Thursday February 6th
Noon
Marie Leveaux's tomb is easy to identify in the St. Louis cemetery -- it is the one with all the stuff. Hundreds of X's in groups of three have been scrawled on the whitewash, by ignorant people who think they mean something in the world of voodoo. The three X's may mean something in Hollywood and for that matter might mean something to Marie by now, since so many people come to the tomb wishing and scrawling, but whether they amuse her, please her or annoy her is something only she could tell. Marie has been dead for well over a hundred years, and is still very popular, even though she doesn't talk much.
Sarah stood in front of Marie's tomb, feeling kind of awkward. Her costume felt out of place in the cemetery… no, thinking about it, the costume was in place (she was certainly not the only angel in the cemetery), but it seemed wrong to be wearing a costume at all, especially for her task at hand. On the other hand it was either stop here on the way to work, or make another trip back, and that was more than she cared to think about.
So Sarah stood in front of Marie's tomb wearing her angel robes, wings and white greasepaint. She looked at the various offerings people had left for the widow Paris, and she wondered, does one continue to be a widow after you die? Does it matter if you weren't really widowed in the first place if you only called yourself a widow to make yourself more mysterious? Marie Leveaux, also known as the widow Paris, had made a career of being mysterious, and that career had lasted well after her death.
"Marie, I'll be honest with you, I feel kind of silly standing here talking to you, since by this point I know that there isn't much left of you except maybe some dust.
"But, I know people who say you have helped them, one way or another, so here I am asking for help. I'm tired of being lonely. Help me find love, Marie, or help it find me, and I'll come back and leave you something, and I promise it will be something good, not like these morons who leave beads."
She looked at the offerings other people had left. Several clusters of three cigarettes, a candy bar, some flowers, three mint candies, a pint sized bottle of Captain Morgan rum, a stuffed animal. She wondered how many of these had been left by people who knew the protocol and left the offerings after they had received help, and how many were left by people before they even asked their favors. She wondered where the person had found the rubber ducky beads that were hanging off the tomb, and why they thought they were a good idea.
She stood there for a moment and turned to leave, and found a group of tourists watching her. They were probably too far away to have heard her, but it made her feel funny that they would think something so personal was probably part of her act. She took a couple of turns through the maze of the cemetery to avoid them. Which was a little annoying because it took her pretty far out of her way; they had been between her and the exit. She wondered if they would imagine she had vanished into thin air.