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tell you all about it.”
    “Okay.”
    “You’re someone I’d like to hear from. And I mean that.”
    I knew I was wearing my skeptical expression, the one that made me look a lot like
     my father, the man who had told me that nothing in life’s free, nor is it ever fair.
    Matilda stood up from the table. When she put out her hand for me to shake, her bracelet
     glinted in the sun.
    “Cassie, it was quite lovely to meet you. And now you have my card. Thank you for
     your honesty.”
    “Thank you for … not thinking I’m a complete idiot.”
    She let go of my hand and cupped my chin like a mother would. I could hear the charms
     tinkle against each other, they were so close to my ears.
    “I hope we meet again.”
    The door chime signaled her goodbye. I knew that if I didn’t call her, I’d never see
     her again, which made me feel unaccountably sad. I placed the card carefully in my
     front pouch.
    “Making new friends, I see,” Will said from behind the bar. He was emptying a case
     of sparkling water into the refrigerator.
    “What’s wrong with that? I could use a few friends.”
    “That woman’s a little off. She’s like a Wiccan-hippy-vegan or something. My dad knew
     her back in the day.”
    “Yeah, she told me.”
    Will began a long diatribe about stocking more nonalcoholic beverages because people
     are drinking a lot less, but that we could charge more for sparkling water and thosespecial sodas and ciders and probably still make good margins, but all I was thinking
     about was Pauline’s journal, and the two men, the one behind her and the one beneath
     her, and the way her sexy boyfriend traced his firm hands down her forearm and how
     he pulled her into his embrace on the street in front of everyone—
    “Cassie!”
    “What? What is it?” I said, shaking my head. “Jesus, you scared me.”
    “Where did you go just now?”
    “Nowhere, I’m here. I’ve been here all along,” I said.
    “Well, go home, then. You look tired.”
    “I’m not tired,” I said, and it was true. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been more
     awake.”

I t took me a week to call Matilda. A week of the same old thing, of walking to work
     and of walking home, of not shaving my legs, of yanking my hair into a ponytail, of
     feeding Dixie, of watering the plants, of ordering takeout, of drying dishes, of sleeping,
     and then of waking and doing it all over again. It was a week of looking out over
     Marigny at dusk from my third-story window, realizing that loneliness had blotted
     out any other feeling. It had become to me like water to a fish.
    If I had to describe what propelled me to call Matilda, I guess I could say it felt
     as if my body was having none of this anymore. Even as my mind was reeling with the
     idea of asking for help, my body forced me to pick up the kitchen phone at the Café
     and dial.
    “Hello, Matilda? This is Cassie Robichaud, from Café Rose?”
    Five Years pricked up its ears.
    She didn’t seem at all surprised to hear from me. We had a brief conversation about
     work and the weather, and thenI made an appointment for the next afternoon at her office in the Lower Garden District,
     on Third, near Coliseum.
    “It’s the small white coach house next to the big mansion on the corner,” she said,
     as though I’d know exactly where that was. In fact I always avoided the tourist spots,
     crowds, people in general, but I said I’d have no trouble finding it. “There’s a buzzer
     at the gate. Give yourself a couple of hours. The first consultation’s always the
     longest.”
    Dell entered the kitchen as I tore the address off the back of the paper menu on which
     I wrote it. She peered sternly over her reading glasses at me.
    “What?” I barked.
    What kind of help was this Matilda woman going to offer? I had no idea, but if it
     was the kind that would end with an ardent man sitting across from me at a table,
     it was the kind of help I welcomed. Still, I worried.
Cassie,