Jenn waited patiently for the traffic lights to change so she could walk across the busy road towards the famous Basin Street Station. The large building had been built at the turn of the twentieth century, and the frontage of red brick and large glass windows looked just as impressive today as it must have done back then.
The station building had become a hub, with the open-top double-decker tourist bus stopping on one side of the building and the famous St. Louis Cemetery Number One on the other. Inside the station was a large and grand marble-floored lobby where the tourism officers sat behind large wooden desks and handed out maps and information.
Beyond the lobby was the old station’s waiting room which had been restored and contained glass display cases with historical documents and items from days gone by, when the building had been a working railway station. Jenn often spent time in the waiting room looking at the old timetables, maps, and trinkets that were on display.
A recent addition to the building was a shop that had been set up within the old ticket office selling New Orleans merchandise, most of which was overpriced and seemingly pointless, but the tourists loved it.
The traffic light changed, and Jenn hurried across the road and into the tourist office where she was immediately greeted by Miss Mae, a rotund black lady in her seventies. Miss Mae knew everything there was to know about everything. She sat, as always, in her large, worn leather chair.
“Hey, sweetie,” Miss Mae greeted her.
Jenn exhaustedly smiled back at Miss Mae. “Hey. Gosh, it’s hot out there today!”
Miss Mae laughed. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothing, dove.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jenn chuckled. “You’ve seen it hot enough to melt parked cars, I know.”
She placed her green high-visibility vest back in the first aid bag behind one of the large desks and walked over to the water cooler where she started to fill a paper cone with ice cold water.
“By the way,” Jenn said in between sips, “did a snooty-looking brunette come in here?”
Miss Mae smiled knowingly. “Oh, yeah, we saw her in here.” She shook her head and chuckled as Jenn downed the rest of the water. “In her fine shoes.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Jenn nodded.
“She didn’t like the bus.” Miss Mae pointed out of the window at the open-top bus, which was about to depart on a tour of the city.
Jenn frowned. “Why not?”
Miss Mae shrugged. “I didn’t ask. She didn’t seem to like much.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Jenn agreed.
“She took a map and a few leaflets. Said she’d go and look at the cemetery.”
“She paid for a tour?” Jenn questioned with surprise.
Kathryn didn’t seem like the kind of person who would want to go on a tour of the cemetery. Jenn would have bet money down at Harrah’s Casino that Kathryn would have gone straight to the art museum.
“Yep.” Miss Mae released a long and tired sigh and closed her eyes for a moment before looking up at Jenn. “How do you know her, dove?”
“She came into CeeCee’s,” Jenn said. She poured herself some more cold water. Little and often, that was the key. “Then I saw her at the parade. She wanted directions to here.”
“She on vacation?” Miss Mae frowned.
“Kinda, yeah.”
“She don’t look like she on vacation.”
“No, I think it was kind of a last-minute thing,” Jenn admitted. She decided not to mention the conversation she’d overheard. It was really none of her business. Moreover, if Kathryn ever found out that anyone else knew about that conversation, she’d know who to blame. Jenn didn’t want to be on the receiving end of her anger.
“She’s troubled,” Miss Mae said with a small shake of her head.
“She’s trouble,” Jenn enunciated.
“No, troubled,” Miss Mae pressed. “Those big old brown eyes of hers, she seemed haunted somehow.”
Jenn finished her water and threw the empty cone into the recycling bin. She rolled her eyes. Not a day went by when Miss Mae didn’t use her supposed voodoo sixth sense to identify some sort of pain or suffering in a stranger passing through the tourist office.
“Nothing a vacation can’t fix, I’m sure,” Jenn said.
She tidied some of the leaflets that lined the desks. It didn’t need doing, but she liked to keep busy.
“Are you going to be at Jack’s tonight?” Miss Mae asked.
“No, I’m on the streetcar tonight,” Jenn replied.
Miss Mae shook her head. “I don’t know why you still do that job, dove.”
Jenn shrugged. “It’s fun, you meet lots of interesting people on the streetcar.”
Miss Mae sneered with obvious disagreement. “But working the nightshift as a conductor on those streetcars… no, no, no.”
Jenn smiled at the maternal head-shaking Miss Mae was offering her from her beaten-up chair.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” she placated. “Most people are just fine. Besides, it’s no worse than working on Bourbon Street in the evening, and you don’t mind me doing that.”
“At least then I can keep an eye on ya!” Miss Mae laughed loudly.
Miss Mae might have been an older lady, but that did not stop her from getting right in the thick of things when it came to a good party. Jenn had met Miss Mae for the first time when the older woman was entertaining a large crowd at a karaoke bar on Bourbon Street.
Jenn had still been getting used to the novelty of being able to carry around an alcoholic drink and was walking up Bourbon Street sipping on a frozen daiquiri from a plastic cup when she heard the most amazing sound.
Utter silence.
She had been passing a bar with all the doors and windows thrown wide open. The place was packed with people but completely silent. While all of the other bars pumped out loud music and the sound of people talking and laughing turned into an incomprehensible rumbling over the top, this bar was quiet with expectation.
Jenn stopped and looked into the building from the road. Then suddenly a deep and beautiful female voice floated over a loudspeaker. The voice was singing a song that Jenn didn’t know the words to, but that didn’t stop her from feeling immediately captivated. She found her feet walking towards the bar without a second thought.
The room was small and crowded, but Jenn managed to navigate her way to the stage and was surprised to see that the owner of the voice was a woman in her twilight years. She sat on a well-worn, high-backed chair. It looked out of place in the bar, almost like she had brought it with her from her own living room.
At the end of her first song the bar exploded into whoops and cheers, applause and whistles, and the woman gave the slightest nod of gratitude before moving straight into the next song. She sang five songs in a row before leaving the stage and heading into a dressing room in the back. Jenn asked a member of the bar staff who she was and, before long, she was being introduced to Miss Mae in person.
Miss Mae took an immediate liking to Jenn and explained to her that if she wanted to listen to real jazz and hang out in the best bars, then she needed to head towards Frenchmen Street. Miss Mae scrawled some directions onto a napkin along with the names of bars with days and times scribbled beside them.
Over the next month, Jenn saw Miss Mae perform many times in many different venues, and they struck up a close friendship. Before long, Miss Mae was introducing Jenn to Mr Webb, her boss at the tourist office, and telling the man that he had to hire Jenn.
“Why don’t you go on home?” Miss Mae said. She looked around the empty office lobby with her eyebrow raised in amusement. “I think I can manage all these folks.”
“Are you sure?” Jenn asked, a smile drifting across her lips.
Miss Mae chuckled. “Go on, before I change my mind.”
“You’re the best,” Jenn said. She gave the woman a quick embrace before grabbing her rucksack that she’d left behind the desk.
“I know.” Miss Mae nodded. “Repay me. Come and see me one night, maybe at The Cat?”
“Sure, I’ll be there,” Jenn promised.
She looped her arms into the rucksack straps, tightening them as she walked through the old waiting room. She took one last deep breath of air-conditioned air before heading out into the stifling heat.
She walked up the sidewalk beside the cemetery and almost immediately let out a groan.
Kathryn was straight in front of her. She was pensively chewing her lip as she leaned against the stark white, crumbling wall that surrounded the cemetery.
Jenn quickly decided that she’d come too far up the sidewalk to turn around. Besides, the road was too busy to cross. She was going to have to head straight towards the prickly woman.
She put her best customer-facing smile on and approached.
“Hello again,” she said.
Kathryn frowned at her, seemingly disorientated. A few seconds passed before recognition washed over her face.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, me again.”
“Are you following me?”
“What?” Jenn blinked. “No, you’re the one who keeps bumping into me!”
Kathryn didn’t seem to be listening. She heaved herself away from the wall, and Jenn noted that her silk blouse clung to her skin and her face was covered with a sheen of sweat.
“Regretting your outfit yet?” she smirked.
“Can you imagine being buried in one of these wall vaults?” Kathryn asked, ignoring her question and placing her hand on the thick wall.
“Alive? No.”
“At all,” Kathryn clarified. “Being slid into a hole in the wall like… like an envelope in a desk drawer.”
“Well, it’s not quite like that,” Jenn argued.
“And then… after a year and a day,” Kathryn continued, “they scrape out whatever might be left of you and put someone else in instead.”
Jenn looked closely at the woman in front of her to try to ascertain if these were serious words or the ramblings brought on from some kind of heatstroke.
“It’s the way it’s done here,” she explained softly. “It’s tradition, religion.”
“My father died six months ago.” Kathryn stared at her hand pressed against the cemetery wall.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jenn replied. Kathryn may have been a rude, entitled pain in the backside, but Jenn was still sincere in her condolences. Family was important.
“He was buried,” Kathryn said. “In the ground. And I visit him as often as I can, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. What about these people? What if they want to visit their loved ones, but someone else is in there?”
Jenn shrugged off her rucksack and knelt down. She unzipped her bag and grabbed a bottle of water. She stood again and grabbed Kathryn’s hand, wrapping it around the bottle.
“I think you need to drink something. It’s very hot out here.”
Kathryn absentmindedly took the bottle. She gave Jenn a serious look. “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
“Not really,” Jenn said.
“Not at all? You think we just, what, rot?”
Jenn pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “Look, it’s Kathryn, right?”
Kathryn nodded.
“Kathryn, I really think you need to get back to your hotel and lie down for a while. The heat can kinda creep up on you, and—”
“I’m fine,” Kathryn argued.
“Humour me.” Jenn looked at the bottle of water meaningfully. “It’s sealed.”
Kathryn twisted the plastic cap off and took a few delicate sips of water.
“Look, I’m heading back to town,” Jenn explained. “Maybe I can walk you back to your hotel?”
Kathryn shrugged and gestured for Jenn to lead the way. Jenn was relieved that she didn’t put up a fight; she didn’t feel like she could cope with that right now.
They walked side by side along the street.
Kathryn sighed and ran the back of her hand across her clammy forehead. “So, you live here?”
“Yep.” Jenn nodded. “Five years now.”
“Five years.” Kathryn paused. “Why?”
Jenn laughed. “Wow. You’re really rude, aren’t you?”
“Just honest.”
“It’s a fine line,” Jenn said. She pressed the button at the crosswalk. “I moved here because I wanted something different. I’d just graduated in Boston.”
“Boston?” Kathryn frowned. “Well, you certainly succeeded in finding something different. What made you stay?”
The light changed, bringing the traffic to a stop. They crossed the road, Jenn leading the way.
“Probably the same reasons that makes you hate it,” she admitted. “It’s fun, disorganised, full of life, unexplainable.”
Kathryn let out a rich, throaty laugh. “So, you have me pegged already?”
“Oh, I think you’ve been quite clear on your preferences. New Orleans is not one of them.”
The walked down a narrow road with abandoned buildings on either side of the street. Kathryn continued to sip from the bottle of water. Jenn continued to wonder if Kathryn was suffering from the heat.
“I suppose,” Kathryn said thoughtfully, “I suppose I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“It,” Kathryn repeated. She waved her hand at their surroundings. “It. New Orleans. The… I don’t know, the culture, I guess? It’s foreign to me. I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone.”
Jenn could understand how the city could easily be outside Kathryn’s comfort zone. She knew that New Orleans wasn’t for everyone, but she also thought that most people could find something for them in the diverse environment, if only they gave it a chance.
“I think that’s what I like about it,” Jenn confessed. “I’m constantly surprised by things. I never feel like I’ve seen it all. It’s an adventure.”
“I’m too old for adventure.”
Jenn laughed. “Oh, come on, you’re not that old.”
“Not as young as you,” Kathryn said, dragging her eyes over Jenn’s body.
Jenn shivered at the attention. “Not that old,” she repeated.
She glanced at Kathryn. She was very attractive, something that Jenn had only recognised now that Kathryn wasn’t being a massive pain. But now the woman was softening, Jenn could appreciate it.
“Too old for adventure,” Kathryn repeated before sipping some more water.
Jenn regarded the brunette with a critical eye. “I’m good at this, I think you’re… thirty… five?”
Kathryn stopped dead and stared at Jenn in surprise. “How on earth did you know that?”
Jenn stopped and turned back to look at her. “I told you, I’m good at that.”
Kathryn shook her head and started walking again. “Well, anyway, too old for adventure.”
“You’re never too old for adventure. I think if you gave New Orleans a chance, you might even find you like it here.”
Kathryn laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Look, I’m not suggesting a cocktail run on Bourbon Street to get wasted. New Orleans has something for everyone, I can guarantee there will be something here for you to enjoy.”
“I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything here for me,” Kathryn argued.
“I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”
“Why do you care so much whether I like it here or not?”
Jenn opened her mouth to reply, but the truth was, she didn’t know why she cared. Kathryn had been an annoyance to her ever since she arrived, but for some reason Jenn felt compelled to make sure she left New Orleans having enjoyed her vacation. Even if it was an enforced vacation which she clearly intended to hate every minute of. For some reason, it was important that she reverse Kathryn’s view of her adopted hometown.
“Because I love New Orleans,” Jenn finally said, “and I honestly believe that it’s rich enough and diverse enough that there will be something you’ll enjoy. I work for the tourist office, it’s like my mission to make people love it here.”
“Hold on.” Kathryn paused and placed her hand on Jenn’s arm to stop her from walking. “You work at the bar, you work as a marshal at the parade, and you work for the tourist office?”
“Yep.” Jenn looked at the manicured fingers that briefly touched her arm before fading away again. She instantly missed the sensation.
“Any other jobs I should know about? Will you be serving me breakfast in the morning?” Kathryn chuckled.
“No, but I do run a water aerobics class in your hotel on Thursday,” Jenn confessed. She started walking again. Kathryn quickly joined her.
“Water aerobics instructor,” Kathryn said disbelievingly. “So, a bartender, a marshal, tour guide, and a water aerobics instructor?”
Jenn bit her lip and looked down at the cracked sidewalk.
“Oh my god, there’s more.” Kathryn laughed.
“Technically the first aid job is part of the tourist office,” Jenn explained.
“Uh-huh.” Kathryn nodded with a smug smile.
“I work on the streetcars,” Jenn admitted. “As a conductor.”
“The trams?” Kathryn frowned.
“Streetcars,” Jenn corrected. “Yeah, I’m working tonight. You should come.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because the streetcars are a part of New Orleans history! The Saint Charles line is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, running since 1835. In 2014, it was listed by the National Park Service as a historic landmark.”
Kathryn’s shoulders shook with barely contained laughter. Jenn looked up to see the woman biting her lip.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so that is the exact speech I give at the tourist office, but I mean every word of it. And it’s accurate.”
“I’m sure it is,” Kathryn said with clear amusement. “It’s adorable.”
“And,” Jenn continued, on a roll now, “we’ve bumped into each other three times today already, so it’s obviously fate that I’m supposed to show you how wrong you are about New Orleans.”
She didn’t know why she was suddenly offering to show the woman around her hometown. She told herself it was in defence. She wanted to hear Kathryn take back the words ‘sordid hellhole’.
They arrived at the revolving doors to Kathryn’s hotel. Kathryn started to hand back the half-drunk bottle of water.
“Keep it,” Jenn instructed. “And make sure you carry a bottle with you in the future. The sun can be fierce, and I can’t always be here to save you from dehydration.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kathryn gave Jenn a small salute.
“So, what do you say? Want to see the streetcars?”
Kathryn considered the question for a few seconds before nodding. “Well, I don’t have any other plans. And, as you say, we seem destined to bump into each other anyway.”
“Great.” Jenn pointed towards Canal Street. “Meet you by the stop up there at nine minutes past eight.”
“Very precise,” Kathryn commented.
“It may be the Big Easy, but the streetcars run on time.”
“Impressive.” Kathryn smiled. “Thank you for the water. I do think I was beginning to feel the sun a little.”
“You’re welcome.”
Kathryn frowned. “I’ve just realised, I don’t even know your name.”
“Jenn,” she said.
“Jenn,” Kathryn repeated with a smile that set Jenn’s heart racing. “Well, Jenn, I’ll see you tonight at nine minutes past eight.”
Kathryn turned and nodded to the doorman before disappearing into the hotel lobby. Jenn watched her leave, wondering what on earth she was getting herself into.