age-spotted mirror hanging above the empty fireplace and said out loud, âOh, Jesus.â
Her eyes were wide and dilated, her face white, her hair hanging in damp, stringy clumps. The wet vines and shrubs sheâd run through had left green stains across the front of her white T-shirt and skirt, and her calves and sandaled feet were flecked with drying mud. She looked like a wino just coming off a three-day binge.
The room had a compact bath carved from one corner near the fireplace. Stripping off her clothes, she turned on the shower and stood beneath it, letting the hot water cascade over her head and shoulders. The backs of her legs were still trembling, and it was a minute or two before she could set to work washing her hair with the bar of soap she found wrapped up beside the sink.
It was such a wonderfully mundane task, washing her hair, a touchstone of normalcy in a life careening suddenly, wildly, off track. For one moment she closed her mind to everything that had happened in the last hours, to the whirlwind of confusion and suffocating fears, and simply concentrated on the sensation of wet hair gliding through fingers and the familiar comfort of hot steam filling her lungs.
The room had an air-conditioning unit built high up in the wall, but she couldnât get it to work and finally just gave up and opened a window. The last thing shewanted to do was call attention to herself by complaining about it. She washed her T-shirt, skirt, and under-clothes as best she could in the sink and spread them out near the open window. She wasnât sure the clothes would even dry in the moist, hot night air, but hotels like this one didnât furnish their guests with hair dryers.
Wearing nothing but a towel, she sank down on the edge of the bed and attacked the wet, snarled mess that was her hair. The sultry breeze pushing through the screen of the open window brought with it the pungent aroma of wet earth and sweet jasmine underlain by the subtle, pervasive hint of decay that was ever-present in New Orleans.
Once, when Tobie was seven or eight years old, her family had passed through New Orleans on their way to visit her motherâs people in South Carolina. Like most of the Bennett-Guinness familyâs vacations, it had been a tumultuous two weeks of her stepfather barking orders and her mother softly pleading as Tobie and her brother and sister squabbled in the backseat. But the three days theyâd stopped in New Orleans had been pure magic. She remembered hours spent in the dusty wonder of the Cabildo; hours more exploring the tangled batture that stretched between the levee and the Mississippi, with Hank yelling, âIf you get bit by a snake, Iâm going to make you pay the hospital bill.â Tobie smiled at the memory. Then her smile slipped. The urge to call Colorado, to hear her motherâs soft drawl and her stepfatherâs flat, calm tones, was so overwhelming it brought the sting of tears to her eyes. But she knew better than to give in to the urge to call anyone close to her.
For hours, her focus had been on survival, the needto escape, to find a safe refuge for the night. Now came time for reflection, and with it, anger. A man sheâd both liked and respected had been brutally murdered. Sheâd been shot at and chased through a driving rainstorm by three men who claimed to work for her own government, whether they actually did or not. Because of them, she was alone in a cheap hotel room, without a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. She was worried about her cat. She had classes in the morning she didnât dare go to. She couldnât use her cell phone or her credit cards. She couldnât even talk to her own mother and stepfather.
Raising her head, Tobie pushed her hair out of her face, her hands clenching together behind her neck as her anger hardened slowly into determination.
That viewing session had obviously been a success . What had she seen ?
She and
Her eyes were wide and dilated, her face white, her hair hanging in damp, stringy clumps. The wet vines and shrubs sheâd run through had left green stains across the front of her white T-shirt and skirt, and her calves and sandaled feet were flecked with drying mud. She looked like a wino just coming off a three-day binge.
The room had a compact bath carved from one corner near the fireplace. Stripping off her clothes, she turned on the shower and stood beneath it, letting the hot water cascade over her head and shoulders. The backs of her legs were still trembling, and it was a minute or two before she could set to work washing her hair with the bar of soap she found wrapped up beside the sink.
It was such a wonderfully mundane task, washing her hair, a touchstone of normalcy in a life careening suddenly, wildly, off track. For one moment she closed her mind to everything that had happened in the last hours, to the whirlwind of confusion and suffocating fears, and simply concentrated on the sensation of wet hair gliding through fingers and the familiar comfort of hot steam filling her lungs.
The room had an air-conditioning unit built high up in the wall, but she couldnât get it to work and finally just gave up and opened a window. The last thing shewanted to do was call attention to herself by complaining about it. She washed her T-shirt, skirt, and under-clothes as best she could in the sink and spread them out near the open window. She wasnât sure the clothes would even dry in the moist, hot night air, but hotels like this one didnât furnish their guests with hair dryers.
Wearing nothing but a towel, she sank down on the edge of the bed and attacked the wet, snarled mess that was her hair. The sultry breeze pushing through the screen of the open window brought with it the pungent aroma of wet earth and sweet jasmine underlain by the subtle, pervasive hint of decay that was ever-present in New Orleans.
Once, when Tobie was seven or eight years old, her family had passed through New Orleans on their way to visit her motherâs people in South Carolina. Like most of the Bennett-Guinness familyâs vacations, it had been a tumultuous two weeks of her stepfather barking orders and her mother softly pleading as Tobie and her brother and sister squabbled in the backseat. But the three days theyâd stopped in New Orleans had been pure magic. She remembered hours spent in the dusty wonder of the Cabildo; hours more exploring the tangled batture that stretched between the levee and the Mississippi, with Hank yelling, âIf you get bit by a snake, Iâm going to make you pay the hospital bill.â Tobie smiled at the memory. Then her smile slipped. The urge to call Colorado, to hear her motherâs soft drawl and her stepfatherâs flat, calm tones, was so overwhelming it brought the sting of tears to her eyes. But she knew better than to give in to the urge to call anyone close to her.
For hours, her focus had been on survival, the needto escape, to find a safe refuge for the night. Now came time for reflection, and with it, anger. A man sheâd both liked and respected had been brutally murdered. Sheâd been shot at and chased through a driving rainstorm by three men who claimed to work for her own government, whether they actually did or not. Because of them, she was alone in a cheap hotel room, without a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. She was worried about her cat. She had classes in the morning she didnât dare go to. She couldnât use her cell phone or her credit cards. She couldnât even talk to her own mother and stepfather.
Raising her head, Tobie pushed her hair out of her face, her hands clenching together behind her neck as her anger hardened slowly into determination.
That viewing session had obviously been a success . What had she seen ?
She and
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