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“I like my tips in cash,” Melinda pointed out. “I can’t pay my rent in beignets.”

“But if I eat ten beignets, I won’t be hungry for dinner later, so I’ll save money there.”

“Okay. I know I pay you both well enough to pay rentandeat,” their boss said, rolling her eyes at them.

“Do you want to grab lunch before we have to be back here?” Jill asked Melinda as she stared down at her list. “Only seven today?” she asked her boss.

“Off-season,” the woman replied. “And I’m going to run to the bank to dropoff the deposit.”

“I only have six,” Melinda replied, looking down at her list of people who had signed up online for her tour. “We could get some walk-ins.”

“Likely, a few, but you two go to lunch. I’ll be back in ten minutes and run the desk if we do.”

Melinda was grateful for both her job and her boss. She’d been working at NOLA Guides since she first turned nineteen. Growing up in the city had given her an innate love for it, but over the years, she’d recognized that even if she hadn’t grown up here, she’d still be in love with the people, the music, the art, the atmosphere, and yes, even the humidity. Sometimes, it was so thick, Melinda brought a second uniform shirt to work because she’d sweat through the first one while walking around the city. They offered over a dozen different tours at NOLA Guides, and over the first year, she’d trained to give all of them and even made up one of her own that had since been added to the roster. Skipping college had been a risk, but it had been a good one, in her opinion. Now, she was twenty-five, and she knew she wanted to do this for a long time.

“You really like the Garden District tour?” Jill asked when they left the office and turned right toward their favorite Po-Boy place.

“Yes. Why?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t really change all that often. Every once in a while, a new celebrity moves in, and I guess that’s exciting for a few tours, but I prefer the Quarter because it’s different each time.”

“Not really. Same bars. Same galleries just on the other side of those bars. Same drunk tourists.”

“No, the old tourists go home, and new tourists show up.”

“Same behavior.”

“Maybe. But I like to think about each of them having a different story. Yesterday, I made up at least ten reasons why people were in town. One of them had her heart broken by her boyfriend and was sitting at a table, looking all forlorn,until a woman approached her.”

“Ah. I can guess how you turnedthatstory around,” Melinda said, laughing a little.

“She left more than satisfied, and her broken heart was broken no more,” Jill replied.

“Was that in your story or in reality, though, Jill?”

“A womandidapproach. She just borrowed an empty chair and walked off. But, in the story, the broken-hearted girl had a very sexy time on the dance floor before she got taken into the bathroom, causing a longer-than-usual line to form outside. They left after that, and the hotel room smelled like sex the next morning.”

“My God, you have an active imagination,” Melinda said, laughing some more.

“You don’t do that at all?”

“What? Imagine people having sex?”

“No, make up stories when the tour is dull and the tourists you’re walking around with aren’t really all that interested in what you’re saying.”

“Not really.I’musually focusing on what I’m saying, even when a pre-teen is on his phone behind his parents, hoping they aren’t watching him post about how bored he is to his friends.”

Melinda pulled the old blue door open, practically feeling the wood contract from the unusual cold for the beginning of the new year. Whenever it was humid, though, the door expanded, and they had to leave it open during operating hours because it stuck so much that people would assume the place was closed, causing them to lose out on business. She couldn’t wait until they installed the new glass doors to replace this one soon, but she knew she’d miss the old blue gal at the same time. Melinda wasn’t sure New Orleans truly ever had an off-season, but the spring and summer months were certainly busier than the fall and winter, which made her love the winter months more than most. The lines weren’t as long, and she could chat up the proprietors to find out how things were going more easily.

“Hey, Mel!”

“Hey, Henry,” she greeted back with a wave.

The tall, lanky man with a graying mustache and little puffs of hair on his head gave her a smile and a laugh, despite her not saying anything funny.

“Usual?” he asked her.

“And Jill’s, too,” she replied. “How’s business?”