"I'll wait," Odessa said. "And I'll take that coffee. Cream, two sugars. But I'd like Miss Moreau to bring it."
* * *
It was Tasha who brought the coffee, in a paper cup from the café across the street with a sleeve on it, and a little paper bag with a praline in it that Odessa had not asked for. She set them down on the corner of the desk that was not covered in letters. She did not look at the letters, very carefully, the way a person doesn't look at a car wreck on the side of the road. But Odessa saw her see the tab that said MOREAU, and saw her swallow.
"Thank you, baby," said Odessa.
Grant was on the phone in the corner of the office with his back half-turned, speaking in a low voice. Odessa heard the words four and a half and no, I'm serious and well, I don't know, Lorraine, she just walked in.
Tasha bent close as she set down a napkin. "Miss Dessa," she whispered. "Is that real?"
"Real as rain."
"Where — how —"
"Marsh," Odessa said, and winked, and Tasha made a small noise that was almost a laugh.
"Tasha." Grant had put his hand over the receiver. "Thank you, that's all." His voice was pleasant, but there was something underneath it, a tightness Odessa recognized from a hundred bus-stop parents who smiled at the driver and then hissed at their kids. Tasha straightened and went out. Odessa watched her go. The young woman's shoulders were up around her ears.
Lorraine Thibodeaux could not be there until Thursday, it turned out. She was in Baton Rouge. But she would very much like to meet Mrs. Arceneaux on Thursday morning at ten, at this branch, and she would like Mrs. Arceneaux to know how very grateful the bank was that she had thought of them, and was there anything at all the bank could do for her in the meantime?
"There is," said Odessa. She stood up and began, without hurrying, to gather the letters back into their tabs. "Thursday's fine. I'll be here at ten. I'm going to bring somebody with me. And between now and then, I'd like Mr. Whitfield to pull the files for these twenty-three households, the actual underwriting files, not just the letters, and have them on the table when I get here. All of them. And I'd like Miss Moreau to sit in."
"Tasha?" Grant said. "She's a — she's a personal banker. She's been with us eight months. She doesn't have any lending authority."
"I know what she has," said Odessa. "I watched her read in the dark for six years." She snapped the elastic cord around the accordion folder. "Thursday at ten, Mr. Whitfield."
She picked up the deposit slip, too. He watched it go back into the manila envelope as if he were watching a train pull out of the station with his luggage on it.
At the door she stopped and turned around.