She’s frantic. She’s grabbing at Charles, all but pinching him, desperately trying to get him to just finish up and tell her what’s going on. Finally, he turns around, and she’s never seen him look like this, like maybe one of their kids has died or something.
He says only, “Oh, baby,” and puts his arms around her. She feels his body buck, and realizes that he’s crying too, that he can’t hold it in anymore, whatever it is. Has one of their kids died?
Finally, he pulls himself together enough to tell her what’s happened — that the city is flooded, their neighborhood is destroyed, some of their neighbors are probably dead.
Their own children thought they were dead until they finally got Tony and Mathilde.
Cherice cannot take this in. She tries, but she just can’t. “Eighty percent of the city is underwater?” she repeats over and over. “How can that be?”
They live in a little brick house in New Orleans East, a house they worked hard to buy, that’s a stretch to maintain, but it’s worth it. They have a home, a little piece of something to call their own.
But now we don’t, Cherice thinks. It’s probably gone. We don’t have nothin’.
In the end, she can’t go that way. She reasons that an entire neighborhood can’t be destroyed, something’s got to be left, and maybe her house is. She wants to go see for herself.
“Cherice, you gotta pay attention,” Charles says. “Only way to go see it’s to swim. Or get a boat maybe. There’s people all over town on rooftops right now, waitin’ to be rescued. There’s still crazy lootin’ out there. The mayor wants everybody out of town.”
“That’s what he said before the storm.”
“He’s sayin’ it again. We goin’ to Highlands tomorrow.”
“Highlands?”
“Well, where else we gon’ go? Mathilde and Tony got room for us, they say come, get our bearings, then we’ll see. Besides, Mathilde wants us to bring her some things.”
There it is again — Mathilde asking a favor to get them to leave. So that’s how serious it is. Well, Cherice knew that, sort of. But it keeps surprising her, every time she thinks about it.
“How we gon’ get out with all that lootin’ goin’ on?” she says. “Might even be snipers.”
“Tony says the best way’s the bridge. We can just go on over to the West Bank — we leavin’ first thing in the morning. And I mean first thing — before anybody’s up and lootin’. Let’s try to get a few more hours sleep.”
Cherice knows this is impossible, but she agrees because she wants to be close to Charles, to hold him, even if neither of them sleeps.
De La Russe is in the parking lot at the Tchoupitoulas Wal-Mart, thinking this whole thing is a clusterfuck of undreamt-of proportions, really wanting to break some heads (and not all of them belonging to looters), when Jack Stevens arrives in a district car. Sergeant Stevens is a big ol’ redhead, always spewing the smart remarks, never taking a damn thing seriously, and today is no different.
“Hey, Del — think it’s the end of the world or what?”
De La Russe is not in the mood for this kind of crap. “There’s no goddamn chain of command here, Jack. Couple of officers came in, said they got orders to just let the looters have at it, but who am I s’posed to believe? Can’t get nobody on the radio, the phones, the goddamn cell phones—” He pauses, throws his own cell across the concrete parking lot. It lands with something more like a mousy skitter than a good solid thud.
He has quite a bit more to say on the subject, but Stevens interrupts. “What the hell you do that for?”
“Why I need the goddamn thing? Nobody’s gonna answer, nobody fuckin’ cares where I am, nobody’s where they’re supposed to be, and I can’t get nothin’ but a fuckin’ busy anyhow. Nothing around here... fuckin’... works! Don’t you... fuckin’... get it?”
“Del, my man, you seem a little stressed.”
De La Russe actually raises his nightstick.
“Hey. Take it easy; put that down, okay. Ya friend Jack’s here. We gon’ get through this thing together. All right, man?”
For a moment, De La Russe feels better, as if he isn’t alone in a world gone savage — looters busting into all the stores, proclaiming them “open for business”; whole families going in and coming out loaded down with televisions and blasters and power tools (as if there’s gonna be power anytime soon), right in front of half the police in the parish. Sure, De La Russe could follow procedure, order them out of there, holler, Freeze, asshole! like a normal day, but which one of ’em’s gonna listen? In the end, what’s he gonna do, shoot the place up? It’s not like he’s getting any backup from his brother officers and, as he’s just told Stevens, it’s not like he can get anybody on the goddamn phone anyway. Or the radio. Or anyhow at all.
“Now, first thing we’re gon’ do is go in there and get you another phone,” Stevens says.
De La Russe knows what he means, and he’s not even shocked. What’s going on here is nothing short of the breakdown of society, and he thinks he’s going to have to roll with it. Something about having Stevens with him is kind of reassuring; he is a sergeant — not Del’s sergeant, but still, if he heard right, a sergeant in the New Orleans Police Department has just told him to go into Wal-Mart and loot himself a phone.
Just to be sure, he tries something out: “Loot one, you mean.”
“Hell no! We’re gonna commandeer you one.” And Stevens about kills himself laughing.
They hitch their trousers and push past several boiling little seas of people, seemingly working in groups, helping themselves to everything from baby food to fishing poles. Nobody even glances at their uniforms.
“Why are we bothering with the goddamn phone?” De La Russe asks. “Damn things don’t work anyhow.”
“Yeah, you right,” Stevens says. “But just in case.” He turns to the busy knot of looters on the small appliances aisle and grabs himself one at random — a woman. Just shoves an arm around her, gets up under her chin, and pulls her against his body. De La Russe sees her pupils dilate, her eyeballs about pop out of her head with fear. Stevens whispers something in her ear and she nods.
When he lets her go, she reaches in the pocket of her jeans and comes out with a cell phone, which she hands over, meek as you please. Stevens passes it to De La Russe. “Now ya back in business.” He swings his arms wide. “Anything else ya need?”
De La Russe feels sweat break out on his forehead. His scalp starts to prickle, and so do his toes. His heart speeds up a little. Weirdest part of all, he’s actually having a sexual reaction; he’s getting hard. Not all the way hard, just a little excited, like when he sees a woman he likes, maybe lights a cigarette for her, brushes her thigh, but that’s all, no kiss or anything. A woman who isn’t his wife but someone who’s not supposed to get him excited. This is how he feels now, except with sweat and prickles. Because he’s pretty sure this is not an idle question Stevens is asking. Thing about Stevens, there’s rumors about him. About how he makes stuff disappear from the property room, shakes suspects down for drugs, little stuff that tells you a lot.
Thing about De La Russe, he’s not above the same kind of thing. And he doesn’t need rumors, he’s been disciplined and everybody knows it. Yeah, he’s been clean since then, but he’s starting to feel this is something else again, this thing he’s looking at. This thing that’s nothing less than the breakdown of the social contract. It’s just occurring to him that people are going to profit from this, and they’re not just gonna be the Pampers-and-toothpaste thieves. He decides to get right down to it.