The Map of Moments

by Christopher Golden

  “City Park,” he said.

  Charlie frowned and sat behind his desk. “What about it?”

  Max walked around the office, running his finger along the book spines. They were in perfect alphabetical order. Before or after the storm? he wondered. “What do you know about the place?”

  “Stupid question. What do you want to know?”

  “The past. A long time ago, before the city was here. Maybe the French were there?”

  “Well, yeah, they founded the city. Early eighteenth century. But…”

  Max could not help smiling. Had he seen a change in Charlie's eyes already? “A friend of mine is interested, that's all,” he said. “And I was looking for an excuse to come out here before I fly home, so I said I'd see if you were still around.”

  Charlie put down his drink and leaned forward, steepling his hands in front of his face. “Exactly what do you want to know?”

  “What did it look like? Who and what was there? Anything you know, really.”

  “It was marshland, mainly. Swamp. Forest. Lots of oak. Much of it was reclaimed to form the park. Back then, before New Orleans was founded by Jean Baptiste-LeMoyne, you had different Indian tribes there.”

  Max tried to keep his face neutral, but inside he was translating everything Charlie said into the vision he'd had the previous day. Marshy ground …oak trees …Indians …It all fit, and with every word that Charlie uttered, Max became more scared.

  This was stuff he did not know, yet he'd seen it all.

  “These Indians …did they practice ritual sacrifice?”

  Charlie frowned and leaned back, then broke into a smile. This was the man Max remembered. “Never thought of you as a gore hound, Max.”

  Max smiled back. “I'm not. But my friend is writing a historical novel, and he was just wondering…”

  “Historical novel?”

  “Yeah.” Max tried not to look away, feeling foolish for lying.

  “Well, there're no real records, to be honest. There are myths and stories of sacrifice, but there's no saying they reflect actual events. I seriously doubt it, if you want my two cents. Rituals, yeah. Offerings. But blood sacrifices and that kind of crap, I'm gonna say no.” Charlie picked up his glass and tapped his wedding ring against it again. He looked down into the despair he had obviously been inhabiting, then up again. “You haven't had a drink.”

  Max lifted his glass and sipped, and he had an intense flashback to the previous day: Ray, the bar, and what had happened afterward. “They didn't mind the rain,” he muttered. “And the men wore masks.”

  “I think the Biloxi wore masks in some of their tribal ceremonies,” Charlie said. “There was an offshoot of that tribe here. Though I'm no real expert, of course.”

  “The Frenchman,” Max muttered. He had been so close, he could have reached out and touched him, but the man had still not noticed him. That's because I was never really there. I was witnessing the moment, not actually there at all.

  “The one I mentioned? Jean—”

  “No, no,” Max said, waving his hand. He took another drink, and the flashback this time was simply his need to remember.

  “So, your friend's novel?”

  “Work in progress.” Max shrugged, then drained his glass. I didn't know any of this, he thought. And yet he remembered the Indians—Biloxi, perhaps?—the Frenchman, and their surroundings. He shivered.

  “It's good stuff,” Charlie said, lifting the half-empty bottle. “Amazing what you find in fellow professors’ rooms.”

  “Maybe you should go with your family, Charlie.”

  “Houston? Fucking hate the place. I live here. I was born here, forty-two years ago. Lived in six houses in New Orleans. My house now …not too bad. I can live there, at least, though I wouldn't want the kids to see it.” He poured some more whiskey without offering Max any more. “Besides, there're ‘plans’! The university will rise again from the waters, like a soggy fucking phoenix, ready to…” He shook his head and sipped some more.

  “It'll be all right,” Max said. “Eventually.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie put his glass down again. “You know, I might be able to find you a book on the Biloxi. Dan Petti-grew used to have a thing for them, and he went back to Chicago when everyone evacuated.” He stood, swayed a little, and then headed past Max and out into the corridor. “Come on.”

  Max did not really want a book about the Biloxi. He did not want to walk past the office he'd once occupied, where he'd spoken to Gabrielle on the phone, made plans with her, and daydreamed about their time together, and fantastic sex in that hot attic. But Charlie's eyes had changed as soon as Max had asked his first question. Here was an intelligent man, unable to come to terms with what was happening to the city he loved and desperate for somewhere else to aim his intellect.

  And Max had left. After only six months, he'd fled the city this man had loved his whole life.

  So he followed Charlie, watched as he appropriated the book about Biloxi Indians from Pettigrew's office, and was glad when Charlie shook his hand and wished him well. “Maybe you can come back here to teach, one day,” Charlie said. Max was not sure how much he knew about the circumstances in which he'd left—they'd never been that close—but he nodded, and said maybe, and then it was time for him to go.

  As he descended the stairs and went back out into the ruin, he heard the steady chink …chink …chink of Charlie losing himself again.

  Max started walking along St. Charles Avenue. He hadn't thought about arranging for the cab to return, and he hoped that he'd be able to flag one down. The odds were stacked against him, though. How many cabs were running in New Orleans two and a half months after Katrina? Not many, and those that were probably stuck mostly to the French Quarter hotels. It hadn't been very long since they'd started letting people back into the city.

  The small slug of whiskey haunted the edges of his perception, but as he walked and broke a sweat, it was not the only ghost troubling him. The map was in his back pocket, and it never quite sat comfortably. He was always aware of it, could always feel it, as though it was announcing itself to him. He found himself dwelling once again on the Second Moment, a boxed section of neat, meticulous writing that said The Pere's Kyrie. He knew of the Kyrie, but he had no idea who the pere might be.

  The writing had appeared in Jackson Square, not far from his hotel in the French Quarter. He knew eventually he would go to that spot, try to figure out what the Second Moment was all about, and see if anything strange would happen. He was torn between curiosity and fear. If he went and nothing happened, that would mean last night never happened. But if he went and something did happen …he would no longer be able to pretend it was anything but real.

  He needed to find out about the Pere's Kyrie. But now he walked a little faster, and the day grew a little warmer, and another ghost began to bother him more. This one had a name but no face, a link to his past but nothing by which he could connect. Its name was Coco.

  He knew he ought to go back to the hotel. New Orleans wasn't really ready for visitors. It needed tourists, and it needed the people who were the heart of the place to return, but given the pace of the recovery so far, it would be years before things were put back in order. By then, many of the older generation would have died, and many of the younger generation would have moved on to somewhere that didn't have the character, the history, or the finely woven fabric of life in New Orleans.

  This city might be dead, Max thought. And the idea hit him like a blow to the gut. The people who loved it too much to stay away, or so much they never left in the first place, might be inhabiting some kind of necropolis, and not wake up to that truth for years.

  God, he prayed that wasn't so, that it wouldn't ever be true. If not for Gabrielle, he never would have left this city. New Orleans could be resurrected, he felt sure of that. America needed New Orleans.

  Max held the book Charlie had given him against his chest like a schoolboy, thinking about ghosts. His memory of Gab
rielle haunted him, but other things haunted him, too, and that was why he couldn't just go back to his hotel and wait out the day until his flight home. He'd never been the kind of man who'd run from his ghosts. The only thing he'd ever run from was Gabrielle, and he'd cursed himself for a coward ever since.

  No more running.

  But before he went looking for the Second Moment, he had to at least look into the other ghost that was haunting him. It weighed on him, filled him with a nervous energy, like he knew there was something he was supposed to do but couldn't quite figure out what.

  Gabrielle had loved him. But the woman he thought he'd known wouldn't have cheated on him with one of his own students. The woman he thought he'd known was loved everywhere she went. Yet Gabrielle had cheated. Her family hated her so much they wouldn't even pay for her burial, and she had no real friends.

  Had his Gabrielle ever really existed? Could the bright, shining intellect he'd seen in those young eyes, the humor and life he'd seen within her, have been nothing but his imagination?

  If he went home without trying to understand how he could have been so wrong about her, that would haunt him more than any spirit could.

  When Max had pressed Corinne about Coco, she had glanced away, as if she didn't want to meet his gaze. I only met him once, she'd said. In Digg's. He was bad news. Forget I ever said his name.

  Max had heard of Digg's—a bar in the Quarter—and it was as good a place as any to start looking. As if to urge him along this new plan of action, a cab drifted by and slowed down. It was the same cab that had taken him to Tulane.

  “Find what you went there for?” the driver asked.

  “Partly,” Max said.

  “Cool. I drove around a little, but not a lot of people needin’ taxis today. Maybe I came back to work too soon, y'know, but what else am I supposed to do?”

  Max didn't have an answer. “Thanks for coming back.”

  “Hey, you got places to be and money in your wallet. I'm not out here for the scenery.”

  The cabbie turned up his music and wheel-tapped all the way to the Quarter.

  chapter

  5

  Digg's was on a narrow backstreet, away from the 1 bright lights of the French Quarter, a block away from a fish market and a Cajun seafood take-out place. This wasn't a spot for tourists. The combination of Katrina and the flood hadn't done much damage here, but the neighborhood felt like it had started holding its breath when the storm swept in, and had yet to exhale.

  Max walked past Digg's twice before noticing the doorway. A faded wooden sign was screwed into the brickwork, announcing the name. The door was ajar, and immediately inside a stairway led down, its walls papered with decades of overlapping music and gig posters. Hundreds of names publicized dates long since passed, and perhaps some of those names were long gone, too. The stairway was poorly lit, but standing by the open door Max caught a mouthwatering waft of gumbo and fried chicken, and the familiar scents of bars everywhere: spilled drinks, old wood, good times.

  Digg's certainly wasn't doing much to draw attention to itself, but in his seven months here, guided by Gabrielle, Max had come to love local bars and shun the more commercialized tourist areas of the city.

  But she had never brought him here.

  He wondered whether Coco came here sometimes, sat alone at the bar and thought about Gabrielle. And then he wondered why the man had not been present at her funeral.

  Max went down. As he passed the half landing, the sound of subdued conversation, the clink of glasses, and soft laughter rose to meet him. He hoped none of that would stop when he entered.

  It was a small bar with brick walls, a vaulted ceiling, and a flagstone floor. The bar itself was brick-fronted, and the furniture scattered around the place was all dark, old wood, well used and comfortable. A candle on each table gave an intimate lighting level. There were maybe thirty people sitting around in small groups or couples, men and women, black and white and every hue in between. A skinny guy working the bar might have been Native American, or some perfect mélange of heritage that gave him skin with the color and gleam of bronze.

  Max walked directly to the bar as though he belonged,

  smiling and nodding at the barman and receiving a smile in return.

  “What'll it be?”

  “You do crustas?”

  The barman's grin widened, and he uttered a deep, slow laugh. “Do we do crustas?” He went about mixing the cocktail, his movements smooth and fluid without verging on cocky, the product of experience rather than practice.

  Max put the book on the bar, leaned sideways, and looked around. He caught a couple of patrons’ eyes, and swapped polite nods and smiles. Most of the people here seemed upbeat, but there were enough sad faces to remind the still air of the place that a storm had passed them by. The laughter was low but honest, and to Max it felt like an easy place.

  He wondered whether Coco was down here right now, but he thought not. He wasn't quite sure why he thought that—he had no idea what the guy looked like—but he'd have a feeling if Gabrielle's other love were in the same room with him. A hint. Maybe he'd see a similar loss in that other man's eyes.

  “Here you go,” the bartender said, sliding a glass across to Max.

  Max nodded his thanks and handed over a ten, then took one of the bar stools and sat down.

  “Nice place,” he said. “You the owner?”

  “Been in my family fifty years,” the barman said. He swilled the cocktail shaker and dried it, repositioned clean glasses, wiped the bar, always on the move, always working. His smile looked painted on, but the paint was contentment, not fakery.

  “I've only just come back,” Max said, then decided not to elaborate. If he admitted to being an outsider, maybe the barman would feel less inclined to help him.

  “Yeah, well…” He poured a glass of soda, dropped in a slice of lime, and took a drink. “Lotsa people still away. Lotsa people not gonna make it back.”

  “Plenty.” Max drank and sighed, feeling the alcohol hit instantly. Maybe whatever shit had been in that clay bottle had lowered his tolerance. “Actually, I'm looking for a guy called Coco. You seen him around?”

  Something changed. The bartender's smile remained, but the muscles used to keep it there altered, strained rather than flexed. He took another drink of his soda, perhaps so that he could look away from Max and up at the ceiling.

  Max glanced around the bar again, as if looking for the man himself. He was pretty sure no one else had heard the question, and he wished he'd asked louder.

  “What you want him for?” the bartender asked.

  Max turned back, and the man was mopping the bar top again. It was clean and dry, but obviously it needed to be cleaner, and drier.

  “Just to chat,” Max said.

  “Don't know any Coco,” the bartender said, shrugging.

  Max frowned. What was this? The guy was obviously lying. He'd just asked what Max wanted with him.

  “What about Gabrielle Doucette?”

  “Who?” This time the man's shrug seemed genuine.

  “Guess not,” Max said.

  “Refill?” the bartender said, taking the empty glass. Even his smile had slipped now, and it was clear that he really didn't want to serve Max another.

  “I'm good,” Max said. “Just hoping to meet an old friend.”

  “Well, good luck,” the bartender said, even before Max had slid from the stool.

  Max nodded, then walked slowly back toward the stairs. He glanced around as he went, trying to see what had changed, why this place no longer felt at ease. Maybe it was simply the bartender's abruptly altered manner.

  So who the fuck is Coco? he thought. On the bottom step he paused and turned back, considering asking out loud if anyone knew him.

  Several pairs of eyes flickered from him, and a swell of loud talk and laughter rose up. Digg's suddenly looked and felt like a very different place.

  Max hurried up the stairs and back onto the street, t
urned left, and headed away from Bourbon Street. He remembered he'd left the book about the Biloxi on the bar, but he had no desire to go back. He was confused and frustrated, because every time he looked into part of Gabrielle's life, it revealed more mystery. The bartender down there had known Coco, he was certain of that, and he'd clammed up as soon as his name was mentioned. He knew I was an outsider. But there was more to it than that.

  If only Corinne had known more, or trusted him enough to tell him whatever else she did know. But he was starting to wonder now if, cousin or not, Corinne had really known Gabrielle any better than he had. There were family secrets and secret histories, but perhaps Corinne had been too far away from both sides to be immersed in either. Maybe the sadness in the woman's eyes was for herself more than for Gabrielle; for her city, and a family she had betrayed for a girl she'd never understood.

  He had to find this Coco guy.

  Max reached the end of the street and paused. He could hear the sound of a funeral procession, the slow dirge and hymns echoing between buildings, and he stepped up onto the raised sidewalk to show respect. As the procession approached, he wondered whether this was another victim of the floods only just recovered from the ruins.

  Funeral marches in New Orleans were usually accompanied—once away from church—by vibrant, upbeat music celebrating the life of the deceased. He was surprised there would be any processions at all in these dark days. But in New Orleans, tradition was everything. The music was an expression of sadness and loss, but he knew that this somber sound would soon turn into a celebration of the life of a lost loved one, not a mourning of their death.

  Gabrielle should have had this, he thought. Max glanced at his watch, amazed that it was still only mid-afternoon. He sighed, looked up at the sky, listened to the funeral procession passing by, and then sensed someone standing behind him.

  “Don't turn round,” the voice growled.

  Something pressed against the base of Max's spine. It could have been the person scaring him with their fingertip, or it could have been a knife or gun.

  “Lookin’ for Coco?” A waft of garlic breath washed over Max, indicating just how close the man was.