"Having a late breakfast?" he said.
"I don't eat breakfast, me," she replied.
He looked disappointed. Then his eyes lit on the coffeepot and a piece of carrot cake on a shelf.
"I thought I might join you," he said.
"Last night s'pposed to go on your bill, too?" she asked.
"Yes, that would be fine."
"I want my money," she said.
"Carrie, Carrie, Carrie," he said, patting her shoulder.
He leaned across her to pick up the piece of carrot cake from the shelf. She could feel the outline of his phallus press against her back.
JUST before noon Carrie bathed and fixed her hair and dug in the back of her closet for a dress that had been made for her by a tailor in New Orleans. Then she powdered her face until it was almost white, rouged her cheeks, darkened her eyes with eyeliner and, with a silk parasol held aloft, sat regally in the back of her carriage while a Negro driver delivered her to the front of Abigail Dowling's cottage on East Main.
"Could I help you?" Abigail said, opening the door, looking past Carrie, as though an emergency of some kind must have developed in the street.
"I want to talk bidness," Carrie said.
"I'm probably the wrong person for that," Abigail said.
"Not this time, you ain't," Carrie said.
They sat down in the living room. Carrie fixed her eyes out the window, her back not touching the chair. Her red-streaked black hair looked like a wig on a muskmelon. She took a deep breath and heard a rattling sound in her lungs.
"Are you feeling all right, Miss LaRose?" Abigail asked.
"I got chest pains at night," she said.
"You need to see a doctor."
"The only good one we had was killed at Malvern Hill. I want you to find out what's wrong wit' me."
"I'm not qualified," Abigail replied.
"I wouldn't take my horse to the doctor we got. What's wrong wit' me?"
"What else happened when you had the chest pains?"
"I couldn't breathe. It hurt real bad under my right arm, like somebody stuck me wit' a stick."
Abigail started to speak, but Carrie raised a hand for her to be silent.
"I hear a man walking in a long corridor. I hear an iron door scraping across a stone flo'," she said. "I t'ink maybe somebody's coming for me."
"Who?" Abigail said.
"I growed up in Barataria, right here in Lou'sana, but I run a house in Paris. A colonel in the French army kilt my husband over some money. When I got the chance I fixed him good. Wit' a poisoned razor in his boot."
Carrie paused, waiting to see the reaction in Abigail's face. "I see," Abigail said.
"I was supposed to die on the guillotine. I done some t'ings for the jailer. Anyt'ing he wanted, it didn't matter.You know what I'm saying to you? I done them t'ings and I lived."
"Yes?" Abigail said.