it, or you don’t. I’ll know soon enough.” I slid my hands into the pockets of my yellow poplin shirtdress and ambled down the street, not waiting to see if he’d keep up. I knew he would.
He jogged to catch up. “This is more stressful than my Starstruck audition.”
I’d learned how to keep my thoughts off my face, so I offered him a bland smile. “I’m a much tougher judge too.”
He groaned. “I’m going to fail.”
I glanced over at him. “We’re going to walk, and you tell me what you think about the vibe of each block.”
“Boomers and zoomers,” he said on the next block. On one corner, a large condo complex was going up, scaffolding around the outside. Directly across the street, an old burned out brick house stood, doors boarded up, the roof falling in.
“Harsh,” I said. “And I don’t agree, but I see it.”
“I can’t believe it’s still like this all over the city,” he said. “I mean, less in the French Quarter, but still pretty much everywhere else.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know. Some news show ran a story last month about how New Orleans has recovered from Katrina, and Chloe and I both threw pillows at the TV.” It had been an outsider’s perspective. Yes, new development was going up, but these weren’t locals. So many long-term residents, especially Black ones, had been displaced after the hurricane to Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and beyond. Government relief funds earmarked to help people rebuild disappeared in bureaucratic inefficiency, and it was too hard to come back and start from scratch.
We kept walking, and I nodded at a house painted in eye-popping shades of purple and green. “I have to warn you that one of the most irritating things about the Bywater is the Airbnbs. They’re everywhere. That’s one. A lot of the people who could rebuild after Katrina went that route. And I get it. So many people depend on that income. And on the upside, they maintain the properties really well. But it also means you get less community here. Every block has a party house or two with guests who don’t care about the noise they’re making and leave in two days.”
“That sucks, but...”
I picked up his unfinished thought. “You’re right. For you, that might be good. Your club will give them something else to do.”
“I promise I’ll be a really good Bywater resident. I’ll be part of the community. Work with the schools. Join the neighborhood situation. I swear.”
I made a noncommittal sound. “We’ll see. We’ll keep walking, you keep talking.”
He found analogies to explain each block. One he compared to a Louis Armstrong song. Another he compared to a Mississippi riverboat, a third he compared to a classic Lincoln car.
He wasn’t wrong about any of them. When we got to Louisa and Burgundy, I stopped and turned east. “You passed.”
“I passed? I passed!” He picked me up in a hug that pulled me up to my tiptoes then released me, and I wobbled for a second, every nerve ending where he had touched me suddenly on fire. He didn’t seem wobbly at all as he executed some footwork straight out of one of his old pop videos.
Danger, danger. This isn’t how agents and clients act. “Don’t make me take it back.” My voice came out breathier than I meant it to, and I took a few more steps away, still feeling like I was made of electricity. A few people had slowed to look at us, one of them staring from Miles to me and back again, frowning.
My skin prickled in places he hadn’t touched. Behind my knees. The back of my neck. It was like I had a thousand pairs of eyes on me, and I felt them each like a point of contact. I hated being seen. I started walking again.
He didn’t. “The hug? If you have to. Come and get it.” I turned and he held his arms out wide, but I blushed and stayed where I was even though I knew he was only trying to make me laugh.
“I meant don’t make me take back Bywater privileges.”
He rearranged his face into a ridiculous mournful expression. “No, ma’am. What now?”
“Now we show you the first property I’m thinking about.”
“Yes!” That got an arm pump.
“Don’t do that. You look like a middle-aged dad at a Pelicans game.”
He dropped his arm to his side. “You are a tough audience. What are the acceptable forms of celebration?”