“So, Angel,” Nora said as she steered them off the interstate and onto a road with the improbable name of Elysian Fields Avenue, “tell me what brings you to my neck of the woods.”

Michael answered before he could stop himself, and it was all Nora’s fault for phrasing the question as an order. He never could disobey an order.

“Griffin asked me to marry him.”

Nora slammed on the brakes and steered the Mustang to the side of the road.

She turned off the engine, turned her incredulous face to him, and said, “What?”

“It’s legal in New York now,” Michael said, raising both hands and waving them in a sarcastic hooray. “They’re recognizing out-of-state marriages, too. I know way too much about it. Griffin spoke to a lawyer already.”

“Yes, I know it’s legal in the state now. But so is tattooing a purple dick on your face. Doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

“I know you’re not really into the whole marriage thing,” Michael said.

“Doesn’t matter what I’m into or not,” she said. “What are you into?”

Michael sighed, hard. “I…” He dropped his head back and stared at the sky.

“You didn’t tell Griffin an answer? And you call me a sadist?”

Michael laughed a sad miserable little laugh. “He told me not to answer. He knows me so well he knows I have to think about it. He asked me last night, and he’s going to be in L.A. till Sunday. He said to think about it until then, tell him yes or no when he gets home, and if it’s a no we won’t talk about it again unless I bring it up. I’m following orders and thinking about it until Sunday. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone in our apartment for days obsessing over it.”

“So you came here to obsess about it?”

“Exactly.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s obsess about it. Over beignets.”

They didn’t talk much more as she drove them into the French Quarter. They had to park a few blocks away from the café, but the walk gave Michael a chance to stretch his legs and take in the sights. The houses fascinated him and he wished he’d thought to bring a better camera than just his iPhone. They were all so brightly colored—pink and red and mint green and blue—and right on the sidewalk. But to make up for their proximity to the general public, they were shuttered in the front so you couldn’t see inside the windows. He glanced through iron gates between the houses and caught glimpses of elegant little courtyards with fountains behind the houses. Everything was old and odd and eerie. No wonder Nora and Father S and Kingsley liked it here so much.

At the cafe, Nora bought them beignets and cafe au lait, which they carried back to the car instead of eating at the crowded tables.

“You’re making me wait for powdered sugar, fat, and joy?” Michael asked.

“It’s for the best,” she said. “Pro tip from an old pro—let them cool down first. I burned my tongue on a beignet right after we moved here. Couldn’t give a blow job for a week. My priest was pissed.” The blow job comment was made just as they passed a young couple pushing a stroller with a sleeping toddler. The father gave Nora a double take, which resulted in him getting a hard slap on the arm by his unamused wife. Nora didn’t notice any of it.

“Okay, but coffee at nine o’clock?” he asked as Nora passed him his cup.

“You have three days to decide if you’re getting married. We’re going to need all the caffeine we can get.”

Michael sipped at his coffee as Nora drove them to her house in the Garden District, and studied all the strange buildings they passed. The architecture major in him was in heaven. The art major was in an even higher circle of heaven. He’d never seen houses like this anywhere in the world. Shotgun houses. Looming Victorians with massive balconies. Iron fences with spiky fleur-de-lis pointing straight up defying anyone to jump the gate. They drove past a cemetery in the middle of a residential neighborhood surrounded by ten-foot high stone walls and filled with aboveground crypts. Actual crypts full of actual human remains and right across the street from a café. A cemetery and a café.

“Nora, this town is weird.”

“I know,” she said grinning. “I love it.”

A few blocks later, Nora pulled in front of a massive white house, an estate more than a house—grand, gleaming white, with stone steps leading to an ebony front door, and a black iron fence surrounding the entire property.

“Home sweet home,” Nora said.

“This is your place?” Michael asked, staring wide-eyed and amazed at the house.

“Just kidding. This is King’s,” she said. “Mine’s a little smaller. But it’s right around the corner.”

“It’s an upgrade from the townhouse,” Michael said, still staring at the white mansion as she drove away.

“The best part is that it was a third of the price of the townhouse. That’s how insane Manhattan real estate is.”

“Wow.”

“And my new place was about the same price as my old place in Connecticut and it’s bigger,” she said. “That’s mine.”

She pointed at the house as they drove past it to get to her off-street driveway. He couldn’t get much of a look at her place, Too dark out, but he could tell it was a red two-story with a big porch and a balcony on the second floor. He couldn’t see much else as it was hidden behind a massive oak tree and every lower limb dripped with hundreds of Mardi Gras beads of every color.

“What’s with the beads in your tree?” he asked.

“They just keep appearing,” she said with a shrug as she pulled in behind the house and parked. “Sometimes I go away and come home and there’s a bunch of new beads that weren’t there before. Søren thinks they’re a gift from an admirer.”

“An admirer?”

“He’s old so he says things like ‘I think you have an admirer.’”

Michael could hear Father S saying just that.

“He’s not that old,” Michael said.

“I know, but he’s going gray and it’s killing me. I’ve always had a thing for older men. He said if I didn’t stop groping him all the time he was going to start using a safe word on me. Rude, right?”

“How dare he,” Michael said dryly.

“Thank you, I agree. Come on,” Nora said, throwing open her car door. “Let’s talk and eat. Not in that order.”

She had a small backyard but it was nice. She had stone benches and tropical-looking potted plants here, there, and everywhere, a couple more smaller live oak trees, and a small back porch with a swing on it.

Nora let them in the backdoor and once inside she tossed her keys onto the kitchen counter. Spacious kitchen, all old hardwood and cabinets painted white.

“Table's there,” she said, pointing. “I’ll get us plates, napkins, and then even more napkins.”

“Don’t forget the napkins,” Michael said as he sat down at her big butcher block table. She set a plate in front of him, opened the beignet bag and out poured five gallons of powdered sugar.

Michael stared at the sugar pile before looking up at Nora. “I’m gonna need a bigger napkin.”

As they ate their fried balls of sugar and joy, Nora told him about her house. An Italianate style—hence the big porch—and built in 1910. Three bedrooms—her room, a guest room, and her newly finished private playroom, plus a tiny downstairs office. Almost everything in the house was original except the paint job. She’d painted every room downstairs a different shade of blue and every room upstairs a different shade of red. Her bedroom was scarlet, she said, and her playroom the color of red wine. She said the last part with the tiniest hint of a blush on her face, and that’s when Michael remembered her Le Boy Toy was a winemaker. He wouldn’t mention the blush to Nora, but he might mention it to Griffin.

“How’s Kingsley?” Michael asked. “Is he around?”

“He’s…um…” Nora closed one eye, wrinkled her nose, tapped her foot on the floor in nervousness. “Somewhere.”

Michael narrowed his eyes at her.

“Somewhere?”

“Somewhere I can’t tell you. Under pain of death. But Juliette and Céleste are with him at this undisclosed location. Well, he’s with them. He didn’t want to go. Juliette made him go. Well, Céleste made him go. He’d only go because of her. He wouldn’t have gone if she hadn’t begged. You know how kids are…they like what they like, and you can’t say no to your kid, I guess. And it’s a good time to go what with the weather being a little cooler, and all that.”

“He’s at Disney World, isn’t he?” Michael asked

Nora exhaled slowly through her nose. “Yeah.”

“Thought so.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Nora said. “He’ll really kill us if it gets out. Céleste is going through a princess phase.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t tell anyone Griffin asked me to marry him. I feel bad even telling you except I know Griffin wouldn’t mind. I just don’t want to talk to anyone about what I’ve decided until I’ve told him.”

“What have you decided?” she asked.

“I’ve decided I need to decide.”

“It’s a good start. Can I ask, on a scale of one to ten, how stressed out are you about all this?”

“Can the scale go to eleven?” he asked. “Thousand, I mean?”

Nora nodded, a little smile on her lips but she didn’t say anything else.

They finished their beignets and Nora offered to take him out in the backyard and hose him down. He opted instead to rinse off in her bathroom sink. He splashed cold water on his face, ran his head under the faucet to wet his hair. Nothing helped. It got rid of the sugar, but it didn’t take away the buzzing in his brain caused by the question Griffin had asked him. It was a weight on his shoulders. It was a hamster on the wheel in his head. It was a thorn in his side. Being around Nora was fun but it hadn’t cured him of his anxiousness yet. Was there anything that could? No. Probably nothing in the world would help. It was a lost cause.

When he opened the bathroom door, he found a note taped to it that read, Take your shoes and socks off and come to the last room down the hall.

Intrigued, Michael did as the note told him. Barefoot, he walked down the hall and opened the last door on the right. It was Nora’s playroom. In wide-eyed wonder, he glanced around taking in the black leather St. Andrew’s cross and the rows of floggers and the rows of canes and the rows of whips lining the wine-colored walls. And there was Nora standing in the center in black high heeled boots, tiny black shorts and a black bustier. She had a flogger in her hand and was casually slapping it against her leg.

“I thought I might try to bring your stress level down a little, Angel,” she said with a smile. “If you think this would help.”

Michael slowly nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “This might help.”