VenCo(84)

“Hey!” Stella chucked her lightly on the arm. “My hats are not weird!”

Lucky leaned her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. “They are when you wear more than one at a time.” They watched the show to the end, muted, until the credits were rolling. Lucky’s phone turned back on and began dinging from the kitchenette counter.

“Right, shit!” She sprang up and checked the screen.

One was an image, a cartoon drawing of a rather stern-looking alligator with its tail touching the tip of its snout. Surrounding it were pencil-shaded forks of various sizes. The second message was from Wendy, with a name and location of the Booker: Claudia Welan, the Moon Over Marigny Gallery & Bookstore. She put the name of the store into Google Maps and got directions. It was not too far from here.

Stella burst out laughing. She was now watching a sitcom on mute.

“You can turn that up now. I’m not sleeping anymore.” Lucky raised the volume on the remote herself. Then she softened her voice. “Uh, listen, Grandma, I’m just gonna go grab some towels from housekeeping.”

“We just got here. Why do we need towels already?”

Lucky pointed to random towels, wet and strewn around the floor. “Well, you blew through most of those. I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

She found Theodore near the front door replenishing the brochures for haunted walking tours and the Voodoo Museum. “Hey there, Lucky, how you doing? Oh, your Stella, she’s a hoot. Aunt Aggie has invited her for dinner. She’s sent my co-worker Myrtle out for beignets. She’s real glad to have someone like her to pass the time with. If that’s okay?”

It was more than okay, and Lucky said so. She had been about to ask him to watch Stella for a bit while she ran errands, so this worked out just great. She returned to the room and told Stella that Theodore would be by later to pick her up for a dinner date.

“Jesus, you’re so bad at reading people,” Stella mumbled. “That man is not interested in vaginas, Lucky. Not even mine.”

“Well, obviously not an actual date . . . Wait, it was the gay thing that threw you, not the fact that he’s, like, thirty years younger than you?

Stella scoffed. “You think I don’t got game? I didn’t even breastfeed your dad. These ladies are still pointing the right way.” She hefted her boobs with her forearm.

On that note, Lucky left.



Out on Toulouse Street, right near the corner of Bourbon, music was already pouring out of doorways and patios and windows, some of it recorded, other strands live. Lucky paused to listen, sheltering under the baskets of flowers hanging from a hotel balcony.

The sun was high over the Quarter. The buildings here were narrow and low. Where they did have second or third floors, each one was wrapped in iron filigree balconies like cursive writing. Across the street, between two slim buildings, a wooden gate had been left open, and she saw a path there that led into a small, lush garden, with green ferns and a crooked palm tree and a small stone fountain. She wondered if every place in New Orleans had a secret garden, if every place was so witchy and beautiful. And for the first time, she was filled with an enormous pride for who she was—what she was, all of it. That pride filled the spaces between her bones so that it was impossible not to stand tall.

Anxiety makes everything feel very big or very small, depending on which is more hurtful in the moment. Being suddenly relieved of anxiety in this moment gave her a clear understanding that this was the life she had been running towards. Not necessarily New Orleans, not a distant dot on a map, not a brand-new career, but a life full of secret gardens.

Her Uber glided up the street, and she got in with a smile on her face.



The Marigny was off-kilter, leaning, somehow, in all directions at the same time. The houses were shades of every colour, with contrasting wooden shutters. The roads lay like wrinkled sheets, being knuckled from underneath by old roots and new growth, and the sidewalks were cracked right through.

The Moon Over Marigny was in a yellow shotgun house with massive front windows rammed with lively paintings of Mardi Gras Indians and tunnels of oak trees over old roads. Over the door was a hand-painted sign: be nice or leave. A small speaker on the porch played zydeco music. Lucky took a deep breath, climbed the three steps, and walked inside.

The place was one large room—not a standard stuffy gallery, but an eclectic space with paintings of all sizes from floor to ceiling. Running down the middle of the room were three velvet couches, each more dilapidated than the last, each charming in its own way. One wall was covered in bookshelves, with a library ladder attached to a railing so that you could reach the highest shelves. And at the back of the room, through an archway, she could see a whole studio, riotous and paint-splattered, dropcloths on the floor and works-in-progress propped up every which way. Early grunge, Soundgarden maybe, was coming from a small speaker on a wooden chair.

“Afternoon,” a woman’s voice called out.

Lucky spun, looking for the body the voice belonged to.

From a corner of the studio, a short woman with pink hair in black coveralls emerged. She fiddled with her phone and the rock music stopped. She wiped her hands on her pants legs and walked into the gallery space.

“How you doin’ today?”

“Uh, I’m good.”

“Can I help you find something?” Up close, she was older than Lucky first thought, maybe close to sixty. Her cheeks were round and her glasses moved when she spoke.