The Map of Moments (3 page)

Max stared at her, waiting for the smile.

It didn't come.

“You're serious.”

Corinne kept both hands on the wheel and her eyes straight ahead. There'd been precious little small talk at the airport, and even less since.

“We're a little short on jokes down here, lately,” she said. “So yeah, I'm serious. It's rough. The city's still reeling.” She trailed off, but Max sensed that she had more to say, so he gave her the silence in which to speak. After a pause, she did. “They've got hundreds of dead folk in a warehouse over by the Superdome. Doing DNA tests, supposedly, trying to figure out who they all are. If I hadn't laid
claim to Gaby, she'd probably still be over there. Maybe forever. French Quarter's back up and running, other parts of the city, too. High ground. You'll be fine in your hotel. But some areas, it's still a war zone. Might as well be in Baghdad. A lot of the folks that left, maybe most of 'em, aren't ever coming back. Some places, it's like the apocalypse came. There's talk of rebuilding, but it's never gonna happen. That's the first sign of a crumbling empire, Max. Cities fall and nobody builds 'em up again.”

He kept staring at her, but Corinne still didn't turn to him. Max became keenly aware of his hands, as though he should be able to do something with them, maybe try to offer her comfort, or send up a prayer to God. But he barely knew Corinne, and he and God were strangers.

After a couple of minutes, the time when he should have said something in reply passed, so he stopped seeking the words.

Corinne and Gabrielle were cousins, Creole girls who'd never be mistaken for white but whose skin forever marked them out among the black population of New Orleans. Max had never understood the politics of hue, and always feared expressing an opinion on the subject. He was white and from Boston, and he couldn't claim to know a damn thing about New Orleans. So he kept his mouth shut. All he knew was that even before he'd met Gabrielle he had thought a mixed race heritage produced the most beautiful children, and that there must be some lesson the world should learn from that. Meeting Gabrielle had cemented this belief.

Riding in the car beside her, Max saw some of that same beauty in Corinne. They'd met half a dozen times when he'd
been involved with Gabrielle, but he'd never really noticed her looks. She simply didn't have her cousin's presence. Gabrielle had burned brightly; Corinne had been in her shadow. But apparently it hadn't stopped her from loving Gabrielle.

Abruptly, she turned and shot him a hard look. “Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

“You look a little like her,” Max said.

“I'm
nothing
like her!” Corinne snapped, turning her gaze back to the road ahead. The hurt in her voice didn't surprise him, but the anger did.

“Are we really going to be the only people at the funeral?”

Corinne softened. “Our family shut her out; you know that. The ones who are still in the city, they live Uptown. When she was alive, they'd cross the street if they saw her coming. Now that she's dead, they won't be going out of their way to say good-bye. Could be some of her friends'll have heard and come along and surprise me, but I doubt it. Lots of people have been shipped out. Those who
are
still here are looking after themselves and their own. It's all right, though.”

Max looked out the window, watching the side of the highway where wind-downed trees and abandoned cars remained, part of the debris left behind by the storm.

“Two people,” he said quietly. “How can that be all right?”

“Ah, she wouldn't mind so much,” Corinne said. “She didn't have but the two of us who really loved her.
We'll
be there. That's as it should be.”

Max swallowed hard. His throat had gone dry. “I'm not sure—”

“Don't even start. She put the knife in you deep, man. I know that. But don't try to tell me you stopped loving her because of it. I know better.”

Irritated, he narrowed his eyes and studied her. “You think so?”

“You're here, aren't you?”

Max opened his mouth, but closed it again. The Doucette women had a habit of leaving him speechless.

The French Quarter of New Orleans had established a reputation around the world. Some of it had been born of fame, thanks to the Quarter's unique architectural mélange and the delights of its restaurants, and some had sprung from the infamy of Bourbon Street, where the drunkenness and breast-flashing of Mardi Gras had spilled into the other 364 days of the year. Max had never been interested in Bourbon Street. One walk along that road, with its faux-voodoo shops and tourist puke-fest bars, might have put him off of the city forever, if not for the rest of what the Quarter had to offer. The terraced balconies and narrow streets could transport him back in time, and the tiny restaurants with their succulent gumbos delighted him.

The Quarter had sustained hurricane damage. There were restaurants and bars that were still closed, some of them boarded up, and more than one shop stood empty and dark, the owners having given up on New Orleans forever. The wind and the rain had taken their toll, but the Quarter
hadn't flooded. When the city was ready to receive tourists again, Bourbon Street would be there.

For now, though, Max found it eerie as hell. Even in the rain, there had always been street performers here; saxophone players and steel bands, dancers, mimes and jugglers. The afternoon he arrived, the sun was shining, but as he walked into his hotel the street outside was silent. New Orleans had lost its music. It might as well have lost its soul.

Next morning, Corinne picked him up and they drove out of the Quarter, following Esplanade up through Faubourg Marigny. Their route took them mainly through areas that had remained above the floodwaters, and thus far he'd not encountered the level of devastation he'd seen in photographs and on television. He wondered if Corinne had been purposely sparing him that, or if she'd just rather avoid it herself.

When they reached Holt Cemetery, however, there was no way to avoid the reality of what had transpired in the city. Max had driven past it before, had seen the rows of tilted crosses and slate-thin headstones, but he'd never been inside the gates. In most of the Catholic world, All Saints’ Day just meant another trip to church. But in New Orleans, every first of November brought massive gatherings to the city's cemeteries. People went there to decorate the graves of their loved ones, to leave flowers and notes and photographs, or just to remember.

As Corinne drove the car slowly along the narrow cemetery road, Max shuddered to think what November
1st had been like this year. Markers were down, and many were probably far away from the graves they were intended for, lying on brown, lifeless grass.

“The whole cemetery was flooded,” Corinne said.

Max didn't need telling. In his mind's eye, he could see the crosses slowly being submerged as the water level rose. In some places the water had worn the topsoil away, and the upper edge of a coffin could be seen. If any bones had been brought to the surface by the flood, they'd been removed or reburied. With so much of the city's population driven from New Orleans, Holt Cemetery had probably been quiet on All Saints’ Day, but someone had been tending to the worst of it. Someone had hope.

“There are no aboveground crypts here,” he said, glancing around in surprise.

Corinne laughed. “Not everyone can afford to be buried in style, Max. Holt's full of poor black folks. Some of the markers have lists of names on them, bones from half a dozen generations in a single grave.”

“Your family's not poor.”

She put the car in park.

“Our grandparents and my father are buried in the family crypt in Mount Olivet Cemetery. I tried to get Gaby's parents to let us put her there, but they refused, and they wouldn't give a dime for her burial. Even my mother wouldn't give me a dollar for Gabrielle's coffin, and the girl had been her favorite once. Made her laugh more than I ever could. Gaby used to sleep over and we'd do my momma's hair. Now that she's dead, everyone turned their backs on her.”

Her voice cracked, tears threatening.

“I don't understand,” Max said. “When I was seeing her, I was aware of some rift, but she never talked about it. Now you tell me her family hated her so much they won't even come to see her laid to rest. But
why?”

For a second he thought she might tell him, and the idea brought a darkness to her eyes that made him think maybe he didn't want to know. Then the moment passed, and Corinne shook her head.

“It's family business, Max. I start talking about family business, and when my time comes I'll be buried out here with her. They're already turning cold to me because I won't pretend Gaby never existed. I'm just hoping once she's in the ground, we can all put it behind us.”

“So you can forget her?”

Corinne glared at him. “I won't ever forget her. But I want
them
to forget. It's the only way they'll forgive me. Now, come on. They're waiting.”

She exited the car and started off across the ravaged cemetery, stepping over a warped, bloated wooden sign that had once marked a grave. Max watched her go, trying to ally the picture she was painting of Gabrielle with the girl he'd known. At nineteen, she hadn't only been stunning, she'd been spectacular, one of those people who seemed loved everywhere she went.

Maybe she never went anywhere she wouldn't be so well received.

There might be some truth to that. In the months he and Gabrielle had been together, the only member of her family she had introduced Max to had been Corinne. But he had
never realized the full extent of the rift in the Doucette clan. Now that he did, he couldn't help wondering not only what had caused it, but what it had cost Corinne to ignore it.

Max fixed his tie and adjusted the cuffs of his jacket. Even in November, he felt too warm in the charcoal suit he only ever wore at weddings and funerals. Perhaps the New Orleans weather was to blame, humid and warm today. Or maybe he just felt out of place here, the jilted ex, much too old for the dead girl to begin with.

The eight people standing by Gabrielle's open grave watched him without expression as he approached.

Corinne spent a few moments in quiet conversation with the priest, by which time Max had arrived at the graveside. From there he could see the other road through the cemetery and the two cars parked there, one of them a hearse. There had been no wake and no funeral mass.

No longer able to deny its presence, he at last focused on the coffin that sat on the ground beside the open grave. It was a simple metal box, but he suspected it was better than a lot of those interred at Holt would have had. He stared at it, tried to imagine that Gabrielle lay inside, and could not.

His throat closed up, emotion flooding him. Grief and anger mixed into some other, unnamed thing. Memories began to rise of their time together, making love in the attic room of that empty house, strolling the backstreets of the Quarter, drinking in bars in Marigny or listening to music in Bywater clubs. She'd hated all the tourist spots except for Cafe du Monde; their beignets were better than crack,
Gabrielle had joked. At least, he'd always thought she was joking. She'd make breakfast in the nude, but get shy if he walked into the bathroom while she was showering. She loved flowers that grew wild, but thought gardens pretentious.

How could anyone not have loved her?

How could he ever stop?

“Are you all right?” Corinne asked.

Max flinched, looked at her, and then slowly nodded. “I will be.”

“You don't look it.”

He smiled, keeping his voice to a whisper. His words weren't meant for other ears. “I thought I was being a fool, coming down here. What kind of guy travels this far for a girl who slept with someone else, you know? But I'm glad I came.”

Corinne touched his arm gently. “She was hard to understand.”

Max only nodded. That was the understatement of the year. He glanced at the other mourners. “I thought you said it'd be just us.”

“Father Legohn's congregation is mostly gone. The one with the nice shoes is the undertaker. The others are what's left of the church, just here to help carry her, say a prayer, and put her in the ground.”