1 |

The mostly familiar roads whipped by the passenger side window. Moss-strewn, sparsely lined with ancient magnolia trees and not as new as they ought to be, but these roads belonged to the most familiar place in the world for Victoria.

“How many this time?” she chuckled when she asked her friend Lourdes, a bit of a speed demon, so she could take her mind off the precarious speed the peach 1957 Cadillac was traveling. She was trying not to be too obvious about white-knuckling it — and failing.

Lourdes threw her a look of quick mischief and replied with utterly fake modesty, “Eh, just two – so far.” Victoria shook her head and laughed at her friend. Lourdes and her men. “Slow year, huh?” This sent Lourdes into a fit of giggles that erupted into a too-intense coughing fit. Victoria winced and reached over to firmly pat and rub her oldest friend’s back, then asked, “So, how bad is it really?”

On the tail end of the fit that made Lourdes’ eyes water, she avoided Victoria’s concerned gaze. “I mean, they say it won’t kill me. It’s just too damn regular for my tastes and the heat is no damn help at all.” Lourdes glanced over at Victoria. “I appreciate you coming all this way to look after me, Tori. For real. You have no idea how much it means.”

Lourdes reached over and clasped her best friend’s hand. Victoria clasped it back with both of hers, the identical cocoa of their fingers overlapping. Victoria brought Lourdes’ hand to her lips for a light kiss.

“You kidding me? Who else is going to look after you like me? Hell, who else has the patience?” Victoria replied with some mischief of her own.

This time, Lourdes stifled her giggles, not wanting to disrupt her respiratory system so violently again in such a short span of time. She could already feel a slight burn creeping outward from her sternum. “That last one about got me outta here. I’m gonna quit while I’m ahead – but you right!”

And there it was, another blur, the town’s sign: “Welcome to St. Legere — Louisiana’s Best Kept Secret! Pop.:733”

Founded by a handful of Black folks – some Creole – Native Americans and even fewer white folks with some sense, the tiny enclave of St. Legere, Louisiana lived up to its status as a secret. It had been miraculously tucked away and thrived fairly undisturbed since the late 1800s, right around Reconstruction. Some people got what they needed and passed right on through, but most had roots there and could claim generations.

In another 20 minutes or so, the Cadillac Lourdes had inherited from her late aunt, Ernestine Kinney –- “Steen” to those she wouldn’t cut to the white meat, and there weren’t many — was winding through the town. Everyone recognized it: Lourdes could barely go five feet at a time without honking and yelling out the window at the residents.
“Hey there, Mr. Marks! Don’t forget to tell your niece to come see me about her wedding dress!” “Miss Morris…I didn’t forget about your cobbler!” “Ter-ray! You ain’t fooling nobody with that limp, nigga!”

The car slowed when Lourdes pulled closer to a sidewalk. A young man in oil-smeared navy blue mechanic overalls, with the sleeves tied around his waist, was all but oblivious until Lourdes called out, “Excuse me! Excuse me, sir!” Hypervigilant at first, he turned to see where the voice was coming from, then his inside-of-a-pound-cake baby face softened when his warm brown eyes lighted on Lourdes, who bit her lip. When he ambled over to the car, she dropped her voice and asked, bluntly and all kinds of sticky sweet, “So, um…how much?”

He smiled fully at the joke –- which, knowing Lourdes, may not have been a joke when Victoria thought about it – and looked at Lourdes with a mix of adoration…and hunger. It was so intense, it made Victoria glance down in her lap at her folded hands. For a moment, the embroidered pansies on the thighs of her bellbottoms were the most fascinating thing on Earth. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Lourdes reach out and grab the front of his white tank top and pull him down for a kiss so intense that it made Victoria turn completely to look out the passenger side window so as not to feel like a voyeur.

How long had it been since someone made it feel like mercury was pooling hotly in the bottom of her abdomen?

Too long, she knew.

Then he answered. “Free, for you. Always.” A beat. “Will I see you later?”

Lourdes was a bit breathless when she answered. “I should hope so.”

“Mmmmm,” the young man responded.

Lourdes winked and pulled away. She looked over at Victoria. “Girl —”

Victoria held up a hand. “I wasn’t gonna ask.”

Lourdes continued anyway. “Etienne, girl.” She let out a sigh that came up from the soles of her feet. “A mechanic, but he can fix anything.” While keeping her eyes on the road, she leaned over to Victoria and lustily repeated: “ANYTHING.”

“Lourdes…” Victoria chuckled while shaking her head.

“Look at you! Are you blushing?” Lourdes teased. “Okay, okay. I won’t say anymore…QUEEN Victoria.”

“I am not, and do not start that ‘Queen Victoria’ shit, okay?”

“I don’t know how I manage to forget that you’ve always been the respectable one of the two of us.”

“Oh, God,” Victoria rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Respectable. Ha! What respectable woman leaves a loving husband behind to go be a dancer?” she asked wryly and almost more to herself.

The Cadillac finally wound up the driveway of Miss Ernestine’s split-level brick Victorian home with its expansive front porch and peach-trimmed shutters.

“Chile, please,” Lourdes said as she threw the car in park and cut off the engine. “You were too much woman for Damien LaMarche…and he knew that shit,” she threw over her shoulder as she got out of the car.

“Lourdes!”

“Don’t. You know it’s true.”

Victoria shook her head and regarded the house fondly as she got out of the car and shielded her eyes from the sun. Not much had changed, save it was no longer full of Steen’s formidable presence. But it had been well-kept in the 8 or so years since Steen had passed. Only sign of neglect was an overgrown backyard and some unruly hedges that wrapped around the house. Victoria prayed it wouldn’t get bad enough for Steen to start haunting the place.

Lourdes came over to Victoria’s side of the car and regarded her best friend for a moment before enveloping her in a hug so tight that she briefly abandoned concern for her fragile respiratory system.

They smiled and rocked each other. “Welcome home, Tori.”

 

2 |

“Tell me about Paris!” Lourdes eyes glowed anticipating stories of Negro-girl-in-Europe debauchery, hoping to hear that Victoria had, for once, completely cut loose on foreign land where no one knew her. She couldn’t wait to hear all about Victoria’s adventures, since they hadn’t written each other as much as they thought they would. Maybe that was for a reason: now she could hear these tales in person.

The rush of aromatic steam met Victoria’s face and the front-knot of the emerald silk scarf that housed her afro. She stirred the rabbit soup and watched the carrots and chunks of bellpepper swim around and bob to the surface. While extending her lithe frame to grab some seasonings from the cabinet, and ignoring the request, she remarked, “You ever thought about putting a garden out back, Lo? I mean, you could grow some herbs out there… would liven your food right on up.”

“Oh. Ignoring me, huh?”

“There’s nothing to tell about Paris, Lo.”

“That’s bullshit…it’s Paris. How the hell is there nothing to tell? Even for YOU, there has to be SOMETHING. Come on, Tori!”

Victoria spotted a small jar of oregano and sprinkled some in the pot. She stirred and tasted. Almost there. She walked over to the fridge and scanned it until she saw some sprigs of rosemary. “This will do,” she said to herself. Then, to Lourdes: “I don’t get it, Lo. You have more than enough money to have seen Paris for yourself. You could easily have your own stories about the place!” She dropped the sprigs in whole, stirred once more, turned the heat down on the pot and covered it. She faced Lourdes.

“Maybe. But what can I say? I love home. Nothing really out there to make me wanna leave St. Legere.”

“I ain’t saying you had to uproot. Move there. I’m just talking about a visit.”

“I know you are. Still. And when would I have had the time? Off to school for accounting and then right back here to help Steen run her businesses. It wasn’t meant for us both to be free like that at the same time. It was meant for you to go see the world and me to live that through you. Who better? Besides, I’ve had my own kinda freedom here.” Lourdes shrugged. “I’ve had my own adventures in this itty bitty place –– there’s more to taste than what it look like.”

Victoria leaned against the stove and crossed her arms with her head cocked. “No regrets?”

Lourdes shook her head as the corner of her mouth curled. “Not a single one.”

“Seriously. Think about a garden, though.” Victoria made her way over to the gold-trimmed cherrywood table and sat across from Lourdes. She let out a sigh. “What you wanna know?”

Lourdes eyes got big. “Everything! Start with the food!”

“Well, first of all, you never seen so much red wine in your LIFE! Red wine with everything! Breakfast? Red wine. Dessert? Red wine. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Red wine. It’s ridiculous. The food is so rich and decadent, though. Everything is cooked in butter —”

“You sure the French ain’t really just some albino niggas? Because butter with everything is kinda how WE do it, too!”

They shared a laugh over that as Lourdes listened to Tori bring Paris to life in the kitchen of her deceased aunt’s kitchen. Victoria got up to turn off the pot and begin preparing the plates.

“So can we say you had fun in Paris, then?”

Victoria nodded. “Yeah. We can.” She threw Lourdes a smile over her shoulder. A beat as she ladeled the too-hot soup into a bowl for Lourdes. “It’s tough sometimes living it right in the moment, you know? It’s moving…so fast. The lights and crowds and performances and…” She trailed off, then picked up her thought a moment later. “Some of this stuff I’m telling you, I didn’t even realize I remembered it until I started talking.”

She sat Lourdes’ bowl in front of her. Lourdes’ body shook as it was wracked with a brief bout of coughing. She looked up at Victoria. “Sounds like a lesson, Tori. Live it…WHILE you living it. Take it in. Right then. It’s okay to have a thrill, honey. As many as you can stand, shit.” She squeezed her friend’s hand and didn’t touch her food until Victoria had made her bowl and sat. They said grace while holding hands and added in a special note of hope that Steen approved of the quality of the meal.

After, Victoria shooed Lourdes away when she attempted to help with the dishes. “Go sit. What other travels of mine did you want to hear about?”

“Oh, don’t you worry. We’ll get through them all while you’re here. No sense rushing to get through all of your worldly travails this evening.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Victoria conceded. “Let’s turn the spotlight on YOU, Whore of Babylon,” she teased.

Lourdes’ hand exaggeratedly fluttered to her bosom in mock shame. “That is SUPREME Whore of Babylon to YOU, Mrs. LaMarche!”

Victoria laughed and dried her hands. “What’s in here for dessert?”

“Hmmmm…there should be some pecan pound cake in the icebox. Oh! And look in the freezer for some vanilla ice cream. If it’s in there, just take out the carton. We not gonna be dainty and dirty up anymore dishes.”

“Speaking of dessert, wasn’t your gentleman caller supposed to come by this evening?” Victoria inquired mischievously while laying out napkins for the thickly sliced pieces of cake.

A dismissive wave from Lourdes. “He probably got tied up at the shop or somethin’,” she answered casually. “It happens. He be fixing them old folks’ cars for free or next to nothing and he never tells anyone ‘no’…no telling.”

Victoria opened the carton of ice cream and they both dug in. “So, how did y’all meet?”

“Well, how else do you meet a mechanic? At church!” They laughed. “He supposedly noticed some crazy noise Steen’s car had been making. Now, I been driving that car for a while and I hadn’t heard anything so I thought he was lying. You know, just trying to be fresh.”

“Well, what was it?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t remember, chile. What I do know is whatever he did to that car, I did notice it’s been driving a bit different since. It was nothing wrong with it, necessarily, but it’s just been a bit smoother. Anyway, he kept asking me out and I kept telling him no. Then I overheard Mrs. Wilkes – you know, the one whose brother took over as the head deacon at church? – say that she broke down one evening and Etienne would not leave her side until he had fixed her car and made sure she got home safely. So…next time he asked me out, I said yes. He still doesn’t know that’s what made me accept.  None of his business, either. All he needs to know is how lucky he is.”

“Oh, my. He sounds like a good one, Lo.” It moved Victoria that Lourdes was obviously well-loved by someone so attentive, protective…and efficient.

“Yeah,” she licked some vanilla off her spoon. “He’s lovely. Really lovely.” A pause as Lourdes’ eyes slid slyly over to Victoria. “And he gets aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the hard to reach places.” Lourdes let loose the contagious belly cackle of a captured witch.

“Oh, Lord, Lo…”

“Look, here. It takes a lot of man to get me off the ground, okay? But, HONEY? Whew! When Aretha says she needs a strong man, I…that song is about Etienne. He’s strong, but…gentle. I can’t quite explain it. He just…” Lourdes props her chin in her hand. “He just knows what to do.”

Victoria’s wide eyes dropped into her lap as she left Lourdes to her reverie and felt stirrings of longing she tried to stuff back down from wherever they were trying to crawl up from. A question nipped at her, perfect timing to distract herself a bit.

“Now, you said there were two. If Etienne is this perfect, who’s the other one?”

Lourdes chuckled with secret knowledge that wasn’t about to be a secret anymore. “You not gone believe this. Tori, you remember Jacob?”

Victoria leaned back and crossed her leg as she contemplated. “Jacob…Jacob…” She frowned as a realization dawned. “Jet Black Jacob? Jacob Matheson?”

Lourdes grinned wide as she nodded. “Unh-huh. THAT Jacob.”

“I…how?”

“Let’s just say,” Lourdes said getting up and disappearing from the room for a moment and returning with a photo, “he ain’t the same Jacob you remember.”

Victoria glanced at the photo as shock covered her face. Lourdes was clearly understating. The grown man in the photo was definitely NOT little Jet Black Jacob. Her mouth dropped. Lourdes reached down to push her chin back up. “You’ll draw flies, girl.”

“Lourdes —–”

“Mhm. Gorgeous, ain’t he?”

“Jesus Christ,” Victoria muttered, as if the savior himself might come down and offer a double confirmation that this was Jacob in the photo. “Remember he had those teeth?”

“Not anymore, Tori. No more ugly duckling for that one. He grew up into a swan with very, very strong hands and a long —-”

“That’s enough, Lo!” The upright, beaming man in this photo was miles away from the twig-thin kid they used to chase around with a dead frog and play keepaway with his baseball mitt. His smile glowed from the image and the twinkling eyes were from hard-won confidence. It was the kind of masculine beauty paid homage to in Greek myth. “What’s he doing now?” She handed Lourdes the photo.

“He’s a banker at St. Legere First Bank right up there on Mackey and Jane. He’ll probably run that place one day.”

“Damn,” Victoria muttered to herself. “You wanna tell me how Y’ALL got together?”

“Just dropping off deposits up there for Steen.”

“I see. Then HE was dropping off deposits…” Victoria arched an eyebrow wickedly.

“Oooooh, you catch on quick!”

Victoria’s turn to rest her chin in her palm as she studied her friend studying the photo. “They love you well, Lo?”

“Hm?” Lourdes looked up at her. “Oh, I don’t know about love, Tori. I’m not sure I love them either. What I know is what they keep showing me: that they are here for me. I do feel adored by them. Special. Almost…worshipped sometimes. I suppose I hadn’t thought about love when I know I feel even more like the Queen of Sheba than I usually do when they touch me or I see them smile. I’m not sure all those things add up to that. What I know…is that they are here. For ME. They’re here. I know that I enjoy them. They seem to enjoy me and mean it. I know that we laugh. I know that we’re never mad at each other for long. I know that it never feels like anything is…missing. I get a special and beautiful and glowing and whole thing that is different from the both of them and I don’t feel greedy about it and there are moments when that nearly feels sacred. And they don’t make me feel bad for receiving as freely as they wanna give. With all that…I don’t know, Tori. I’m not sure love is a thing I require.” Lourdes seemed to be sifting through it all as she spoke it. “Does that make sense?”

Victoria grinned and wondered if she could have ever said any of that about Damien. “It sounds like it makes sense to YOU. And that’s all that matters, Lo.”

They sat there in silence for a little while, enjoying a breeze that lifted the pristine white shears in the kitchen windows and carried the perfume of fallen magnolia petals. Victoria closed her eyes as the aroma met her nose. She saw Steen tending to her skinned 8-year-old knee, heard her concern disguised as fussing, none of the sternness making its way to her gentle hands.

“Don’t mess these legs up, gal. They’ll carry you around the world one day.” She saw her ballet teacher, Ms. Muldoon; felt the light tap of her ruler on her shin as she demanded a sharper two position of Victoria’s legs. “Oui, c’est ça.” Yes, that’s it, she affirmed Victoria in a French lilt as light as the magnolia breeze that wafted in.

Victoria’s eyes snapped open.

“Where were you, Tori?” Lourdes inquired lightly, knowing Victoria wouldn’t tell her. It had been like that since they were kids. She always wondered if Victoria might have been mentally conjuring the places she had no idea yet that she’d visit.

Victoria shook her head slightly, smiled tightly. “What say I braid your hair before you go to sleep?”

Lourdes’ eyes lit up. “Would you?”

“Of course. And you can have one of my French scarves to wrap it up in. Can you help me finish unpacking first?”

“Sure can. I wanna to finish seeing the fabulous clothes and trinkets of a world traveler!”

Victoria laughed and shook her head as she cleared the table. They ascended the stairs, arms linked and going at Lourdes’ pace so she didn’t overexert herself. Victoria couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before Lourdes was unable to take the staircase without completely wearing herself out.

Her breathing was mildly labored as she settled on the sateen port wine comforter with cream tassels on Victoria’s bed.

“You okay?”

“Mhm, I’m fine. Just gotta catch my breath is all.” Lourdes fanned herself with her hands. “Open those suitcases, girl!”

Victoria obliged and what ensued was an impromptu fashion show that took them late into the night as Victoria provided commentary on where each item came from. A beautiful gold handchain from the Orient. A silk caftan from Morocco. Custom-made heels with electric blue soles from Milan. And so on.

By the time they were done, both were so sleepy that Lourdes playfully admonished, “Hey, you still gotta braid my hair, Tori. You better not give me no crooked parts.” The sleepiness made them both giddy with laughter and they were 9 and 11 again trying not to wake up Steen with their late-night shenanigans. Even now, they reflexively stifled themselves as though Steen was right up the hall.

They were both nodding when it came time to braid Lourdes’ hair. “Chile, just make it quick,” she muttered sleepily, with a wave of her hand. “Do it like how you used to when we were kids.”

Victoria cocked her head to the side and tapped the comb handle to her lips. “You talkin’ about the one big braid around your head? Like a halo?”

“Mhm,” Lourdes’ drowsy reply. “It’s gone be the only way I get any kind of halo, girl.”

Victoria chuckled and took Lourdes’ hair down and ran her fingers through the thick tangle of shoulder length kinks to detangle it. “You still tenderheaded?”

“Yeah. Lil’ bit.”

Upon the first attempted pass of the comb, Lourdes’ shocked flinch broke her out of a good bit of her sluggishness. She grasped at her scalp. “OW! Damn, Tori!”

“You JUST said you were tenderheaded only a little bit! Liar!”

Lourdes rubbed at her scalp with mock indignance. “Go easy, heffa!”

“Okay, okay…”

Relying a little more on her slender fingers and a bit less on the aggressive teeth of the comb, Victoria began sectioning and braiding. As she settled into a rhythm, she could see Lourdes’ shoulders relax as her eyes closed. She winced occasionally as Victoria gathered the hair and anchored it to her scalp. In not much more time, a single, thick rope of a braid framed Lourdes’ sable face with its full, high cheeks, sand dollar-round eyes, sculpted jet eyebrows and bow of a mouth.

Victoria rummaged through one of her suitcases for her favorite French silk scarf – a bold backdrop of bronze and copper, with a golden-eyed lioness in profile. If anyone deserved her very favorite scarf, it was Lourdes. She gently wrapped and tied it around Lourdes head as she slept upright, then bent to gather her feet to put them up on the bed so she could lay on her side.

When Lourdes head hit the matching port wine of the pillow case, she stirred and mumbled with some coherence, “I need to go get in my bed —–”

“Shhhhhh. Go on back to sleep, Lo.” Not very many minutes later, a light snore escaped Lourdes.

Victoria turned off the lamp so the moonlight could dance in uninterrupted. Before climbing into bed next to Lourdes, she sat in the bay window for a moment to shake off the rest of the world and let the “back home” sensation fully wash over her and begin melting into bones that had time, for the first time in a while, to process their exhaustion. You couldn’t get this moss-bathed air anyplace else but St. Legere, she swore. Crickets and frogs united for a nighttime aria, with the occasional percussive crispness provided by the staccato shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.

How long had it been? Thirteen years? She’d married Damien at 19, right before he went into the Air Force, and got an opportunity to audition for an all-Negro ballet company in Chicago two years later while he was stationed in Colorado’s Lowry Air Force Base. By then, he’d nearly buried her under slabs of obligation, duty and wifely expectations.

It was a hell of a Dear John letter.

“Dear Damian,

I’m leaving you. For me.

Best,

V”

Her farewell was without venom, but Lourdes had reminded her of something about herself when she told her about it a couple months later.

“Oh, you always been like that, Tori.”

“Like what?”

Lourdes had chuckled, not quite expecting having to explain. “You will wake up tired of a thing. And put it down right where you found it. And walk away.” Victoria processed that with mild horror on the other line. “I always loved that about you. Them little spikes of meanness right at your center.” Victoria couldn’t see it, but Lourdes was beaming proudly.

“I ain’t do it to be mean, Lo. I just…”

“I ain’t mean ‘meanness’ like that, Tori. I mean more like…resoluteness. It’s a good thing. You chose Tori. That’s a good thing.” A beat. “I never did like that red nigga —-”

A giggle sputtered from Victoria’s lips. “Stop it, Lo.”

“Well, I didn’t. He was the dangerous kind of bland that slowly kills you. Death by laundry…and sewing holes in draws…and picking up dirty socks…and nothing but missionary…”

She shook off the desiccated skin of military wife and the molting brought an intense start as a dancer for those first couple of years as she had to find the kind of in-herself soulfulness that ballet had mostly wrung out of her.

Finding a new way of moving meant, for her, finding a new way of being. Of living. Her ripening as a dancer was bound to her ripening as a woman. Away from Damien. Away from St. Legere.

Steen had that in-the-bones knowing that seemed to descend automatically on Black elders after the age of 50. The words echoed back to her again for the second time that night: “These legs are gonna take you around the world.”

And they did.

Steen couldn’t have known it was an incomplete prophecy. She had no idea what might bring Victoria back to St. Legere.

3  |

It wouldn’t have taken much for the women of St. Legere to make a sport of it if they wanted to. A spectacle to rival something biblical like the Christians and the lions.

Watching Sonny Moreau do yardwork was…an event.

They were huddled conspiratorially around the window, necks craning, about eight of them with glasses of cherry lemonade, a specialty of Mrs. Canady’s.

Those glasses weren’t the only things sweating.

“Good land! It’s my house, you’d think I’d have a front row seat!” lamented Mrs. Canady trying to stand her tiny, but plump 71-year-old frame on tiptoe to see over the rim of her glasses and around her friends, all of whom had shown up not at all randomly to request random items just that morning. So much for age before beauty.

Coming all the way across town to ask for a hex wrench? No. These ladies knew Sonny was scheduled to cut Mrs. Canaday’s grass.

Without even looking at Mrs. Canaday, Vonnie Burch lazily replied while running her finger absentmindedly back and forth across her collarbone, “Mrs. Canaday, you could be out there watching on your porch if you wanted to.”

The right thing to do would have probably been to employ one of the teenagers in the town. They were always looking for little odd jobs to have money for penny candy and honey drippers.

But Sonny Moreau was a grown man.

No concave wisp of sinew for a torso.

No still-developing biceps challenged by the power of the lawnmower.

No strips of grass missed from the haste and inattentiveness of well-meaning youth.

Each set of awestruck eyes captured him in parts, a mosaic of man born from the feminine gaze. He didn’t know he was fragmented, splintered and made whole over and over again in a kind of secret god-sight men never knew was exerted on them by women.

Taking the pieces and arranging them abstractly could not have lessened the blunt force of Sonny.

Right now, he was on a ladder, sawing some low branches from a robust, hulking laurel oak in Mrs. Canaday’s front yard. The heat had wasted no time rolling in with its needy, selfish cling on everything it touched…including the knots of muscle that worked in Sonny’s sweat-soaked back, poorly veiled by the ribbed white tank they all wished wasn’t there.

“Oh, my Lord. I didn’t ask him to trim them branches. Just a light touch on the hedges and cut my yard down,” Mrs. Canaday noted out loud as she made her way to her door.

They saw him descend from the ladder, saw his profile: the scalp under his buzzcut glinted in the sun, the axe edge of a jawline with its flourishing stubble. Saw the light maple glaze of an arm they swore had the circumference of a tree stump. They saw Mrs. Canaday gesture toward the tree with her cane, saw Sonny nod several times. Saw him smile sheepishly. Saw Mrs. Canaday…giggle?

The force of the collective gasp from inside the house should have easily pulled Mrs. Canaday and Sonny toward it. Clara Dupree wondered aloud to no one in particular, “He gotta be like a full three heads taller than her.”

One might say there weren’t necessarily many white folks in St. Legere. Just…enough. Sonny was one of them, but without saying it, they got the collective sense that there was something exotic about him no one could quite place or articulate. When he spoke, they felt the shadow of an unplaceable accent more than they heard it. An echo of some foreign place you could’ve learned about in Clara’s class back when she was a history teacher. The mark of someone who not only didn’t grow up in St. Legere, but who had perhaps at one point had an idea to just pass through, and ended up settling and making a life in the little enclave from wherever he came from or had been.

Sonny didn’t seem like the kind of man another city might spit out from not liking the taste of him, but you never really knew about these things.