“Why was Nostrander so anxious to see you?”
She said, “He fell for me. It was very annoying as far as I was concerned.”
I said, “You don’t mean that you moved out of the apartment, changed your whole style simply because some man whom you didn’t like was making passes at you.”
“Well — well, not exactly.”
“Why, then?”
“I’d rather let it go just the way it is.”
I shook my head. “You can’t.”
She said, “Well, to tell you the truth, in part I got tired of the life I was living. I wasn’t working. I was getting all of my expenses paid simply to stay there and take the name of Edna Cutler. I wasn’t getting up until along about eleven or twelve o’clock in the morning. I’d go to breakfast, take a little walk, pick up some magazines, come back, read and doze during the afternoon, go out about seven o’clock for a bite to eat, come back, take a bath, put on my glad rags, take a lot of care with my make-up, and groom myself up to the minute. Then I’d either have a date, or else I’d drift across to one of the bars, and — well, you know how it is in New Orleans. It isn’t like any other city on earth. A girl sits in the bar, and men pick her up. They don’t think anything of it, and neither does the girl. In any other city, you’d wonder what sort she was, but — well. New Orleans is New Orleans.”
The waiter brought our daiquiris. We touched glasses, took the first sip.
The waiter stood by the table, exerting a silent pressure for our orders.