He watched, without breathing, as the knob slowly turned, and the door opened, a sliver of light at a time.
The door opened of its own weight after a moment, and Laborde saw a woman standing in the dimly-lit hallway. She looked as if she were made of isinglass. He could see through her, see the hallway through her dim, pale shape. She stared at him with eyes the color of an infirmary nurse's uniform.
Isinglass? How could he remember something like that? They had used isinglass before they'd started putting real glass in car windows.
The woman said, "Jessie passed through in New Orleans. She was the oldest of us. She was the one wanted to find you the most."
His mouth was dry. His hands, still on the dresser drawer, were trembling.
"I don't know any Jessie," he said. The voice seemed to belong to someone else, someone far away on a mountainside, speaking into the wind.
"You knew her."
"No, I never, I've never known anyone named Jessie."
"You knew her better than anyone. Better than her mother or her father or any of us who traveled with her. You knew the best part of her. But she never got to tell you that."
He managed to close the drawer on his underwear. He found it very important, somehow, just to be able to close the drawer.
)
