Crescent City Connection

“okay” sign—Good idea.
    “But you know—restaurants—I don’t really have any training or anything.” She put her elbows on the table and stared past him, out the window. “There was this ad in the Times-Picayune for a low-fat cook….”
    He gave her the “come-here” sign—More, more.
    She just smiled and looked at her plate.
    He couldn’t stand it. He got up and found his pad. “Did you answer it?”
    “No. I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid to—I couldn’t take rejection right now.”
    “Why would they reject you?” he wrote.
    “I don’t have references, for one thing.”
    He thought a minute, and then drew a picture of himself with a lightbulb over his head. “I used to work in a juice bar and guess what I did? Vegetarian cooking—you know, making guacamole and gazpacho, but still, it was cooking. The owner’s a really good friend. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind cooking you up a reference.”
    “Really?”
    The Monk nodded.
    “I don’t know.”
    He wrote, “It’s just a formality—it’s not like you can’t cook.”
    She smiled at him, and he knew that she appreciated his caring about her. He was surprised at the way that touched him.
    When he meditated and had been sitting quite a while, it occurred to him how eager each was to live the other’s life, Lovelace for Isaac and he for her, and how easy that was. He could plainly see what she could do, what held her back. She could be right about him, too, but she wasn’t him. It was your own life that was hard.
    Later, he thought,
This floor is hard, too. I wonder when she’ll leave.
    * * *
    Things were moving so fast Daniel felt out of breath. They were in the house now, the place he had found on Magazine Street, and there were a lot of them. His respect for his father— his wonder at him—increased every day. He probably had twenty-five or thirty followers in New Orleans with an inner core of a dozen—that was a lot for a man who’d been trashed by the media and was wanted by the FBI. It was enough to really do something.
    There were six of them living in the house—all white, so as to draw less attention. The others were couples, and since they had a double, it even looked as if they were two separate households. It was a discreet setup, but a little public. Magazine was a big-deal street and people were so friendly here—or nosy, depending on how you looked at it. They couldn’t have anyone dropping in unexpectedly—in fact, couldn’t have anyone seeing Daddy at all. It would be dicey, but it ought to work as long as the others shopped for groceries and that sort of thing.
    Daniel was in an incredibly productive period, thriving on urban activity after the years of rural isolation. He and one of the women had spent an afternoon finding furniture at various junk stores; another couple had bought linens and dishes. That was really all it took to get settled, except for the two armoires Daddy wanted. That took another afternoon.
    Meanwhile, one of the other men had installed the office—computer, fax, copier, everything Daddy needed to communicate with his fellow Jurors.
    And Daniel had made phone calls and a couple of trips. He’d made virtually no progress on Lovelace, but he’d filed a full report on Rosemarie Owens that included her unlisted number, which he’d gotten by breaking into her house so gently she hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t had her alarm on because she was home at the time. He’d done the research, but what it was about he had no idea. The woman was no exemplar of virtue, but she wasn’t someone who needed justice either—not a potential target, to Daniel’s mind. Perhaps Daddy saw her as an ally, though why— except for her money—he couldn’t imagine.
    Or perhaps it was the husband who was the target. Could that be?
    No—dumping your wife just wasn’t a capital offense. The Jury was a serious organization.
    After about a week, when he was satisfied everything was in place, Daddy said, “Let’s call that Owens woman. What do you say?”
    “Whatever you like, Daddy. You want me to get her for you?”
    “Yeah. On the speakerphone. Let’s make it a conference call.”
    “What’ll I tell her?”
    “Just tell her I want to talk to her.”
    “Use your real name?”
    “Hell, yeah, use my real name.”
    He shrugged. His father amazed him with how much support he could get, how many people he could rally, but when all was said and done, the old man had delusions of grandeur.