As we step into the main dining space of the restaurant, a smattering of applause starts, then fills the room. I look around to see whose birthday it is, then realize that the applause is for me. A little celebrity goes a long way in Mississippi. I recognize familiar faces in the crowd. Some belong to guys I went to school with, now carrying twenty or thirty extra pounds—as I did until Sarah’s illness—others to friends of my parents or simply well-wishers. I smile awkwardly and give a little wave to cover the room.

“I told you,” says Caitlin. “There’s a lot of interest.”

“It’ll wear off. As soon as they realize I’m the same guy who left, they’ll be yawning in my face.”

When we arrive at our table, she stands stiffly behind her chair, her eyes twinkling with humor. “You’re not going to pull my chair out for me?”

“You didn’t look the type.”

She laughs and takes her seat. “I wasn’t before I got here. Pampering corrupts you fast.”

While we study the menus, a collection of classic Cajun dishes, I try to fathom how Caitlin Masters wound up in the job she has. The Examiner has always been a conservative paper, owned when I was a boy by a family that printed nothing that reflected negatively upon city worthies. Later it was sold to a family-owned newspaper chain which continued the tradition of offending as few citizens as possible, especially those who bought advertising space. In Natchez the gossip mills have always been a lot more accurate than anything you could find in the Examiner. Caitlin seems an improbable match, to say the least.

She closes her menu and smiles engagingly. “I’m younger than you thought I’d be, aren’t I?”

“A little,” I reply, trying not to look at her chest. In Mississippi, wearing a blouse that sheer without a bra is practically a request to be arrested.

“My father owns the chain. I’m doing a tour of duty down here to learn the ropes.”

“Ah.” One mystery cleared up.

“Okay if we go on the record now?”

“You have a tape recorder?”

“I never use them.”

I take out a Sony microcassette recorder borrowed from my father. “The bitter fruit of experience.”

Our waitress appears and takes our orders (crawfish beignets and iced tea for us both), then stands awkwardly beside the table as though waiting for something. She looks about twenty and, though not quite in Caitlin Masters’s league, is quite lovely. Where Masters is angles and light, the waitress is round and brown and sultry, with the guarded look of the Cajun in her eyes.

“Yes?” Caitlin says, looking up at her.

“Um, I was wondering if Mr. Cage would sign a book for me.”

“Sure,” I tell her. “Do you have one with you?”