Saturday, May 7
11:43 p.m. On North Rampart Street, the sign said “Loretta’s Pralines and Cream,” and we had no choice but to cross the road and enter. The storekeep lady—surely one could only expect that this was Loretta—came out from the back where she’d been making okra gumbo for a Mother’s Day lunch. She told us about being sent to Rouen, in France, as an ambassador of Lousiana. She told us about New Orleans pralines. Pralines, pronounced praw-leens. Buttery, pecany: we got one for the road. Maud got a box for a friend in Houston. She was concerned they might melt in the heat, but Loretta knew better. “You’ll pass out before they do,” she said.



Two on a Saturday afternoon, we sit outside Lucy’s Retired Surfer Bar on Tchoupitoulas under a giant red umbrella. The guacamole is called Rock-a-mole, and the surfer waitress girl calls us “Y’all.” At La Côte Brasserie across the street, the suits at lunch are neither surfers nor ever were.



We are having a lazy day, and teatime means iced coffees-and-chicory in the garden out back at Café Beignet. The air is birds chirping in the palms, and a folk singer somewhere down the street, and the train, always the train, in the distance.



In the French Quarter, there was a jolly La Bamba while we shopped for dinner groceries at the local A&P. I tried to make Maud buy a large jar of pickled pig’s feet, but she wasn’t having any of it.



We walked down Royal Street all the way home. We live on the other side of the tracks, and we like it like that. Through the French Quarter, through Faubourg Marigny, through Bywater, across the railroad tracks, and all the way to Mazant:

Victorian houses with curving iron balconies and carved wooden cornices;

whole walls of delicate white jasmine, their scent seductive, dizzying;

a black cat and a red porch;

beat-up old Chevrolets and Jaguars to make a girl swoon;

red flowers to match red shoes;

a heron—a live one, a white one, a genteel one—perched and still on a garden fence;

old warehouses with faded names;

and then the setting sun, and then just one more block to go, and then we were home again.



It is cool in the evenings here. We were sitting on our balcony, me and Maud, with our feet up, and we were watching the house across the street. The house across the street has boys, and this evening they were having a barbecue out back. The house across the street has a hand-painted yin-yang flag hanging out front, and strings of fairy lights jimmyed up to the electrical pole on the corner. There are all sorts of heehaws and doodads hanging out the front corner window: hats, strings of beads, a tall, green stuffed cactus. The house across the street is such that one can exit a second-floor window to walk on the roof of the porch. We have seen the boys do it.

This evening, there was the scent of burning sugar in the air, and Maud said, “They’re having shamallows,” by which, either because she is French or because she is Maud, she means marshmallows. And then the smell of grilled meat followed, floating up to our balcony, and we were hungry, and, sure, we had the makings of dinner ourselves, but those were downstairs in the fridge. We tried to get ourselves invited over:

“Maybe if we start talking really loudly about how we’re hungry.”

“We’re so hungry!”

“And, like, about how we’re nice. And cute. And we smell good.” And here we smelled ourselves. And then we thought about it. “Well, we could.”

“It might take some work, but it’s possible.”

“It’s happened before.”

“Look we can’t help it, it was hot. And we’ve walked a lot today.”

The sky was fading, dimmer and dimmer till it was a watery blue. We went and made our dinner, spinach salads with yellow peppers and apples and grapes and walnuts, and slices of tomato and mozzarella, and toasted whole wheat bagels, and there we sat, three girls with the night and the world to themselves. The sky was a deep purple, then, and the cigarette tips glowed orange.

We can’t say it enough, life is good, life is good, life is goo-oo-ood, like the train calling in the Nawlins night, its chug-chug-chug and two-toned honk floating on the breeze.