nola delirium

September 12

Breaking through the dark surface of dreamless sleep, I can almost hear the splash and feel the vital air on my cheek. I sit up in bed immediately. The oaky little room is cool, the sky azure through the window screen. The video camera is coming toward me.

            “We didn’t get blown up!” I tell it. 

            “Nope!” Brian documents merrily, “We’re here.” The part of me lingering back in the watery subconscious really is surprised—to be in one piece, in this room, in this strange refuge of a city. I want to get out on the street to verify it quickly (even though, for the first time, we have two long days to indulge this new place). Unencumbered in my gauziest shorts and shirt, little purse on a string over my shoulder and no map whatsoever, my hand is on the doorknob minutes after my shower.

            “Okay, Perky,” he says, shoving his wallet into his back pocket. “Let’s get to it.”

            As soon as we’re outside, weight accumulates. It’s over 90° already, and on the wavy cracked sidewalk there is no breeze, no rich smell of the river. In the cracks bakes something that smells like shit. I don’t mean just unidentifiably offensive, I mean Decatur Street, today at least, smells like feces. It’s arresting, so I defer to Brian, who sees Café Du Monde down the street and plunges ahead. 

            We get a table among the dozens on the patio of the world’s best café. Brian weaves between green vinyl diner chairs to the order window under a green and white striped awning. The menu boards offer only two things: chicory coffee and beignets. The only decision to make is how many. He returns balancing two porcelain mugs and a plate covered with powdered sugar. Under the white dusting are three golden glaze-less donuts, crispy on the outside and spongy in the middle. Donut redemption. The foul aroma of the street is a memory. 

            In the shade of the patio, a rogue wind flutters the big ferns planted behind me. After savoring the first douse of chicory and sweet grease, I light a cigarette. A woman in a sleek red wrap dress who’s been trying to get her three children under control at the next table, gives up and lights one as well. The children disappear into the colorful mélange and the mother and I nod at each other. Brian and I trade puffs between bites and sips. As some people leave the patio, others enter in smooth rotation; too many people to hear more than single scraps of conversation about yesterday or anything else. We relax in the Café’s shade for quite awhile, until it gets so crowded that people are hovering over us with their plates and mugs.

            On the way across the street to Jackson Square, a strange chalky statue of a man standing on a box is blocking the curb. When it suddenly reaches out for me, I yelp, as does the couple in step behind me, and Brian laughs at us. I’m not compelled to drop any change in statue-man’s cup. The giant figure in the square suits me better. On a grass island in a pebbled walkway, Major General Andrew Jackson—hero of the Battle of New Orleans, among other things—straddles his reared steed, waving his cap above him. He led the Gulf campaign against Britain in the early days of 1815, and though he was himself a slaveholder and advocate of Indian Removal, he counted among his forces here Choctaws and free black men, and of course pirates. Slaves, citizens and renegades worked together to widen and defend the city’s canals, and Jackson’s victory compelled the British to ratify the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war. Now “Old Hickory,” the original democrat, is surrounded on three sides by local artists and street performers, their backdrop the whitewashed St. Louis Cathedral with its three spires stabbing through cirrus into the blue sky. 

            Everything in the French architecture of the square begs for attention as we stroll by, already languid on our swelling feet. Pink and white blossoms punctuate the lamp posts and the perimeter fence on which artists display their work. Landscapes and parade scenes are for sale as well as on-the-spot-portraits and caricature drawings. A few artists perch on the edge of a folding chair with a palette on their knee, extracting from their white canvas some image they'd filed in a vivid mental catalogue of things far removed from Jackson Square.

            “Aren’t they burning up out here?” Only one sits under an umbrella in the otherwise totally exposed square.

            “Yeah, I’m surprised the paint doesn’t just melt.”

            “Or blister,” I say, pushing a fingertip into my pink shoulder to check for damage. I think, regretfully, that if I can’t stay in the cool of a cafe patio all day I’d just as soon be indoors. But the strolling continues, not very thoughtfully, past tour guides, toy stores and galleries, hot dog and ice cream carts in front of the cathedral, past the state museum and the government building where the Louisiana Purchase was signed, past the Pirate Alley home where William Faulkner wrote his first novel. It barely registers by now that I will someday be taken aback by the decision to not venture inside such monuments. This time let's blame the heat. Back where we started, staring across the street at Café du Monde, the only thing I find the least bit rousing is a line of fancy cabs parked along the curb. The drivers sit erect, certainly sweating under their black hats and coat tails, and the foamy horses shake flies from their tails and stomp the cobblestone. I swing my purse absently while Brian speaks to the last driver in line. Where would he take us, or does it matter?

            “100 bucks for an hour,” Brian returns chuckling.

            “Okay, never mind. Why’s everything so expensive?”

            “’Cause tourists are rich.” As he says it, a silver-haired pair in matching linen climb into the first carriage; the driver comes to life and his horse clomps off. The sun is arcing toward the crown of my head, and the scene wobbles. I can’t find the anchor that’s moored us here.

            “Let’s go check email,” I suggest.

            It’s a little cooler in the brick embrace of the alleys and all their potted ivy. On Toulouse Street we find The Bastille Computer Café. We sit at separate screens where friends have connected to verify that yesterday did happen, and that we’re all still here. How different the messages are from just two mornings ago, and how much longer it takes to respond satisfactorily—to spread among us like sacred bread the same bewildering grief, stabilizing while still in the midst of it by sharing our stories. I didn’t even make it to work downtown; they closed the office. I watched it all at the gym. I was in a cab and the driver just stopped and put his head in his hands. The Starbucks guy was handing out free drip. It took me all night to finally reach my sister—she’s fine. We spend twenty dollars to stay grounded in the pulsing room for as many minutes. And then we’re back out among the foul gutters and the Olde Absinthe signs. Obviously it’s time to start drinking in earnest.

           

            Bourbon Street is broader than its tributaries, and in the dull glare of daylight, it appears to be a mock-up. The flat-topped buildings, their bricks impeccably faded, grip each other with no space in between, so the impression is of just a façade. They emit very little light through their shutter slats—the hour is still too early for life; the vampires twitch in their sleep. The only person we pass on the cobblestone is a delivery guy returning to his incongruous white van. We slog along, leaning into any hint of breeze, until through an open double doorway comes the cool sound of Motown. 

            I halt, swaying, and stare at the colored ice spinning in the round windows of daiquiri machines that line the wall like a Laundromat. Banana, mango, lime, blue raspberry, red sangria...a booze rainbow. A rugged old gal, glad to redirect her attention from fuzzy CNN hanging in the corner, pulls our orange slush into 32 ounce Styrofoam cups with straws. The condensation melts off the cup fast, mostly into the side of my neck where I hold it between greedy stinging gulps.

            We wander further, still holding our high octane Slurpees when we walk into Pat O’Brien’s for an early lunch break. We sit under green and white striped awnings again, this time in a secret stone patio that reminds me of everything we couldn’t access in Savannah, misted by gurgling fountains and dangling foliage. We share an elaborate shellfish appetizer so spicy that we must order more frozen fruit-infused rum. The napkins are cloth but the glasses are plastic: souvenir hurricanes. The few other patrons of the restaurant look lost or lecherous as the booze kicks in for real.

            “Is this how you remember it?” I ask Brian in a low voice. He’s been here before, with his buddies in college, when the world was not falling apart and his posse had no choice but to match the craziest people on the street drink for drink, shirt for shirt.

            “It’s not quite Mardi Gras…”

            “And you’re not quite 21.” I give him one of his own winks.

            “Hey! I’m not 30 yet either. I’ll knock the shit out of this place tonight if you’re up for it.” What an easy dare; he knows I’m not up for it after the road we’ve traveled to get here.

            “Maybe tomorrow night.”

            “You really want to stay tomorrow night, too?” He asks. Can he be doing it, reading my muddled mind and acting on it before I can resent that he hasn’t? “Because I’m not sure we'll be able to fly out of Memphis on Sunday any more, but we can get back in the van tomorrow and go all the way home.”

            “Wow.” Just us huddled together the rest of the way through the middle of this wilderness. Despite the toll the close quarters may have taken until yesterday, now the thought is appealing, like the nostalgic adventure golf date; he can take me all the way back to the beginning.

            “Let’s see where we are tonight," I savor it.

            “Cool.”

            We leave Patty O’s with hurricanes in hand, poking through empty pathways and novelty shop doorways until we wind up back on Decatur, just north of our hotel. There’s Hard Rock Café #3 on one side of the street and a House of Blues on the other. More regionally franchised experiences where someone else decides what stories to underscore. A flyer on the House of Blues gate invites us to join the haunted walking tour at 10 pm. I flash to the same invitations back in both Carolinas and Savannah. This is the last chance, but we won’t take it unless I tell Brian right now to call the flyer’s number and reserve us spots.

            I’m too hot and intoxicated to make any commitment. We return to our hotel and check the news. No survivors found in the NYC rubble yet; volunteers stand at Red Cross tables stacking and restacking limp transfusion bags. I snap the TV off, call Mom, and tell her we might cut New Orleans short and drive home. Even if they open the airports, I don’t see myself able to fly. Just keep me posted, she says, and goes back to her normal day. I toss my gauzy shirt into the ripe pile and put on a fresh one, and a layer of sun-block under which to venture back outside. My sights are set on the St. Louis Cemetery we drove by yesterday, with its ancient catholic tombs all above ground, protected from the water line. Never mind the chaperoned, probably silly, haunted tour; St. Louis will cap all the grave reckoning I’ve done down here, and maybe put yesterday in a different perspective. In the lobby I ask the porter how far it is to the landmark, and he shakes his head abruptly.

            “I can’t recommend that Miss; not safe at all.” He seems to think I should already know this. “There are no tours there, just thieves and drug addicts. Last weekend a couple was robbed at gunpoint; it’s common.”

            “Oh.” 

            Out in the wet heat in front of the French Market Inn again, swimming in circles. We cross the street to see where the red riverfront trolley goes. Naturally it goes along the river, stopping at the convention center and then on the other side of downtown five miles away. It has just left. We think we want to go to the Garden District. The station clerk confirms that’s where all the historic homes, and of course gardens, are; we can take a bus from Canal Street. He tells us the route number, and to wait twenty minutes. The drunken system of chimes from the trolley station clock tower starts up, playing the same carnival rendition of “God Bless America” that has been in the background all day. I sit down. Brian produces a water bottle from the camera bag and we both take long swigs. 

            “Still feel like walking?” he asks, thumb mechanically sweeping the beads of sweat from his brow.

            “Seems like the thing to do. As long as we keep a mellow pace.” I unfold myself slowly back to standing, and he leads us, within a few blocks, into the business district, where any trace of old world charm has evaporated. In its place, haggard employees push past each other with eyes down, ladies and gentlemen in suits look flushed as they juggle white-sacked lunches and cell phones. I’m still surprised that regular people live in these places. They get on and off buses, even today, just as I do in my rainy city, but for some reason getting on this bus feels outlandish. I slip my dollar into the slot, and ten minutes later the office towers are gone and charm reemerges. We exit the bus. 

            The mansions on St. Charles Street have marvelous iron gates protecting their white columns, wide steps, and beveled glass doors. Some have weeping willows, bay windows, carvings on the portico molding, rooftop terraces, and their own plaques of historic signification. If I were paying attention I would agree that it's much like Savannah, only more spread out, and be re-captivated. But my head feels thicker by the minute and I only say, is this all? An army green street-car with rusty trim teeters along the middle of the road. When it stops we board it, hoping we are going toward some gardens. A group of Russian tourists on the car amuses us. The leader loses his balance, falls down, and the others chastise him. Otherwise the scene remains static; we sluggishly disembark.

            A hundred white columns and one MTV Real World house later, we give up on the gardens and turn back. We weave from one side of the street to the other to stay in the mottled shade. Brian photographs the most peculiar plaques, and my favorite is “On this site in 1897 nothing happened,” taking a jab at how many other plaques we’ve photographed. He switches to video for no good reason, filming the leaf formations on the sidewalk, our shadows as they stretch out in front of us, and eventually just our feet, which propel themselves by now. Another hour passes on St. Charles Street, and I don’t believe we’re any closer to the French Quarter. Brian rattles off his favorite corny jokes and corrupted song lyrics (Hold me closer, Tony Danza? C’mon!) while I fan him with my purse. I stumble over a crack in the sidewalk and figure the alcohol must be wearing off, so I enter the next dark bar we come upon and fall into a blue velour swivel chair near the door. Brian falls in beside be. The bartender turns from the grisly news hanging in the corner to his only patrons. 

            “Whiskey and Coke!” I slur.

            “Seven and Seven!” echoes Brian.

            “Hot out there, friends?” inquires the bartender. We nod silently, but this guy only requires our presence as a cue to have a conversation. He is made of leather and gives me the impression that he lives beneath the bar. Between commentary on the President’s whereabouts and the cancellation of baseball games, he sets down our sweating tumblers. Brian’s has a wedge of orange in it. We clink glass, gulp, and study the garnish. Our host must notice from his stool under the TV.

            “Is that a lime do you think?” he asks Brian, who needs a double take to make sure he’s the one who’s been asked.

            “It’s orange actually. It looks like an orange. Or it’s an orange lime.”

            “Yeah, damn….” for a second I’m not sure the guy can finish. Then, “…yeah, I got the case yesterday, of limes, and I thought they looked orange. I don’t know…” 

            I fish it out of the drink with puffy fingers and sink my teeth in up to the rind.

            “It’s an orange.” I smile. The guy keeps talking about the perils of fruit shipment until we finish the weird drinks and muster the strength to get back to the hotel. We’re detained a few blocks down by a group of guys shouting Spanish into a cardboard box of live blue crabs on the sidewalk. The guys poke empty water bottles at the crab heads and claws in some kind of corralling strategy. This must be the dinner shipment for a nearby café, but why it has stopped on the sidewalk is as unclear as why limes pass for oranges around here.

            When Canal Street is finally back in view, so is Harrah’s Casino, on the ground floor of a high rise connected by a sky bridge to the World Trade Center office. Yikes. It sits primly behind a crowd of American flags at half-mast. We know without even looking at each other that we are not walking past a casino that blasts air conditioning, provides cheap if not free drinks, and the ka-ching of killing time one of our favorite ways. It is time to drop this surreal goose chase for the authentic Big Easy and pick up something we can thoroughly grasp in any locale: betting chips. Unfortunately I go down $50 at a blackjack table before I even get a drink. But the frigid air has quickly brought things back into focus and I decide not to give up on the city just yet. 

            A third change of clothes and still nothing new to report on the TV prepares me for a night that could meet expectations. The first puff of evening blows through the French Market curtains like an elixir; our room at the Inn has become divine. I stretch across the bed sheet as Brian changes his own clothes again.

            “Hungry?” he asks.

            “Always, but it’s too early for dinner.” So what can we do but return to the Café Du Monde and another round of beignets and coffee.  We’ve decided now—we won’t stay the planned third night here. But just as we don’t know how to stay in New Orleans, we do know that we’ll miss this glimpse of it, so we squeeze out the drops we can handle for all they’re worth. These are the best donuts I’ve ever had.   

            With dark pushing down the pink behind the high flat roofs, we return to Toulouse Street, where I remember being distracted this morning by the window dressing of a voodoo museum. It’s now open for business, and Brian indulges this last chance for my haunted fantasy. He deposits our $8 donation to the preservation of every occult artifact imaginable. I linger by the pedastaled tomes propped open to yellowed recipes for love spells, revenge spells, and safe passage for the dead. I rush past the jars of embalmed snakes and bats and cat skulls as if I were in a shark tunnel. It takes many rooms to tell the long history of bayou magic. Voodoo came to the Delta from the African Coast; women held most of the power in this realm, and served as the priestesses. Spirits of water and fire, moon and sun, good and evil, co-mingled with the Catholic saints they were surrounded by. But the midnight snake-charming and trances induced by the power of other natural idols put an illicit spin on New Testament stories. The right incantation can purportedly make rather unholy things rise with the swamp mist, mingling with the alligators, and send all manner of imagined undead into the streets of the French Quarter and Vieux Carré. There are no boundaries in this town between lives seen and unseen.

            “See how cool some museums are?”

            “I don’t have anything against museums, Babe,” Brian sighs at me. “I’m just a little pickier than you. But this is what it’s all about tonight.” He points at a beaded curtain with a sign that offers palm and tarot readings for only $20 a hand.

            “Can we?” I ask. 

            “I think we should.”

            The reading room is all red drape and shadows; we sink into silky beanbag cushions on the floor. The Creole queen who takes my hand floats in a sea of lilac crepe, and wiry tendrils of grey hair escape from the matching cloth wrapped around her head; heavy ropes of crystals and charms swing forward off her ample bosom when she leans over the low table to peer into her cards. Much of the hour in her lair is murmurs and slow-motion nods, as she articulates our fate with measured gravity through her syrupy patois.

            “Many branches on the love line. Many children maybe. Or maybe many something else.” Either way, she says I’m going to make it to 91 years old, Brian to 93.

            “You all in the middle of a looong journey.” Does it show?

            “And vulnerable; many rods and swords. Beware of misinterpretation.” She identifies us as the Hermit and the High Priestess, one upside down and one right side up, so hard to say which is which…one side selfless, intuitive; other side withdrawn, impatient. "And Queen of Cups, vanity.” She asks if we are astrological fire signs; I nod yes for both the Leo and the Sagittarius.

            “Mmmm.” She clicks her tongue a few times and looks past us, over Brian’s shoulder. Clicks a few more times, dubiously. She tells us we’ll be brave though, surprise ourselves, fighting with our rods and swords. Bravery would surprise me for sure. And then she says, “Don’t be afraid of what you don’t see out there. You have more rods here than just your two; trust the unseen counsel that walks ahead of you, there is a power in not knowing.”  

            The spirits expel us back onto the city night. The air has cooled by a few degrees, and we give Bourbon Street another chance, another round of daiquiris in hand. The dark has transformed it into a raucous brick road of bars and peep shows. It’s funny to see older men, with their older wives beside them, stop to study the posters at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club, where fishnet legs pop out of the wall and you can “wash (yes, wash) the girl of your choice inside.” There’s a strip genre for every appetite—teaser pictures of cabaret girls next to fire-fighting girls, Jungle Jane girls, dirty nurse girls, vampire girls and plaid Catholic school girls. In the bars between the peep shows, pianos clatter and trumpets burst.

            The whole night is like the front of a postcard, the explanatory caption on the back of which is inaccessible. The street is a strobe of lights and laughter. Shaggy pumps out of giant speakers further down the sidewalk, …it wasn’t me… There are periodic genuine whoops from all directions; people are dancing and making out in the “3-4-1” drink line. The rest of the world stands still in the backwash of disaster and this place continues to churn spasmodically. I’m astounded by the masses filling the street, much like I felt amidst the lunch crowd at Lamberts yesterday. And despite how badly part of me wants to grab this second chance at the life-affirming electricity I pined for on the Grand Strand, I can’t reach it. I lead us around a corner to the House of Blues.

            “Not feelin’ Bourbon?” Brian asks. He’s already done this party until he’s passed out, and it’s clear by now that this time his mission is to make sure I get what I want out of it. Maybe just because of that, I already have. Maybe yesterday re-aligned something in his team strategy. And so tonight I cleave to the familiar, to see how the new strategy will play.

            “I know this restaurant is a chain,” I apologize, “but I liked the food when we went to the Mandalay Bay one—”

            “I know…well, this one looks pretty cool.” In other cities the House of Blues gives the illusion of the bayou with ash railings and balconies, stars on the ceiling, and a big oak tree growing up through the center. In New Orleans it might be the real thing. It was only the sunlight, so inappropriate here, that made me doubt its legitimacy this morning. Moss and ivy overtake the outer walls and gloomy music wails from the dining room, which is so dimly lit that our hostess almost trips on the step up to our table.

            This is where all the youngest people in town are hiding, dressed for a fete. I swear they look like they are in high school; what brings them here looking this way, this late on a Wednesday night, this Wednesday night? Where are their parents; do they live on St. Charles Street behind a plaque? I watch them quietly, while I drink cabernet and let the sweet potatoes, collard greens, and banana bread pudding melt on my tongue. When the wine is gone it’s near eleven o’clock, and the crowd is just getting started, surely having hibernated through the day. But we are near the end. I lurch down the dark alley with hiccups, and Brian tries to keep his arms around me but I keep slipping away, drawn toward every window I’ll never have a chance to look in again. 

            We take one last cocktail in our Market Inn bar, to be respectable, but it’s a shabby nightcap compared to Savannah’s Marshall House, in this closet with six stools and two tables squished behind them. The pours are still from last night’s stale bottles. Television news is still searching in vain for intact bodies and already throwing around the word War. Really? Who do we go to war against? A government didn’t do this, did they; how do we go to war against individual zealots, or are we saying a whole country consists of such people? A sense of doom drives us to bed, but does not follow us there. The washable vamp girl has inspired Brian. Afterward I’m awake for quite awhile, listening to him snore against the sporadic clamor in the street.