Day 8

January 7
10PM

It’s cold. Everyone’s talking about it. In other parts of the world, people treat weather as a mundane topic that you cover when you really have nothing else to say to people, but in New Orleans the weather, like most other things, is epic: it’s normal to find groups of people discussing it with the same intensity they’d give to politics, love affairs, and the Saints. We are born storytellers, New Orleanians, and weather is fair game.

“It’s so cold my dog froze!” A woman is saying as I walk up to the bar.

“Um, really?” Her companion asks. He is wearing one of those furry Russian hats with a lot of extra fabric on the top part, and confusing-looking flaps sticking out at weird tentlike angles. Where do you even get a hat like that in New Orleans, I wonder. And then I look around and I realize I’m practically the only person in the whole bar who’s not wearing one. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I definitely see at least ten puffy furry hats here, so huge they obscure the faces of their owners, with earmuffs and chin flaps and heavy insulating fabric underneath everything. You’d think we were all about to go to Antarctica together.

“Yes.” The woman sips her vodka emphatically. “I walked outside and there he was. Frozen. It took me, like, ten minutes to get his legs to work again.”

“Oh,” says the man in the hat.

The adorable bartender has my Smithwicks ready. I feel exultant.
“I’m Catherine,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “We’ve done this already.”
Really? Wow! How could I have missed it?
“Oh,” I smile sheepishly. “Well. You know. It’s good to see you.”
I roll my eyes at myself and walk over to the other side of the bar.

In walks Molly, who you can barely see underneath the woolly knit hat, the huge intensely striped scarf, the puffy down jacket, the sweaters, the button-down shirt, the long-sleeve shirt, and not one but two Catalyst Project t-shirts (one short-sleeved, one a tank top; both super-cute and just a sample of what’s on sale right here in New Orleans for a limited time only, just in case you were wondering).

I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been walking around naked all day.

And then Rosana comes, and Anne, and they are bright and beautiful and triumphant, and then Noah, who kind of looks like a Zapatista but with skinny jeans. All you can see are his eyes underneath all the winter-weather gear. He leaves us instantly to go socialize with Eric in the kitchen upstairs and watch the unfortunately-named but sometimes decent-to-listen-to band, the White Bitch, play, and then it’s just the four of us, and it’s just a night. We talk politics and kids and, yes, weather, and tattoo strategy, and I’m laughing so hard I can’t see straight, and I have one of those misty alcohol-induced moments where I look around and think, “Wow! Look how beautiful y’all are!” Between the four of us we have survived death and divorce and cancer and heartbreak, not to mention the cataclysmic devastation of our magical community, and we are all continuing to fiercely make things happen in our broken world. I am amazed and inspired and grateful, and in the end it gets so warm that I take off my scarf, and Rosana’s just in a tank top, and even Molly’s down to the last 2 t-shirts, and we settle in, and stay awhile.