She parked. She sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel at ten and two.
"You don't have to be nice," she said aloud. "You only have to be clear."
That was a thing she used to tell the new drivers, the ones who got eaten alive their first week by eighth graders. You don't have to be nice. You only have to be clear. Children could smell a person who did not know what they wanted. So could most grown people. So, she suspected, could banks.
She got out of the car.
* * *
The lobby smelled of carpet glue and coffee from a machine. There was a big framed photograph on the wall of the bank's founder, a man in a three-piece suit standing in front of a cotton gin in 1911, and beside it another framed photograph of the bank's current board of directors, eleven people, standing in front of the new building in hard hats holding gold shovels. Odessa studied the second photograph while she waited. She counted. Nine men and two women. Eleven white faces. She had expected that, but she counted anyway. Counting was a habit. Children on, children off. You counted every time.
"Good morning, ma'am. Can I help you with something?"
The young woman at the welcome desk was perhaps twenty-four, with her hair in neat twists pulled back from her face and a name tag that said TASHA M., PERSONAL BANKER. She had a nice voice. She had the kind of nice voice that was actually nice, not the kind that was a uniform.
"I have an appointment," Odessa said. "Ten o'clock. Arceneaux."
Tasha checked the screen. Her eyebrows went up slightly and then came down. "Yes, ma'am. Mrs. Odessa Arceneaux. You're on the books with — oh. You're on with Mr. Whitfield." She paused. "It says here the appointment was made for, um, 'large deposit and account structuring.'"
"That's right."
Something passed over the young woman's face. It was quick, and Odessa would not have caught it if she had not spent twenty-nine years reading faces in a long rearview mirror. It was not surprise exactly. It was more like the face of a person who has just seen the weather report and is deciding whether to say something about it.
"Mr. Whitfield is our branch manager," Tasha said carefully. "He handles a lot of our — he's very experienced." Then, in a lower voice, as she came around the desk to walk Odessa toward the glass offices: "If you need anything at all while you're here, you can ask for me. Tasha Moreau. I'm right out front."
Odessa looked at her. "Moreau," she said. "Any kin to Lillian Moreau? Over on Lombardy Street?"
The young woman stopped walking. "That's my grandmother."