Page 91 of Justice for Radar

“Yeah, why not? I ain’t got nothing pressing back home and you can work from anywhere and were jamming it out so hard the last few weeks I’d like to hope you can spare the time.”

She looked thoughtful and her smile said the jig was sort of up.

“You planned this didn’t you?” she asked, laughing.

“Maybe,” I said, nodding. “Cutter was actually the one to suggest a little decompress time before heading back to the fort,” I said.

“Whyisit called Ft. Royal?” she asked. “I didn’t see anything there to indicate why.”

I smiled, “Used to be, waaaay back in the day, an old pirate stronghold.”

“Oh, really?” she asked, interested.

“Really, I can show you some of the old foundations and shit out in the water. Sea levels rose and some of the old town ended up under water. It makes for some good snorkeling.”

She giggled. “I’ve never been. Knowing my luck, I’d dive and suck in a lungful of water.”

“Just gotta remember to blow to clear the tube when you come up, like a dolphin or whale,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, and said, “Should have stopped at Dolphin?” Then she gave a self-deprecating giggle. I briefly wondered if her wasband had ever gotten on her about her weight and if that was partially why she was so rail thin… it was an uncomfortable thought.

We held hands and took a walk through the French Quarter along Bourbon talking about what sights to see, different cuisine, and her lack of any taste whatsoever when it came to spicy food which I fucking lived for.

“I don’t like to taste my endorphins!” she cried. “I like to actually taste my food.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Spicy is a flavor enhancer,” I argued and she shook her head.

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

The banter with her was pretty fucking sweet.

We walked from the café to Jackson Square, then stopped through Pirate’s Alley before heading further on up.

We toured the Lalaurie Mansion and had a late lunch before an easy stroll through Louis Armstrong Park to digest; finishing our day by taking a slow walk through St. Louis Cemetery no. 1 where Jussy left an offering of her Chapstick for Marie Leveau.

We hit a giftshop or two where Jussy mainly focused on a book or two about history and ghosts in our travels and she picked up a miniature of the Lalaurie Mansion.

I bought my girls a thing or two and a tank top for Jussy without her knowing about it in our travels and hailed a dude with one of those rickshaw bicycles to take us the rest of the way back toward our hotel.

Jussy groaned and flopped on the neatly made bed when we got back to our room.

“That was so much fun,” she declared. “But my feet arekillingme!”

I dropped into the chair at the room’s little desk and wheeled it across the floor. “Gimme,” I demanded and she lifted her head off the bed to look at me. I touched her knee and she lifted one of her slim legs where it was draped off the side of the bed. I rolled back and dropped her foot in my lap, working her sandal off and pressing my thumb into the bottom of her foot. She groaned.

“Oh, my God! That feels so good.”

I chuckled.

“You spoil me,” she declared with a breezy sigh.

“I should hope so,” I answered. “Somebody needs to do it.”

“Mm.” She closed her eyes and I smiled. She was so beautiful. Even in her sadness before, she was lovely – but now that she smiled? Woof, she was gorgeous and the fact I was responsible for her smiles made me a thousand times the man I could ever have hoped to be. In her I felt a kinship. The world had cheated us both in more ways than I could count but in each other, we each found justice for those wrongs.

Some of it was bittersweet, sure, but could you really appreciate how sweet it was without the bitterness there to show you? Remind you, that it could just all be sour with no end in sight?

“I love falling in love with you,” I said suddenly and she looked up, craning her neck to look down her lean body while I kept her foot in my hands.

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