SOS - Chapter 1
The Quarter is chill with the cool damp of the muddy Mississippi river as I make my way from the Cafe du Monde with my morning parcel of beignets and café au lait. It is just six blocks from the café to my second story flat at the corner of St.Philip and Dauphine streets. I cross Decatur at St.Ann avoiding the heavy traffic of milk wagons, sailors and colored help already on their way back from the French Market with the day's produce. The stroll does me good, warming my blood and pushing the haziness of last night's drink from my mind. In the few minutes preceding dawn, no one is awake enough to question how a blind man like me could dodge so many moving obstacles and even if they did they would chalk it up to chance. That is my ultimate defense, of course, blind men are objects of pity, if anyone takes notice of them in the first place.
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They say that these things always begin with a woman, but that is just a trope. However in this case, it turned out to be true, just not necessarily in the way that one would expect. You see, the woman’s shadow was waiting for me as I walked through the office door at dawn. Of course, at that time, the shadow was too indistinct for me to be sure of what it might portend, but by lunch time, it had resolved itself into an obviously feminine form. One that would be sitting on the other side of my desk in the second of the two chairs I reserve for clients.
