Catacomb by Madeleine Roux

zooming out the door. “Thanks!”
    “That girl . . .”
    Jordan took a few sips from his soda and then placed it on the desk next to his computer. He flung himself back on thefuton, sighing as he nestled down into the pile of blankets and pillows. “Oh, mattress, how I have missed you.”
    Rather than watch his friend flop back and forth listlessly on the futon, Dan stood and went to the desk, taking a few gulps of the fizzy root beer Jordan had given him. He sat at the folding chair in front of the laptop, watching Abby’s files transfer into a new folder, the preview thumbnails popping up every few seconds.
    “Wow, yeah, she really did take a lot, didn’t she?” Dan moused over a few of the thumbnails. He noticed the pictures from the cemetery, shuddering at the image of the child’s jawbone. So she hadn’t deleted that photo after all. “Oh, nice. That woman at the library let her take pictures of the gangster’s stuff in the archive.”
    “What was in there? Cigars? A bowler hat?”
    Dan leaned closer to the laptop, squinting. The photographs showed an aging cardboard box that was beginning to collapse in on itself, which was placed inside a sturdier wooden box.
    “A few postcards, a tin for something, cigarettes maybe . . . an old lighter, a copy of Julius Caesar . Weird. Wait, ugh—are those bones ?”
    “What? Awesome!” Jordan popped up from the futon, leaning on the back of Dan’s chair to get a look. “Oh, dude, I think those are bones. Fingers maybe? Probably fake.”
    “Fake? Jordan, he was a gangster. Back in his day, even the medical models of skeletons were real.”
    Down the hall, he heard the squeak of the shower being turned off.
    “Damn,” Jordan whispered
    “Yeah, damn,” Dan said. “I wonder why Abby didn’t mention this?”



D an wanted to stay forever in the warm, cozy bubble of feeling brought on by the warm café au lait in his hand and the improbable number of beignets in his stomach. Licking the powdered sugar left on his fingertips, he watched Uncle Steve talk Abby into yet another of the dusty white doughnuts. She didn’t put up much of a fight. None of them had.
    Cafe Du Monde was nothing like Dan had pictured. For some reason, the name conjured images of writers and poets, silver-haired old men chain-smoking and reading tattered books or scribbling their masterpieces by hand. Instead the café existed in a constant state of bustle, the white and green interior blurred by the constant coming and going of tourists, who stayed for five minutes to get the token experience before trundling away, three or four beignets heavier.
    “So what next?” Jordan asked. His loose black tee was dusted with sugar, but in his infinitely cool way it looked intentional, or at least artsy.
    Dan felt sticky and slovenly, and glanced around for a place to wash up.
    “The market, definitely. It’s just there,” Steve said, pointing to a wall of the café and what presumably lay beyond. “Anything you want, you can find there. Food, clothes, souvenirs.”
    They vacated their table, and a server in a paper hat and apron swooped in immediately to tidy it for the next customers. A line stretched out from the back of the café as eager caffeine addicts waited in line for the takeaway window. Jordan and his uncle began to discuss plans for the fall. Jordan was attending Tulane, a private college right here in New Orleans, and Steve was paying, a fact that clearly made Jordan sheepish. His uncle was giving up a lot to help Jordan out with tuition and a place to stay, and Dan couldn’t help but admire the man for it.
    Dan pulled at his shirt, trying to break the sweaty seal it had formed against his chest. Pennsylvania got hot, but it had nothing like this relentless humidity that sat over the city in a soupy funk. Everyone moved slowly here, as if wading through an actual liquid atmosphere. At least everyone was sweaty and gross, which made Dan feel less conspicuous when his hairline