Louisiana Lament

headquarters of the New Orleans Police Department.
    A good thing it’s close,
she thought. She had a client coming in at one, and at three, she had to resume her surveillance of a suspected errant wife. The woman was a college professor whose last class was over then, and Talba was in a hurry to wrap up the case. Eddie’s jokes about “extracurricular activities” were getting tedious.
    Nonetheless, she was in a great mood. She sailed in feeling buoyant and powerful. Finally, finally, she was getting the damned license. She liked the job a lot. A whole lot. And a funny thing, it was a great way to make friends. It wasn’t something anyone ever thought about on career day at school, but once you said the words
private investigator,
it was amazing how many people blurted, “I’d love to do that!”
    They wouldn’t, of course. For one thing, there was the tedium—of records searches, surveillance, online research, court appearances, intake interviews, half a dozen other things. For another, most people thought divorce cases were sleazy, and these were a good chunk of the work. Actually, Talba liked them—she liked catching scumbags (of either sex) and, though originally hired for her computer skills, she’d turned out to be good at it. It wasn’t a job for everybody, but, despite the fact that she was such a computer wiz she impressed even herself, a sensitive and talented poet (in her opinion), and a baroness (she’d decided), it suited her.
    So she was in an excellent mood as she entered the building. A female functionary sporting two-inch purple nails with a tiny picture on each of them pointed to a door on the right. No stairs, no elevator. Couldn’t be more convenient.
    Talba stepped through to a nearly dark, closet-sized anteroom opening onto a large, light comfortable-looking room, which was populated by two people—an enormous woman in a black dress and a smallish, wiry-looking man in uniform. Both were African-American, as was Talba herself. The well-padded woman had a motherly look to her. Pencil in hand, she was poring over something in which she seemed to have a deep and abiding interest.
    She may or not have heard Talba enter, but either way, she didn’t look up. The man was talking on the phone. Talba stood politely for a few minutes, curious as to what was so important the woman couldn’t take time out to serve a customer. And finally, she got tired of it. “Excuse me,” she said.
    The woman looked at her over nondescript glasses that couldn’t hide a pair of bulging eyes.
A thyroid thing,
Talba thought, figuring it was causing the weight problem.
    “I’m here to get fingerprinted.”
    “Whatcha need prints for?”
    “I’m applying for my PI license.”
    “That’ll cost ya thirty dollars. You can get it done for fifteen dollars at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.”
    “Here’s fine. I don’t mind the charge.”
    The woman raised an eyebrow, as if she disapproved of spendthrifts. “Ya filled out ya cards?”
    “No, do I need to?”
    “Use black ink and be sure ya print.”
    In the anteroom, there was an end table she could probably write on, but not enough light to see. “May I come in to fill them out?” There were at least five empty desks.
    “This room’s part of the police department.” The woman went back to her paperwork, leaving Talba rummaging for a pen and hoping if she found one, it would be black.
    She ended up going outside to fill out the card.
    When she returned, the large woman seemed almost cordial. “Come on in,” she said, with a near-smile, and Talba opened the dutch door separating the spaces.
    The other woman came forward to sit at the front desk. “Let me have the cards and ya driver’s license.” The instructions on the application had been explicit—the fingerprinter must see the applicant’s license. The woman studied the documents for almost five minutes before she finally raised her head, face outraged, suddenly a different person.
    “You got different names on these things!”
    It was true.
    Talba’s birth name was an embarrassment to all concerned—to herself, to Miz Clara, and to the human race in general. A white obstetrics resident who thought he was funny had named her. However, the state required the same name on your driver’s license that appeared on your birth certificate.
    “Talba” was her own name, the name she’d given herself and always used except when performing her poems, at which times she used its