In New Orleans I could not sleep. The city was still awake at two in the morning. I refused to be the first to quit. I found a place called Cafe du Monde. Three items on the menu. Beignets. Cafe au lait. Orange juice. Three items since 1862. I bowed to the menu. Jerome brought three beignets without asking. Golden squares buried under a mountain of powdered sugar. The dough underneath was a rumor. I picked one up like a civilized man. The sugar detonated. My shirt. My hands. The table. A woman to my left minding her own business at two in the morning. She did not flinch. She was already white. The man next to her was white. The chair behind her was white. The whole cafe was a joyful crime scene and nobody was investigating. I tried to brush the sugar off my shirt. It got worse. I tried harder. Worse still. Jerome watched me the way a zookeeper watches a new animal figure out the enclosure. "Does the sugar always do this." "Every time." "Has no one in a hundred and sixty years considered reducing—" "That IS the amount." I gave up. I ate the second beignet with no precautions. Sugar went into my hair. A man across the room raised his coffee cup at me. I had joined something. The cafe au lait was bitter with chicory and rude about it. Jazz from somewhere I could not see. An old couple sharing one plate, both white as ghosts, laughing. In my country, beauty is controlled. A garden trimmed. A tea poured without a drop. In New Orleans, beauty lands on your suit and does not apologize. I sat in the sugar until sunrise. I did not brush off a single grain.