Day 23

Jan 22
1030 pm

If ever there were a night where I’d be able to write:

We walk in.
We have a shot of Jameson.
We leave.

--it would be tonight.

I’ve come from a raucous night with my family, of wine and babies and Guitar Hero, and black-and-gold king cake, loud voices around a crowded table, the aunties holding court, the dads sitting back in bewildered amusement. Ultimately I decided not to go to the dance team tryouts tonight, not only because I didn’t want to tear myself away from all my mad loving relatives, but also because suddenly I felt daunted by the prospect of going to practices three to four times a week. I guard my free time fiercely, especially during Mardi Gras, and today I’d started feeling claustrophobic before the whole process even started. So—no. This year I’m retaining my free-agent ways, abandonment of my five-year-old dreams be damned.

Anne and I are bleary-eyed and zombielike. Despite my earnest pledge a few days ago, I’ve really not slept all week. We get carded at the door (!) by an earnest young white man in dreadlocks, who tells me my license looks fake.
“That’s ‘cause I’m old,” I say.
“Well, I mean, you can go in anyway,” he tells me.
“Thanks!” I say.

I squeeze into a space at the bar behind two tidy-looking shiny-eyed women, one of whom has words, such as “Rite-Aid” and “stoplight” written all over her arm in ball-point pen. Literally, all over her arm. Like, you can’t find a place on the whole arm that doesn’t have a word on it. “Never,” “Cross,” “look again.” She’s talking animatedly to the other woman, totally engrossed in her conversation, like she hasn’t even noticed there are all these words on her arm. I think she catches me staring, finally, because she gives me a sweet inquisitive look and I kind of point to her arm and say, “I’m totally fascinated.”
“Oh, that,” she says, and nods over toward her friend. “It’s her thirtieth birthday.”
I nod back, like this totally explains all those words on her arm. “Oh,” I say. “Awesome.”
The friend slides her gaze over to me. She’s got dollars pinned to her shirt, which is one of those things white people in New Orleans didn’t really do until after Katrina. “Are you Adele?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, I was just amazed by all these words on your friend’s arm.”
The friend with the dollars starts cackling, like I’ve said something pretty hilarious. “We were trying to remember how to get to work!” she squeals.
Just in time, our whiskies arrive.
I say a quick happy birthday and scoot over to Eric’s seat at the corner of the bar, where Anne’s been standing.

Eric’s got on this incredible hat, which is off-white and has “New Orleans” written all over it in different fonts. He’s telling us about his plan to go to Miami during the Superbowl and cook food and sell it.
“But what if the Saints are in the Superbowl?” Anne asks.
“Yeah!” Eric says. “It’s gonna be awesome.”
We gaze around the bar for a second. “All the Uptown power people are here,” says Eric.

Anne and I decide to make a lap upstairs to see if there are couches.
“Whoa,” Anne says as we’re climbing the rickety steps. “We are totally breaking our routine.”
“We’ll probably go right back down,” I say.
Upstairs the light is red and low, and it feels polite tonight, and the one available couch is kind of too close to these dudes who are sitting on the other couches, and within seconds we’re heading back toward the stairs.

When we get back down there are two empty stools at the end of the bar, and we snag them and the enthusiastic bartender comes over and we all give each other bright-eyed greetings, like something exciting’s about to happen.
“Which one of y’all is Catherine Jones?” he asks.
“Me!” I say.
He keeps scrubbing the bar with his white towel. “I like that name,” he says. “It’s elegant.”
He tells us his name, which is probably the coolest name I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those names that’s so amazing you don’t even know if it can be true. “For real?” I ask, and the enthusiastic bartender nods exuberantly.
“Totally,” he says.
Wow.

And then, guess what, our drinks are done, and we leave.
“Just like that?” asks the enthusiastic bartender.
“Like lightning,” we say.

Outside the night’s cool and there are a zillion stars, like we’re in the country—which we kind of are, really: down the block there’s roosters crowing, and everybody knows everybody, and the old men on the porches wave as the cars pass by—and three oldish people stumble past us. They look like professors, like NPR people, like people who wake up at 7 and bring their canvas bags to the Farmers’ Market, and here they are, out on the streets knocking around with all the rest of us. One of them, perhaps the most sideways-walking of them all, announces, “I think I almost got that shit together,” and the other two cast off in bales of laughter.

Anne and I glance at each other and giggle. “That makes one of us,” we say.