Mind the Gap (34 page)

“That’s me. Who are you?”

“You have questions for her,” the old guy said, and it wasn’t a question. “Things you wanted to ask her.”

Uncomfortable, Max glanced at him. “Why? Did she talk about me? Give you a message or something?”

“Some, but nothing like what you mean.” The old man reached out and touched the thin metal of the coffin, stared at it a moment, then looked back up at Max. “I’m just saying if you have questions you want to ask, it might not be too late.”

“Look, no offense, but—”

“Your lady’s gone,” the old man whispered.

Max glanced at the coffin, thinking he meant Gabrielle. But then he heard the sound of a car starting and looked across the cemetery to see Michelle driving slowly away. She didn’t turn around, didn’t look at him, but neither did she seem in a rush to leave. Almost as if she’d forgotten he was even here.

“Time to talk, Max,” the old man said. Max was not sure whether it was posed as a question or a statement.

“How’d you know my name?”

The old man shrugged, in a smug way that Max knew would become bothersome very quickly.

“And what do you mean when you say—”

“I know a nice little bar,” the old man said. He stretched, and Max was sure he actually heard bones creaking. “Not far from here. Least, used to be nice. Since the Rage, the whole place has gone sour.”

“Rage?”

The man rolled his eyes at the clear blue sky. “The storm. Katrina. Such a sweet name.”

“Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“’Cause you’re intrigued,” the man said, shrugging again. Then he smiled. “And ’cause your lady’s gone.”

As he climbed into the passenger seat of the white coupe, Max realized that he had made no plans beyond the funeral. He’d arranged the trip, booked the flight and hotel, spoken with Michelle about her picking him up from the airport, but his focus had always been on the moment that had just passed. He had watched Gabrielle’s coffin as words that meant little to him were spoken, and now that it was over, he was lost.

Three days left in New Orleans, and nothing to do.

Max closed his eyes for a moment and saw Gabrielle’s face, and the thought that he would never see her again seemed to cut him in two. Since leaving, he had lived with the certainty that she was out of his life forever, but at least she had still existed in the same world, still shared the same atmosphere. He was still
aware
of her. Now she was gone, completely and finally, and he sucked in a breath that contained nothing of her.

The old man drove slowly from the cemetery, steering around grave markers that had been washed onto the road. He turned left, eventually edging them past the muddy ruin of City Park and driving so slowly that Max thought they could probably walk faster. He glanced across, and the expression on the guy’s face was one of quiet contemplation.

“Bar’s called Cooper’s. I’ve been drinkin’ there some thirty years, and it was there long before that. Cooper’s long dead an’ gone, but his boys, they still run the place. It wasn’t the nicest place you’ll find in the city, even before, but…it’s one of the best. You can smell the honesty when you walk in. Know what I mean?”

Max didn’t, but he saw where the old man’s non-answer was leading. “All right. We can talk when we get there. Do I get to learn your name?”

“You can call me Ray.”

“Ray,” Max repeated. The framing of the answer wasn’t lost on him. The guy seemed to sidestep every question, and this was no exception.

When they reached the bar, the place looked dead. The sign had been blown away, leaving a bent metal hanger above the entrance door, and most of the windows were boarded up. Three others were exposed, glass grubby, and surrounded by what Max first took to be bullet holes. Then he realized that they were nail holes, punched into the frames and walls when the windows were covered before the storm. Behind one window was an old neon beer sign, swathed with brightly-colored paint to give it some semblance of life.

Someone had spray-painted “We shoot looters” across the facade, the double “oo” of “shoot” missing now that the entrance door was visible again. Just below that stark warning, two feet above pavement level, was the grubby tide mark that Max had already noticed around the city. It showed how high the waters had come. The limits of life and death.

“Place got off lightly,” Ray said. He slammed the car door and stood beside Max. He was a good eight inches shorter, but a palpable energy radiated off him like heat. For someone so old who drove so slow, he certainly seemed very much alive.

“Doesn’t look that way.”

Ray pointed along the street. “Ground level falls the further you drive. Half a mile down there, water was ten feet deep.”

“I don’t want a tour,” Max said, immediately regretting the comment. How could he not expect Ray to want to talk about the storm? The Rage, as he’d called it.

“Good,” Ray said, and Max knew that he meant it. “’Cause life and death move on.” He opened the door to Cooper’s and beckoned Max inside.

You can smell the honesty when you walk in
, Ray had said, and Max had not really understood. Yet upon entering, he knew exactly what the weird old man had meant. It no longer looked like a normal bar, if it ever had been. Floorboards had been replaced with thick plywood flooring, joints rough, nail holes already filled with dirt and cigarette ash. The furniture was a mishmash of plastic garden chairs and tables, wooden benches, a couple of church pews, metal chairs with timber seats tied on with wire, and a large round table made from piled car tires and a circle of the same plywood used for flooring. Flickering candles sat on each table and on rough shelves across the walls, providing a pale illumination.

Along the back wall was the bar itself, with beer crates stacked five high, and an open shelving unit screwed to the wall and containing dozens of liquor bottles. A tall, thin black man sat on a stool beside the pile of booze, a cigarette hanging from his mouth and his eyes half closed. Another tall man walked the room, collecting empties, chatting with the dozen people there, fetching more drinks. These, Max assumed, were the Coopers. They had refused to let their place go to stink and rot, and had instead reopened it as best they could. No illusions, no pretense; this was a place to drink and talk. It stank of sweat and spilled beer, because there was no power for air-conditioning. It stank of defiance.

“Bother you, bein’ the only white face?”

“I thought you’d been drinking here for thirty years?” Max asked.
So where was the welcome? Where were the raised hands from the Cooper brothers, or the other patrons?

That shrug again. “Keep to myself.”

“Okay,” Max said, unconvinced. “And no, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Good,” Ray said. “’Cause if you looked bothered, it’d bother them. Drink?”

“Yeah,” Max said. He wondered whether Michelle was drinking now, and what she was thinking about, and why she’d left him with Ray.

“Water?” Ray said, a twinkle in his eye.

“Whiskey.”

“I’m partial to Scottish single malt myself. But hereabouts it’s mostly bourbon. Folks are suspicious about anything that goes down too smooth.”

“Whatever.” Max looked around and spotted a plastic table in the corner of the room, two old school chairs upside down on its yellowed surface. He took the chairs down from the table and sat, and Ray came across with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses. Max wasn’t a big drinker, but right now it was just what he wanted.

Max had a hundred questions about Cooper’s, but a thousand about Gabrielle, and Ray saw that. The old man sighed and sat, pouring them both a double shot, and lifted his glass. Before he could say anything, Max cut in.

“What? A toast? To Gabrielle?”

“If you like,” Ray said.

“For now I’ll just drink. And I’ll listen.”

Ray nodded, his face suddenly serious for the first time since they’d met. Max wondered whether this was his natural look.

“Gabrielle’s truly one of New Orleans’ lost souls,” Ray said. He drank his whiskey.

“You mean a hurricane victim?”

Ray shook his head. “I’m not talkin’ about that, not now. This goes deeper, and further back. Right to the heart of this place.” He smiled, and gave a more casual version of that annoying shrug. “But you ain’t from New Orleans.”

“No buts, Ray,” Max said, trying to keep his voice level and low. “And no more of this mystery-man crap.”

“Oh, I’m not sayin’ I’m not goin’ to tell you. Already decided that, in this old head of mine. All I’m sayin’ is, you won’t understand.”

Max wanted to stand, leave Cooper’s Bar and walk as far and as fast as he could, following the terrible tide marks to higher ground and finding his way out of this city once and for all.

“She could have been so special,” Ray said.

“She
was
special.”

“You can save her, boy. If you choose to do as I say, if you’re willin’ to follow the path, you can save her from herself.”

“She’s dead,” Max said. “By now, she’s in the ground.”

“Dead now, yeah. But she
was
alive,
so
alive. More’n any woman I ever met.” Ray stared into his glass for a moment, seeing unknown pasts in the swish of amber liquid. Then he drank the remnants of his whiskey and poured some more. He filled Max’s glass as well, which Max was surprised to find empty.

“I don’t know what I’m listening to here,” Max said, drinking the whiskey in one swallow. It tasted good, felt better.

“There’s a man who can help you, name of Matrisse. He’s a conjure-man.”

“Magic,” Max said. “Right.”

“Not magic like you know it. Not that tourist shit. Matrisse, he don’t have a shop front on Bourbon Street selling charms and magic dust. He’s known in the city, but only to some.” Ray leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “True magic, boy. None of this meddlesome fakery peddled to wannabes. His heart is tied with the heart of this city.”

“And he’s still here after the storm?”

“Yeah, still here. His heart aches, but he can never leave this place. It’s a New Orleans thing.” Ray sat up again and smiled, pouring more whiskey into his glass. They’d got through a third of a bottle already, and Max was feeling the effects stroking his senses. The candlelight looked brighter, the outlines of the other patrons sharper, but the door looked much farther away than before.

“True magic’s an oxymoron, Ray. No such thing. Even if there was, what do you think this guy can do for Gabrielle? Make her a zombie?”

“Forget Hollywood,” Ray said, his smile no longer holding any trace of humor. “Forget all the stories you think you know. Matrisse, he has ways an’ means to do more than you can imagine, boy. An’ one of those things…well, he can open a door to the past. Maybe get a message through.”

His chin tilted down, so his eyes were lost in shadow. “Maybe get a man through. It ain’t easy, and he don’t do it too much…but he’ll do it for you. For Gabrielle.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. ’Cause she could have been special.” Ray drank more whiskey and filled his glass again, no longer topping up Max’s.

It was a hell of a fantasy. Send a message back to Gabrielle, warn her about what was coming. But a fantasy couldn’t raise the dead.

Max stared at Ray. “Even if I believed any of this, how would I find this Matrisse?”

“He’ll find you. First, though, there’s a map you have to follow. You got no magic about you. No aura. You’re from outta town, but in cases like this that can be good. An advantage. A clean slate.”

So sincere, and already talking like Max had agreed to go along with this bullshit. He almost scoffed, but stopped himself. He was asking the questions, wasn’t he? Maybe it was the whiskey talking, but he couldn’t stop his mind from following where Ray’s words led, and wondering.

“Clean slate for what?” Perhaps it was their surroundings, lending that honest power to everything the old man said. Or maybe it was just the deadly combination of grief and Jack Daniel’s.

“For gatherin’ magic to you. I can give you the map, if you commit to followin’ it. Follow it, magic yourself up, like runnin’ your feet along a carpet to build up static, and at the end of the map, you’ll find Matrisse. And if he finds you as well, then maybe he’ll help you through.”

“And maybe I can get a message to Gabrielle, back before any of this happened?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you bring it yourself. Right place, right time…”

Max wanted to laugh. He wanted to mock this old fool, tip the table over, and storm from the bar. But he could not. And he knew it wasn’t just the whiskey keeping him in his plastic school chair. It was something about the old man and his words, and the fact that he obviously believed every one of them.

“Why are you telling all this to me?” Max said. “You knew Gabrielle. You obviously cared about her. Why don’t you do it?”

“’Cause it’s dangerous, and I’m old, and I doubt this body could take it,” Ray said. “You want to see the map?”

“Yeah. But…won’t it all be changed?”

Ray grinned. “This ain’t a map of just places, boy. It’s a map of moments.” He took an envelope from inside his jacket, extracted a folded sheet of paper, and spread it across the table. He glanced around just once, and for an instant Max saw something like danger in his eyes. And Max knew that this harmless old man could be deadly as well, if the time and need called for it.

He leaned over the table and looked down at the map. “That’s just a tourist map of the city.”

“It was, ’til it was changed. Look closer.”

Max did so. Wavering candlelight seemed to make the Mississippi flex like a sleeping snake, and Lake Pontchartrain loomed across the top of the map, dark blue and menacing.

“It’s your choice now, boy. I’ve told you enough, and I can’t hold you down an’ make you do this. I ask one thing, though.” Ray smiled at the empty bottle of whiskey. “You owe me half a bottle, so do this one thing for me. Go to the first place, an’ the first moment. You’ll know where an’ when that is when you study the map. Drink this beforehand, an’ it’ll help you.” He laid a small clay bottle on the table.

Now Max did scoff—too loudly, fueled by whiskey. “Magic potions? You’re shitting me.” Every head turned to look at them.