lunch, and the ladies were all abuzz about the burglary of a friend. The burglar had apparently done something unbelievably brutal—had picked up the couple’s little white dog and thrown it against a wall—or so it seemed from the dog’s injuries. It was still alive when they came home, but it had to be put to sleep.
    The story knocked the breath out of her. Surely they couldn’t be talking about Meredith Clemenceau. She and Troy had made up that story about the yappy little dog—it wasn’t real, it was something they imagined, just to have something to laugh about.
    She wondered,
Can you make something happen, just by talking about it?
    She didn’t tell Troy, didn’t tell anybody—it was too creepy. The coincidence, for one thing, but also that someone would actually do that to a dog! She didn’t want to think about it.
    It was another two days before Troy called and came over and presented her with Meredith Clemenceau’s diamond earrings.
    * * *
    That first night Lovelace lay awake in Isaac’s bed (Isaac having insisted on sleeping on pillows on the floor) and assessed her position.
    She felt bad for her uncle, for a lot of reasons, but most immediately because he had to sleep on the floor. She had to get him an air mattress of some kind.
    It surprised her that she thought that—it must mean she wanted to stay.
    She didn’t want to deal with that—whether she did or didn’t want to stay—but one thing she knew. She was happy. Lying in this hospital-clean bed, squeaky clean herself from the shower, full of Isaac’s inconceivably healthy vegetable stir-fry, she was absolutely euphoric.
    Of course it’s always nice, she thought, not to go to bed with your hands bound, and with no knockout drops in your bloodstream.
Damn! I still can’t believe my own dad did that.
    She certainly wasn’t afraid of her dad in the sense you’d be afraid of a criminal—he wasn’t going to rape and rob her—but this had to have something to do with her grandfather, who really was scary, and not only to her—this was a man who’d killed people. She hadn’t seen him at all in recent years and really had no idea who he was.
    When she was a kid she’d hardly noticed him, and she was pretty sure he’d hardly noticed her. She tried to think back, to get anything at all, and she drew a blank.
    Michelle knew about him. When Lovelace told her, her roommate had all but fallen out of bed. “You mean your grandfather’s a killer? But what’s that like? What’s he like? How on Earth could you have a grandfather who’s a killer?”
    She didn’t know. Try as she might, she couldn’t conjure up the least image of him, except preaching. She’d been made to go to church and hear him.
    He sounded like a preacher. That was really the only impression she had. But it frightened her that she hadn’t noticed anything odd.
    What a weird family
, she thought, thinking of poor Isaac.
    All the warm feelings she’d ever had for him had come flooding back—and more. They were nearly the same age, she realized. When she was three and he was ten, he was another whole species, and when she was ten and he was seventeen, he was yet another. Now though, when she was twenty and he was