“Funny girl. Thirsty?”
“Always.”
She climbed in and they barreled down to the Saturn Bar on Saint Claude. They sat in a booth drinking whiskey, smoking Camels, and listening to George Jones on the old dime jukebox. The pill took effect, making the music sound like she was in a tunnel. She looked at her hand and it seemed a mile away.
“You’re really gone, aren’t you, Jimmie?”
“Yes, I’m surely dead.”
“I must be crazy then.”
“I like you because you’re crazy, girl.”
“I’ve been a terrible, terrible person. Horrible. I’m just a wreck, Jimmie. Sometimes I think I stick around just so another hurricane can finish the job.” She wiped her brow. “Your funeral’s tomorrow. You coming?”
He took a drag off his Camel. “I think it’s going to storm again.”
She sat down on a stone bench in front of the mortuary in Metairie. The service was proceeding inside but she couldn’t bring herself to go in. Instead, she remained outside and smoked cigarettes. A pair of crows landed near her, cawing loudly. Thunder sonic-boomed in the distance.
“You going in or what?”
“You asshole, Jimmie! This prank has gone on long enough. You’re coming with me now.” She took him by the arm and pulled him to the front door. The crows shrieked as she opened the door and marched to the chapel.
“Look who I found!” she announced loudly to the room. Jimmie Lee’s grandmother, mother, stepfather, sisters, aunts, uncles, other relatives, friends looked up. The priest paused. Jimmie Lee’s cousin Ronnie slipped his arm out of hers and coughed. The priest held up the Eucharist and the service resumed. She watched Ronnie walk away to sit down with a girl who glared at her. She felt bewildered and faint, and ran outside to the parking lot as the rain came down.
She woke up suddenly from an afternoon nightmare about trapped, dying cats and dogs howling from the evacuated houses around her. Drenched in sweat, she arose and started the bath water.
She was depressed in the first place, so it was hard to differentiate the new despair from the old. Everything was a chore. Everything was broken. Someone opened the door to Paradise, and Hell walked in.
After the bath she donned a leopard-print wraparound dress with strappy high heels, barelegged. Too hot for stockings. Her long black hair reached to her lower back. The Latin migrant workers, brought in to secure blue tarps over roofless houses, wolf-whistled after her.
Drinking was a crutch, yes, but it got her through the day. Just for today, she would drink just for today, one day at a time. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe she should sell everything and move west. West of Eden.
“Maybe you should slow it down, lady,” said the new bartender. New bartenders were the worst. She hated the new faces that appeared daily in the city. New faces from the rest of America, dull uninspired faces. She surveyed the bar and noted the appalling number of strange men. They all seemed to be staring at her. New predatory faces contending for spoils. Modern carpetbaggers descending upon a modern Reconstruction.
Wyatt sat next to her.
“You okay?”
“I’m ghastly, thank you for asking.”
“That was a bit of a fiasco at the funeral the other day. You’ve sure been acting loopy, come to think of it. Even more than usual.”
“It’s my fault he’s dead.”
Wyatt put his arm around her. “Come on, now, we all feel helpless about it.”
“I was with him that night. Just before.”
“Then what happened? What happened to you and Jimmie Lee down by the levee?”
Jimmie started the car, a rebuilt Mustang.
“Maybe we should ride around so we get some breeze,” he said, and pealed out into the late night. They drove around the Bywater, sharing the joint, then headed over the Industrial Canal to the Dead Zone. It was black as black can be. No streetlights, nothing. Just the gleam of the waxing moon on the eerie razed stubble of a landscape that was once a neighborhood. Acres of toxic silt. Mountains of trash. Even the crows wouldn’t land here.
Jimmie parked near the levee and turned the headlights off.
“If they build a casino on this land, I swear I’ll torch it myself,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
Tears welled in her eyes inexplicably. “I think I’m cracking up.” Jimmie took her hand and caressed it. “You can lean on me, girl.” He handed her his cigarette.
She took a drag, wiping her eyes. “You think the city is finished, Jimmie?”
“Hell no. If yellow fever, fire, and Betsy didn’t wipe us out, Katrina won’t either. But the government might.” He gave her a toothy smile.
His handsome gaze lingered. Their breath quickened, and she leaned toward him. They kissed and embraced under the moonlight in the Mustang parked in the Dead Zone with an urgency like it was wartime. And it was.
Later, she opened the door from the backseat and looked for her panties. Jimmie sat there with his Wranglers unzipped, smoking a cigarette.
“You sure got a tiger in your tank,” she said automatically. She said that to all the men. She found her panties in the front seat and put them on.
“You may want to keep those off. I’m not finished yet,” he said tenderly, putting a hand on her back. She brushed it away.
“This was a mistake,” she snapped.
“Why?” Jimmie asked in a puzzled voice.
“Why why why. Don’t be so clingy.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she couldn’t stop herself.
They rode in silence to Montegut Street.
“Please stay,” Jimmie said low, as he stopped near her gate. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Go cool yourself off, Jimmie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She got out and walked to her door. The Mustang squealed away loudly.
Wyatt sighed long.
“Someone told me they found his clothes all neatly folded on the rocks down there at the Riverwalk. You know how crazy a kid he was; he probably tried to swim across the river to Algiers. Nobody ever makes it. The current lost him. Hell, the hurricane lost him.”
She left Wyatt and wandered down by the Riverwalk, desolate at this hour. Clouds moved fast across the moon. Is this where you did it, baby? Just like you to go skinny-dipping in the River Styx, she thought. She walked down the steps to the water. She used to drink wine here with her ex. There was a figure sobbing.
“Jimmie Lee?”
She looked closer; it was the brunette her ex had been seeing.
“He set me up. The bastard!” she sobbed. “He called and asked me to meet him, and when I walked into the bar, there he was all cozy with some new fat rich cunt from New York who thinks she’s going to save New Orleans. He wouldn’t even look at me.” The brunette shuddered as she cried.
“That’s really tough, kid,” she said, as she sat down on a step and lit a cigarette. Lightning flashed in the direction of the Gulf, followed by the low drones of thunder.
“You must really hate me,” said the brunette when the sobs receded.
“No, I hate myself,” she replied, and offered the brunette a cigarette.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the brunette said, taking the offered cigarette. “Does anyone know how he ended up in the river?”
She took a long drag and stared at the light dancing on the river currents. A breeze came off the water, small respite to the burning.
“He was number one hundred,” she said finally.
The former rivals sat side by side smoking cigarettes. Watching the shadow of a barge in the dark moving quickly and silently up the river.