When I lived with Richard, there were always people around us, and unless they were friends of ours, I had to worry about what they might do. When we first moved to New Orleans, we lived in a rooming house, a sagging wood building at the far end of Bourbon Street. It was a dump, but we were lucky to have it. The first two places we’d tried, the landlords said they’d just accepted someone else. We were sure they were lying, but what could we do? I’d gone alone to apply for this room, and the manager had rented it to me. But now he’d seen Richard, and we were afraid he’d kick us out on the smallest pretext. One night we got home so late, we started tiptoeing when we were two houses away. Shushing each other, bumping through the unlit hallway like clumsy burglars, we crept upstairs to our room. Even after the door was shut behind us, we tried to be quiet. We didn’t dare turn on the lamp—the manager might see light coming through the transom and get mad about it. Richard was silent, invisible in the dark.
