With an hour to kill before our reservation at Muriel’s, we cut through Jackson square, toward Andrew Jackson’s statue, and past horse-drawn carriages on Decatur Street. Stacy—Bleu—has been quiet since the Shades of Bleu painting. Usually excited by street performers, she wanders ahead eerily quiet past a crowd swaying and singing to a Christian band at Washington Artillery Park. She appears dazed as she moves to the riverbank, pausing a moment. I turn around, glimpsing the high-rises on Canal Street and Saint Louis Cathedral’s majestic spires dotting the skyline in the near distance. We continue along the Moonwalk’s stone promenade down terraced steps straight to the river’s edge. The river rises disconcertingly above the land that floods easily during rainfalls. Bleu sits beside me, star
