The Map of Moments (5 page)

You can smell the honesty when you walk in,
Ray had said, and Max had not really understood. Upon entering, however, he knew exactly what the weird old man had meant. This was a place where the sweat and blood of life were laid bare, and the lie of casual acceptance had no place. It no longer looked like a normal bar, if it ever had. 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 round tables made from piled car tires and circles 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: 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, and fetching more drinks. These, Max assumed, were the Coopers. They had refused to let their place go to rot, and had instead reopened it as best they could. No illusions here, 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.

Everyone here lifted their bottle or glass before they took a first drink, toasting their barkeepers.

A few people glanced around at the new arrivals, then returned to their conversations.

“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. “ ’Cos if you looked bothered, it'd bother them. Drink?”

“Yeah,” Max said. He wondered whether Corinne 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.”

“Partial to Scottish single malt myself. But hereabouts it's mostly bourbon. Folks are suspicious of anythin’ 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 nodded that way, then left Ray to buy their drinks.

Max walked between tables, nodding a greeting as a couple of men looked up. They tilted their beer bottles in
apparent welcome, but watched him a moment longer. He remembered walking into Roland's Garage for the first time with Gabrielle on his arm, how all the eyes had settled on her and he'd felt as though he hardly existed. But she'd looked at him and made him glow, because that night she only had eyes for him.

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 down, pouring them both a double shot, and lifted his glass.

“What?” Max asked. “A toast? To Gabrielle?”

“If you like,” Ray said.

“For now I'll just drink. And 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 going 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. When he'd lived here, he'd enjoyed being an outsider, trying to learn the city. Now Corinne's talk, the way Gabrielle's family had abandoned her, and Ray's condescension just made him want to get the hell away.

“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 and go here an’ there, now an’ then, 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 the 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. It burned his insides, and he imagined parts of his body glowing when the lights went out.

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

Max paused with his empty glass halfway down to the table. He looked away from Ray, glancing around the bar at the other drinkers. Most were in pairs, a couple drinking
alone, and they all found something amazing in their glasses, whether empty or full. When they were tired of looking at each other, they could look into their drinks and see themselves.

“Magic,” Max said. “Right.”

“Not magic like you know it. Not that tourist shit. Ma-trisse, 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, boy, 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 the extremes of 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?”

“Hollywood!” Ray spat, 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, you mean?”

“Yeah, for Gabrielle. He don't even
know
you.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. ’Cos 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 what was coming. But 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. You're a clean slate.”

So sincere, and already talking like Max had agreed to go along with this bullshit. Max almost scoffed, but stopped himself. He was asking the questions, wasn't he? Maybe it was the whiskey talking, but he couldn't prevent 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 following 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. Then maybe he'll help you through.”

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

“Or maybe you bring it yourself.” Ray raised his glass and looked into the liquor again, hypnotized by the candlelight refracting gold and amber. “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 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 me all this?” Max said. “You knew Gabrielle. You obviously cared about her. Why don't you do it?”

“ ’Cos 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 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. Ray had smiled, and grinned, and looked serious …but now Max sensed that he could be deadly as well, if the time and need called for it.

Max took another long swig of whiskey.
This is crazy,
he thought. But hadn't his love for Gabrielle been a kind of craziness as well? Back in New Orleans now, why not let that insanity continue, just for a while …?

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

“Look closer.”

Max did so. Wavering candlelight seemed to make the Mississippi flex like a sleeping snake, and Lake Pontchar-train loomed across the top of the map, dark blue and menacing. He started by trying to locate exactly where they were now, with Holt Cemetery, and Greenwood and Metairie Cemeteries, close by. Then he moved farther out, tracing roads with his finger, until he came to a marking he did not recognize across City Park:

“What's this?”

“One of New Orleans’ most magical moments,” Ray said. “You can see it, sense it, feel it. You can watch it, and gather some of the dregs of its magic to you. Moments like this echo through history, 'cos time don't bow down much to magic.”

“How can I see something that happened—?” Max began, but Ray cut in, an element of impatience in his voice.

“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.” He 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.”

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

Ray paused, hand holding a small clay bottle halfway to the table. He spoke quietly. “Don't believe in them?”

The other patrons turned away again, and Max sensed a tension in the room now. Maybe they
did
all recognize Ray. Maybe he
had
been drinking here for thirty years.

“Just humor an old man,” Ray said. “Ain't nothin’ in this bottle to hurt you. And you know I ain't lying, just like you know the rest of it's true.”

Max frowned. Somehow he
did
believe it when Ray told him nothing in that bottle would harm him, but he couldn't avoid the suspicion that the old man's words only sounded like the truth because Ray himself believed them.

“You're crazy.”

“Thank you.” And Ray chuckled, an infectious laugh that came from somewhere deep and shook his whole body.

Max stood, and the whiskey hit him hard. His legs shook and his head seemed to sway atop his neck, and he wasn't sure whether everyone was looking at him, or everyone was looking away. He grabbed the map from the table and folded it, then snatched up the small clay bottle. It seemed the right thing to do.

“This…” he said, waving the bottle before Ray's face. But the old man was still chuckling, and he watched as Max edged his way across the bar.

Standing by the front door, conscious of the poor light
inside and the harsh sun without, Max glanced back at the old man. There was a fresh bottle of whiskey on his table, his glass was full, and he was talking at the chair Max had just vacated. He gestured with his hands, nodded, and gave that annoying, dismissive shrug once again.
Talking to himself,
Max thought.
Now I
know
he's nuts.

Then Ray did a curious thing. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a small glass vial. Carefully, he poured a few drops into the glass Max had just left behind, and followed it with a dash of whiskey. He slid the glass across the table, toward the empty seat, and smiled.

Nutjob.

Max tugged at the door and stumbled outside. The stark autumn sun blinded him for a moment, and he slid down the wall and sat on a sidewalk strewn with litter and grit. He shaded his eyes to try to see, and a shadow passed before him. It seemed too large to belong to just one man.

Ray chuckled again and started the coupe, the engine seeming to match its owner's laughter.