Day 15

January 14
830 pm

Meenakshi’s sitting at the bar when we get here, drinking Abita Amber and socializing with people I’ve never seen before. They wave at me and I wave back, and I spend a second trying to remember if I actually do know them after all, but then we scoop up Meenakshi in our thick winter hugs and take her over with us to a table by the window. “They’re friends of somebody,” Meenakshi’s explaining, but I forget the story as soon as it’s over.

The adorable bartender nods at us from across the room. His shirt tonight is fire-truck red, a lone jolt of color in this grey room. His adorable girlfriend is smoking cigarettes in the corner with the Mohawk guy. I like her jacket. I kind of smile over at them but I don’t think they see me.

Tonight, in an attempt to add some healthy things to my nightly regimen, I’ve got hot tea and an armful of satsumas that Adi bought out of the back of a pickup truck this afternoon. Magically, they’ve survived the freeze. The last of the season, they taste like candy.

Meenakshi’s drinking Amber so that the Saints will win. She and Anne haven’t seen each other in a long time, so Meenakshi’s filling Anne in on her residency and her boyfriend, who also happens to be my cousin. Anne thinks the Amber strategy is a good one, and she ends up getting one too.

Elizabeth and Rahn come in, and you can see the cold air they’ve brought in with them. It wraps around them like grainy clouds. Their cheeks and jackets are still chilly from the walk over, and we find extra chairs and pull them close, and within seconds Elizabeth’s telling Meenakshi an exuberant story about an expedition we took to the hot springs one day in New Mexico. You'd think they've known each other forever.

A man and a woman walk in like they’re here to accomplish something. They are wearing identical black suits, and the woman’s has a round sticker or button on the lapel. I bet she’s running in an election. The man is about a foot shorter than she is, and he’s got an ill-fitting black fedora on with coarse wiry grayish hair tufting out of the bottom, toward his shoulders. His grin is wide. I wonder if they’re going to come over and start campaigning but they find a table in an out-of-the way corner and I realize they’re just people, just like all the rest of us, and soon I forget about them.

Today, Rahn went to visit a creative exciting innovative school Uptown where he may be getting a job, and we start having the phoenix-from-the-ashes conversation about all the beautiful things that have risen up in our city since Katrina, and people start getting excited and animated because conversations like these remind us that we are still living in a moment of hope and possibility. Which is true, and I feel those things too, but I also have a sense of responsibility to the past and our context, and I say something like, “yeah, but all those beautiful things came at great cost. And I wonder if, sometimes, the reason we hold up those things is because there’s so much desolation around them still; because they stand out even stronger against all the things we’ve lost.” And people are kind of quiet for a minute, and I feel bad, like I’ve dropped a dark depressing curtain over everybody, but then Elizabeth starts telling a funny story and it’s another moment: we’re moving again.

We eat the satsumas like they’re going out of style. Soon, everyone’s telling epic tales of my addiction to citrus:
“She eats thirty satsumas a day!”
“She turned orange when we were in med school and everyone thought she had yellow fever!”
“And not only citrus: once I saw her eat eight peaches in a single car ride!”

The adorable bartender comes over to our table to pick up our empty pint glasses and Whoa! Not only is he wearing the reddest shirt I’ve ever seen, but he’s got on this enormous silver belt buckle that’s sending spangles of light all across the room! Wow. I wish you could see it.

Rahn and Elizabeth are yawning and getting up to leave as Noah comes in. Everybody gives everybody a hug, and Meenakshi and Noah introduce themselves to each other, and Noah says her name a few times to make sure he’s got the pronunciation right. Which is cool. I keep waiting for him to jump off his barstool and say, “I’m going upstairs,” but he doesn’t, and we end up getting into a long conversation about whether or not it would be a good thing if a bunch of Americans went to Haiti, and across the table Anne and Meenakshi are smoking Marlboro reds and laughing about something, I am sure, that is altogether different from what we’re talking about.

When we start to go, Meenakshi says she’s sticking around for a while. She needs some thinking time. We hug like family; we basically are family. Then it’s time to say goodbye and I give Noah a hug and tell him I’m glad he came out tonight, and he says, “Yeah, well, I’ll probably see y’all tomorrow if we keep doing this,” and Anne looks over at him with a knowing grin and says, “I think you’re having fun, Noah.”