They’d danced – literally and figuratively – around the reason for their visit into the late night. Chance dutifully took Katie to a few of the better known, but less touristy spots in the Quarter and river front. The food was terrific of course, and the drinks and entertainment even better.

They had their usual comforting silences and chats. They read each other’s thoughts, and in general, behaved like the newlyweds they were. The underlying tension, however, was not their normal sexual chemistry. Chance was anxious and at times distracted, and Katie picked up on it.

Eventually, they returned to their room after midnight. Both exhausted, they nevertheless made love with the window opened a tiny crack. The lights of the city streamed in from below and above, making the room seem suspended between heaven and earth. Maybe a little closer to heaven. The New Orleans skyline still impressed Chance, particularly the twin spans of the Greater New Orleans Mississippi River Bridge. There had only been one span when Chance had lived there thirty years before.

The next morning, Chance awoke to the sound of Katie talking on the telephone. He showered and shaved. By the time he came out, Katie was dressed and sat at the window table, glaring at her computer. After a time she grunted and closed her laptop with a click.

“What’s it all about?” Katie asked, eyebrows raised.

Chance sighed, “Well, it’s a long long story.” Chance tugged at his shirt, a gesture of agitation.

She looked at him with deep concern. Softly, “What happened in South Carolina?”

He faced her, standing with his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go downstairs. I need some liquid courage.”

They sat in a very large booth at one of the hotel lounges. The waiter had supplied them with drinks and a bowl of nuts. Chance popped a few nuts, and stared at the table. In New Orleans, an early start on alcohol was as normal as red beans and rice.

“Where to start. The beginning I guess.” Chance turned sideways in the seat and leaned his back against the wall. Katie tucked her legs up under herself, and sipped at something clear in a tall glass.

“First of all, what happened in TR was that my mother sent Paul and me a note from beyond the grave.”

Katie’s eyebrows raised quizzically, her face opened incredulously. “What??”

“Remember her instructions? She wanted her ashes mixed in Pop’s?”

Katie nodded.

He smiled without humor. “Believe it or not, she left a note in Pop’s ashes. She put the note there when Pop died.” He paused and reached into his shirt pocket. “Here it is.”

Katie quickly scanned the note, her expression becoming increasingly puzzled.

“Who are the Jacksons?”

“A black family my father knew. I remember playing with the kids. A girl and a boy. Jeremy, I think. He was a year younger than me, I think.”

Chance took a pull on his Bourbon. No doubt Niznick would find his choice of drinks a bit more ennobling.

“I vaguely remember driving a long way to get to their house. It was brick, and had a driveway on the side. I was envious because they had a big back yard with their own swing set.”

He swirled the amber liquid in the thick glass and stared out the window. Canal street looked as busy as ever. Busses and streetcars in the wide center divide between the lanes. Streams of people going in all directions. Chance noticed a very old black woman, wearing a peacock blue dress, black stockings, and a feathered hat with a long curved brim, partially covering her face.

She held a clutch purse that matched the dress. Her face was elevated, chin pointed toward the opposite corner. Chance could see the red lipstick of her compressed lips, and the whites of her eyes behind a thin veil supplied by the hat. When the walk light changed for her, about twenty people on the same corner gushed forward toward the center of the street. The old woman grasped her purse tightly in one hand, swinging it in a slightly exaggerated arc, and walked with slow grace across to the bus stop, the people parted around her like a stream around a rock.

In just about any city in America, the old lady would stand out. Certainly in that peacock dress. But in New Orleans, the solemn dignity, combined with the flamboyant colors were a caricature of New Orleans itself. Stately, dignified in the face of Katrina, yet flaunting it, too.

Chance put the glass down, and looked back at his bride.

“Mom, Paul, and I refer to this stuff as the ‘Martin Family Legend’.”

Katie nodded, her eyes showing blue streaked intensity.

“Family legend has it that my father – Pop – was a contractor for the CIA from the late fifties to the early seventies.” In response to Katie’s start of surprise, Chance quickly amended, “Oh no, not the killer kind of contractor, just a person under the pay of the CIA.”

“Further, family legend also holds that Pop was in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Actually in Cuba, behind the lines.”

“There is evidence to support some of this. First, Pop could speak fluent Spanish in several dialects. Also, he could fly multi-engine airplanes. He commented to me frequently that his favorite plane was the C-47.”

“When we lived in Miami, frequently we had Spanish speaking people visit or even live with us. I can recall a couple of maids we had that spoke no English.

“Back around 1964 or ‘65, I remember going with Pop to a house in Miami. I was pretty hard of hearing at the time, so they probably didn’t notice me. It wouldn’t have mattered since I don’t speak Spanish anyway. I remember that trip very well because it was the first time I recall seeing a black light, and I was fascinated with what it did to the room and my clothes and stuff.”

“Anyway, I remember Pop speaking amongst several men, and carrying on the conversation just as quickly as English. Faster, actually, seemed like they all spoke very fast.”

“His work pattern, as Paul and I remember it, is that Pop would be gone for a couple of months at a time, then would come back for a couple of months. He always returned with money, and we were told he was a deep sea salvage diver.”

“We lived in Miami until 1966 where I started the first grade. Again, according to family legend since I was too young to remember it very well – we left in the middle of the night, leaving most of our stuff behind. Mom’s letter mentions that.”

“We arrived in Jacksonville, and stayed with Pop’s friend, Mr. Sands, sleeping on the porch for awhile. We moved at least two more times inside of a year – that I can remember. Finally we ended up in an apartment, still in Jax somewhere.”

“That apartment was memorable to me, because, we kids were being home-schooled by Mom. We were under very strict orders to not leave the house during school hours, and to not make noise during the day, and to keep the curtains closed. The worst spanking I ever got was when I snuck outside to buy some candy around the corner and got caught by somebody in a suit. He gave me a business card.”

“Pop came home, and didn’t even wait until I got to the bedroom. He started spanking me with his belt in the hallway.”

Katie interjected, “Sounds like you were hiding.”

“Exactly.”

Chance swirled the glass in his hand, listening to the quiet tinkle of the ice.

“At one point, after leaving Miami, we lived in at least a half dozen different places around Jacksonville in the space of about a year.”

“Then, it gets weirder. Somewhere around this time, Mom flips out and is gone, and next thing you know – Paul and I are all alone in the apartment with neither parent. According to Paul, that lasted for about two months. We survived by scavenging for bottles and redeeming their deposits. Then, wonder of wonders – Uncle Andy shows up in a car, and hauls us to Holly Hill, South Carolina, where we lived with our real uncle for about six months.”

“That was an odd time for us because they had four boys – all a lot older than Paul and me – and they were a Navy family. Every morning, six am sharp, reveille was sounded. One day, unannounced, Mom showed up and took us down to Ft. Myers to live her parents on Pondella road. A few months later – Pop shows up and we had a reasonably normal life until the middle seventies.”

“Once we were in Ft. Myers, Dad again disappeared several times, for months at a time. I remember waiting for him to call us at the laundromat on Saturdays. We had a phone, but he always called us there. We didn’t have a number for him, and no way to get in touch.”

“That’s strange,” interjected Katie.

“Yep. Oh yes, almost forgot. According to Paul, Pop’s index finger was amputated at the same time we left Miami in the middle of the night. He remembers the bandage or something. I don’t – but I was fairly clueless at the time.”

“His finger was amputated?” Katie asked.

“Yes. According to yet more family lore, it’s a Cuban custom to do that to the ‘trigger’ finger as a warning to a member when they leave the fold. Designed to not only disable them, but as a constant reminder. The Japanese mafia has something similar. They apparently are more fond of cutting off the little finger rather than the index finger.”

“For some reason, the story about that finger seems to have been different for Mom, Paul, and me. I thought it was shut in a car door. Paul thought it was an accident with a saw. I don’t remember what Mom said.”

Chance paused, his drink gone. He started chewing on the depleted ice. “Let’s see, what else.”

Katie unfurled herself on her seat, and stretched her legs. “I know you think this is somehow important, but I have to tell you, it just seems like muddled romantic childhood memories. Very faded, and seen through a child’s lack of context.”

Chance turned around, looking at the slightly tilted eyes. He felt amazingly lucky. Married just over a year, he’d met Katie on a photo shoot. She’d been part of the company’s entourage accompanying a new product launch. There to ensure that costs didn’t get out of hand, and to a lesser degree to foster the fledgling relationship between her high-tech startup, and Chance’s own small concern. Little did either realize that the relationship fostered would be their own, quite apart from the professional relationship.

In an age when merely looking at the opposite sex in the workplace could inspire sexual harassment lawsuits and firings at worst, or insufferable lectures from HR at least, they had proven that the best place to look for love was in all the wrong places.

The company Katie worked for was absorbed by a larger rival, and Katie found herself working with Chance at his small studio in the South Bay of San Francisco. She found the clients, and Chance did the rest. It worked very nicely, indeed. Within a year they moved in together, and less than two years later, they married.

Katie sat up, extending a catlike stretch to her body and arms. “Didn’t you say that your father was in prison? Seriously, Chance, this all sounds like a bad country song.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous – and I haven’t even told you the really wacky parts.”

Katie looked at him as if he was an experiment gone awry. “Oh great, more than being a spy for the CIA?”

Looking uncomfortable, Chance nodded.

“OK, I’ll bite, lay it on me.” Katie looked at him with exasperation, crossing her arms under her breasts. Her left foot impatiently tapped the center pillar of the table.

Chance pinched his nose and closed his eyes. “Look, never mind. This is a Martin thing. I don’t expect anybody else to understand.

Katie softened. But not much. “I’m a Martin, now, too! Sell me!”

Chance grinned sardonically, “You’re the sales person. I’m just a photographer.”

Her eyes flashed briefly, then dropped toward the floor. “Look, I just want you to be reasonable here. Look at this through my eyes. It sounds like your mother was a raving lunatic. I mean really, leaving a note in an urn? You can’t stop now. Tell me the rest.”