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RHODA woke up dreaming. In the dream she was crushing the skulls of Jody’s sheepdogs. Or else she was crushing the skulls of Jody’s sisters. Or else she was crushing Jody’s skull. Jody was the husband she was leaving. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the skulls between her hands, beneath her heels.

As the dream ended her father was taking her to the police station so she could turn herself in. The family was all over the place, weeping and wringing their hands. Her mother’s face was small and broken, peering down from the stairwell.

She woke from the dream feeling wonderful, feeling purged of evil. She pulled on Jody’s old velour bathrobe and sat down at the dining room table to go over her lists. Getting a divorce was easy as pie. There was nothing to it. All you needed was money. All you needed for anything was money. Well, it was true. She went back to her lists.

Today the real estate agent was coming to see the house. Then she would sell it. Then she would get a cute little shotgun apartment in the Faubourg-Marigny. Then she would get a job. Then she would get a new boyfriend. Everything would fall into place. Jody would hang himself and the will would still be made out in her favor and she would quit her job and go live in New York. In the meantime she might have to be poorer than she was accustomed to being.

That’s okay, she told herself. She took off her robe and went into the dressing room and stood in front of the mirror. Dolphins don’t have anything, she told herself. A hawk possesses nothing. Albert Einstein wore tennis shoes. I am a dolphin, she decided. I am a hawk high in the Cascade Mountains. I am not a checkbook. I am not a table. I am not a chair.

She got into the bathtub and ran the water all the way to the top, pretending she was a dolphin in the summer seas somewhere off the coast of Martinique or Aruba. The morning sun was coming in the window, making long slanting lines on the walls and shutters and the water in the tub…now what about those tablecloths, she began thinking, imagining the contents of a closet she hadn’t opened in years. What am I going to do about all those tablecloths? She saw them stacked in rows, tied with small blue ribbons, monogrammed with her initials and her mother’s initials and her grandmother’s initials. Oh, God, she thought, what will I do with all those goddamn tablecloths? There won’t be room for them in a tiny house in the Faubourg-Marigny. She sat up in the tub and began cleaning the mortar between the tiles with a fingernail brush.

She had worked her way up to the hot water faucet when the phone rang. “Now what?” she said. She jumped out of the bathtub and padded into the bedroom and answered it. She grabbed the receiver and threw herself down on the unmade bed, letting the sheets dry her body.

“Mrs. Wells,” the soft black voice said. “I hope I didn’t wake you. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.”

“Who is it?” she said. But she knew who it was. It was the insurance adjuster who was in charge of her claim for the diamond ring she had sold last month.

“It’s Earl,” he said. “Earl Treadway. Remember, we talked last week.”

“Oh, Earl. I’m so glad you called. I talked to Father Ryan about getting your son into the summer arts program. He said he was sure it could be arranged. Are you still interested in that?” Five thousand dollars, she was thinking. She shivered, a wonderful shiver that went all the way from her scalp to her groin. Five thousand dollars. Easy as pie.

“I told my son about talking to you,” the black voice said. “He was excited about it. But listen, before we start talking about that. I need to see you about your claim. I think we have it straightened out now.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten about it. It’s all so embarrassing. I can’t believe I left that ring lying out when there were workmen in the house. I guess I’ve just always been too trusting. I just couldn’t believe it would happen to me.”

“It happens to everyone sooner or later,” he said. “That’s what I’m for. Look, would it be possible for me to come by on my way to work? I have the check. I’d like to go on and deliver it.”

“A check?”

“For four thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars. Will that settle it?”

“Oh, well, yes. I mean, a check. I didn’t know they did those things that fast. But, sure, come on by. I mean, I’m up and dressed. How long will it take you to get here? I mean, sure, that’ll be fine. Then this afternoon I can go out and start shopping for a new diamond, can’t I?”

“I’ll be by in about thirty minutes then,” he said. “I’m glad you were there. I’m glad it’s all worked out. I’m looking forward to meeting you after all these nice talks we’ve had.” Earl hung up the phone and leaned back against the refrigerator. The baby’s bottle had spilled milk on the counter. He reached for a rag to wipe it up, then changed his mind and left it there. He straightened his tie and took his coat off the back of the highchair and put it on. It was too hot for his corduroy suit but he was wearing it anyway. All those nice talks, he was thinking. All those nice long talks.

Rhoda rolled off the bed and started trying on clothes. She settled on a tennis skirt and a red sweater. They love red, she told herself. They love bright colors. Besides, what had she read about red? Wear red, red keeps you safe.

Well, I don’t need anything to keep me safe, she thought. All I’m doing is cheating an insurance company. It’s the first time I ever stole anything in my life except that one time in the fifth grade. Everybody gets to steal something sooner or later. I mean, that little Jew stole my ring, didn’t he? And Jody stole five years of my life. And this black man’s going to bring that check and I’m going to take it and I don’t give a damn whether it’s honest or not.

She sat down on a chair and pulled on her tennis shoes and tied the strings in double knots.

Cheating an insurance company hadn’t been Rhoda’s idea. All she had started out to do was sell her engagement ring. All she had done was get up one morning and take her engagement ring down to the French Quarter to sell it. A perfect stone, a two-carat baguette. A perfect stone for a perfect girl, Gabe Adler had said when he sold it to Jody. It was insured for five thousand dollars. Rhoda had thought all she had to do was go downtown and turn it in and collect the money.

She drove to the Quarter, parked the car in the Royal Orleans parking lot and proceeded to carry the ring from antique store to antique store. One after the other the owners held the diamond up to the light, admired it and handed it back. “There’s a place down on the Avenue that’s buying stones,” the last dealer told her. “Near Melepomene, on the Avenue. A new place. I heard they were giving good prices. You might try there.”

“Oh, I don’t think I really want to sell it,” she said, slipping it back on her finger. “I just wanted to see what it was worth. I’m a reporter, did you know that? It would be a real pity if all those people out there buying diamonds found out what it’s like to try to sell one, wouldn’t it? If they found out what a racket you guys have going? This ring’s insured for seven thousand dollars. But no one will give me half of that. I ought to write an article about it. I ought to let the public in on this.”

“There’s no need to talk like that,” the man said. He was a big, sad-looking man in baggy pants. He took the glass out of his eye; his big droopy face was the shape of one of his chandeliers. “There’s no need for that.” A group of tourists lifted their eyes from the cases and turned to watch.

“You antique dealers are just a bunch of robbers,” Rhoda said as loudly as she could. “Selling all this goddamn junk to people. And the jewelry stores are worse. How can my ring be worth seven thousand dollars if no one will buy it when I want to sell it? You want to tell me that? You want to explain that to me?”

“Leave the store,” the man said, coming around the counter. “You just go on now and leave the store.” He was moving toward her, his stomach marching before him like a drum. Rhoda retreated.

“Thanks for the diamond lesson,” she said. “I’ll be able to use that in my work.”

The place at Melepomene and Saint Charles was a modern showroom in an old frame house. There were gardens in front and a shiny red enamel door. This looks more like it, Rhoda thought. She opened the door and went inside, pretending to be interested in the watches in a case. “Can I help you?” the boy behind the counter said. He was a very young boy dressed like an old man. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have some jewelry I’m thinking of selling. Some people I know said this was a good place. I’m thinking of selling some things I don’t wear anymore and getting a Rolex instead. I see you sell them.”

“What was it you wanted to sell? Did you bring it with you?”

“I might sell this,” she said, taking off the ring and handing it to him. “If I could get a good enough price. I’m tired of it. I’m bored with wearing rings anyway. See what you think it’s worth.”

He took the ring between his chubby fingers and held it up above him. He looked at it a moment, then put a glass into his eye. “It’s flawed,” he said. “No one is buying diamonds now. The prime was twenty percent this morning.”

“It is not flawed,” she said. “It came from Adler’s. It’s a perfect stone. It’s insured for six thousand dollars.”

“I’ll give you nine hundred,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

“How old are you?” she said. “You don’t look like you’re old enough to be buying diamonds.”

“I’m twenty-five,” he said. “I run this place for my father. I’ve been running it since it opened. Do you want to sell this ring or not? That’s my only offer.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s insured for six thousand dollars. I only meant to sell it for a lark.”

“Well, I guess it depends on how badly you need the money,” he said. “Of course if you don’t like the ring there’s not much sense in keeping it.”

“Oh, I don’t need the money.” She had drawn herself up so she could look at him on a slant. “My husband’s a physician. I don’t need money for a thing. I just wanted to get rid of some junk.” She squared her shoulders. “On the other hand I might sell it just so I wouldn’t have to bother with keeping it insured. There’s a painting I want to buy, at the Bienville. I could sell the ring and buy that painting. It’s all irrelevant anyway. I mean, it’s all just junk. It’s all just possessions.”

“Well, make up your mind,” he said. He held the ring out to her on a polishing cloth. “It’s up to you.”

“I’ll just keep it,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of selling a ring that valuable for nine hundred dollars.”

It was almost a week before she went back to sell the ring. “Seven hundred and fifty,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”

“But you said nine hundred. You definitely said nine hundred.”

“That was last week. You should have sold it then.” Rhoda looked into his little myopic piggy eyes, hating him with all her clean white Anglo-Teutonic heart. “I’ll take it,” she said, and handed him the ring.

He left the room. She sat down in a chair beside his desk, feeling powerless and used. He came back into the room. She was trying not to look at his hands, which were holding a stack of bills.

“Here you are,” he said. “We don’t keep records of these things, you know. We don’t give receipts.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“There isn’t any record. In case you want to file a claim.”

She took the money from him and stuffed it into her handbag without counting it. “My God,” she said. Her power was returning. She felt it coursing up her veins. Her veins were charged with power. A thousand white horses of pure moral power pouring up and down her neck and face and legs and arms and hands. “I’ve never filed an insurance claim in my life,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t bother to file one if I actually lost something.” She stood up. “You are really just the epitome of too goddamn much, are you aware of that?” Then she left, going out into the sweltering heat of the summer day, out onto the Avenue where a streetcar was chugging merrily by.

I’m going to turn them in, she thought. As soon as I get home I’ll call the mayor’s office and then I’ll call the Better Business Bureau and then I’ll write a letter to Figaro and the Times-Picayune. I’ll get that little fat Jewish bastard. My God, it must be terrible to be a nice Jew and have to be responsible for people like that. That’s the strangest thing, how they all get lumped together in our minds, a saint like Doctor Bernstein and a little bastard like that. No wonder they all want to move to Israel. Oh, well. She got into the car and opened her bag and counted the money. Seven hundred and fifty dollars. Well, it would pay the bills.

It was several days before she called the insurance company and filed the claim. “It was right there in the jewelry box on the dresser where I always leave it,” she told the police when they came to make a report. “I can’t imagine who would take it. My housekeeper is the most honest person in this city. My friends come in and out but none of them would touch it. I just don’t know…”

“Have you had any work done on the house?” The police officer was young. He was standing in the doorway to her bedroom getting a hard-on but he was trying to ignore it. She was very pretty. With a big ass. He liked that in a woman. It reminded him of his mother. He shifted his revolver to the front and cocked his head sideways, giving her his late night look.

“Oh,” she was saying. “I forgot all about that. I had the bedrooms painted last month. I had a whole crew of painters here for three days. You don’t think…I mean, they all work for Mr. Sanders. He’s as honest as the day is long. He paints for everyone. Still, the ring is gone. It isn’t here. It was here and now it isn’t.”

“I’d bet on the painters,” the policeman said. “There’s been a lot of that going on lately. This is the third claim like this I’ve had in a week. In this same neighborhood.”

“But why would he only take the ring?” Rhoda said. “Why didn’t he take anything else? There was other jewelry here. Expensive things.”

“They’re after diamonds. And flat silver. They don’t mess with small stuff. No, I think we’ve got a pretty professional job here. Looks like he knew what he was looking for.”

“I only want my ring back,” she told Earl the first time he called. “Or one just like it to replace it. I’m so embarrassed about this. I’ve never filed an insurance claim of any kind. But everyone said I had to go on and report it. I didn’t want to.”

“There’s a lot of unemployment right now,” he said. “It makes things happen.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I hate to report this. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, any poor person or someone that had to steal to eat or something like that.”

“You sure sound like a nice lady. I’d sure like to meet you sometime.”

“Well, sure,” she said. “Before this is over we’ll have to see about that.”

That had been the beginning. He had called her several times, asking for details of the robbery, checking facts. The conversations had drifted into discussions of movies, city politics, civil rights, athletics, her divorce, his divorce, his little boy, her connections that could get his little boy into a summer painting program. Somewhere along the way she told him the rest of the robbery story and he filed the claim and the money had been sent on its way from the home office of the insurance company.

Then he was there, standing on her doorstep, all dressed up in a corduroy suit with an oxford cloth shirt and a striped tie, six feet three inches tall, soft brown eyes, kinky black hair.

“Come on in the kitchen,” she said. “Come have a cup of coffee.” She led him through a dining room filled with plants. Rhoda’s whole house was filled with plants. There were plants of every kind in every room. Lush, cool, every color of green, overflowing their terra-cotta pots, spilling out onto the floor. It took the maid all day Tuesday to water them. Earl followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a maple captain’s chair. He put his briefcase beside him and folded his hands on the breakfast room table. He smiled at her. She was trying not to look at the briefcase but her eyes kept going in that direction.

“Where are you from, Earl Treadway?” she said. “Where in the Delta did you escape from with that accent? Or is it Georgia?”

“I escaped from Rosedale,” he said. He was laughing. He wasn’t backing off an inch. “My daddy was a sharecropper. How about you?”

“I escaped from Issaquena County,” she said. “Sixty miles away. Well, I only lived there in the summers. In the winter I lived in Indiana. I lived up north a lot when I was young.”

“Are you married? Oh, no, that’s right. You told me you were getting a divorce. We talked so much I forgot half the things we said.” He picked up a placemat from a stack of them at the end of the table. It was a blue and yellow laminated map of the British Virgin Islands, bright blue water, yellow islands. The names of the islands were in large block letters, Tortola, Beef Island, Virgin Gorda, Peter Island, Salt Island, The Indians. All the places Rhoda had been with her husband, Jody, summer after boring summer, arguing and being miserable on the big expensive sailboat. Dinner on board or in some polite resort. Long hungover mornings with whiskey bottles and ashtrays and cigarettes and cracker crumbs all over the deck. Anchored in some hot civilized little harbor. While somewhere ashore, down one of the dirt roads where Jody never let her go, oh, there Rhoda imagined real life was going on, a dark musky, musical real life, loud jump-ups she heard at night, hot black wildness going on and on into the night while she sat on the boat with her husband and people they brought along from New Orleans, gossiping about people they knew, planning their careful little diving trips for the morning, checking the equipment, laughing good-naturedly about their escapades in the water, wild adventures thirty feet below the dinghy with a native guide.

Earl picked up one of the placemats and held it in his hand. “What is this?” he said again. He was looking right at her. His face was so big, his mouth so red and full, his voice so deep and rich and kind. It was cool in the room. So early in the morning. I wonder what he smells like, she thought. I wonder what it would be like to touch his hair.

“My husband bought those,” she said. “They’re maps of the British Virgin Islands, where I have a sailboat. I used to go there every summer. I know that place like the back of my hand. I’ve been bored to death on every island in the Sir Francis Drake Channel. I guess I still own part of the sailboat. I forgot to ask. Well, anyway, that’s what it is. On the other hand, it’s a placemat.”

“I like maps,” he said. “I remember the first one I ever saw, a map of the world. I used to stay after school to look at it. I was trying to find the way out of Rosedale.” She smiled and he went on. “Later, I had a job at a filling station and I could get all the maps I wanted. I was getting one of every state. I wanted to put them on a wall and make the whole United States.

“How old are you?” she said.

“I’m thirty-four. How old are you?”

“I’m thirty-four. Think of that. Our mothers could have passed each other on the street with us in their stomachs.”

“You say the funniest things of anyone I ever talked to. I was thinking that when I’d talk to you on the phone. You think real deep, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I read all the time. I read Albert Einstein a lot. Oh, not the part about the physics. I read his letters and about political systems and things like that. Yeah, I guess that’s true. I guess I do think deep.”

“You really own a sailboat in this place?” he said. He was still holding the placemat.

“I guess I do. I forgot to put it in the divorce.” She laughed. His hand had let the placemat drop. His hand was very near to hers. “It isn’t nearly as much fun as it looks in the pictures,” she said. “It’s really pretty crowded. There are boats all over the place there now, big power boats from Puerto Rico. It’s all terribly middle class really. A lot of people pretending to have adventures.” She was looking at the briefcase out of the corner of her eye. It was still there. Why don’t you go on and give me the check, she wanted to say, and then I’ll give you a piece of ass and we’ll be square. She sighed. “What did you want to talk to me about? About settling the robbery I mean.”

“Just to finalize everything. To give you the check they cut this morning.”

“All right,” she said. “Then go on and give it to me. Just think, Earl, in my whole life I never collected any insurance. It makes me feel like a criminal. Well, you’re an insurance salesman. Make me believe in insurance.”

He picked up the briefcase and set it down in front of him on the table. “Will this hurt the finish on your table? It’s such a pretty table. I wouldn’t want to scratch it up.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s an old table. It’s got scratches all over it.”

He opened the briefcase and moved papers and took out the check. He held it out very formally to her. “I’m sorry about the ring,” he said. “I hope this will help you get another one.”

She took it from him. Then she laid it carelessly down behind her on a counter. She laid it down a few inches away from a puddle of water that had condensed around a green watering can. Once she had put it there she would not touch it again while he was watching. “Thanks for bringing it by. You could have mailed it.”

“I wanted to meet you. I wanted to get to know you.”

“So did I,” she said. Her eyes dug into his skin, thick black skin. Real black skin. Something she had never had. It was cool in the room. Three thousand dollars’ worth of brand-new air-conditioning was purring away outside the window. Inside everything was white and green. White woodwork, green plants, baskets of plants in every window, ferns and philodendrons and bromeliads, gloxinia and tillansias and cordatum. Leaves and shadows of leaves and wallpaper that looked like leaves. “What are you doing tonight?” she said. “What are you doing for dinner?”

“I’ll be putting napkins in your lap and cutting up your steak if you’ll go out with me,” he said. “We’ll go someplace nice. Anywhere you want.”

“What time?”

“I have to go to a meeting first. A community meeting where I live. I’m chairman of my neighborhood association. It might be eight or nine before I can get away. Is that too late?” He had closed his briefcase and was standing up.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said. He locked the briefcase and came out from beside the table. “Don’t lose that check,” he said. It was still sitting on the edge of the counter. The circle of water was closing in. “Don’t get it wet. It would be a lot of trouble to get them to make another one.”

When he was gone Rhoda straightened up the house and made the bed. She put all the dishes in the dishwasher and watered the plants. She cleaned off the counters one by one. She moved the watering can and wiped up the ring of water. Then she picked up the check and read the amount. Four thousand six hundred and forty-three dollars. Eight months of freedom at five hundred dollars a month. And forty-three dollars to waste. I’ll waste it today, she decided. She picked up the phone and called the beauty parlor.

Six o’clock is the time of day in New Orleans when the light cools down, coming in at angles around the tombs in the cemeteries, between the branches of the live oak trees along the avenues, casting shadows across the yards, penetrating the glass of a million windows.

Rhoda always left the drapes open in the afternoons so she could watch the light travel around the house. She would turn on “The World of Jazz” and dress for dinner while the light moved around the rooms. Two hours, she thought, dropping her clothes on the floor of her bedroom. Two hours to make myself into a goddess. She shaved her legs and gave herself a manicure and rubbed perfumed lotion all over her body and started trying on clothes. Rhoda had five closets full of clothes. She had thousands of dollars’ worth of skirts and jackets and blouses and dresses and shoes and scarves and handbags.

She opened a closet in the hall. She took out a white lace dress she had worn one night to have dinner with a senator. She put the soft silk-lined dress on top of her skin. Then, one by one, she buttoned up every one of the fifty-seven tiny pearl buttons of the bodice and sleeves. The dress had a blue silk belt. Rhoda dropped it on the closet floor. She opened a drawer and found a red scarf and tied it around the waist of the dress. She looked in the mirror. It was almost right. But not quite right. She took one of Jody’s old ties off a tie rack and tied that around the waist. There, that was perfect. “A Brooks Brothers’ tie,” she said out loud. “The one true tie of power.”

She went into the kitchen and took a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass and began to walk around the house. She stopped in the den and put a Scott Joplin record on the stereo and then she began to dance, waving the wineglass in the air, waiting for Earl to come. She danced into the bedroom and took the check out of a drawer where she had hidden it and held it up and kissed it lavishly all over. Jesus loves the little children, she was singing. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious, precious, precious. Four thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents. A day’s work. At last, a real day’s work.

The doorbell was ringing. She set the wineglass down on the table and walked wildly down the hall to the door. “I’m coming,” she called out. “I’ll be right there.”

“Now what I’d really like to do with you,” Earl was saying, “is to go fishing.” They were at Dante’s by the River, a restaurant down at the end of Carrollton Avenue. They had stuffed themselves on Crab Thibodeaux and Shrimp Mousse and Softshell Crabs Richard and were starting in on the roast quail. It was a recipe with a secret sauce perfected in Drew, Mississippi, where Earl’s grandfather had been horsewhipped on the street for smarting off to a white man. But that was long ago and the sauce tasted wonderful to Rhoda and Earl.

“I’m stuffed,” she said. “How can I eat all this? I won’t be able to move, much less make love to you. I am going to make love to you, you know that, don’t you?”

“If you say so,” he said. “Now, listen, Miss Rhoda, did you hear what I said about going fishing?”

“What about it?”

“I want to take you fishing. I’m famous for my fishing. I won a fishing rodeo one time.”

“We don’t have to do it tonight, do we? I mean, I have other plans for tonight as I just told you.”

“We’ll pretend we’re fishing,” he said. “How about that?” He was laughing at her but she didn’t care. Black people had laughed at Rhoda all her life. All her life she had been making black people laugh.

“What are you thinking of?” he said.

“I was thinking about when I was little and my mother would take me to Mississippi for the summer and if I wanted attention I would take off my underpants and the black people would all die laughing and the white people would grab me up and make me put them back on. Well, I guess that’s a racist thing to say, isn’t it?”

“You want to see if it makes me laugh?”

“Yeah, I do. So hurry up and finish eating. When I think of something I like to go right on and do it. In case they blow the world up while I’m waiting.” Earl took a piece of French toast and buttered it and laid it on her plate. “Are you sure you aren’t married, Earl? I made a vow not to mess around with married men. I’ve had enough of that stuff. That’s why I’m getting a divorce. Because I kept having these affairs and I’d have to go home and eat dinner and there the other person would be. With no one to eat dinner with. That doesn’t seem right, does it? After they’d made love to me all afternoon? So I’m getting a divorce. Now I’ll have to be poor for a while but I don’t care. It’s better than being an adultress, don’t you think so?” She picked up the bread and put it back on his plate.

“Why don’t you stop talking and finish your quail?”

“I can’t stop talking when I’m nervous. It’s how I protect myself.” She pulled her hand back into her lap. Rhoda hated to be reminded that she talked too much.

“I’m not married,” he said. “I told you that on the phone. I’ve got a little boy and I keep him part of the time. Remember, we talked about that before. It’s all right. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.” He felt like he did when he coached his Little League baseball team. That’s the way she made him feel. One minute she reminded him of a movie star. The next minute she reminded him of a little boy on his team who sucked his glove all the time. “We’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other. We don’t have to hurry to do anything.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Tell me all the good parts first. You can work in the bad parts later.”

“Well, I’m the oldest one of thirteen children. I worked my way through Mississippi Southern playing football. Then I spent three years in the Marines and now I’m in insurance. Last year I ran for office. I ran for councilman in my district and I lost but I’m going to run again. This time I’ll win.” He squared his shoulders. “What else? I love my family. I helped put my brothers and sisters through school. I’m proud of that.” He stopped a moment and looked at her. “I’ve never known anyone like you. I changed shirts three times trying to get ready to come and get you.”

“That’s enough,” she said. “Pay for this food and let’s get out of here.”

“My grandmother was a free woman from Natchez,” he continued. They were in the car driving along the Avenue. “A light-skinned woman, what you’d call an octoroon. She lived until last year. She was so old she lost count of the years. Her father was a man who fought with Morrell’s army. I have pictures of many of my ancestors. They were never slaves…you sure you want to hear all this?”

“Yeah, I want to know who I’m going to bed with.”

“You talk some. You have a turn.”

“I have two sons. They go to school in Virginia. They’re real wild. Everyone in my family’s wild. It’s a huge family, a network over five states. I love them but they don’t have any power over me anymore. Not that they ever did. I think I’m the first person in my family to ever really escape from it. It’s taken me a long time to do it. Now I’m free. I might learn to fly. I might teach in a grade school. I might be a waitress. I might move to Europe. I might learn to sew and take up hems. I don’t know what I’m going to do next. But right now I’m going to go home and fuck you. I’m tired of waiting to do it. I’ve been waiting all day.”

“So have I,” he said and pulled her closer to him.

“Another thing,” she said. “I stole that money from you. I sold that diamond ring you paid me for. I sold it to this fat piggy little Jewish boy on Melepomene. He paid me in cash and told me I could file a claim. I’m thinking of reporting him to the Jewish temple. Well, he thought it up. But I’m the one that did it.”

“Did you see that mule?” Earl said. “That mule flying by. That’s the damndest thing. A gray mule with black ears.”

“I stole the money from you,” she said. “The money for the diamond. Don’t you care? Don’t you even care?” She moved his hand from around her waist and put it between her legs.

“That’s the damndest thing about those mules when they get to town,” he said, turning down the street to her house. “You can’t keep them on the ground. They’ll take off every time. Also, I am married. I guess we might as well go on and get that on the table.”

“What mule,” Rhoda said. “I don’t see any mules. They don’t allow mules on Saint Charles Avenue.”