Trina’s business cards read: Madame Trinae, Hellseer. Her shop had a prime spot on the corner of Dauphine and Bienville, one block off Bourbon Street. She leased the space from Daphne Reine, the Queen of Dauphine, who retired after her third diabetic amputation. She removed Daphne’s mildewed awning, PSYCHIC in faded letters, and installed in the window a red neon sign: HELLSEER. She built a website that explained her title as derived from the German word for clairvoyant, Der Hellseher, and advertised her specialties—Aura readings. Palm readings. Relationship guidance. Career advice.
But it was only after Abby entered her life seven months ago that people started to notice Trina. She had found the abandoned eleven-year-old just when she thought she would have to admit defeat after almost two years in business, after she’d given up her apartment and moved into the one-room shop, where ten-dollar readings and the occasional bachelorette party barely covered the costs.
In the girl Trina discovered a second chance. Business was picking up because of Abby’s gift, but Trina now had a new problem. As she did every Sunday, Trina had left before dawn to buy the pills Abby needed to make it through the week. Not only was she returning empty-handed, but things had gone so wrong that she was now a couple thousand dollars in debt. On the walk back, Trina allowed herself a moment of panic, a moment of resentment, thinking that maybe Abby was too much of a liability. No, she wanted to keep the girl. She could manage the situation.
As soon as Trina returned home, she called to Abby, “Up, up, up!”
Abby had been asleep on the futon in the corner. She rolled over and focused her wet eyes on Trina.
“We need to get to work as soon as the shops open up. I could really use your help today.” This got Abby’s attention—the girl loved to be helpful. Abby was buoyant by nature, but in the mornings and evenings when it approached time for her ten o’clock pill, she barely spoke, just sat sweating, scratching, tearing at her skin. Trina kept Abby’s nails clipped to the quick to keep her from drawing blood. The girl slid off the edge of the futon and moved across the room with a weak tap dance shuffle in her socked feet, stopping in front of Trina. Trina put her hand on Abby’s cheek and said, “Today, we’re going to make you my official apprentice Hellseer. Trial period is over.”
“Your Hellper,” Abby whispered. Helper with two ls, one of their inside jokes.
“I count on you, you know?” Trina nudged Abby gently away and then went to get the hair bleach kit she’d bought her a while back but hadn’t made the time to use. She put the girl on the floor cushions in front of the full-length mirror and scooted a chair up behind her. “In this city you need a gimmick. Since you’re my apprentice, you have to look the part.”
Abby nodded, reached back and clasped Trina’s ankles.
That was the first thing Daphne had taught Trina: New Orleans was all about showmanship. A bit noir, a bit naughty. Essential for tourists, but locals expected it too. The Queen of Dauphine had been endlessly flamboyant, bedazzled velour blankets to wear as royal tunics, never saw a customer without circling her eyes in thick, black liner, teasing her gray hair and donning one of her costume tiaras. When she’d lost her toes, her cane became a scepter. When her foot had gone, her wheelchair a throne. Like Trina, Daphne didn’t have the true gift of sight, but her theatricality made her a lot more successful than the few psychics who actually did.
The sharp smell of ammonia burned Trina’s nose when she opened the package. Abby breathed in deeply and tilted her chin toward the ceiling.
Trina stirred the contents to a thick paste. She used the brush that came with the kit to paint streaks down the length of Abby’s hair, wrapping each in aluminum foil to protect the rest. In moments like this, she felt like a mother. The feeling wasn’t entirely unpleasant. As she was finishing the last streak, her phone alarm went off.
Abby jumped up. “Medicine time!”
Trina gave the thumbs up, and Abby hopped behind her to the kitchenette. Trina used a stepladder to pull a bottle from the top cabinet and removed a fifteen-milligram oxycodone tablet, the only one she had left. With a knife she cut the pill in half and put the other half away. Then she used the knife’s handle to crush it to a fine powder.
Abby watched closely and began to tremble. “That’s not enough.”
Trina ignored her. She put a piece of white bread in the toaster and got out the strawberry jam, mixed a large spoonful with the powder, and when the bread popped up, spread the mixture onto the toast, put it on a plate, and handed it to the girl.
Abby took a huge bite. Mouth full, she complained. “It’s not enough.” A glob of jam dropped to her forearm. She brought it to her mouth and sucked it clean. “I need more.”
“It’s the same amount you always get,” Trina said.
Abby circled her hand around Trina’s wrist. “You can’t lie to me.”
Trina bent down and touched her forehead to Abby’s. She’d never forget how she’d found her, late last summer, huddled on a bench at Toulouse Station, shivering despite the hot evening air. Trina wouldn’t leave her there, but Abby threatened to run off when Trina proposed taking her to a hospital. Trina was wary of hospitals too, of the girl ending up in the system like she had. Trina had grown up in foster care, living in eight different homes all over Vernon Parish because child welfare kept trying to reunite her with her worthless parents. At fourteen, she finally ran away and caught a ride across the state.
So instead of a hospital, Trina consulted an old regular of Daphne’s, a doctor with a gambling problem who was under investigation for insurance fraud. He examined the girl. No signs of sexual abuse—thank god; Trina hadn’t been quite so lucky. No apparent physical abuse except that she was an opioid addict and probably had been since birth. The doctor gave Trina the contact information of an acquaintance at NOLA Detox. But Trina didn’t trust anyone else being involved, so he proposed an opioid taper strategy. He started Abby on a comfortable dose of oxycodone and tapered ten percent per month. The weaning was clearly hard on Abby, but they’d gotten through it. Except now—Trina had cut the dose by fifty percent. There was only half a pill remaining, and she had no idea if she could get hold of more.
Trina guided Abby to the sink to wash the bleach out of her hair. She must have either mixed it wrong or left it in too long, because clumps came out with the foil.
“Well, fuck,” Trina said.
Abby fluttered her arms. “What, what?!?”
“Nothing. Looking good.” The strands that remained were split and fried. Trina used dish soap to wash out the bleach, then plugged in her dryer and set Abby on the counter while she dried her hair.
For months Trina had paid the doctor two hundred a week for prescription pills and put up with his halfhearted lectures about Abby being better off with professional help. But today when she’d shown up at his place, the door opened to his haunted, bloodshot eyes, his crumpled suit, someone hovering in the apartment behind him. He stepped outside with her and apologized for being so desperate before demanding five thousand dollars, or else he’d turn her in for exploiting Abby. Exploiting? As if she didn’t take care of the girl. Trina went straight to Daphne, someone who could handle any situation in this town. Daphne told Trina she was an idiot for getting involved with a man with a gambling problem, and then charged half—twenty-five hundred dollars—to make sure the doctor never bothered her again. Trina agreed but knew she needed to pay Daphne back asap. If she didn’t, Daphne would charge exorbitant interest, take away her business, make sure she never worked in this town again. Threats, violence, worse. Despite their history, Daphne wouldn’t hesitate.
Back in front of the mirror, Trina opened a pack of hair chalks and picked out the red.
“So that we match,” Abby said, and they smiled at each other in the reflection.
Trina colored in Abby’s frizzled white streaks, layering in as much red chalk as she could. She dimmed the lamps scattered throughout the shop. They stood side by side in front of the mirror and looked at Trina’s handiwork. The damaged strands of hair fanned out as if charged by static electricity.
◆
Trina put on her work outfit—white peasant dress, black work boots, red choker, arm cuff, lipstick—and they headed out to recruit at the Museum of Death before Trina’s afternoon appointments. The warm March breeze made the day ideal for a walk, and the streets swarmed. Sunday tourists wore khakis or floral as if they’d just come from church. There were plenty of old churches in and around the French Quarter to wash away any shame these people felt over the shitshows they’d performed the previous night out on Bourbon Street.
Last night’s trash mixed in with tiny petals that blew like confetti from the white flowering hawthorn trees lining Bienville. Abby got a running start down the sidewalk, jumped up, bopped a branch and made it rain. On the way down, she stumbled and skinned her knee, but not too badly. Trina helped her up.
On one street corner, a man in a suit played the saxophone well enough for Preservation Hall, his open instrument case displaying CDs for purchase. Across on the other corner, a homeless man blew into a party-favor kazoo, a dirty hat for donations next to a pit bull that slept at his feet. Trina’s adopted city never got old.
Inside the museum, families amassed in the front lobby for the serial killer tour. A small group of nuns clustered by the stained-glass window where a collection of Victorian hair wreaths hung on a freestanding pillar. Abby paused to admire the fetal pigs preserved in jars, tapping the glass as if they might wake up, while Trina found Serge at the ticket desk.
“That is too perfect,” Trina said, gesturing at the nuns. She got a handful of business cards from her purse and added them to the stack on the desk.
“I know. So weird. That old one with the hunch bought enough Pogo the Clown iron-on patches for her whole group.”
Serge put his arm around Trina and pulled her close. He was twenty-seven, a couple years younger than her, tall and solid, yet a little awkward. She turned her face to his neck and breathed in deep, loving the way he smelled even if it could never work between them. Underneath his tattoos and his collection of death metal t-shirts, he remained a sweet mama’s boy.
Abby bounded up to him and jumped on his back, getting a little blood from her skinned knee on the waistband of his jeans.
“What up, Abby,” he said, swinging her around piggy-back style and then setting her down gently. “Badass hair! Now you two look like sisters.”
Abby held onto his hand a moment and the thoughtful expression came over her face.
When she let go, Serge excused himself, saying he had a surprise for them.
Once he left, Trina said, “We don’t do that to our friends, remember?”
“I try not to,” Abby said. “I can’t help it.”
“I know. You can tell me what you saw later. Now go pick out the ones with cash.”
Abby nodded and Trina let her loose to scurry among the museumgoers and gather information. Trina had already learned a few things about Serge from Abby. Thursday’s “guys’ gaming night” meant barbecuing at his parents’. He had an associate degree in hospitality management from the local community college, even though he said he’d quit high school like her. Dumb lies like that, but they added up. Trina couldn’t see a reason for them other than maybe he felt sorry for her or saw her as some sort of sideshow. Still, he was useful, she trusted him around Abby, and he was good at minding his own business.
Serge came out of the storage room dragging something heavy that he set down on the floor by Trina’s feet. It was a child-sized coffin made of glossy black wood with red resin inlay crisscrossed throughout. Deep scratches marred the lid as if something with razor nails had wanted inside.
“You said you needed a coffee table,” Serge said. “I picked this up at the flea market in Metairie, but we don’t have room for it here.”
Serge always found the best stuff. Most of the items in her shop came from him. He was the one who’d sourced her neon Hellseer sign two years ago, long before he’d asked her out.
“This is fantastic, but I can’t afford it.” Besides suddenly owing Daphne a ton of money, she’d cleared out her bank account just last month to put a down payment on the forged documents Abby would need to start school in the fall and live a more normal life.
“It’s a gift. It’s yours.”
Trina kissed Serge hard on the mouth. She figured he’d say that. She spotted Abby across the big room fidgeting next to a group of guys in LSU ball caps bunched around the Jeffrey Dahmer exhibit. The girl looked over at her and beamed.
“You know that kid loves you, right?” Serge said.
Trina knew.
She left Serge to go get the scoop and make the rounds. Abby told her that the young nun with the cat-eye glasses had a daughter she’d given up for adoption who she’d begun to visit in secret. The short nun who just sneezed had a scientist mother who disowned her when she joined the church. The LSU hat-boy in camouflage shorts went home to his parents’ farm some weekends and used binoculars to spy into his sister’s bedroom window.
“That’s all you got? A couple nuns and a frat boy?”
Abby hunched in on herself. “I don’t feel good. You didn’t give me enough medicine.”
“Fine, shush. Can you handle any more, some of the ones with money? That professor-looking woman over there? The guy with all the plastic surgery?”
Abby shook her head and her eyes teared up.
“Okay, fine. This can be it for the day. We’ll pick it back up tomorrow.” They only worked this hard—daily recruiting at museums, parks, cemeteries, cafes—so that Trina could gain enough word of mouth and didn’t have to rely on Abby so much. When Daphne had taken in Trina as a young runaway, she had one rule: bring in a new customer or twenty dollars every day, or else sleep on the street. Why would I keep you if you’re just another mouth to feed?
Trina sent Abby to wait at the ticket desk while she approached the nuns. She decided not to mess with Mr. LSU, but a couple nuns as clients? How great would it be if one of them agreed to write a testimonial and supply a picture for her website. She could call herself Hellseer to the Nuns! Trina stepped beside the one with the cat-eye glasses and said quietly, “Will you leave the church for your daughter? I’m Madame Trinae, and I can help you see,” then slipped a business card into her hand. Next to the short one, she said, “If you want to repair your relationship with your mother, I’m Madame Trinae, and I can help you see,” and slipped her a card. She gave a handful to the one who’d bought the Pogo patches, then turned and walked away.
◆
Serge followed them back across the street, rolling the coffin on a dolly. It was time for Trina to start getting ready for her clients. The breezy day had turned on them and it was raining hard enough that most people had sought shelter. But even if the streets had still been crowded, the woman standing in front of Trina’s shop trying to peer through the blinds would have stood out. She was taller than Serge. She wore a light-green cashmere jumpsuit and carried a leather bag that was definitely not a French Market knockoff. Her wavy hair was gathered into a low bun that drooped with raindrops.
“Madame Trinae?”
Trina unlocked the door for Abby and Serge to go ahead inside, and then she turned to the woman. “Yes?”
“I need to see you. Right away.” The woman spoke with her shoulders back, confident, used to getting her way. She clearly had money; Trina could charge her the rich-lady rate.
“I’m all booked up for today. Did someone refer you?”
“You came up to me in the park outside my law office, gave me one of your business cards. You said, ‘Are you finally going to get the nerve to leave your family? I’m Madame Trinae, and I can tell your future.’ That was twenty-two days ago, and I haven’t slept since.”
Trina remembered. Coliseum Park. The woman had made even a park bench look like a throne, regal in her silk dress, emerald-green and black, which probably cost more than two months of Trina’s rent. Abby told her that the woman couldn’t bear to be around her husband and son. But when Trina approached her to explain how she could help, the woman had shooed her away like a piece of garbage.
Trina pulled up the scheduler on her phone. She wished she could afford to turn people like this away, but she didn’t have that luxury. “Today I have back-to-back clients until late evening. But let’s see, I’m sure I can squeeze you in somewhere down the road.”
The woman reached into her purse and removed an envelope. “Here’s a thousand dollars cash. But I need you to see me. Now.”
Trina took the envelope. “I can give you a quick reading before my next appointment. I like to get a sense of who you are, what decisions you’re facing. To see how we might best work together.”
“I just need you to tell me one thing,” she said. “Only one thing.”
“If you want to know something specific, something about your future, it’ll take several sessions.” Trina imagined a weekly envelope stuffed full of cash: debt paid off, documents acquired, an apartment so she and Abby could have a little room to breathe.
“I don’t have time for that. Believe me, I don’t even want to be here.”
The little bell on the shop door dinged and Abby peeked her head out. “Get!” Trina said, and the girl closed the door.
She looked the woman in the face. “Bring me another thousand and meet me here at ten fifteen tonight.”
The woman stepped back. “I can’t wait that long. For a second on the way over here, I thought it would all be easier if I just drove my car off the side of the three-ten overpass.”
Trina regarded her for a moment. “Come with the money at ten fifteen, or don’t. That’s your option. But if you do come, don’t be late.” She opened the door to her shop, waved the envelope, and called over her shoulder, “And don’t be early, either.”
◆
Trina couldn’t tell the woman anything without first getting more information from Abby. The woman would have to wait until after Trina’s scheduled clients left. Serge would babysit Abby and bring her home in time for her ten o’clock pill. The drug would kick in so Abby would feel a little better before the woman showed up, and Trina could pull the girl aside to get what she needed. Then Serge would take Abby again while Trina met with the woman. Simple.
Trina locked the shop door behind her. The coffin was now in place near the mirror. Serge positioned the chairs and cushions around it.
Abby trudged up and burrowed her head on Trina’s chest. “I feel so crappy.”
Trina pushed her off and looked at the red spot on her dress where the girl’s damp hair left a chalk mark. She pulled her dress over her head, shivering in her underwear. “Fuck.” She went over to her freestanding closet, put the money in a drawer, got a robe off the hanger, and tossed the ruined dress in the corner. Abby followed her around and clung to her like a baby.
Trina shook her off and said to Serge, “When you bring her back tonight, can you hang here for a while so she can meet a new client, and then take her home with you again?”
Abby said, “You said we were done. I don’t feel like it tonight.”
Trina ignored her. “I can come get her at your place after.”
“I mean, if she doesn’t feel like it…” Serge said, frowning.
Trina clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “Forget it. I’ll ask Daphne.”
“No!” Abby hopped up and shouted right in Trina’s face.
Trina smacked Abby on the side of her head. If Trina had ever acted like that in any of the homes she’d grown up in, she would have been out on her ass. The smack wasn’t very hard, but still Abby stumbled backward. Serge rushed over to catch her before she fell.
Trina knew that Abby hated going to Daphne’s. The old woman’s apartment reeked of cigarette smoke and all she did these days was sit in her wheelchair and binge old cop shows. More than that, though, Abby hated what she saw when she touched the old woman. But who else was there? Daphne was the closest thing to a mother Trina’d ever had.
“Know what? If you two can’t help me with this one thing, never mind.”
Serge guided Abby over to Trina and put his arms around them both, pulling them all together. “Your plan’s fine, Trina. Okay? I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Abby echoed.
Trina stood rigid and felt her chest contract, aching. She shouldn’t have smacked the girl, she would apologize for it later, but she wasn’t prepared for Abby jumping in her face like that. She endured the group embrace for the length of time it took for her to count three deep breaths, and then pulled away.
◆
Of the seven appointments that afternoon and evening, two were weekly regulars who paid for hour-long sessions and appreciated Trina for helping them navigate their messed-up lives, but she’d been unable to give them her full attention. Ms. Theriot asked a dozen times if she was okay. Mr. Bixby made an excuse and left early. She’d have to call them tomorrow and make it right. One appointment was a tourist from Austin who immediately left a two-star Yelp Review: Meh. She blamed the woman, spouting about driving off an overpass just to get her way. But she was worried about what tomorrow would be like when she was out of Abby’s pills and had to figure out what to do about it.
Trina mixed Abby’s jam so that she could hand it over the moment it was time. When they came in, Abby’s hair was wet and combed, most of the red chalk out, a pinkish trace left behind in the bleached strands. “That stuff was getting all over everything,” Serge said. “It might work better tomorrow when the rain stops.” The girl also had a band-aid on her skinned knee.
Abby went straight to the futon to scratch at her skin with her nubby nails. She rocked back and forth.
“She seems extra not good tonight,” Serge said.
The moment her phone alarm went off, Trina handed the toast and jam to the girl.
Before she even took a bite, Abby said, “That’s not enough.” She grabbed a handful of Trina’s skirt and yanked it. “I need more.”
“Come on,” Trina said. “You make it seem like I’m starving you. You know better than that.” She pulled her skirt from the girl’s grasp.
She avoided looking at Serge. She wanted the day to end.
Soon after finishing her toast, Abby became hyper. She jumped on the futon, snaked behind the mirror, climbed on the kitchen counter and jumped for the high cabinet. She opened the lid of the coffin and stepped inside.
“Jesus Christ,” Serge said, looking at Trina as if he expected something from her, as if she were some sort of expert in dealing with tantrums. Then he went over to Abby and said, “Let’s just let it be a coffee table, okay?” He picked her up and placed her back on the floor. She bared her teeth at him until he let her go, and then resumed tearing through the room while he put the lid back in place.
The shop bell jingled. It was ten-fifteen sharp. The woman was trying to enter through the locked door.
“Serge, can you get that?” Trina asked, walking around to turn off all the lamps except the one with the lace-covered shade by the mirror so that the neon Hellseer sign made the room glow a soft red.
“I’ll get it!” Abby said and darted toward the door.
Trina took a breath to calm herself. The plan was simple: Abby touches the woman; Trina gets Abby alone for information; Serge and Abby leave.
Except that while Trina unfolded the screens around her bedroom, she heard Abby speak in the voice she used when she saw: “Your son. Jackson. He’s very, very sick. You need to know if he’s going to die.”
No. Abby was not allowed to speak to a client, not allowed to let others know of her gift. She knew the rules and she never broke them. Trina turned to see her and the woman in a frozen handshake. The woman was drenched from the rain, her jumpsuit plastered to her body.
Abby continued: “I remind you of him. My age, my height, my eyes. The way I skipped up to you in the park. The way I touched your leg.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Yes.” She knelt and Abby put her hands to the sides of the woman’s face.
Trina rushed across the room to them, but stopped short next to Serge, who stood transfixed. When she tasted blood, she realized she was biting down on the inside of her cheek.
Abby kept going, and it was strange hearing her speak as she saw, not the same as when she reported to Trina afterward, so unnatural for her skinny body to possess the room like that, for her child’s mouth to produce those words: “The first man was in Chicago. Innocent at first, supposed to just be a drink after the reception. The next man was in Baton Rouge when you went to take that deposition. Then you invented a work event in Tulsa where you picked up a man in a bar. In Santa Fe, the two of you slipped out to the back alleyway—”
The woman pitched backward away from Abby and collapsed on the rug. “Stop.”
Trina touched Serge’s arm and he startled. “Take her away,” she said. “Pick her up and take her. I’ll be over soon.”
Trina heard the tremor in her own voice when she said to the woman, “Is that all you want to know? If your son’s going to die?”
Abby jumped up and yelled in Trina’s face. “You can’t tell her anything!” Then she rammed her body into Trina over and over, knocking her back. Serge tried to grab her, but she wriggled out of his grasp.
The woman crawled toward them. “I just need to know if Jackson’s going to die. If I knew, I could be calm, stop torturing myself and my family. Even if the answer is yes.”
“Give me more medicine and I’ll tell you!”
The anguish in the girl’s face. The woman needed to leave. Trina took hold of Abby and wrestled her onto the floor cushions next to the mirror, wrapping her legs around her to pin her arms in place as she tried to thrash.
Abby shouted at Trina, “You think it would be easier if I weren’t here. You don’t think you deserve anything good.”
“Quiet.” Trina clasped her hand over the girl’s mouth. To the woman, she said, “The money. Did you bring the money?”
“Please,” the woman said. “Banks are closed, I haven’t been back home. Please, Madame Trinae. I have to know.”
Trina closed her eyes and listened to Abby draw frantic breaths through her nose. When she felt a touch on her shoulder, she grasped the woman’s wrist.
The woman had to believe her son was going to die, otherwise she would not be in this room. Trina looked into her eyes and told her the story she needed to hear: “In ten years, you’ll lie in bed with a man and say you could never have imagined yourself so happy. In eighteen months, you’ll see your husband for the last time after your divorce is finalized. On the last day of the summer, Jackson will die peacefully while you hold his hand because you’re going home right now and not leaving his side again.”
Trina released the woman’s wrist and rested her head on the cushions, holding Abby tight. Not leaving her side. When Trina had found her on the bench at the streetcar station, she’d bent down to check for a pulse. The girl had taken her hand and, after a moment, said, You wish you could mind your own business and leave a girl alone to die. And it was true, Trina had been thinking that if she worried about every stray in the city, she wouldn’t have time for anything else.
Somewhere in the periphery the shop bell signaled the woman leaving. Trina uncovered Abby’s mouth and looked up to see Serge still standing by the mirror. When they made eye contact, he came over and knelt to pick Abby up.
But at his touch, Abby said, “You don’t think you can ever bring Trina home to meet your parents. They’ll think she’s too trashy. But you might choose her over them. You dream about having a family with her, but sometimes when you see her with me, you think you could never let her near a child of yours.”
Serge released the girl and backed away. Trina crushed Abby in an embrace and buried her face in the girl’s neck. After a moment, the shop bell dinged again. He was gone.
And it was just the two of them now. Trina held Abby tight and rubbed her back in slow circles until her breath calmed and her heartbeat slowed. Tomorrow she’d contact the woman at the detox center. She couldn’t promise Abby that they wouldn’t take her away. What Trina could promise was that she’d fight for the girl. Even though Abby might be better off without her, she’d fight.
“Come on,” Trina said.
They stood and leaned on each other, went together to lock the door. They turned off the lamp with the lace-covered shade. They switched off the red neon Hellseer sign, stood still and listened to the sounds of their haunted city. Then Trina led Abby across the dark room toward their futon, trying not to stumble along the way.