Day 5

January 4, 2010
9:45 pm

Steve’s waiting for me at the bar. He’s wearing a pea-coat even though we’re inside. It’s that cold today.

I’ve just come from an art party at Shadi’s; she bought about nineteen canvases and invitied us over to make art for her bare walls. I’ve still got blue paint on my hands. I need to remember to wash it off for work tomorrow.

I order a Smithwick’s, which Steve is also drinking. “I’ve got you hooked,” the adorable bartender says. Yes, I say. You do.

“Wanna know something cool?” Steve asks. “For the first time in my whole life I have, like, a crew.” He’s got five neighbors that I know by their stories; I’ve only met a couple of them, and these just in passing. But I love thinking about how they all orbit around each other, everyone a sun in each other’s lush, cracking Marigny world.

“If you were on a sitcom, it’d be The Gang,” I say.
“Exactly. They just come over all the time and we eat amazing food and play Rock Band.”
“Sounds pretty awesome,” I say.
“Yeah.”

I see the Mohawk guy, at the other end of the bar, surrounded by a crowd that conssits of beautiful women and inordinately pierced bearded men wearing hoodies. Everyone’s all bundled up today. It’s the two weeks of winter we get every year in New Orleans, and everybody’s doing it up.

“I have to show y’all my New Year’s picture,” the adorable bartender tells us. “I came as the New Year’s Baby.” He fumbles with his phone for a long while indeed, but eventually it is worth it because he shows us a grainy black-and-white photo of himself clad in a diaper and kneeling on a bed that appears to be made of champagne. Or maybe I’m making that last part up.
“That’s pretty awesome,” we say.

He leaves to go take care of some other people and Steve’s like, “You love that guy.”

I do. I’ve had a platonic crush on him for about 5 years. We could be cousins; I just know it. But I’ve actually never really talked to him.

“You know how sometimes you get invited to some random party,” Steve’s saying, “and it’s, like, your neighbor’s lover’s sister’s friend’s lover’s party, and of course they live right down the street from you, and you go and you realize you know, like, everyone there?”

Totally, I say.

“That’s a total New Orleans thing,” Steve says. “I was at one of those parties with that guy and we talked for a while about something—I think it was music—but now I don’t remember his name.”

“I never knew it.” I sip my Smithwicks. It’s almost gone.
“It’s time to know,” Steve says.
“Totally,” I say. “I’ll ask.”

But I don’t. Before we realize it the night has decided it’s over, and Steve and I both have to work tomorrow, and I’m wondering if I’m going to go see some bluegrass at the HiHo before calling it a night, but probably I’m just gonna go home, and then we’re out on the street and Steve’s like, “Oh no! We forgot to ask that guy his name!”

We look at each other for a minute; it’s one of those minutes that carries an entire world inside it. Whole lives change after minutes like these, sometimes.

But sometimes they don’t. This time, the minute passes.

Tomorrow, I say. We’ll do it tomorrow.