Hit and Run

This particular specimen was in sad shape. The exterior needed painting, there were slates missing from the roof, and the lawn was a wasteland of weeds and gravel. The inside was worse, the floor littered with debris, the kitchen filthy.

Keller said, “Gee, there’s nothing left for us to do, is there?”

“She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?”

“Was that a SOLD sign I saw out in front? Got to be one hell of an optimist who bought this place.”

“Well, hell,” Do

“Might take a little work,” Keller said, “mixed in with the love.”

“And a few dollars in the bargain. Here’s what I got in mind.” And he walked Keller through the old house, outlining his plans for its transformation. He had some interesting ideas, including adding a second floor onto the back half of the house, converting it into what was known locally as a camelback shotgun. That last, he conceded, was on the ambitious side, but it could make a big difference in the home’s resale value.

“So here’s what I’m getting at,” Do

“The down payment took most of his cash,” Keller told Julia, “and the rest will go for materials and the other men, because he can’t expect guys like Dwayne and Luis to work on spec. But he figured maybe I’d be willing to roll the dice, and when it’s done and he sells it, I’d be in for a third of the net profit.”

“Which probably translates into a good deal more than twelve dollars an hour.”

“If the job doesn’t take too long, so the carrying charges don’t mount up too high. And if we get a buyer who’ll close in a hurry and pay a decent price.”

“I’d say you made your decision already.”

“How can you tell?”

“‘If we get a buyer.’ And what could you possibly say but yes?”

“That’s what I thought. The only downside is I won’t be bringing home any money for a while.”

“That’s all right.”

“No payments on the loan for the truck, and no contributions to the household budget.”

“It’s a hell of a situation,” she agreed. “If it wasn’t for sex, you’d be no use to me at all.”

It wasn’t until her father’s ashes were scattered and the sickroom emptied and smudged that Julia moved upstairs, to the bedroom she’d occupied as a child. Keller kept his own room, kept his things in the drawers and closet, but spent nights in hers.

The job in Gretna ran behind schedule and over budget, which didn’t really surprise anybody. Both men put in long hours, working seven-day weeks, starting at daybreak and keeping at it until they lost the light. Do

The work was satisfying, especially when Do

When the last of the work was done, with the lawn sodded and new shrubbery in place, he brought Julia to see it. She’d been there earlier, with the work barely under way, and said it was hard to believe it was the same house. Outside of the beams and rafters, he said, it barely was.

They went to the Quarter for a celebration di

If the profit was all Do

“Well, he’s a Wallings,” she said. “They’re enterprising.”

First, though, Do

“Well, of course,” she said. “He’s an Orleanean, isn’t he?”

When they got home she asked him what had gone wrong.

“Because your whole mood changed between when we left the restaurant and when we got to the car. The weather was fine so that couldn’t be it. Did I say something? No? Then what was it?”

“I didn’t think it showed.”

“Tell me.”

He didn’t want to, but neither did he care to keep things from her. “For a minute there,” he said, “I thought someone was looking at me.”

“Well, why not? You’re a nice-looking fellow and… oh my God.”

“It was a false alarm,” he said. “He was looking past me, waiting for the valet to bring his car around. But I remembered a man I heard about who got in trouble because he went to San Francisco, where somebody who just happened to be there saw him and recognized him.”

She was quick, if you gave her the first sentence she got the whole page. “We should probably stay out of the Quarter,” she said.

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“And other places tourists tend to go, but it’s really mostly the Quarter. No more Café du Monde, no more Acme Oyster House. For oysters, Felix’s has a place uptown on Prytania that’s just as good, and they don’t get as crowded.”

“During Mardi Gras—”

“During Carnival,” she said, “we’ll stay home altogether, but we’d do that anyway. Poor baby, no wonder your mood changed.”

“What bothered me,” he said, “wasn’t getting a scare, because it didn’t last long enough to amount to all that much. By the time I knew to be afraid I could tell there was nothing to be afraid of. But I’ve got a whole new life, and it fits me like a glove, and I cut every tie to the past when we shoved that car into the river.”

“And you thought that whole part of your life was over.”

“And it is,” he said, “but what I also thought was that nothing from the past could find me, and that’s not exactly true. Because there’s always the possibility of an accident. Some sharp-eyed son of a bitch from New York or L.A. or Vegas or Chicago—”

“Or Des Moines?”

“Or anywhere. And he happens to come here on vacation, because it’s a popular spot.”

“Not so many tourists since the hurricane,” she said, “but they’re starting to come back.”

“And all it takes is one, who happens to be in the same restaurant, or on the street when we come out of the restaurant, or any damn thing. Look, it’s not very likely. We don’t exactly live the high life here, we keep a low profile by nature. Most of the time we’re home alone, and when we see somebody it’s Edgar and Patsy or Do

“They might,” she said, “when you and Do

“Don’t hold your breath. Neither of us is that ambitious. You know what appeals to Do