At last Caitlin adjusts the lapels of her black silk jacket, covering the shadowy edge of aureole that has been visible throughout lunch. “I was born in Virginia,” she says with a hint of defensiveness. “My parents divorced when I was five, though. Mother got custody and spirited me back to Massachusetts. For the next twelve years, all I heard about the South was her trashing it.”

“So the first chance you got, you headed south to see for yourself whether we were the cloven-hoofed, misogynistic degenerates your mother warned you about.”

“Something like that.”

“And?”

“I’m reserving my judgment.”

“That’s kind of you. Do you like Natchez?”

“I do. It’s not sterilized or Disneyfied like Williamsburg. It’s still funky. Gossip, sex, whisky, and eccentricity, all behind a gossamer veil of Southern gentility.”

I chuckle. “A woman I grew up with decided to move back here after working ten years as a film producer in Los Angeles. When I asked why, she told me she was worried that she was losing her mind, and knew that if she did it in Natchez, no one would notice.”

Caitlin laughs. “That’s exactly it! What about you? Do you like it?”

“That’s like asking someone if they like their mother. I’ve been away for years, but no one who grows up here ever really leaves this town behind.”

She makes a note on her pad. “I was surprised it’s such a haven for gays. But the contrasts are disturbing. You’ve got a real race problem here.”

“So does Los Angeles.”

“But this is a purely white-black race problem.”

“And your paper contributes to it.”

She reddens. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

“Sure. The Examiner has never dug beneath the surface, never urged people toward their better natures. It was always too afraid to upset the white elite.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“You talk like you don’t.”

“Trust me, I do. Let me ask you something. I’ve been following local politics pretty closely, and there’s something funny going on.”

“Like?”

“You’d think Shad Johnson, the black candidate, would be making race a major issue, trying to mobilize every black vote.”

“How’s he playing it?”

“He’s not even mentioning race. He’s in the former money capital of the slaveholding South, thirty percent of the black population receives some form of public assistance, and he acts like he’s running for mayor of Utopia. Everything is New South, Brotherhood of Man. He’s running as a Republican, for Christ’s sake.”

“Sounds like a shrewd guy.”

“Will African Americans vote for him if he sucks up to the white vote like that?”

I can’t help but laugh. “If Johnson is the only black man in the race, local blacks will vote for him if he buggers a mule at high noon on the courthouse lawn.”