“No,” he said, “to make my life miserable.”

“Oh yeah? Well, read the newspapers. The oil and gas industry is going in the toilet and they’re laying off in droves down there. You better make sure you value the job you got here, jack. You can’t make money down on the old bayou anymore.” He pulled a rubber stamp from his desk and slammed it down on the blue form. “Wu’s boiler is going to the junkyard.”

“Maybe,” Paul said as he closed the door behind him.

Eight

After Christmas Colette was promoted at her bank, her office moved down the hall to a private suite of walnut-paneled rooms next to Dirk, who began to bother her for luncheon dates. In the afternoons, he would slide into her office, sit on her desk, look down on her, and talk, while from her chair she examined his caps and bridgework. Dirk confessed that he was the bank gossip, that he knew “who was doing whom.” Colette asked if he knew about anything other than sex and money and he laughed loudly, showing two caps and a Maryland bridge.

In the evenings she began to cook for herself, making shrimp gumbo, sometimes white beans and pork roast, eating her one serving and freezing the rest. She invited Elise over, but she would eat only salads and dried fruit. Colette missed people to eat with and discovered that eating alone was only half a meal. She would stare at a bowl of gumbo and remember her brother, mother, and father gathered with her in the old high-ceiled kitchen back home with the square plastic clock nailed to the wall over the iron sink, its plastic hands slicing thin circles off their lives. She thought of her little Formica kitchen in the rent house she shared with Paul, how even there they had company once a week, talking through steam rising from the food.

* * *

Colette became a trust officer and endured the hounding of fast-living beneficiaries who tried everything to get advances from the sum left by a well-meaning relative for their maintenance. Some tried to bribe her; young men tried to entice her; some whined like the children they were. All of them seemed spoiled and filled with contempt for her. When she was working with the lawyers to set up the trusts, she had to explain terms up to eight times when the clients were very old. As a woman, she was expected to be understanding, tolerant, and patient. The manager of the bank told her this when she was promoted, and at that time Colette thought of her raise and agreed, jumping into the job with a forced smile for the many old people, retirees from every part of the country.

The senior officers in the bank treated her with a friendly disdain, admiring her jewel-like fingernails or the way she moved her arms while explaining terms to a client, and she saw their condescending smiles when they heard her diminishing Acadian accent. They considered her to be above average, but not exceptional, not expertly ambitious for one with her kind of looks. She also knew they had hired her because the company employed few women holding a rank above teller and needed to up the quota.