The truth of this hit Max hard. Despite the warning Corinne had given him, the idea that there was nobody left in New Orleans who cared enough to say good-bye to Gabrielle was bitter and ugly. It boded ill for the city, and spoke darkly of the dead girl. At least Gabrielle's body had been identified, not left amongst the hundreds of corpses remaining unclaimed, identities unknown.
The priest took his place at the head of the grave, Bible clutched in his right hand. As he began to speak, Max leaned toward Corinne.
“At least she had you,” he whispered. “If you hadn't paid for it, who knows where she would've ended up.”
“I didn't pay for it,” Corinne said. “The storm left me with nothing.”
Max blinked, confused, listening to the priest with one ear as he tried to make sense of Corinne's words.
“Then who did?”
She gave the slightest nod toward the hearse. A third car had pulled up on that cemetery road, a little white two-door coupe that looked forty years old. The man who stood by the car must have been thirty years older, with hair as white as his car, and skin darker than his funeral suit.
“Who's he?” Max asked.
One of the congregation members hushed him. Corinne was focused on the priest and didn't answer. Max looked back across the cemetery to the old guy and his little white coupe and wondered why, if he'd paid for the coffin and the grave, he didn't come and listen, and say good-bye.
But then Father Legohn began to talk about Gabrielle— what little he knew of her from Corinne—and he segued into talking about the days of loss they'd all put behind them and the many more days that lay ahead. And Max let himself be seduced by the man's eloquence and heart, and again slipped into the past, into his own memories of Gabrielle.
When the funeral ended, the undertaker and the handful of members of Father Legohn's congregation accompanied the priest back to his car. Several men piled into the Lincoln with him and drove off, but others remained behind with the undertaker. They stood by the hearse and smoked, waiting for Max and Corinne to depart so they could put Gabrielle into the ground. One of them offered a cigarette to the old man by the white coupe, but he declined.
“I could use a drink,” Corinne said. “And nothing pleasant. No fucking margaritas for me. I want whiskey.”
Max looked at her. “I'm with you. I'd like to take a minute, though. Is that all right?”
“Take as long as you like.” Before leaving the graveside, she touched her fingers to her lips and then brushed them against the lid of Gabrielle's coffin, a last kiss for a cousin who'd been more like a sister. Then without glancing back at Max, she turned and walked back across the storm-and-flood-ravaged cemetery to her car.
Hands stuffed in his pockets, Max stared at the coffin. No headstone had been erected. From the look of Holt Cemetery, it seemed more likely Gabrielle would have some kind of marker set into the ground, and maybe that would be the best thing. If someone put up a cross or a stone, the next storm surge might just knock it down. And any fool could see there would be a next time.
“I hate you a little,” he whispered. “For what you did, and now for dying.” He chuckled softly, ashamed but unable to pretend he didn't feel these things. With Gabrielle dead, he'd never know why she'd hurt him, or how she really felt. He'd never be able to confront her about it.
“Sometimes I wish I'd never known you.” But he knew, even as the words came out, that they were a lie. What he wished was that he had never learned the truth.
A cough startled him. The polite, sorry-to-interrupt-you sort of cough.
He turned to see that without him hearing, the white-haired old man had come over to the graveside. Max stood at the head of the grave, where the priest had prayed a short time before, and now the old man stood at the foot, with that gaping hole between them and Gabrielle's coffin off to one side.
“You're Max Corbett,” the man said. His skin was so dark his hair looked like snow on top of tar. Of all the things Max might have expected to come out of his mouth, this wasn't it.
“That's me. Who are you?”
The old man nodded toward the coffin. “Girl was a friend of mine. Sweet thing, and gone too soon.”
Max nodded. Gabrielle was full of surprises.
“You have questions for her,” the old guy said. “Things you wanted to ask her.”
Uncomfortable, Max glanced at him. “Why? Did she talk about me? Give you a message or something?”
“Some, but nothing like what you mean.” The old man touched the thin metal of the coffin, stared at it for a moment, then looked back up at Max. “I'm just saying if you have questions you want to ask her, it might not be too late.”
chapter
2
Max had no intention of going anywhere with this strange man. He'd just buried the girl he'd once loved, and Corinne's suggestion that they get a drink—probably more than one—sat well with him just then. Besides, this guy was …spooky. And obviously a little deranged.
“Look, no offense, but—”
“Your lady's gone,” the old man whispered.
Max glanced at the coffin, thinking he meant Gabrielle. But then he heard the sound of a car starting and looked across the cemetery to see Corinne driving slowly away. She didn't turn to look at him, but neither did she seem in a rush to leave. Almost as if she'd forgotten he was even here.
“Time to talk, Max,” the old man said. Max was not sure whether it was posed as a question or a statement.
“How d'you know my name?”
The old man shrugged, in a smug way that Max knew would become bothersome very quickly.
“And what do you mean when you say—
“I know a nice little bar,” the old man said. He stretched, and Max was sure he actually heard bones creaking. “Not far from here. Least, used to be nice. Since the Rage, the whole city has gone sour.”
“Rage?”
The man rolled his eyes at the clear blue sky. “The storm. Katrina. Such a sweet name.”
“Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“ ’Cos you're intrigued,” the man said, shrugging again. Then he smiled. “And 'cos your lady's gone.”
As he climbed into the passenger seat of the white coupe, Max realized that he had made no plans beyond the funeral. He'd arranged the trip, booked the flight and hotel, spoken with Corinne about her picking him up from Baton Rouge airport, but his focus had always been on the moment that had just passed. He had watched Gabrielle's coffin as words that meant little to him were spoken across it, and now that it was over, he was lost. He'd figured today would be taken up with the funeral, and whatever gathering might take place after it. But there wasn't going to be any gathering, and Corinne had just taken off and left him in the cemetery. And what the fuck was that about?
Two days remaining in New Orleans, and nothing left to do.
At some point, back in Boston, he'd presumed he would at least go by and visit the colleagues he'd worked with at Tulane, see about their welfare after the storm. But he'd barely been in contact with them since he left, and wondered if he'd be welcome.
Beyond that, he hadn't thought about what he would do after saying good-bye.
Max closed his eyes for a moment and saw her face, and the idea that he would never see her again cut him in two. Since leaving, he had lived with the certainty that she was out of his life forever, but at least she had still existed in the same world, still shared the same atmosphere with him. He was still aware of her. And now she was gone, completely and finally, and when he sucked in a breath it contained nothing of her.
The old man drove slowly from the cemetery, steering around grave markers that had been washed onto the road. He turned left, eventually edging them past the muddy ruin of City Park and driving so slowly that Max thought they could probably walk faster. He glanced across, and the expression on the guy's face was one of quiet contemplation.
“You said it might not be too late,” Max said at last.
“Hmm?”
“To ask questions of Gabrielle. What did you mean by that? And who are you, anyway? An uncle or something?”
“Something like that,” the man said, smiling. He exuded calmness and peace, and Max wondered how he'd made it through the past couple of months. Because he had no doubt that the old man had been here before the storm, and had not left since. There was something about him that attested to that, some New Orleans quality that Max had just started to recognize in people before he fled back to Boston.
“If you're not going to answer—”
“Bar's called Cooper's. I've been drinkin’ there some thirty years, and it was there long before that. Cooper's long dead an’ gone, but his boys still run the place. It wasn't the nicest place you'll find in the city, even before, but …it's one of the best. You can smell the honesty when you walk in. Know what I mean?”
Max didn't, but he saw where the old man's non-answer was leading. “All right. We can talk when we get there. But do I get to learn your name?”
“You can call me Ray.”
“Ray,” Max repeated. The framing of the answer wasn't lost on him. He'd asked for the old man's name, but he hadn't given it. Just something Max could call him.
Ray gave that haughty, one-shouldered shrug again, and kept his eyes on the road, the little coupe crawling along the streets of New Orleans.
Cooper's looked dead. The sign had been blown away, leaving a bent metal hanger above the entrance door, and most of the windows were boarded up. Three others were exposed, glass grubby and surrounded by what Max first took to be bullet holes. Then he realized that they were nail holes, punched into the frames and walls when the windows were covered before the storm. Behind one window was an old neon beer sign, swathed with brightly-colored paint to give it some semblance of life.
Someone had spray-painted WE SHOOT LOOTERSacross the façade, the double “oo” of “shoot” missing now that the entrance door was unboarded again. Just below that stark warning, two feet above sidewalk level, was the grubby tide mark that Max had already noticed around the city. It showed how high the waters had come. The limits of life and death.
The edge of the sidewalk nearest the road was piled with broken things: air-conditioning units, smashed-up floorboarding, picture frames, chairs, ceiling fans, and the remains of a wooden bar, all of them tainted with filth or swollen from immersion in water. It looked like someone's insides laid bare.
“Place got off lightly,” Ray said. He slammed the car door and stood beside Max. He was a good eight inches shorter, but a palpable energy radiated from him. For someone so old who drove so slow, he certainly seemed very much alive.
“Doesn't look that way.”
Ray pointed along the street. “Ground level falls the farther you drive. Half a mile down there, water was ten feet deep.”
“I don't want a tour,” Max said, immediately regretting the comment. How could he not expect Ray to want to talk about the storm? The Rage, as he'd called it.
“Good,” Ray said, and Max knew that he meant it. “ ’Cos life and death move on.” He opened the door to Cooper's and beckoned Max inside.
You can smell the honesty when you walk in, Ray had said, and Max had not really understood. Upon entering, however, he knew exactly what the weird old man had meant. This was a place where the sweat and blood of life were laid bare, and the lie of casual acceptance had no place. It no longer looked like a normal bar, if it ever had. Floorboards had been replaced with thick plywood flooring, joints rough, nail holes already filled with dirt and cigarette ash. The furniture was a mishmash of plastic garden chairs and tables, wooden benches, a couple of church pews, metal chairs with timber seats tied on with wire, and round tables made from piled car tires and circles of the same plywood used for flooring. Flickering candles sat on each table and on rough shelves across the walls, providing a pale illumination.
Along the back wall was the bar itself: beer crates stacked five high, and an open shelving unit screwed to the wall and containing dozens of liquor bottles. A tall, thin black man sat on a stool beside the pile of booze, a cigarette hanging from his mouth and his eyes half-closed. Another tall man walked the room, collecting empties, chatting with the dozen people there, and fetching more drinks. These, Max assumed, were the Coopers. They had refused to let their place go to rot, and had instead reopened it as best they could. No illusions here, no pretense; this was a place to drink and talk. It stank of sweat and spilled beer, because there was no power for air-conditioning. It stank of defiance.
Everyone here lifted their bottle or glass before they took a first drink, toasting their barkeepers.
A few people glanced around at the new arrivals, then returned to their conversations.
“Bother you, bein’ the only white face?”
“I thought you'd been drinking here for thirty years?” Max asked. So where was the welcome? Where were the raised hands from the Cooper brothers, or the other patrons?
That shrug again. “Keep to myself.”
“Okay,” Max said, unconvinced. “And no, it doesn't bother me.”
“Good,” Ray said. “ ’Cos if you looked bothered, it'd bother them. Drink?”
“Yeah,” Max said. He wondered whether Corinne was drinking now, and what she was thinking about, and why she'd left him with Ray.
“Water?” Ray said, a twinkle in his eye.
“Whiskey.”
“Partial to Scottish single malt myself. But hereabouts it's mostly bourbon. Folks are suspicious of anythin’ that goes down too smooth.”
“Whatever.” Max looked around and spotted a plastic table in the corner of the room, two old school chairs upside down on its yellowed surface. He nodded that way, then left Ray to buy their drinks.
Max walked between tables, nodding a greeting as a couple of men looked up. They tilted their beer bottles in apparent welcome, but watched him a moment longer. He remembered walking into Roland's Garage for the first time with Gabrielle on his arm, how all the eyes had settled on her and he'd felt as though he hardly existed. But she'd looked at him and made him glow, because that night she only had eyes for him.
He took the chairs down from the table and sat, and Ray came across with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and two glasses. Max wasn't a big drinker. But right now, it was just what he wanted.
Max had a hundred questions about Cooper's, but a thousand about Gabrielle. And Ray saw that. The old man sighed and sat down, pouring them both a double shot, and lifted his glass.
“What?” Max asked. “A toast? To Gabrielle?”
“If you like,” Ray said.
“For now I'll just drink. And listen.”
Ray nodded, his face suddenly serious for the first time since they'd met. Max wondered whether this was his natural look.
“Gabrielle's truly one of New Orleans’ lost souls,” Ray said. He drank his whiskey.
“You mean a hurricane victim?”
Ray shook his head. “I'm not talkin’ about that, not now. This goes deeper, and further back. Right to the heart of this place.” He smiled, and gave a more casual version of that annoying shrug. “But you ain't from New Orleans.”
“No buts, Ray,” Max said, trying to keep his voice level and low. “And no more of this mystery man crap.”
“Oh, I'm not sayin’ I'm not going to tell you. Already decided that, in this old head of mine. All I'm sayin’ is, you won't understand.”
Max wanted to stand, leave Cooper's Bar, and walk as far and as fast as he could, following the terrible tide marks to higher ground and finding his way out of this city once and for all. When he'd lived here, he'd enjoyed being an outsider, trying to learn the city. Now Corinne's talk, the way Gabrielle's family had abandoned her, and Ray's condescension just made him want to get the hell away.
“She could have been so special,” Ray said.
“She was special.”
“You can save her, boy. If you choose to do as I say, if you're willin’ to follow the path and go here
an’ there, now an’ then, you can save her from herself.”
“She's dead,” Max said. “By now, she's in the ground.”
“Dead now, yeah. But she was alive, so alive. More'n any woman I ever met.” Ray stared into his glass for a moment, seeing unknown pasts in the swish of the amber liquid. Then he drank the remnants of his whiskey and poured some more. He filled Max's glass as well, which Max was surprised to find empty.
“I don't know what I'm listening to here,” Max said, drinking the whiskey in one swallow. It tasted good, felt better. It burned his insides, and he imagined parts of his body glowing when the lights went out.
“There's a man who can help you, name of Matrisse. He's a conjure-man.”
Max paused with his empty glass halfway down to the table. He looked away from Ray, glancing around the bar at the other drinkers. Most were in pairs, a couple drinking alone, and they all found something amazing in their glasses, whether empty or full. When they were tired of looking at each other, they could look into their drinks and see themselves.
“Magic,” Max said. “Right.”
“Not magic like you know it. Not that tourist shit. Ma-trisse, he don't have a shop front on Bourbon Street selling charms and magic dust. He's known in the city, but only to some.” Ray leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “True magic, boy. None of this meddlesome fakery peddled to wannabes. His heart is tied with the heart of this city.”
“And he's still here after the storm?”
“Yeah, boy, still here. His heart aches, but he can never leave this place. It's a New Orleans thing.” Ray sat up again and smiled, pouring more whiskey into his glass. They'd got through a third of a bottle already, and Max was feeling the effects stroking the extremes of his senses. The candlelight looked brighter, the outlines of the other patrons sharper, but the door looked much farther away than before.
“True magic's an oxymoron, Ray. No such thing. Even if there was, what do you think this guy can do for Gabrielle? Make her a zombie?”
The Map of Moments Page 3
