“Well,” she went on, “what with having all of my friends whispering around behind my back, and what with the memory of the tragedy gnawing at the back of my consciousness — I decided to travel. I went to New York. After a while I got a job as a model, advertising some lingerie. For a while things were all right, then people recognized my photographs. My friends started whispering again.”
“I’d had a taste of complete freedom. It had lasted for almost a year. I knew what it was like to be just a common, average person, free to live my own life in my own way—”
“So you disappeared again?” I asked.
“Yes. I realized that I’d had the right idea but had made the mistake of getting into a profession where I was photographed. I decided to go to a new place, begin all over again, and smash the first camera that was pointed in my direction.”
“New Orleans?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“You know the rest.”
“How did you meet Edna Cutler?”
“I don’t know now just how it was. I think it started in a cafeteria or a restaurant-it may have been the Bourbon House. Come to think of it, I guess it was. That’s something of a Bohemian place, you know. Most of the people who eat there regularly get to know the other people who eat there regularly. Quite a few of the prominent authors, playwrights, and actors eat there when in New Orleans. It’s an unpretentious little place, but it has the atmosphere, the real, authentic, aged-in-the-wood brand.”