Day 11

January 10
5:30 PM


It’s still daylight. As we’re walking up to the front door a man on a bike calls out to us from the street and says, “Hey ladies, do you have 75 cents?” I dig in my pocket but there’s nothing there and we tell him good luck, and as we’re ducking into the bar he clasps his hands over his heart and says, “Maybe one day, if I’m lucky, I could have a date with one of you two ladies!” We grin and nod and move inside, where it’s warmer.

I’m stifling a yawn and hoping to drink fast and get home and go to bed early. I don’t know if it’s this project or the general decadence of my life these days, but I feel like I’m hitting a wall tonight. The adorable bartender is sitting in the corner next to the adorable girl I usually see him with when he’s not working, and they are smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and whiskey and gazing into each other’s eyes, and it’s all I can do not to reach over and pinch both of their cheeks, it’s all so precious.

“Hi!” says the man behind the bar, with over-the-top enthusiasm. “How y’all doing!”
“Amazing,” we say, plunking down our gloves and bags on the counter.
“Whoa. It’s pretty cold to be amazing.” He moves off to get our drinks, shaking his head in wonder.

But we actually are amazing today: I’ve just come from exuberant expeditions all over New Orleans with Molly, and Anne—believe it—has found her ring. Early this morning she went back to the garden with Noah and his Ohio friend Lisa in tow, and Elizabeth and Rahn were making their way over, and our friend Bay was working on borrowing some metal detectors from a neighbor named Swamp Rat Jack, when Lisa calmly walked over to one of the holes, looked down, pulled out something tiny, and said, “Is this it?” Anne took everyone to Bennachin to celebrate and now here she is in front of me looking whole again, our world just a little more intact than it was yesterday.

I’m drinking a bloody mary instead of Smithwicks, which feels vaguely sacreligious, and not only because soon it will be night-time. But I’m starting to feel a little puffy and bloated from drinking beer every day, and although I’m prepared to make quite a few sacrifices in the name of this daily Mimi’s project, I’m not sure if weight gain is one of them. Morgan Spurlock I am not. And besides, the bloody mary has vegetables in it, and vegetables are healthy.

Aside from the adorable bartender and his adorable companion we are basically the only people in here. The long low remnants of daylight filter in and make yellow shadows across the bar. My stiff wooden chair feels thick and soft and warm, like I’m in an old friend’s living room.

And then the Mohawk guy walks in! He’s wearing a new-looking green Dirty Coast t-shirt and he comes over to sit next to the adorable bartender. Where you been, I feel like asking him, but I don’t.

Through the window we see a hearse pass by, every available surface festooned in silver buttons and bottlecaps, three plastic flamingos perched on the hood as though at any second they will lift off in flight.

The bloody is giving me energy, and when Meenakshi sends me a text to see if I want to have dinner tonight, I abandon my plans to go to bed early. Soon I will drive Anne home and on the way an enormous supernatural-looking animal will cross our path, and when we get closer we will realize it is a raccoon, a huge one, standing right in the middle of Pauger Street, and for a long second it will make eye contact with us from behind those deep black-ringed eyes, and then it will turn around and scoot off through the iron fenceposts into a neighbor’s yard.

It’s getting dark out, and the cold’s seeping in, and so are the night people. Anne and I drain our glasses, and as we prepare to head out the adorable bartender and the man who actually is bartending both tell us goodbye. “See you tomorrow,” we say, before heading back out into our thin grey world, where impossible things happen and where, not always but sometimes, with help, the things we’ve lost make their slow fumbly way back to us.