July 20
ANN

Today when I woke up, I realized something quite important. I had forgotten to order more gin. In my mind's eye, when I woke up, was the note that Jeff, the new relief bartender, had left taped to the office door.

So this is why I am out here, driving through the wasteland that is that distinctive area of town we used to know as Mid-City but that is now a place that reminds me that the hurricane will be a permanent scar on this city's psyche.

And it still stinks of mud, decay and things I do not wish to think of in way too many areas of this city. Almost a year later and sometimes it seems hopeless. Especially lately. I have lost the capacity to have faith that it's ever going to be fun again. It's always going to be a fight. I feel like fighting but not because I think it will get better if I enter into a battle against something or someone. I just feel like fighting because I've got to do something with my anger and hopelessness.

It is hot. So hot. It's 2 in the afternoon and I should not be out here. But I woke with that thought of no gin for the shift tonight and could think of nothing more important to do but run over to Metairie to get some at the liquor warehouse.

I pass over the 17th Street Canal and glance toward Lakeview just before I leave it, heading west to enter Metairie, land of the much better off. Lakeview still looks dead. The dead zone. My cousin used to live there. I wonder how much longer this will go on - this sense of waiting for something to return to normal.

For weeks now, I have tried very successfully to avoid driving into any of the wastelands. Don't know the last time I ventured to the east, toward Chalmette. Went to the Lower 9th Ward only once, with Bud, me riding shotgun and both of us unable to speak. That was months ago. Me crying silent tears; him staring out his window. His hand coming across the space between us to stroke my head and then to wind his fingers in the hand I put in his. Me crying harder then because I felt like I was crying for both of us.

I stand waiting for the boxes of gin bottles to be brought up front. I have a mixture of well and call gin. I told the guy to have the salesman come see me next week so I could get back on a regular ordering schedule for all the liquor. He is typing in an email to the salesman. I hear the little ticking of the keys.

It is raining buckets by the time my order is ready and I have paid. The boy who's going to schlep my boxes into my car stands with me as we watch the rain and hope it will ease up soon.

My cell phone rings. It is the lady I called yesterday, just getting back to me, wondering if this is a good time. Sure, I say, looking at the rain and wondering how long this boy will wait with me.

"I can bring the petitions by this evening. We won't have another meeting until next week and I thought you might like to get started with this instead of waiting on the meeting," she says to me. Her name is Charlotte and I wonder if she's one of those tony Uptown women whose friends call her Char.

"That sounds good. You don't mind coming to the bar? You do know where it's at in the Quarter, right?"

"Sure. You told me that yesterday. My son's going to drive me. I hate trying to park in the Quarter."

A civic activist afraid of the Quarter? Must be a Garden District trophy wife, I think, and roll my eyes. I picture her in her perfect coif, tennis outfit. She'll be lugging her 17 year old son along to be her chauffeur because it's so very hard for a silly girl like her to drive in this dangerous Quarter. He'll be wearing a polo shirt and khakis. Probably, he'll sit outside behind the wheel while she comes inside, walking like she's afraid she'll catch something.

I say to her, "I'll be around. If I'm not behind the bar, have them get me."

"That sounds fine then. Perhaps about 7 or so?"

"Cool. I'm looking forward to it."

And I am. Even if I fear I'll be seriously out of place in a crowd of women of more refined substance and style than me. But as I close my phone and watch the rain begin to spit instead of pour, I think that calling this organization was a good idea. They are re-organizing for another fight to demand better levees for New Orleans.

Me? I think I won't hold my breath that we're ever going to get real levees. Not if we have to depend on those people in D.C. Even if they fund it, they'll just give the job to the Corps and why would we think these'll be any better than the ones they built that are the cause of our destruction?

But I was thinking yesterday that instead of sitting around wrapped tight in my loneliness and anger, I should use some of that fury where it could actually be constructive. So I called this group and said I wanted to get involved. That I wanted to help kick some ass and get the levees we deserved.

They thought I was being funny about the kicking ass part. This woman, when she called me back to let me know how I could help them, she said they were all laughing at my enthusiasm. We like women with spunk, Charlotte had said. I chuckled to myself. This was a group that started in some Uptown drawing room about three months after Katrina and while I certainly admired the fervor and political muscle these women had already so ably demonstrated, I also wondered what they'd make of a woman like me.

Since I've decided to get involved in the fight, I guess I've felt really good about stoking up all this anger inside me. I keep telling myself that this will be a constructive way to get it out, to use my God-given talent for destruction.

The deluge has turned to the misty rain that is a uniquely Louisiana kind of rain ... it barely registers on you as you walk through it but somehow it can soak the earth so well. Any that's fallen on the roads and sidewalks will be dry within maybe 20 minutes of the sun coming out.

By the time I make it to the Quarter, the grass where I park my car is shimmering with the vapor of steamy rainwater fighting to survive. 

I wonder how long it's going to be before I stop checking to see if Bud's car is parked in here. I can remember what a little thrill I'd get to see his car in there when I'd pull in. It meant he was somewhere nearby. Back when he pretended to love me and I believed him, it would make my heart flip just to see his car. Silly girl, that's me. He hasn't parked in this lot for a while.

From across the street as I lock up the lot's gate, I see the pink blooms on the pavement in front of the bar. My breathing quickens. I curse really foully and don't care that a guy walking past hears me and gives me a double take.

Fucking Bud.

I march across to the other curb and drop kick the new azalea plant out into the street. Unfortunately, it hits a car driving by. Just great. The driver curses. I flip the bird. Inside the bar, I tell Jeff to go sweep up the mess in the street before someone sues me.

"Another one?" he asks me.

"The boxes of gin are in my trunk."

"Okay, I'll get the dolly. I'll take care of it."

"You don't want me to yell at you again for wearing shorts in here, do you?" I ask him, scowling when he comes from behind the bar.

"The girls wear those short skirts ..."

"That's so different."

"I think you're just a prude when it comes to young studs."

"Do you want to get fired?"

"Who'd sweep up the remains of azalea bushes without me around?"

"No more shorts, Jeff. I am not kidding."

"Gotcha."

Of course, he said that yesterday. He has gotten it in his mind that he can sass me with impunity because he thinks I'm hot for him. He thinks he's flirting with me. He's a punk. But he's the first good relief bartender we've found in a while. And besides, busting his chops has kind of become something I look forward to.

All he knows about me is that I recently broke up with my boyfriend and it's made me mean. I heard one of the other bartenders tell him that the first day he started.

I head upstairs, where I will probably wander around my apartment and think about what I'll do when the old owner's two sons come pack up all his stuff and cart it off. I guess they'll take all the furniture. I need to go out and find a bed. Maybe a sofa. Table. Chairs.

I have all that kind of stuff at the old place. Where Bud still lives. I should go and get it but ... but I just don't want to turn sad.

This is what I'm musing over, resigned and edgy, as I step into the elevator to head upstairs.

I stand in the middle of the elevator, looking down, in the back left corner. The door slides shut behind me but I don't move to punch the 3 button to get the elevator moving up. I just stand there.

In the corner, that left corner in the back ... there is another pink azalea bush.

He probably thinks he's being cute and romantic.

But he's really just killing me.

When I rouse myself, I punch the 3 button, pick up the azalea and wait as we ascend together. I am holding it out, like it's an alien life force, and for all I know, it is.

Inside my apartment, I toss my purse and keys on the table and head for the deck outside. My first impulse is to chuck the damn azalea forcefully off the building. But then I remember kicking the plant into the street just a few minutes ago and how it hit a car. Imagine if I just heaved this and it hit somebody walking by?

The first one he sent me, I actually had this momentary thought of taking it out on my deck and giving it a home. The deck could use a few more plants than the ones I've managed to scrounge up from the French Market. But then I heard Bud's car. You know how you just know the sound of a car engine of someone you are either anxious or scared to see? I went over to where I could look down and saw him standing there, looking at the bar. A smug Bud look on his face.

So I went and got the plant. Tossed it smack down onto the sidewalk as he drove by. I was aiming at his car but I was way off.

Why does it have to be that of all things he'd remember, it'd be that I once told him how someday I wanted a place where I could grow azaleas, pink ones like my grandmother grew. And one day, he showed up with one of those tiny azalea plants they sell in drug stores around here. And I killed it about three weeks later because I didn't have a clue how to take care of it. And I cried because he'd done something sweet and I'd killed it. He said he'd never had anyone care that much about something just because he gave it to her. He kept reminding me it only cost a few bucks. He said he'd buy me a new one. And if I killed that one, he'd buy me another. And he'd keep bringing them to me until I learned how to make them live.

But he said that to me just a few days before Katrina hit. The day after, he'd reported for work, hoping this hurricane would miss us like so many others had. But somehow we both knew, just like a lot of other people did, that this one seemed to have us as the target.

So he never got me another azalea. I'd forgotten all about the azaleas.

He remembers that?

Remembers his promise to me. Bringing me a bush every time I killed one. 

Maybe he thinks it is romantic. That I'll swoon into his arms and say, "Oh, lawdie, Mastah White, you be the bestest boyfriend in this whole entire world."

All it really does is make me sad. It makes me remember how unimportant azaleas are anymore. How the one thing I wanted after Katrina was not a damned flowering bush ... it was him, safe and with me.

I wanted what was the only thing that was really important to me: him. But now I don't have what I want, and I won't ever.

Is that what he is really trying to remind me of? That I love him still? I don't need him to remind me. I love him with a sickness that never stops aching.

It's also so eerie to me that he brought that plant to me. It made me remember all the ordinary, casual things we were doing in the months and days before Katrina. Never knowing that something was about to happen that would forever change our world.

Some days, it is so painful to remember the past. To look back on it, as we are now living again in those summer months of last hurricane season. To accept how much I almost lost. I could have so easily lost Bud. He could have lost me. And we never knew we were about to face what we did.

The closer we get to August, the more the sense of impending doom stalks me. It is an echo of last year, I know, but I still hear it. How could we have come through all that, taking it one hour at a time, one day, one week ... getting over every problem, clinging to each other, needing each other so much ... we came through it all and yet we are not together today.

Did we learn nothing? I had thought we did. I thought we learned just how much the other grounded us. I could have sworn we learned that of every other priority, the one that was always uppermost was us ... our love, our union, our belief in the other. I remember him telling me once that he could have lost everything he owned and considered himself the luckiest man on the earth as long as he had me after the storm was over. That's how I felt about him. I think I still do. I think it's why I'll never love again. I already know that about myself. I will never let anyone inside, ever again. It just isn't worth it.

I breathe in deeply in the sullen air. I blow the breath out of my mouth, hearing the sound of expulsion as if I am blowing out the ghosts in my heart. I open my eyes and know I can do this. I search for my anger.

There is no way I'd ever let him in my life again. A man who didn't trust me. Didn't think I had a lick of integrity. Didn't think I was faithful. Screw him and the horse he rode in on, baby.

I walk over to the edge of the roof. To where the wall comes up a few feet. High enough to provide some privacy but not so high I cannot easily look over. I lean a hip against it, holding the plant. I turn and look at the deck. I mentally place the plant over on that edge where there will be shade on the plant all day. It would look pretty there. Liven this dead area up. And then I turn, lean over the wall, and let the plant go, very neatly dropping it three stories to where it slams down inside the dumpster.

Good riddance, I think as I flip a bird in the general direction of his apartment.

July 24
BUD

They don't bother to assign us nights off anymore. We come and we work until there comes a night when someone figures it's our turn to take a rest.

That's what it's like in this war on crime in a city filling itself up with punks who can't remember what it was like to value life. That's the shift that's come with this post-K nightscape. The formerly have-nots thinking they deserve to get a leg up on the have's in a city where most of the people have not returned and those who have are still not sure about anything really.

Crime is up. The violence is grotesque. When did we lose this generation of the storm?

I went in for roll call, as usual. Captain called us in right before. Said to take the night off. I said give it to one of the guys with little kids who ain't had their daddy tuck them in bed for a while. Captain's lip twisted up. Go home, take your girls out, give them a thrill, he says to me and Nate.

Nate and I are driving away from the precinct. He asks did I notice the A/C was working tonight. I say yeah.

About a mile later, Nate starts giggling. I look over at him. He's looking outside his window, shoulders shaking, like he's holding an even bigger laugh inside. Then he turns and meets my eyes. Then puts his head back and just roars with laughter.

"What?" I finally growl out, irritated. Hate feeling like I didn't the joke ... 'cause that's usually when it's on me.

"Who would have ever believed it, Bud my main man? Podnah, we done got to be old men these last few weeks."

I just frown. Nothing to say. He's being a clown. I start driving again. He won't let this go.

"Did you not just hear what we were saying to each other just before? We're fucking talking about air conditioning in the fucking precinct."

"And?"

"It's Thursday night. We're on our own. We have a night off. First one in so long I don't remember when. And what do we talk about? Chasing skirt? Drinking each other under the table? Nah."

"I'm going home to sleep."

"You old fuck! C'mon ... let's go get shit faced."

"Some other night."

"What other night? We never get a night off ... let's do it."

"I got something I gotta do. Maybe I'll meet up with you later."

"You're gonna go home and sleep. You bastard old man. You're creeping me out, White."

"No. I got something I gotta take care of."

"I come by later and catch you sleeping in your bed, I will make you pay."

"You think you can take me?"

"If you're asleep. Sure."

Nate's a funny guy when he's like this. Usually he can get me to at least crack a smile. But I'm already nervous so I don't do more than narrow my eyes at him. "Where you want me to drop you, Casanova?"

"Royal and St. Louis." We're maybe a half block from the turnaround on Canal when he says it. I have to cut across three lanes but I do it because he thought I wouldn't. Just to show him, that's why I do it. Maybe to show myself, gird my loins as they say. I head back on Canal until I can turn in on Decatur. At St. Louis, I hang a wide left, veering just shy of a couple so deep into pouring their tongues down each other's throats that they have forgotten everything their moms ever taught them about looking both ways before crossing the street.

Bourbon is only half-crazy tonight. It's summer and most summers, even on a Thursday night, it'd be a whole lot crazier than tonight. Still, it's more populated than it was even a few months ago. Nate likes the way it's slowly getting back to the crowds it had pre-K. I was kinda hoping it'd stay small forever.

When I let him off a block later, he makes one more plea for me to join him on a carouse in which no women and no beer will be safe from us tonight.

I take my foot off the brake so the car will lurch forward. He shakes his head at me as he hops out of the way and slams the door shut behind him. Maybe just over five minutes later, I find a space a block away from the apartment.

Tonight's the night. If I wait, keep on waiting, I may never do it. She won't expect me tonight; she thinks I'm working. And if I do not do this thing tonight, on impulse, taking advantage of this unexpected opportunity, then what's that say about me?

She's had plenty of time to cool off.

I've had plenty of time thinking about what it'd be like if I had to live without her in my life. I've had so much time to beat the crap out of myself for what I did. And there has even been time to feel she surely must be weakening. But not enough time to plan what I'll say.

Outside her bar, I take a deep breath when I catch sight of her through the glass door. She is behind the bar, filling orders. Her face has that fake half-smile she wears sometimes when she thinks no one will notice or care.

But I care.

Always have.

I watch her. Just watch. I wonder who is taking care of her. Who is watching over her. Inside me there is a wall of shame. I've hurt her. It's not like I didn't know that before ... but it is too real, too raw. Seeing her. 

What I know I have to do is this: apologize ... start over with her. I never have been good at this.

My hand is on the door. I flash back to the first time I touched it. To what happened to me once I got up the courage to open it. To what I started when I risked it all just to walk inside there and sit across the bar from her.

ANN

When he comes in the bar tonight, it's the first time in a long time that I relish just seeing a man I know is coming in here just to flirt with me. 

He is far too young for me, Charlotte's son Wade. And he is preppy, far more preppy than he should be. But he has tricks up his sleeves and he's caught me off-guard because I never expected him to be much more than some Jesuit High alum puff boy.

Wade walked into my bar with his mom a few days ago and he's been coming by to see me every night since. He thinks he's getting under my defenses ... he's right and he's wrong about that.

What he's doing is making me think about how I would feel better if I were to fuck some Garden District Rex-in-the-making, with his mom totally unaware her grown up son is interested in a life lesson with the likes of me.

Can you even imagine if he invites me to their house some day ... to a pool party or something? I may be Charlotte's idea of a great warrior in arms over the levee fight, but date her son? Whew. Now that would really piss her and her charming girlfriends right the fuck off.

He is 29 years old. He is an attorney, practicing in his dad's law office. He is totally dangerous because he wants to play me. And I want to play him back. We could do each other some real harm ... and we'd love it. And we won't feel the least bit guilty because we are both adults and if we get our lumps, so be it.

Wade sits at the corner of the bar. He orders a beer and I warn him that beer drinkers have a tough time picking up girls in this bar. He plays along and asks why that is. Because, I say, the girls in here know a beer-guzzling man won't be quite as long-lasting in the sack that night. He grins at me, switches his order to scotch and asks what the chances are he'll get lucky with me tonight.

Better than with beer, I tell him. But you've still got a lot of work cut out for you, I say as I flit away. I shoot him a grin from the other side of the bar area as I take a new order. He licks his lips and mouths something I don't understand. My next trip over to his area, I let him whisper what he was trying to tell me into my ear. He says he was asking when I got off tonight. In the morning, I tell him. He has a sexy smile, smoldering. I ask him if he's been practicing that look in his mirror a long time. He asks me how I got the fine art of busting balls down so very pat. I say, practice makes perfect.

We're so close, whispering in each other's face. I'm not caring who sees, who knows. They may think I'm nuts, my friends and regulars in the bar. They may know this is my rebound from Bud White, but I don't care if they judge me insane. I fucking don't care.

So before I draw away from him, I'm looking at his pouting, damp lips and droopy bedroom eyes, and his thin long fingers that are stroking my wrist. And I lean in a little further and nip his bottom lip. He tries to return the kiss, his fingers stopping, pressing in on my wrist in an instinctive move to keep me there. But I'm gone before he can really do much more than press the tip of his tongue between my lips.

Wade stays on his stool, sipping his scotch. He wants to play this game with me. It's foreplay to him. He wants to fuck me. He thinks it'll be an intense work out. He thinks I'll let him do things with me his debutant girlfriends never would. He is right. And why wouldn't I?

An hour or so goes by. It's hot outside and even inside, the air conditioning cannot quite keep up with it. It's been challenged for days but it always is, every summer. I mentioned to Dino that we should upgrade it. He said for me to get an estimate. This is what I am thinking about as I'm getting drink orders ready ... about who I can call to get an estimate and how hard it's going to be in the post-K world where contractors are hard to trust and hard to find.

My mind's a thousand miles from Wade and yet his presence is a sexual cloud for me tonight. I feel as if I'm wading through the impending sex acts I'll do with him. But I can also think about air conditioners and the fact I need to get a new sign to replace the one someone stole about a week ago. Fucking teenagers ... coming in and stealing my sign. I know it was teenagers. Gutter punks, no doubt, thinking how fun it'd be to have a souvenir.

This is when I notice a new customer slide into a bar stool nearby. By rote, I look up, smile, say I'll be with him in a minute ... my hands are full of bottled beers and two mixed drinks I'm getting ready to put on the bar counter for the cocktail waitress to serve to a table full of reporters from Atlanta.

The new customer makes me stop in mid-motion. I feel my heart rip a huge tear in itself. I swallow hard. I am so grateful just to see his face. I see red anger. All at the same time.

"Maybe you need to take your business elsewhere," I say to the new customer who is named Bud White and whose body I know with an intimate sense of oneness that still makes me reach for him when I am sleeping alone upstairs.

"Bourbon. Rocks," Bud White says to me. His face is impassive but his eyes are anything but. He wants me looking in his eyes, seeing pain and remorse and longing.

I glance over at Wade, who is watching the two TV producers wearing tank tops and shooting pool. They are part of a larger group but no doubt they are hoping to pick up guys tonight.

"Sure. Coming right up," I say to Bud but I won't look at him again. 

After I serve him, slamming it down on the bar before him so hard that most of it spills, I wander over to fill new orders for others along the bar. The ones who have been coming here a while watch Bud and then Wade. It's as if they wait for the match to be struck. For the two opposing forces of a man I have left and a man I am playing with to explode when they realize who each other is.

For everything in my life to go up in smoke.

Maybe I do as well. My self destructive and petty nature rises up. So I go and talk to Wade while Bud sits with an empty glass before him.

I am leaning in on my elbows, my fingers playing with the line of his jaw. We are making plans to hook up after my shift. I am maybe two seconds from just giving him the key to my place and letting him go upstairs to relax and wait on me.

But then Bud slides into the seat next to Wade, jostling his shoulder as he does. I glance at Bud. He is staring at me, his mouth a tight line.

"Hey. Watch it," Wade says, irritated as Bud's bumped him into the wall. Wade's scotch has spilled thanks to Bud. Wade is shaking the drops from his hand and glaring at Bud.

"You got a problem?" Bud asks him, his voice innocent, his head turning to Wade, his eyes regarding him, looking him up and down.

"Yeah. You," Wade says.

"I'm about to be a whole lot more than just a problem if you don't get your scrawny ass out of this bar," Bud growls in a deceptively soft voice.

"What the fuck?" Wade says, looking at Bud like he's a crazy man and like Wade has experience with crazy men.

"Take your hand off her and get out of here before I run you in."

Wade laughs. He cannot believe this. He thinks it's got to be a joke. "Run me in? Yeah? What, are you a cop?"

Bud pulls his badge from the pocket of his slacks. Shows it to Wade and then taps it on Wade's forehead for emphasis.

Wade is not impressed. He looks at me. I shake my head. I mean to warn him but he must think I mean something else. "Officer, I'd like your badge number. And I'd like you to tell me, before this witness, what exactly you think you're going to arrest me for?"

"Wade, why don't you go wait in my ..." I try to interrupt, to send Wade someplace else while I deal with the ugliness of Bud tonight. But I am far too late and maybe I was too late before I even met Wade.

"Loitering," Bud says, as an answer to what he'll arrest Wade for. He hooks a finger in the front of Wade's shirt and draws him nearer. "And for being a general fuck wad. I don't like fuck wads."

I get this premonition of Bud yanking on Wade's balls like he did in the movie to the gangster. I reach across the bar and grab hold of Bud's arm. It is big and muscled. All man. Imperious. Touching him brings back memories I wish to never have. But I grip in harder and yank on him.

"Do you have any idea of the trouble you've got yourself in now?" Wade asks, his voice smug and privileged. I wince at how I think this will affect Bud.

"Bud, stop this. You have no right ..." I say, my voice rising, and I hear panic in its edges.

"You ever touch her again, Romeo, and she will be the last woman you ever touch. You got that?" Bud grates out, still gripping onto Wade's shirt while I'm yanking on Bud's arm.

"You know him, Ann?" Wade asks, a moment later, as he seems to have stopped himself in mid-thought to catch that I've called his attacker by name and seem to be trying to protect Wade.

"He's just leaving. Aren't you, Bud?" I say, now shaking his arm and not making it move but knowing he feels me. "Bud, you are not welcome here and I want you to leave, you bastard."

Bud slowly lets his hand open and Wade pulls away from him, his shirt now free. With Bud's arm no longer engaged in gripping onto Wade's shirt, it goes limp in my clasping hands and I am yanking him toward me. And I realize just as he lets me do that, that Bud is wanting me to be touching him, holding him back, pulling him toward me. His face turns and he is looking in my eyes. There is anger in every speck of light in his irises.

"I ain't leaving, Annie," he says to me. "Not until we deal with this."

"There is nothing to deal with," I say and my insides are quaking. I am afraid and I do not like being afraid.

"This has gone on long enough. I want to talk to you," he says.

"There is nothing to talk about."

He opens his mouth to say something. His eyes turn from angry to confused, like he's wondering what's just happened here. And then they turn just this tiny edge of happy to see me. I know he's thinking that I'll probably just melt to be near him. To have him come in there and play the brutish thug with a guy I'm flirting with.

"Get out," I say.

"Annie ..." he says, his hand now sliding up my arm, touching my elbow. His hand is big and warm. I shake my head at him. "I just want to talk to you. Please."

Looking in his eyes, I feel how much I will always be in love with him. How much it hurts to feel that way. I pull myself away from him. This pain is far too much for me. I look around for the cocktail waitress. Of course, about every eye in the place is on us, on me and Bud. Knowing this could be ugly or this could be good but either way, it's gossip material.

But when I snag the cocktail waitress' attention, I give her the high sign to come behind the bar and take over for me. I tell Wade I'm sorry and that this won't take long if he wants to wait but if he wants to go, it's fine, too. I tell Bud I can talk to him in the office.

I'm almost at the office, most of the way down the hall, when Bud's hand circles my elbow and he starts guiding me down to the elevator. No, I tell him. Let's give ourselves a little privacy, he says quietly. I think about that for just long enough for him to move me down to the elevator. And I remember times I've been in the bar and heard the old owner yelling at one of the other bartenders in the office. Maybe nobody will hear me and Bud tonight if we fight this out in the office. But probably they will. And I am far too private a person to want that.

So I unlock the elevator, we climb in together and I press the button for my floor. And I remember, as we are silent on the ride up, about finding that azalea bush a few days ago inside the elevator and I make a mental note to yell at Jeff because he obviously let Bud do that.

In my apartment, we kind of circle each other. I should offer him a drink but I don't.

"So talk," I say, flip and angry.

He looks around then shoves his hands in his pockets. Hunches his shoulders. "I know I was wrong. I know you never did what I accused you of. I came here to say that and to say I'm sorry I did that."

"Is that all?"

"You want more? You want me to grovel?"

"What I want is for you to leave. So if you're done, then you can leave."

"Annie ..."

"Don't. Don't you dare think you can change anything by coming here and saying anything to me."

"I am so sorry. I love you. Tell me what I can do to make this right?"

"You can't. You never can."

"You don't mean that."

"Yeah. I do. Listen, you proved you don't love me, or trust me or even think I am a good person."

"That isn't true."

"I don't blame you. Knowing what you know about me, of course it's natural for you to think I'm capable of lying, cheating and abusing your confidences. But the truth is, I was innocent but that didn't matter one bit until your buddy Nate told you the truth. I don't want you in my life. What you did to me was wrong. And it proves you ..."

"It only proves I can make a mistake. Like anyone. Like you ..."

"Oh. That's rich. Thanks so much, Bud, for reminding me of how many mistakes I've made in my life and how I once felt safe to admit them to you. What an idiot I was. So, yeah, I've made mistakes. And I have paid for them. Dearly."

He stops. Crooks he head to the side. Studies me. Points a finger at me.  His voice has changed, just like that, from sweetness to aggression. "Is that what it is? You suffered so now I have to suffer the same way?"

I blink and shake my head. "No. That isn't what ..."

"No? Then what is it?"

"It's just how it is. A man hurts you once, like this ... big like this, I mean ... and that's it. You only get one shot at proving you didn't love me. I won't let myself be used."

He takes in a deep breath. Turns around. Walks away to where he's standing in front of the bookshelf. He just stands there for maybe a second before he turns around slowly and walks back toward me. Like he's got this new idea in his head now.

"I see how it is. Yeah. I should have seen it before," he says.

"See what?" I say, on the alert, ready to run.

"Your pattern with men. Yeah, you're right. This was never gonna work."

"What pattern?" I feel my chin rise. I try hard to keep the feeling of panic at bay. I cling to the anger and try to use it to shove the panic down, down, down.

"You fall in love with a man. You put him up on a pedestal. It's great. So great. Perfect. Until he makes a mistake. Until he falls off that pedestal. Until he's human and makes a mistake. A bad one, yeah. But it's still a mistake and that's all it takes."

My face feels like it's going to fall off as I stand there and absorb the angry look in his eyes, the cold way he speaks to me. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Have you ever forgiven a man when he messes up, when he hurts you? Ever? Damn. You can have the hardest heart to stop loving a man so completely, so fast, one mistake. A man will never be able to be good enough for you, Annie, because men make mistakes. Even men who love you so much they will never stop."

It's a verbal slug ... a punch in my ego's gut ... a knife slash to my fragile self-confidence.

He sees the impact.

But it does not stop him. And I don't blame him for advancing to give the mortal blow.

"Terry made a mistake. Remember? And it never occurred to you to confront him and let him ask for you to forgive him. Instead, you just rushed off and retaliated, diving down until it was too late."

"That is so unfair ..."

"Yeah? Isn't that what's happening here? I made a mistake. I did something bad to you. But it never occurred to you to tell me anything, to yell at me, to fight it out. No, not you, Annie. You just left and here I find you, tonight, about to fuck some kid who doesn't give a shit about you. When I'm right here, a man you know loves you but you won't forgive me. You won't even consider forgiving me, that's the sad part."

"You don't love me and you can't stand that I know that."

"Bullshit."

We stand there, glaring at each other. I know he's waiting on me ... waiting for me to say something, do something, be someone else than the stupid bitch I always have been. The one who's always fucked up with men she loves. Who never gets it right. Who never deserved him but never deserved to be treated like he did to me when I didn't do what he thought I did. My head is pounding. I cannot move and I cannot talk and I will not cry because I will not humble myself that way before him.

"Fine," he whispers in that soft voice that I can still hear sometimes in my head when I am crying in the shower and wishing my life would not be this way. "Fine. Have it your way. Keep your pride. Keep pretending you're someone worth loving."

My breath leaves me. And then he's gone. Moving through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

And I'm here. Sinking to my knees and knowing he's more right about me than anyone has ever been.

And I never saw this side of myself before. I never knew this about me. And it's too late now because he's seen it and he'll never forget.

I don't know how many minutes pass by. But the next thought I can own is stark and simple: I'm never going to ever let myself love another man ever again. I will never expose myself. That's two good men I've loved in a row and I've fucked it up with both. That's it for me.

August 1
BUD

For days, I am haunted by the memory of her face. White. Shocked. Destroyed by my words. 

I work insane hours, a lot of them on my own, just cruising like I'm a hell-bent undercover cop trying to bust enough creeps on the streets ... as if I can single-handedly stop the crime going on in my Central City district.

But through it all, I know that what I said to her was said in anger and I could not have hurt her more than if I'd punched her around. I wanted to hurt her. In that moment, I just did. I am just as bad as my old man. She had me believing there for a while that I was not like him. But she was wrong about me, blinded by love.

So she wasn't gonna forgive me right away? Did I really think she would? Would any woman? But knowing her past ... why didn't I use it to maneuver her rather than use it to batter her?

On the other hand, her damned pride and that rigid way she was holding herself ... no way will she ever bend. Even a bit. Not even so we can try again. And I ain't gonna beg.

We are a pair, aren't we? Looks like we're fucked.

Now we have to get over each other. Sometimes you just can't take back what's happened or what's been said.

Nate and I have now drifted into a routine. We work nights together. I work afternoons and evenings by myself, not sleeping near enough, not caring about anything but turning up the heat and turning up leads that Nate and I will work at night.

He watches my back. He diverts the Captain whenever word leaks back to the district that I may be going rogue cop on them. Nate tells him we got leads and we are just putting in extra effort.

I never drive anywhere near the bar anymore. It's an open wound. I have bled enough.

This evening, I am cruising near a former playground that is now just a weed infestation. Grass and weeds so high a kid would get lost trying to find his way to the swing set. Why are the playgrounds no longer a place for kids and laughter? You let things like this happen, and the city is no longer a place for little kids. It just becomes a place where older kids kill each other and think that makes them men.

I look at my watch. I have 45 minutes until I have to pick up Nate and report for duty. I call him on the cell and say I'm bored and coming over early. There is no one around, no one for me to stop, no one for me to worry over.

In the parking lot of Nate's new condo building in the Warehouse district near the river, I stand in the heat and sweat as I wait on him. I am standing next to my car, having gotten out to stretch out the kinks from all the riding around I did today.

The radio traffic is a dull monotone coming from inside my car. I let my head drop and watch as my sweat drips down, falling on the blacktop, sizzling when it hits the charcoal-gray surface.

And this is when I hear the monotone on the radio change its beat. My ears perk up. My head lifts. I am listening intently now.

Multiple gunshots. Officers dispatched. Amelia Street. I know the block. It's still largely deserted post-K. It's in Central City. I drove past it maybe three hours ago.

Person calling it in says there are three bodies. On the street. In front of a house. I grab for my cell and call Nate, telling him to get his ass down here. When he's here, I peel out and he puts out the blue light and we race the ten minutes it takes us to speed over there with our siren going and our light flashing so people get the fuck out of our way.

We get to the scene just after the day shift responding detectives. Three civilians dead at the scene, one of them tells us. A fourth dead about a half block away, around the corner, inside a convenience store where he ran, apparently seeking shelter only to collapse and die before an ambulance could even be called.

God damn, I think to myself. I was just by here.

Nate mutters darkly. I tell him I had cruised this very block not four hours ago, that I cannot believe this would go down on a stretch I had just visited. He asks me if I really thought I was gonna stop any other killings just because I was driving by on these streets more often than I used to.

Yeah.

I think I did.

Maybe I really thought I was making a difference.

But I'm not.

Maybe I never did.

What I do, it's not enough. If I was smarter, maybe I'd know something smarter to do that just be a presence on these mean streets. The brute force, old-fashioned cop-on-the-beat tactics that I thought seemed ideal for the Wild West atmosphere post-Katrina may not, after all the effort, be doing a jack shit bit of good in the end. Not if four more have just been shot down because of drug turf wars, which is, we find out right away, what this was about.

We never do make roll call. Captain says for us to stay at the scene, help on this case. Media's crawling all over the area within maybe 15 minutes of its first broadcast. I still think they should pass a law where it's illegal to scan law enforcement frequencies. Fucking scanners ... you just know the media's listening.

That case, the one with five killed by our friend Anthony, I know the media descended on the scene but I don't remember noticing it that much that night when we first rolled on that case. I only really have a strong memory of it because Ann told me about seeing the first reports, about the way the reporters in the bar swarmed out to cover it. About how she felt when she realized it was my district. About how she worried over me. Over this city.

So tonight, I am hyper-aware of their presence. Of the cameras. The notebooks. The Captain wanting facts that they can release to the press, answer some of their questions. Just before I walk into the store where the fourth guy died, I pause to look down the road. To where yellow tape and uniformed patrol are keeping spectators out. Cameras with their bright lights glare down toward me, right into my eyes.

I wonder if she's watching tonight. If she's worried over me. But inside me, I know she's already written me off and I don't blame her even if it angers me.

We interview the seven people who'd been inside the story when the dead guy ran in. The guy who owns the store and one of the customers know the dead guy. He was 17 years old. Two of the other dead guys are his brothers. One is 16 and the other is 14. The fourth guy is 39. We have already learned he is a friend. They were all sitting on his stoop. The boys, the brothers, lived across the street in a gutted-out old shotgun house. They were on their own ... their mom is still in Houston, where they were evacuated after the storm.

It's obvious the boys were not back here rebuilding the family home. Nate says, let's take bets on why they were here, on their own. The patron who knows the dead guy says the brothers were here making their money. But he clamped down when I wanted to know how they were making it.

Until we took him outside, made him follow the trail of blood drops. To stand there, looking at the pools of blood, the shrouded bodies.

They weren't after the brothers, he finally says to us when we just stand there behind him, not letting him turn away from the blood, the death, the mess. He says they were after the friend, the older guy. Who is they, Nate says. This was their turf now and the old guy shouldn't have come home from Atlanta, says the witness who has now become our informant.

He gives up the names. They are cousins. They were in Houston after the evacuation. They made new drug supply connections. They were sent back and told to hold this area as theirs. The witness says they were walking down the street, the two cousins. They walked past the group of four sitting on the stoop, jiving. They stopped, turned back, opened fire. The three boys, the brothers, they were in the wrong place with the wrong guy and the wrong time. This is why they died.

It is such a waste.

When I leave the scene with Nate, everything is on remote control. I am angry but even the anger feels contrived, a front for something I cannot identify at first.

It is only later, as I take a shower in the locker room and listen to the subdued voices of fellow officers in a room that used to ring with joking and crude remarks after shift. I let water flow over me. I scrub my skin until it hurts. I cannot make myself feel clean.

I cannot make myself feel hope.

Not for me, not for this city.

It is the worst night for me. And I am alone to face the truth that being abandoned has knocked me to my knees. When I close my eyes in the shower, I see my old man. Walking away from me after killing my mother. Leaving me powerless and ashamed, bound to that radiator. Helpless. Alone. Filled with equal parts rage and sorrow.

ANN

He is sitting on the stoop. For this heart-lurching, hopeful moment, I blank out and think ... that he's waiting on me. That he knows I was coming. That he wants to see me. Expects to see me. Needs me.

My feet slow just when I got within a house of him. He looks up ... right in my direction ... and as he does, I read him. I am just a set of footsteps in the darkness of that early morning. I am just someone wandering down this street, heading toward Bourbon. He has figured that whoever it is nearing him, it's no one. No one important. A stranger to him.

I am not me. I am an intrusion on his thoughts. On his wish to be alone.

He not only isn't expecting me ... he isn't too thrilled to see me.

His mouth kind of curls. Like he just witnessed something unpleasant, stinky, sticky.

And then he lifts a bottle to his lips. Amber liquid inside it sloshes as he drinks. It's bourbon; I recognize the bottle's shape. It is about half empty. His eyes stay on me for just long enough that I feel dismissed when he snaps them away and looks up toward the streetlamp as he lowers the bottle.

Now I am before him. He is sitting on the side portion of the cement stoop that is the entryway to the apartment we once shared. One foot is on the bottom step. Another is on the second step. He is leaning back against the building's stucco wall. He is not looking at me.

We are in silence with each other. I study him. He is now hard to discern, even in the harsh yellow glare of the lamp.

"I heard about the murders," I finally say, because I can be so direct sometimes when I can think of nothing as a lead in.

He grunts, sips his bourbon again. Wipes his mouth. Looks down at me like I am a bug he is about to squish. "You got a nose for news, dontcha, Annie?"

I look down at my feet. I am wearing heels. I don't even remember anymore why I put them on tonight. I do remember the feel of slipping them on. The way wearing them can make me remember dressing up in my mom's old high heels when I was so little that they were like boats on me. It always can shock me to realize I am an adult now and can fill out those heels with real aplomb. And how hearing them clack on pavement or linoleum can make me feel aware of myself, aware of my femaleness, aware that men may be looking at me. Bud likes the way I walk, I think to myself. He has told me that before. How he likes to watch me walk.

How did this happen? That I am standing here before him, feeling his hatred of me? I never thought that would happen to us. Not me and Bud. I should turn and walk away, I know I should. The last thing he needs, obviously, is me here to annoy him after what I know has been such an awful night for him at work. But something perverse inside me refuses to let it be that easy in the end for us. And besides, I cannot believe that I cannot believe we are over and that I still care about him like I do and that nothing will ever come of that.

"Is this ever going to end?" I ask him. "All this killing, I mean? I keep thinking, why is this happening? Didn't we lose enough of us in that damned flooding? How could we be killing each other like that storm never happened?"

"People don't change, sweetheart. Killers before the storm ... killers after. No storm's gonna stop it."

"But it should. Shouldn't it? It is so frightening to me to see this going on ... to see this happening now ... it feels like no one is safe. Shouldn't we realize how precious life is?"

"What world are you living in?" he says. His voice is cruel. Snide. Mean.

I take a step back. It was so insane to come here. He is angrier than I even could have imagined. So angry. At me. At this city. At the murders that he cannot stop. At his life that seems to be reverting to form, I suppose.

"I just ... I came by to ... to ..."

"To what? Spit it out, honey. I don't have all day. I was just on my way out."

"Oh. Well ... I didn't mean to intrude," and I mean this when I say it but when I hear it come out of my mouth, I worry instantly that he will think I am being sarcastic. "I'll just go then."

I am only a step away when he barks out at me, "Hey, you got some kind of strange logic, you know that?"

Turning to look at him, I hesitate. And then stop. "I just wanted to see if you were ..."

"Strange logic. Yeah." He stands. Steps down to the pavement. Stands there for a second. Glances my way. His chin is up. "You come here, saying how scared you are about the crime ... all the killings going on, they scare you. Yet you're out here, walking around by yourself, this time of morning? That makes no sense. You see how strange that is? Why would you put yourself in danger if you're already afraid?"

My mouth opens to answer him ... and that is when I think, he's right. This is really insane. I look back up the street. It is still and dark even in the approaching morning. No one is anywhere around but me and him. There is distant noise, blocks away, the opposite direction in which I will walk to return to the bar. The noise is Bourbon Street. Revelry there, even this time of night. But this more residential area is deserted.

Jesus. My mouth is dry now. I have to walk home ... and thank you so very much, Bud White, for scaring the bejesus out of me right now when I am getting ready to walk back through a suddenly much more ominous Quarter. He must read the sudden anger I have over my own vulnerability and stupidity.

"You want me to walk you?" he says. If he'd said it softly, I would have melted. But he's said it with a sneer in his voice, making fun of my weakness, my fear.

"I'll be fine. And you have somewhere you were going."

"Why did you come here?"

It is a challenge. I hear it in his voice. I back away, getting set to turn and go. "It wasn't important."

"Why did you come here?" he says, and now he is turned to face me, full on, his body leaning in my general direction, as if he's about to walk my way. He points a finger at me, jabs the air between us. "What the fuck did you want? Cuz I know you wanted something, Annie, or you'd never have come over here."

"I wanted to see if you were okay."

"I'm fine."

I turn to go. I hear him mutter something. I hear him start walking. Toward Bourbon. I turn and watch him take a few steps.

"I came because I was worried about you, Bud."

He stops. Glances at me over his shoulder for a long, searing moment. Then turns and takes another step.

But now he has my blood pumping. I call out to him, louder, insistent that he hear me. That he knows what he's walking away from. "And because when I heard about those murders, I wondered why I wasn't the one person waiting up to hold you when you came home. And I wondered what you'd do now ... without me to hold you."

He stops again. In mid stride. As if he's hit a wall. He doesn't turn this time. He just stops.

"Haven't we learned anything from this storm, Bud? Haven't we learned a thing about life? I'm just so tired."

His head sags. His shoulders slump.

My heart is beating like I've run a marathon. Every emotion comes pouring out and it's only because he's stopped and he's listening.

"Bud, this is not what I want. I want to be the one person in all the world who holds you. Why can't that happen? I don't understand either of us, how this has happened and how we have let it matter more than being together ... and then these murders ... and I don't understand any of this. I am so in love with you, Bud White. Why isn't that enough?"

I am crying now. I taste salt drops that skim my lips and travel inside, swept up on my tongue.

This is when he turns, walks back, hesitates and finally stops at the stoop that used to be the steps we both took to the place we both lived in. He shoves his hands in his pockets. Stands there. Awkward. Just staring in the direction of my ankles.

Finally, he says, softly, firmly, "I am not the kind of man a woman stays with. Woman like you, Annie, you deserve better."

"That's such bullshit. If you don't love me anymore, just say it, Bud. Don't give me bullshit about who you are ... about what kind of man you are ... because you are the best ... Bud ... I love you. I may wish you trusted me and that you still loved me, but you were the best man I ever have known. And I have done many stupid things in my life but not learning from this storm what's really important is the worst thing ever. And I know that you and I being together is what's important to me ... it's the only thing really important to me. But I don't know what to do about it and I feel like such an idiot to not know."

I am wiping tears away from my cheeks, using both hands, embarrassed and angry at myself for crying like this in front of him. I had this all pictured different. I thought I'd maybe find him lost and alone ... that he'd let me hold him and maybe it would help him on this night to know he was always loved even if he didn't think much of me anymore. I guess I was a fool.

"When I got here, after my shift, I couldn't face going up there." He is talking and I am not sure he's talking to me. But I step toward him as I take in a shaky breath. Just grateful to hear his voice and not hear anger. "I been sitting here, drinking. Getting up the courage ... to either go up there to the apartment and not find you ... or to go out and find someone who'll make it possible for me to pretend I didn't need you tonight."

I look toward the stoop for some reason. Maybe it's the way he won't meet my eyes anymore. So he's been sitting there drinking. Unwilling to go to where once upon a time not that many weeks ago, I would have been waiting and I would have held him tonight and I would have let him take from me all that he needed. And it would have been all I wanted, to feel that needed and that vital to him.

"I'm here now," I say, whispering it, knowing he can hear me because I have walked a few steps closer now. "If you need me tonight ... I'm here ... even if it's only now and even if ..."

But then he raises his head and looks right in my eyes. And I stop flat in my tracks ... and whatever words I was going to say, whatever bargain I thought I was making with him ... it all disappears.

Oh. Bud. To be yours again ... how did it all go away?

For far too long, we stand there ... him spearing me with his eyes and me caught in their power, unable to move and unsure what I'm going to do because I am going to feel worse in a few hours when I have to walk away again when this all turns out to be one man's desperate need for comfort from any port in the storm.

I don't even see him move until he is walking right up to me without any hesitation in his stride ... he puts his arms around me as if he knows without question that I will put mine around him in response.

And that when he kisses me, tender and sweet, right on the lips ... that I will kiss him back. And that when he slides away from the kiss, hugging me into his body ... that I will hug him back. That I will cling to him when he clings to me.

"I do need you ... tonight ..." he whispers against my ear and I shiver and I feel tears spring fully formed into my eyes. "And I need you forever."

My breath catches. I grit my teeth. I clutch my eyes closed so hard that I see stars behind my lids. I am holding onto him now to keep from falling to my knees.

"I don't know how to go on without you," I say and don't know I've said it until it is out there in the air that is suddenly moist with anticipation.

This time, when he kisses me, my eyes are closed but my body feels open and anxious. It is an edgy kiss, full of uncertainty that we both must hate ... and longing we need to feel ... and a desire to be more sure of each other than we can be right now.

I don't feel like soaring so much as I feel grounded. 

This is when he pulls me up his body, urgent suddenly ... and lifts me into a bear hug and my legs go around his waist and we are kissing now as if being desperate is a good thing to feel swell inside us. I hold on and feel so good. And light. A light woman in heavy air. Being carried up cement steps, held by a man who barges into the door, shoves it with his shoulder, mutters some unintelligible curse as the door gives and then he can plow through it, and stalk heavily up the stairs, knocking into the side of the stairwell after about five steps up and just leaning me into the wall so he can put his face into the crook of my neck and grind his body against me for a moment before starting back up.

I would say to him that he could put me down, that I am a burden, that I can walk rather than him having to struggle against his impatience to dive into me as he carries me now down the hall to the door to the apartment that I once shared with him and where I will hold him tonight ... and who knows where I'll hold him in the future but I do think I will be holding him when the future gets going again.

But I can't tell him that ... because I like him doing this. I like it a lot. I like just being held and carried. Later, I know, I will hold on to him and I will be the one person in this whole entire world that he needs.

Anything else, as we say down here, is lagniappe.

At the door, he puts me down. He stops in mid movement as he's just about to put the key in the lock. He looks in my eyes, cups my cheek in his hand. I mirror his actions.

This won't be easy. But I refuse to throw this away. What we are together is more important than anything else. It's not perfect but then Bud and I have never been perfect, either. We have to work at it. But neither of us have ever been afraid of hard work.

After all we've endured this last year only because we had each other, what a waste it would be if we couldn't make our love work now that we are entering the future. I see in his eyes, he knows this, too. It's why I take the key from his hand and unlock the door...