The evening started at a place called Napoleon House. It is a squat and storied structure, every inch of the space, the countertops, covered in some painting that looks iconic, some knick-knack that seemed to have arrived at this final resting place by way of shenanigans and mischief. The place was originally built in 1791, the plot purchased in an estate sale by a man who would later go on to become the mayor of New Orleans. He offered the home as a place of refuge for Napoleon should he ever escape his exile. Napoleon gave it a hard pass, but that didn’t stop them from naming the place after him. There is a cracked apart beauty to that place. A flawed perfection in the carefully selected eccentricities of it, a deliberateness about its imperfections that give them an air of well-earned scars.

But the food. Oh god, the food. If they’d been turning out muffulettas like that in the 1800’s Napoleon would have swum over from Elba. Bright, briny, goodness, sharp and unique like they make the olives in-house, each bite punctuated by a forkful of potato salad like a palette cleanser. Jesus. Mel’s seafood gumbo whispered a bunch of naughty shit to her and she liked it. 

With that rolling like a tropical storm in our stomachs, we wandered the French Quarter, high as kites. Music tumbled out of doorways, bounded off the walls and down the alleyways and we found ourselves punchdrunk at the door of the Dauphine book store. We lost ourselves in there for the better part of an hour and then sun was setting over the Mississippi as we wandered the rising swell of the French Quarter. 

A man fingerpicking a guitar stopped playing midway through a song because the 6 O’clock church bells started tolling. “Gotta respect those church bells,” he said matter-of-factly and we all nodded our heads. Doreen Ketchens played the ever-living-fuck out of a clarinet on Chartre street, the notes arc-flashing out of that instrument like live electricity, everyone’s hair standing on end. The roar of motorcycles and midlife crisis, the smell of fried food and the hum of bodies in transit through a place of complicated magic in the failing light of day. 

Full dark found us shoulder to shoulder in a swaying seagrass of strangers, moving to the sound of music, jazz music that is bright and singular and powerful. Fritzel’s is a staple in the French Quarter. A place where jazz is made and where people go to watch it and be washed over by it. The 6 O’clock jazz band was comprised of a trumpet player, a pianist, a bassist, a drummer, and sax man. They wore suits and there was a storied experience about them that filled you with a sense of safety. These men knew what they were doing. The music ran through them and because it trusted them, you trusted them. These men would not miss a chord or stumble over an arpeggio. These men wouldn’t be flustered by the clinking of glasses or the raucous thunder of drunken laughter. These men would keep playing if the walls went up in flames. 

There was an old fashioned clutched in my fist and it was as sweet and biting as the jazz and like the jazz, I was savoring it and like the jazz it was going, steadily and unimpeded, straight to the softer parts of me. The band finished a rendition of ‘Walking or Riding’ with whipcrack rip of the trumpet and the trumpeter took the mic in his free hand and did some crowd work while the waitresses circulated and the hands went to glasses. The trumpeter made a joke or two about the weather, did an abbott and costello-y bit with the guy on the piano.

“He’s good,” the man beside said. His name was Javid. He was in his 60’s, thickly mustachio’d and had a lightness, an openness, about him that was completely disarming. Within 15 minutes of shaking his hand I was helping him with his phone like a dutiful grandchild and he had told me that he was Iranian by birth, Chicagoan by choice, that he visited New Orleans at least once a year just for the jazz, that his girlfriend Nancy was the love of his life and that he was planning on proposing to her on this trip. “I like his comedy,” Javid said and I concurred, took another nip off my Old Fashioned, let my eyes wander the bar.

There was something about that place. Something I couldn’t define, like a bass-line humming through the foundation of it, and if I googled the place now as I write this and discovered that it was closed because historians had discovered that it lay atop the entrance to Shangri-Fuckin-La, I would cock back my head  and say, ahhhh. It was as though every bang of the drum, every pluck of the strings, strike of the keys, rip of the horn, every laugh, sigh, smile and clap was residing within the walls of the place, radiating through that warmly lit room. 

As I finished my drink, the 6 O’clock band finished their set and everyone but the trumpet player cleared the stage. Trumpeter sheathed his instrument, took the reins on the bass while all around him, the 8 O’clock band filled the stage. These men were the heavy hitters. The A-Team. Their eyes were clear and steely and there was a swagger about them like everything they did was in slow motion. They were led by a man with Thunderhead gray hair that was slicked back to the collar of his blue pinstriped suit. The unlit stoagie clamped between his teeth wagged up and down as he spoke. 

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” he said. His voice was cognac. “We’re the 8 O’clock band.” 

And as he began to list off their members one at a time like an FBI most wanted list, Javid and I shared an anxious glance and he said, “This man means business.”

And I said, “We’re either about to hear a truly amazing set, or die in a mafia hit.” 

And Javid chuckled and I chuckled and then the band began to play and we were certain that we were not about to die in a mafia hit. 

Their music filled the place. Surged into the room and every ounce of skin on your body reacted to it like a temperature change. It woke a heaving, breathing, feral thing that lived in you and it convinced that thing to dance between the walls of you, to howl at the moon in you.  It was a rowdy, evocative brand of music and it spoke to you and you spoke back. The bassist would wander off down the line and the trumpeter would follow him and as it swelled to a crescendo people would call out to it, “okay, okay, okay,” and then when it all came clapping down and the band picked up the pieces of it, the bar would break into a passionate rattle of applause and whistling and before anyone had even caught their breath, the guy on the sax was ripping off down an alley and the piano was in pursuit. We stumbled out of that place punch-drunk and sweating, wove our way through the French Quarter beneath a floodlight moon, believing in true love and peace on earth and all those other words for magic.

Morning came to the sound of raucous laughter, Charlie Browning’ through paper thin walls, all wah-wah, full volume. 6:30 AM on a Thursday. Maybe it was still Wednesday night for that guy. Anyway, it could have been worse and I’d left all the exhaustion and weariness of the day before in the folds of those hostel sheets, so all was right with the world. While Mel was getting ready, I slipped down to the massive industrial kitchen in the common area and gathered up a free breakfast. The breakfast was… free. I housed a so-so bagel, slugged some burnt coffee and braved a biting wind as I cut a path for the French Quarter. Two blocks away, I realized that the area around our hostel was not the place to be if you were looking for ambience. Imagine ‘The Strip’ in Vegas. There was a Hustler Hollywood. I’d been a little disappointed on our walk from the train station. I’d been expecting architecture, history, a little magic. 

The French Quarter delivered. 

I walked a jagged line East through that neighborhood, gawking at the wrought iron railings on the balconies, the ferns growing full and hungry, hanging from porticos. The sound of Jazz, the smell of frying food. I finally found myself at the Mississippi, wandered its banks eastward with my jaw flapping in that icy wind. Surging, coffee-two-creams colored water, coursing along the New Orleans cityscape. To the west, a staggeringly large bridge spanned that coiled python of a waterway, connecting this side of Louisiana to that. Cruise ships were moored along the waterfront beside it. They passed beneath it with ease. Not two-story river cruises. Big, Carnival-looking, shrimp cocktails and waterslides cruise ships. Truly massive tankers Tokyo-drifted the bend in the river, carrying a city-blocks worth of cargo on their mighty backs. 

The wind was furious as I made my way along the water’s edge. Arctic blasts of it came ripping down out of the clear blue sky to slash whitecaps on the water and put tears in my eyes and I pushed through it with my fists mashed into the pockets of my coat. All around me, the sound of music intertwining with the grinding roar of a city. Classic rock, jazz, bubbling up through the drone of jackhammers and weed whackers. The air smelled faintly of the sea. Not always. Often, the smell of car exhaust and occasionally the reek of sewer, but sometimes, when the wind was right, salt and foam, kelp and coral. I meandered to the edge of the wharf, then through the French Market. It was bustling, but nothing like it would be on the weekend. People selling gator nuggets, trinkets, voodoo memorabilia. I’d struck out that morning with my sights set on finding a park I’d read about when I was bloodhounding through the New Orleans chat boards, and I could see my little blue dot drifting closer and closer on Google Maps, but I was struggling to actual find it until I saw the 12 foot letters printed on what looked like a sea-wall. CRESCENT PARK. 

I followed a sidewalk splashed with encouraging messages in spraypaint (“Focus”, “Keep Going”, “Don’t give up now”) to an epic, rusted, staircase which, I was delighted to discover, was the entrance to the park. The staircase, a spiky piece of urban art, rose sharply up from the sidewalk, stretched out over the railroad tracks and dropped down, down, into what had once been a warehouse space.They’d knocked the walls down to let the river breezes in, painted looping, concentric circles on the floor, but left sheet metal roof to provide shelter from the heavy rains, the sultry southern sun. As I made my way down the staircase, a man was rollerskating in lazy ellipses across that open space. A little girl was exploring the edges on a Huffy.

At the termination of the roof the park continued into a row of swinging benches, and behind those, a sprawling lawn of crabgrass and clover. A homeless man lay sleeping in that marshy grass beside a golden retriever and they looked so goddamn peaceful that I almost joined them. A walking trail snaked its way out of the eastern edge of the park and I followed it, the river rolling along to my right, warehouses looming to my left. A beautiful love story played out there along that trail. Someone had painted the words “YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL” on the roof of one of those warehouses in white paint. 

As I read that, my attention naturally drifted back to the river, that cooing, gurgling thing, where I saw a sheet of plywood propped up on the shattered pilings rising up out of the water. The words “I love you” were spelled out in bricks on that plywood and it was as though the city and the river were having a moment that I’d just interrupted with my wandering.

 The trail led to a rusted metal pier that was kissed with graffiti. It looked like another abandoned thing, left to the whirling mash of the tide. But as I approached it, there was a sneaky little bridge and when I crossed it, I found myself in yet another park. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a quiet, open space, which is a luxury in any city. There was a peephole in the center of it, a cutout with a railing that probably held a pillar at one point. Now the river went rushing underneath it, gurgling melodically. They could have just banged that whole place down to make room for expensive apartments. They would have, in another city. Here, it gave back. 

I continued my eastward press through that space and found yet another piece of New Orleans magic, buried in that marshy riverside. The Rusty Rainbow bridge spanned a bog dividing the trail from the Bywater neighborhood. A 75-foot long hunk of artfully corroded steel with precipitous steps on either side. It would be the highlight of your jog if you crossed it everyday. Probably kick your ass a little bit, but in a fun way, like a jiu jitsu class. It deposited me into the Bywater neighborhood, which was delightful. A crayon box of houses, every building a kaleidoscope of pastel colors, and on every flat surface, art. Art about inequity, diversity, change, love. It was striking and galvanizing and good, like exhaling a breathe that I didn’t know I’d been holding. Like slipping into warm water when there’s a chill in the air. I didn’t often feel that way in Georgia. I didn’t see openness and acceptance on the tip of a brush, shining like a lantern above a door so that when you see it, you know that you are safe here. I had starred only one place in that neighborhood and I found myself standing at its door with the smell of fresh bread in my sinuses and a line of drool down my chin. 

The Bywater Bakery. Jesus Christ this place. It’s a brilliant red building flanked by little tables, bustling with happy people who are in the process of filling themselves with fresh-baked-bang-bang. The staff greeted everyone they encountered, myself included, like a regular or a direct relative or an organ donor. I ordered a fancy egg-in-toast, (a quail egg embedded in the center of freshly baked garlic bread) and a sweet potato sticky bun for Melissa. Then I carried my little box of pirate booty out onto that windswept street, with my heart set on slaying it outright with warm bread and golden yolk. It was glorious. Rich and sparkly and deep. With that in my furnace, I turned on a heel and began my journey back to our hostel. At some point along that mystical waterfront the wind snapped off like it was wired to a breaker. 

HOT. 

That southern sun without the chaser of wind to stunt it beamed down on me and I had to peel my jacket off my back, stuff it in my day pack. I was shimmering with sweat when I finally found my way back to the hostel. Found Mel in the lobby working and I offered her her baked good like a cat offers a dead bird to the woman who feeds it.  

After a few minutes of rest in the hostel lobby, the city beckoned me again and I slipped back out into its wilds for lunch. Killer Po-boy was planted just over the demarcation line between the French Quarter and the Central Business District. Casual sandwich joint serving street legal drugs in the form of life-changing sandwiches. I ordered a pork belly for myself because the woman behind the counter called it ‘magic’ and I respect magic. I picked up a tofu po-boy for mel, shimmied back to the hostel with a bag of boom-boom. Magic indeed. The slaw was a revelation, bright and lemony and perfectly balanced against the sweet, smokey bite of the pork belly. A dove flew out of my hat when I was done with it.

That night brought us to the Sylvain, bellied up to the bar with Sazerac’s clenched in our fists. That night brought us a fledgling peeler fire and a chance encounter with a bastion of New Orleans mystery. That night brought us the Woojie List. But long before that, somewhere between Crescent Park and the Bywater Bakery, my heart was open. Open to the gravity that city. Open to the possibility of goodness etched into the foundation of a place. Open to magic.

“MELISSA!” My eyes are all run through with wild, glued to the face of my phone with a fanatical focus. I’ve got goosebumps. My heart stammers in my chest.

“Did he leave?!” She says. Her voice is the flash of blue light between two conductors. Pure, live, energy.

I take my eyes off the screen long enough to nod once, slowly.

“He just left,” I say.

There is some dancing. Nothing shameful. Little action in the hips, mostly hands. Still though, dancing.

“where is he?” she says, her voice still throwing arc flashes.

“26th and Pine,” I say. ” App says he’ll be here in 17 minutes.”

Her brow furrows and she goes to her computer like an ensign on the bridge, fingers flying at the keys.

“17 minutes? From 26th and Pine?!” Shaking her head now. She spins the screen to face me, shows me the Google Maps readout. “This says 8 minutes. Tops.” she pauses dramatically before she says ‘Tops” and it’s super badass.

I turn to stand at the kitchen window. Outside, the sun falls behind the Olympics, shining brilliantly through our Rhododendrons, casting shadows across my face as I fold my hands behind my back. It is a very General Patton move. I say, “Godspeed, Kevin. Godspeed” and it is super badass.

5 minutes of drama and stoicism pass.

“Melissa,” I say, “There are officially zero traffic lights between Kevin and our house.”

A wicked grin knifes across her face and she says, “17 minutes my ass!” and I do a very Robert Redford chuckle as we move to prep the airlock for receiving, by which I mean laying out old paper bags near the door, priming the Lysol. While we’re doing that, the muffled whump of a car door shutting, a rustling on the stoop. Dear God, it’s here.

I yell a frantic thank you through the window at the back of Kevin’s head as he’s sliding back into his Passat and my voice sounds unhinged even to me. During different times, with different stakes, I might have been embarrassed. But this a global pandemic and I’ve got a bag full of burritos on my doorstep. Shame is a luxury that (much like delivery burritos every day leading up to this) I simply cannot afford.

In the airlock, we carefully remove the food, plate it and nuke it for a few seconds in the microwave. We wrap the containers in old paper bags and toss them in the outside trash and then we sit down to the first meal that I did not personally prepare in weeks.

And there is some dancing. And it is shameful. Then we eat. The food is as good as it ever was, but the moments leading up to it, the ordering, the waiting, the receiving, are positively transformative. It is a view of a time when things were simpler and safer through eyes better suited to appreciate it. When I was in basic training, we would sit around in tents in freezing weather, clutching frozen rifles to our chests and we would talk about all the trivial things we took for granted before this. We would stand guard, staring off into the woods with nothing to do but pontificate on how crazy it was that we used to have cellphones in our pockets full of all the entertainment that man had ever conceived of, and that we would complain about being bored. And later, much later, when we were back with the world, our appreciation for those things would fade and we would forget how stolidly we had promised to never take them for granted again. But there was a sweet spot. A time right between the nostalgia and the undervaluing. In that sweet spot, we are really, truly, present. Really, mostly, happy. Wrapped in the warmth of that moment like beans in a weekday burrito.

Written by:

Kellen Burden