Ciji Ware Read Online Free PDF Page A

duplicate model on her great-niece as a going-away present.
    “You can leave a message here for Margery McCullough,” announced a strong, vibrant voice. “I’m either writing my memoirs and ignoring this call… or on my other line… or I’m out on the town! Tell me who you are, and I’ll get back to you when I can.”
    What a woman! Corlis thought admiringly, hanging up without mentioning her most recent debacle. She didn’t want her great-aunt to come home to hear about this upsetting news and find it too late to call her back. Exhausted, she turned out her bedside light for the second time and stared woefully at the carved moldings decorating her ceiling, dimly visible in night’s gloom.
    After what had seemed like hours, Corlis reckoned she’d slept only fitfully, or not at all. At length, when the luminous dial on her bedside clock registered 5:30 a.m., the tears finally burst forth in earnest. Her crying soon prompted a few answering shrieks from a family of feral cats that had long made the back alley outside her bedroom window their nocturnal retreat. Embarrassed by her unrestrained outburst, she stifled her weeping, only to suffer alternating waves of anger and remorse that swept over her in unrelenting succession.
    Aunt Marge and I thought my moving to New Orleans was the perfect solution — and look what happened! No job, looming debts, and now a really rotten résumé!
    She struggled to sit upright in bed and put her head in her hands. She was thirty-four years old. She’d been engaged once, had worked for six different TV stations in five different cities, and had been fired three times in a twelve-year career for telling the unvarnished truth. Not exactly a great track record.
    I bailed out of LA so I could get over that rat, Jay Kerlin. I’d hoped I’d make some really good friends here and maybe even get a life!
    A life? What she had on her hands here was a complete disaster!
    Corlis leaned against the headboard of her mahogany bed and pounded her fists on the mattress in a fit of frustration.
    With sudden determination she threw aside the covers, switched on her bedside light once again, and stood next to her canopied bed. The graceful antique loomed large in a bedroom distinguished by a classic carved marble fireplace and high ceilings. From a drawer in her mahogany highboy, she took out some running clothes, putting on a pair of gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the faded blue letters UCLA stamped across her chest. She grabbed a few dollars out of her purse and marched resolutely toward her front door.
    It was nearly six when she emerged from her brick building into the moisture-laden morning air and gazed briefly at the globe of yellow light atop the old-fashioned streetlamp. She knew perfectly well that she was taking her life into her hands walking the streets of the Big Easy at this early hour.
    So what if she got shot? she mused dejectedly, striding down Julia Street toward the river. At least it would solve her current dilemma—finding another job in a town where she’d already become a public pariah among the city’s upper crust.
    Fifteen minutes later Corlis cut across Convention Center Boulevard past the towering World Trade Center. She continued along the riverfront in the direction of Jackson Square in the French Quarter, focusing her gaze on the mist rising from the broad Mississippi on her right. When she reached Decatur Street, twinkling crystal lights winked at her from the magnificent magnolia trees that bordered the city plaza across from the Café du Monde, her early morning destination. Saint Louis Cathedral, the scene of last night’s calamity, stood sentinel over the square. The church’s triple spires soared heavenward and disappeared into the humid blue-gray fog of early morning, a leaden, murky atmosphere that could easily transform itself into a sultry rain at a moment’s notice. A yeasty aroma poured out of a bakery vent nearby.
    December in Louisiana.
    Dank.