On St. Claude Avenue, stepping out into the day’s wet gust of heat, I am greeted by a chorus of hammers: the old open-air market, nearly collapsed from years of neglect, is getting new bones, and the coffee shop across the street is flocked with U-locked bicycles. Living in New Orleans, I feel sometimes like the woman who invited the ghost of her grandfather to come and visit. Lying in bed, restless and bored, she wanted someone to tousle her curtains, to speak in code, to stand in the corner juggling or tinkering with a jack-knife. What she didn’t realize is that he’d bring friends. As soon as she drifted off to sleep the room filled with a veritable parade, each passing face like a glowing mountain range, and through it all her grandfather stood stock-still grinning: proud, somehow, of her fear.