“Trust your instincts.” He bowed his head, then turned and walked out the front door.
She watched him for a moment, hugging herself tightly, until he disappeared into the fog outside.
“Get a grip, girl,” she said aloud, walking faster than necessary to the door to turn the lock and drop the blinds. She stopped at his table to pick up his coffee cup.
Beside it sat a hundred-dollar bill and a small cream-colored business card.
She stared at the money, then reached for the card.
“Nigel Witherspoon, Nightwatcher.” She turned it over. Written on the back, in a spidery hand in red ink, were the words “Your friend is in danger. Trust your instincts.”
She slipped the card into her pocket. Crazy old man, she thought, picking up the hundred-dollar bill and smiling at it.
Looked like she could have that cheeseburger after all.
For a moment she thought she smelled roses, then shook her head and went back to closing up the shop.
Philip Rutledge turned up the collar of his black leather jacket as he stepped outside his apartment building on Ursulines Street.
It’s like stepping back in time, he thought as he stood looking up and down the street. The mist hid the telephone lines hanging overhead. The lanterns on the fronts of houses, glowing through the whiteness, could have been gaslit. A horse-drawn carriage rode by, empty except for the driver, and in the silence all he could hear was the clomping of horseshoes against the pavement. To his right, he could hear the clicking of boot heels against the sidewalk, but even squinting he couldn’t see who was making the sound, until he suddenly appeared, the mist seeming to part. The man was in full nineteenth-century attire, from the top hat to the cane, to the boots, to the cloak flying behind him. The man nodded at Philip as he went past, a slight smile on his face. Philip stood there and watched the man continue on his way up the street.
The man disappeared into the mist at the corner. Philip grinned to himself. Maybe he’s a ghost, he thought, reaching for a cigarette as he carefully made his way down the five concrete steps from his building’s front door. He stood there for just a moment, staring into the mist where the man had disappeared, lighting the cigarette and walking down to the corner at Burgundy. The man was gone, vanished as if he’d never been there at all. Definitely a ghost, he thought. Everyone knew the French Quarter was full of ghosts, and on a night like this it was even easier to believe. He ran a hand through his thick, dark blond hair, which was cut short on the sides and long on the top. His hair was already damp from the mist. Condensation was forming on his jacket. The night air was still; there was no breeze; there was no sound anywhere.
I love New Orleans in the mist, he reflected as he started walking up Burgundy Street. He loved the timelessness, this feeling that he was walking in a different era. The spell of the mist could last for a while. The streets were deserted—no tourists anywhere, no one out walking their dogs. It was easy to imagine the women in their hoopskirts just inside the walls of the old houses lining the sidewalks, sipping wine out of crystal and laughing at the jokes of the men as they ate by candlelight. Every house’s shutters were closed and latched against the night.
As he approached the corner of Burgundy and St. Ann, he heard footsteps echoing behind him.
A chill went up his body. He stopped walking, standing there, his head cocked to one side, listening.
Nothing. There was nothing to hear except the distant sound of cars driving down Rampart Street, a block away.
Stop scaring yourself, he thought, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out beneath his boot. It’s just a weird night, that’s all; stop letting your imagination run away with you. You’ll never be able to get hard if you keep this up.
He lit another cigarette, turning and looking behind. He couldn’t see more than a few feet; it was pointless. But again, his senses seemed to trigger something, a feeling that something was back there, watching, waiting…He peered through the mist, squinting, straining his eyes. Nothing.
He took a drag on his cigarette and started walking again. Just nerves, that’s all it was, the mist so thick and damp and, well, cloying. He inhaled and blew the smoke out through his nose. He passed under a streetlamp and stopped there for a moment. He cocked his head, straining to hear. He could have sworn…
There! A cautious footstep, then silence.
His heart began to beat faster.
Maybe it’s just someone walking their dog, he thought, looking back down Burgundy Street. But then, why don’t I hear the dog?
He started walking again, trying to keep the sound of his own steps as silent as possible. Surely, he reasoned, no one was going to be out trying to mug people tonight.
The French Quarter wasn’t completely safe. Once away from the neon and crowds of Bourbon Street, in the silent darkness of the lower Quarter, muggers plied their trade, pulling knives or guns or simply jumping the unsuspecting solo pedestrian after night fell. Attention must be paid to surroundings, awareness at its peak for safety. Philip had never been mugged, but he rarely came staggering home drunk in the wee hours of the morning alone.
There. Another step, then another stealthy one followed.
He fought to keep his breathing under control. Just because there was someone back there didn’t mean he was going to be mugged.
St. Ann was only a half block away. There would be people around; the Rawhide Bar was there on the corner. Safety.
He started walking just a little faster, trying not to break into a run.
The steps behind kept pace.
His breathing started coming quicker, beads of sweat forming at his brow line. There was dampness under his arms. He tossed the cigarette away into the street.
A car went by, its headlights glowing against the white blanket, illuminating shapes and forms. He stopped and looked back as the lights swept along the sidewalk, until the glowing red taillights vanished.
There was no one there.
He took several deep breaths and started laughing as his heart rate slowed.
Idiot. He grinned, heading for the corner. You just heard your own footsteps echo; that’s all it was.
He flagged down a United cab at the corner, which was a lucky break. He was running a little late. On his way out, his phone had rung. Once he heard his mother’s voice on the other end, he regretted not letting his machine answer. It was the same conversation it always was: “When are you going to get a real job?…You can’t work at a coffee shop forever…We didn’t spend all that money on college for you to spend the rest of your life making lattes.”
“How are you ever going to buy a house?” she would ask. “A car? What about retirement? You’re young now; you think you don’t have to worry about these things, but you have to start planning, Philip. You have to think about your future.”
His future. He’d applied for plenty of jobs since graduating last summer. Nothing.
His mother, of course, didn’t know he made plenty of extra money. The ad in the local gay paper, with his bare torso and a beeper number, was quite successful. It had been running now for several years, and his mother would be quite shocked if she knew how much money was sitting in his savings account at the Whitney Bank.
He ground his cigarette out on the sidewalk. Arthur, the man in Uptown he was going to see, would give him several crisp brand-new hundred-dollar bills.
What would his dear Southern Baptist mother say if he told her that he could make three hundred dollars, cash, for doing nothing more than standing in front of an old, lonely man while wearing nothing but a jockstrap?
He climbed into the cab. The driver was a black woman with feather earrings dangling down to her shoulders. Thick dreadlocks hung down her back. “Where to, darlin’?”
“Fifteen