“What did you do?”
“I sat around there for a while, and a couple of soldiers who were on the loose started making eyes at me, and I thought, after all, why not? The boys were going to be shipped somewhere pretty soon. They were entitled to as much of a good time as I could show them, so I smiled back at them. They came over, and we had quite an evening. They were awfully nice boys, but they knew nothing whatever about New Orleans. It was their first night in town. They came from Milwaukee. I took them around and showed them some of the sights, told them stories about the Quarter, drank with them until they were just about able to navigate, and left them.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked home, every single, blessed step of the way.”
“You didn’t take a cab?”
“No. I didn’t have my purse; I didn’t have a cent.”
“And how did you intend to get in if you didn’t have a key?”
“I had a key.”
“I thought you said he took your key.”
“Took one of them, but there’s another key in the bottom of my mailbox. I always leave it there, just in case of an emergency. You see, there’s a spring lock on the door, and sometimes when I run down to the corner to get things from the grocery store, I’ll forget to take my key along, so I always leave an extra one there in the mailbox.”