VenCo(88)

Remember who the fuck you are. You’re mine and you’re yours. No one else’s. Ever. Arnya’s real voice popped into her head—not the voice of the fragile woman she’d left on the couch, but of the one who talked to her reflection before she went out for the night, red-lipstick-and-big-swagger Arnya.

Lucky let her shoulder drop out from underneath the hand. Stepping past him, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of cardboard. “My mom says to give these to me.”

He hesitated, his eyebrows pinched together, then took the note and read it. “Your ma is Arnya?” The way he said her name gave Lucky confidence. He definitely knew who Arnya was.

“Yeah, that’s right.” She walked with purpose (so the assholes didn’t approach) to the counter, right by the front door.

Tommy moved back to his spot behind the register. He scrounged under the counter and threw a pack of Du Mauriers on the plastic scratch-ticket case. Lucky grabbed it and shoved it into her pocket. Just then two teenage boys opened the front door, and she bolted without paying. And even though no one gave chase, she ran up the street and all the way home. Holding the image of shitkicker Arnya in her head like a talisman, she ran back to her as fast as she could.

A few days later, Tommy’s Corner Convenience burned to the ground.

“Jesus,” Arnya said around a cigarette, as they stood on the other side of the yellow tape that surrounded the rubble. “I heard it was arson. Guess he pissed off the wrong people.”

Lucky was quiet. She wondered if all that rot from Tommy’s hand had lit a flame he couldn’t blow out.

“There’s no rebuilding from this.” Arnyna flicked her cigarette butt into the ruins. She seemed amused. “Sometimes you need fire to make sure the bad shit can’t come back.”



After they’d dropped Aggie at her coach house, Theodore let Stella into the suite and quietly hugged her good night. They had stopped in at a bar at the top of Bourbon Street after dinner and shared a drink. They stayed longer than expected after finding out they could sit around the piano in back and sing along. It was the most fun Stella’d had in years. She hummed a tune while changing into her pj’s and brushing her teeth. She liked this place, and she liked these people. She wondered if New Orleans felt the same for them, living here year-round, like a treat, like a place running out of time with nothing but time left.

She braided her hair, clucking her tongue at how thin it was getting, how the silver was bleaching white. She was a woman running out of time with nothing but time left. It wasn’t a sad thought. She was fine with it. Especially now. She felt clear these days. Once in a while, she fell into the lapses. But she kind of welcomed the confusion that made Oswald alive and well, sitting at the kitchen table doing his crossword before bed. Welcomed the satisfaction of knowing that her son was alive and well and working at the newspaper-printing plant.

She could hear Lucky snoring softly on the upstairs bed, and she went there now, singing “Moon River” under her breath as she climbed the stairs.

The girl was facedown, head turned to the side, and still fully dressed. Her purse was on the bed beside her, and her shoes were still on. She looked just like her father, when he used to stumble home as a teenager, sneak up to his attic room, and pass out. Stella did what she’d done for him: she carefully pulled off Lucky’s shoes, put her bag on the nearby chair, and found a blanket to throw over her. As she was tucking her in, she felt the phone in Lucky’s back pocket.

She’ll want that plugged in, she thought, remembering this afternoon’s panic when her alarm hadn’t gone off. She carried it back downstairs with her. Tonight, she’d be the one to sleep on the couch. She wasn’t tired anyway. She turned on the TV, pleased to find her favourite show playing, and carried the phone to the kitchen, where Lucky had left the charger.

It dinged in her hand, and she glanced at it. A text from Meena:

Don’t forget to go alone and stay alone until you have the spoon. He’ll be watching everything through her eyes. Message as soon as you can. Good luck!



There were other messages between them that Stella read through. She was going to text back, but then remembered this was not her phone, it was Lucky’s. So she plugged it in to charge, set it down on the counter, and settled on the couch to watch The Golden Girls.



Jay Christos had snared the wrong woman with a sneeze and was finding it near impossible to follow them. The old one slept too much, and when she was awake, she focused on all the wrong things. He had managed to follow them from the Yarb witch’s cabin and, using the few road signs the woman read, had arrived in New Orleans at almost the same time.

Now he was holed up in a grand antebellum-style house in the Garden District that belonged to an old friend of his—so old, in fact, that the man was in a hospital bed and hooked up to oxygen in the downstairs parlor.

“Oh, Gerard, how nice to see you once again,” he’d cooed when he first leaned over the man’s bed. Gerard’s dim blue eyes had teared up with recognition. He held up a hand made repulsive with knotted veins and age spots, and Jay grasped it, even brought it to his lips to kiss. “I’ve come back to visit you, my love.”

“Christos,” Gerard croaked, the plastic mask on his face fogging up.

“Shhhh, now, my oldest, dearest companion. It’s okay.” He gave the hand a pat and gently placed it back on the white duvet. “I’ll leave you be. Your nurse was kind enough to let me pop in to say a quick greeting.” He nodded towards the door where a tall Creole woman in pink scrubs stood watch. “But I had to promise I wouldn’t get you all riled up. I trust you won’t mind if I set up camp here? Shouldn’t be for more than a day or two. Three at the most?”