“What’d he die of?”

“See, the thing is, this guy wasn’t just an old friend. This’s a guy when I met him, the first time I ever talked to him, it changed my whole fucking life from then on.”

“Guy was what, like a priest?”

“He was a hotel burglar.”

“No shit.”

“You know I did time.”

“You mentioned it once, yeah. Three years.”

“Well, before that, when I met the guy… Wait, I have to tell you something else first. Right after I got out of school I worked at Maison Blanche, in the men’s department, and they’d use me in ads. They said I was a perfect size forty and I had good teeth and they said they liked my hair. But I quit ’cause it was a bunch a shit doing that, all that standing around in the lights. Now, this time I’m talking about…”

“When you met the guy?”

“Yeah, eight years ago. Now I’m thirty-two years old working for the Rivé brothers, barely making two hundred a week.”

“They come in here. Emile and Brother.”

“I know they do. They’re my uncles… Anyway, this particular night I come out of Felix’s, there on Iberville, had my oysters, couple of beers, and this woman stops me on the street. She wants to know if I’ve ever done any modeling. I go, ‘Yeah, you know Maison Blanche?’ I can tell she’s from out of town, the way she talks. She says they’re here from New York doing catalog layouts for Hollandia sportswear-that’s the one with the little tulip on the shirt-and she’ll give me a thousand bucks for four days. Just like that. The thousand guaranteed plus overtime. But the way she’s looking at me, touching my hair, I get the feeling she wants to do more than take my picture.”