the black carpet for scribd

8/9/2019 The Black Carpet for Scribd

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1 THE BLACK CARPET by MOIRA CRONE

Moira Crone

FROM CALLALOO

AFTER KATRINA, A YOUNG MAN THINKS OF HIMSELF AS

LUCKY----

The Black Carpet

When I started venturing out in late September, the

sunsets were wonderful. You could see them much better

now so many trees had come down. The sky was a deep blue

hemisphere overhead, a bright band of orange burned at the

horizon. I carried my laptop on these walks, on the prowl for

a hotspot. Id usually end up on a curb outside the boarded-


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up caf not far from my house. I e-mailed her how things

were getting better. After that I tried answering the notes

from people who we worried about me, things that said

Jake: Heard you stayed. How in hell was that? What

happened with Annie? But the signal didnt always work.

A little later, I found out about the Humvees at the

river, where the Guard guys were blogging friends in Ohio

and Maine. You could cop a perfect connection off the

barges. The way I walked home, things looked pretty normal

except for the mounds of trash, the grafittied, taped,

refrigerators on the curb. I was headed for my house on

Dante Street.

When the air got the slightest fall tinge to it, and the

stink started to fade, I couldnt help but remember the

previous September, when Annie was just moving in with

me, and I was the happiest man alive. Then Id reach my

block, which had no lights, and my house, with the silver x

on the door. North, toward the lake, I couldnt see a thing

it was dark for miles, I knew, so what was the point of going

to look?


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*

I actually came to the conclusion that I loved Annie the

first time I saw her, which was in the Maple Leaf Tavern,

about eleven oclock at night, the week after Thanksgiving in

2002. The Rebirth Brass Band was playing. She was wearing

a white dress-- she was the girl in the room who was

glowing. I went up and talked to her, immediately. She said

she came from North Carolina, a small town near Durham

that was being swallowed by brick-and-pseudo-stucco

houses on patio lots, and she was thinking of coming down

to New Orleans for graduate school in painting. This place

felt real to her. I told her, yes, exactly. I said Id started

out as painter but then Id decided to do graphics. Now I

designed websites, and had lots of clients. I told her I had a

room at the back of my house that poked up far enough to

see over the levee, so high you could watch the boats pass.

It was a rare view, would she like to see it?

Now, Id tried this line beforeexplained to more than a

few tourist girls who came to the Maple Leaf (it had made a

hip guide book) what a camelback was, and how my skinny


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camelback had a second hump. This line had never gotten

me anywhere, and I had almost despaired of it.

But Annie said Yes I would. So I got luckybut it

seemed so natural to me, as if it had already

happened,meeting her, Im talking about.

Two days later, when she went home, the only

explanation I came up was that I was in love, that it was

meant to be. There were facts in the universe, such as how

Annie and I would be together, which pre-existed, and I was

just doing my part, complying. The structure, the template,

was there from the beginningall you had to do was fill in

the form, acquiesce.

Everything happened for a reason.

I felt that way about a lot of things in New Orleans

before the storm. That there was a destiny.

*

August 29th, we were there together the night of, and

eight days after. We had supplies at first --Id thought

ahead--and later, I found ways of getting them. I looted small

places by boat. But it was rough on Annie, I saw that. The


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day after Labor Day, she asked me to take her just as far as

the River Road. A couple she knew sneaked past the

checkpoint to get her. Shed sent them a text message.

I couldnt leave the city. These were the reasons:

There were fires and no firemen, to start. There were guys

breaking in to everything on Oak Street, not that far away. I

had to watch my property. If I left for even a day, there was

always a chance of a lockdown, of losing access back in if I

left. But outside the reasons, not leaving was a visceral

thing. When she decided to go, I told her she should stay

put, somewhere safe, until the all-clear. She said that was

great, that was exactly what she was thinking.

She was shook up, I saw that. She was crying. I wasnt

blind, I wasnt.

*

About a month after that first encounter at the Maple

Leaf, she e-mailed me from North Carolina that she had

decided to come to the University of New Orleans. I sent her

an animated graphic-- essentially, when you move to the

city, will you live with me? She wrote back her parents had


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already put down for the dorm, and they wouldnt get it.

Sure we could date, she said.

So I dated her. I courted her. I found this very easy to

do because I was certain it was meant to be.

It took a while. She took her time, but she moved in

with me eventually-- 2004.

We had been living together twelve months the day

Katrina blew in, and we sat on my third floor porch, the

balcony of my houses second hump, watching gigantic trees

snapping like chicken bones. This was meant to be,too, I

thought, somehow, I wasnt sure how. Later she said that

time was a test, it was a test for us.

*

October I got incredibly busy. In the rooms that took

water, there was mold. I had to tear out the buckled kitchen

floor, pull off the hall sheetrock. I figured out I could live in

the good rooms, run a fan with the little generator. I didnt

have any other workmy clients were gone, of course. And I

needed to get in line, or Id never find any contractors.


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It was five weeks post before both our cell phones

would work. The first time I got her, she said the t.v. news

was terrifying and obsessed, cable and local both, and she

couldnt turn it off. Did I hear everything that had gone on? I

said no; she said I was lucky. She was certain the air was

dangerous. She wanted to know what coffin flies were. She

remembered the smell, the sea-vomit stink. Shed heard it

was getting worse.

I said I was breathing fine. Life without news was

possible, maybe preferable. I asked her to come in soon--

one of our favorite restaurants had opened, to everybodys

surprise. It would be fun, high cuisine on paper plates.

Nobody was using their dishwashers yet. All the places had

signs in the windows from the Health Department, explaining

there was a boil order. It was like the Wild West, a frontier

town. People you hardly knew acted like you were their long

lost best friends. Instead of hello, they said, Howd you

make out? I went to our caf every morning and it felt like

high school homeroom, yakking before the bell, sitting there

with my neighbors exchanging information, telling tall tales.


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People would offer you the shirt off their backs, hand you all

their secrets. Everybody was wide open, some cracked open,

but nobody minded. That was impressive: nobody minded.

*

When Id first moved to this cityit was really by

chance, a buddys suggestion-- I immediately felt that New

Orleans had enough personality that you didnt have to know

too many people. The city would stand in, be your

companion. And I was never a genius in the making-friends

department. The place gave you rituals, it fed you, it sang

to you in its very streets when you were low, it had plenty of

drama if that was what you were looking for. Imagine, a

place to live that came with a full-blown personality. How

common was that? Id never seen it in America.

But once I met Annie, I realized how unfinished my life

was. After she finally moved in, I was happy, enlightened,

was how it felt. I would wake up at dawn and say to myself:

now, now, this day in this place is really a wonderland, and I

will hold Annies hand, we will walk out into it. She will see

it, what a gift to be alive here. We became great discovers, I


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thought. We found cheap places with serious food, little

clubs with funk bands that had no cover, secret trees in

Audubon Park. The last real city. I was looking for the

hidden key of it. She was too, I thought.

*

In the third week of October, Annie did start out on I-10

to come to dinner, but then she called to say the traffic was

scary, and she remembered there was a still a curfew. She

didnt want to get caught as she put it. Besides, she

decided to go to her older sisters in Durham for a while.

She was too stressed by Louisiana. She hadnt said anything

about seeing her sister before. Id just got power, there was

really no reason to stay away now. I told her so. She said

there were reasons. She had a list.

I hooked up with Mr. Hall the same day she called. In

the past, he had come around after every bad thunderstorm

to see if there were slates on the sidewalka sign my

ancient roof needed patching. And then hed offer to get his

people to do the work. But now of course the patches were

of another order--you could see big squares of daylight in the


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attic. If wed had a hard rain, I would have been screwed.

We made arrangements. I felt blessed. Mr. Hall promised

hed be around in the morning, but he did repeat himself a

lot.

I didnt see him again for two weeks. When he showed

then, he told me his story.

August 29th, he had a handsome, paid-up brick house

in the East. When the storm passed, he was on his porch

barbecuing at duskno power. Slidell was in trouble, he

knew that, but he was dry.

Then he looked out, and saw something rippling toward

him. It looked like a huge black carpet, except it was a

couple of blocks wide, and taking up cars, busses, then

whole houses, in its path. He grabbed his wife and hit the

attic, where they sat for four days looking square at their

deaths, he said. His in-laws were on Tennessee Street, and

nobody knew what happened to them. Now his wife was

living above a candy store in New Iberia, claiming she would

never set foot again in Orleans Parish.


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He had a third floor room near Coliseum Square--a

warm bed, new clothes, and more offers for work than hed

had in years, plus the FEMA money. He still couldnt sleep

more than two hours at a stretch. The thing was still rippling

toward him every night. The black carpet.

Later, as Mr. Hall started up the ladder, he got a call on

his cell. They had found his in-laws bodies.

*

I tried to imagine what that was like, to have the lake

rise up and unfurl to take you, pure devouring, pure dark. Or

to be related to so many people who were dead. To lose

that much. I couldnt do it. I tried, but I couldnt. I had been

so lucky. I had lost nothing, really, I thought.

The next time I saw him, Mr. Hall said he had pills from

the doctor. They made him very groggy, but he still couldnt

sleep. Besides the black carpet, the Salvadorans at his

rooming house played their radios all night. I was surprised

Mr. Hall had not brought a crew. Abruptly, in the middle of

our chat, Mr. Hall said he better get started. I stayed at my

kitchen table. Ten minutes, I didnt hear a thing. Then I


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came outside and looked up and saw a fifty-one year old

man, over two hundred and thirty-five pounds, quivering on

the top of an aluminum ladder, his big head in his hands,

bawling. I had to tell him to come down.

Mr. Hall said maybe he needed something more for his

nerves. Also, he was going to have to start dragging his wife

home weekend by weekend. He couldnt do this without her.

I said that was more or less what I was going to do with

Annie, You know Annie, my girlfriend who has been living

here since last August?

You? You have a good house with that second hump,

that turret, just lost a quarter of its roof-- the lake didnt get

a decent lick in this neighborhood, stopped right here, Mr.

Hall said, pressing his hand on my first floor porch rail.

I said, yes, the lake did stop at my porch. I was

fortunate. For a moment I felt, or remembered that feeling,

of being given a day like a garden, wide and full of promise.

How wed walk out for coffee, Id get Annie some with foam.

But Annie was worried about mold, now, I told Mr. Hall. She

had allergies.


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Id buy an air purifier and go get her, Mr. Hall said.

They got big ones at Lowes in Gretna.

That night I told Annie why the roof hadnt been

finished, how I had patched it with plastic. Otherwise the

house was okay. Things had to go slowly, I told her. People

were shook up, I said. Id gutted all the sheet rock that

needed it, and I was going to start putting it back up after

the studs dried. The house was going to be better than ever,

I told her.

She said, You think? She was still in North Carolina.

She didnt say how long she was going to be there. I told her

it wasnt good for her to travel so much. She needed to let

me know when she was coming back. She said, Okay, but

she didnt tell me the answer.

*

A few nights later, I went to the movies by myself in the

recovering suburbs, in a building with a huge clock on it.

When I came out, a man who had once been called the

Crown Prince of Zydeco, was standing in front of Sears in a

tent with his accordion and about half his band. The last time


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I had seen him perform, it was main stage at The House of

Blues.

*

Id taken Annie there when we were dating, to celebrate

the first anniversary. Of our meeting. Of the day I saw her for

the first time. At one point I leaned forward and said, Its

November twenty ninth. She stared back at me, her eyes

widened, and said, November twenty ninth? I had to tell

her. She apologized profusely. It was a small thing, I

thought. She wasnt the sort of girl who always knew the

date. Her head was in the clouds. I had to get her to pay

attention, sometimes, to the facts on the ground. She was a

Libra, she was airy. That night, in fact, was when I got the

idea of giving her the tower my second camelback, for a

studio when she graduated and lost the one she had at the

university. She could paint really well up there, with the view

of the river, with the light.

*

In the parking lot at the party, with the Zydeco music,

there were margaritas in little paper cups for a dollar and six


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pretty girls, all of them in blue jeans, one in a veil. The bride,

Gabrielle from St. Rose, told me her fianc was still in Austin.

The wedding was indefinitely postponed, but her friends

thought theyd go ahead with the bachelorette night. The

whole audience was myself and these girls.

I asked Gabrielle to dance because she looked so

lonely.

Then, about half-way in, I thought about Mr. Hall, Mr.

Halls in-laws, who had drowned in the Ninth Ward in an

attic. Mr. Hall had just buried them. Hed come by to tell me

about it. Then I thought about the Crown Prince Elect of

Zydeco, having to slog through this pitiful gig. Finally, I

looked at Gabrielle, behind her frothy lace, gritting her teeth

through the two-step with a stranger, and something that

usually didnt happen to me, not since I was maybe fifteen--

my chest got very tight. I wasnt sure I could breathe. I

thought I would fall down. I told her I had to quit.

I woke Annie up when I got home. She was back in

Louisiana now, Baton Rouge, with people she knew. The

same ones who had picked her up on River Road a few days


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after the storm. I was surprised to hear this. She was back in

the state, she hadnt told me. She asked me some questions.

I told her things were fine. In fact, they had never really

been that bad. We had come through unscathed, really. I

even had my T-1 line.

She said, You didnt even go look yet, did you?

I been by there, I said. Id passed a few miles from it.

She meant the lake, where the water came in.

*

Id always been partial to the Lakefront. Id thought we

would live there when we were raising a family, because the

yards were bigger and you could put your children in a good

elementary school. I hadnt talked to her about these things

yet, she was seven years younger than I was, after allkids,

schools, a home with a swimming pool. She was still into her

art. When I was really doing well Id get a boat, I thought,

and we would go out on Pontchartrain, and cruise and fish. I

could even see what she would wear--a white dress, and it

would show off her tan. Having children wouldnt change

her. It would make her more beautiful.


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Jacob, you can be a very nice guy, and generous, so

generous, really-- she started. And if we had not gone

through all that--you would never have known what I can

and cant take, and I--

Parsing things out, what was the point. Of course it was

rough, at the first. The whole city had been hell. As far as

the devastation, everybody else had told me about those

places. Out by the lake, the Industrial Canal, the houses

collapsed in the streets. The scum lines across every faade,

the gaping empty windows black around the rims, like the

sockets on skulls. There had been a million pictures. I had

the idea. Well, when can I come get you? I asked. Im

waiting, I said. Wed go look at every ruin, if that was what

she wanted to do You need to be back here.

Is that what you think? she asked. Thats very

romantic

You how I am, I said.

I do? she asked.

For some reason I had the image of her taking a sip to

drink, just then. In our bedroom. She always had water on


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the bedside table, I remembered, her thin fingers whitened

when they pressed against the glass. She had small hands

for a grown person. Very small.

She said friends in Baton Rouge had invited us for

Thanksgiving. They feel sorry for us, she said.

I wanted to know why.

*

It was actually my first road trip out of the storm zone. I

went west, through Metairie and Kenner, all blue roofs and a

few collapsed apartment buildings, but basically functioning.

But the traffic was unbelievable.

I got there late, and came in the kitchen door. Annie

was standing by the sink. I startled her. I had not seen her

since September. I realized, suddenly, how long that was.

Things were so different at home, I had not felt time really

pass while she was gone. But now I was conscious of every

night shed been away, and there was a weight to those

nights, a burden, like a big job to do, hauling all that time

away, so we could be together again. She was thinner and

her hair was different. When I hugged her she was stiff, like


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someone in a cast. She smelled like lemons. I wanted to

know what perfume she was using. I said I had to have her

back, in the house, in the tower, where she could paint. Id

just finished sheet rocking it. It was ready to be her studio. It

was time. She said, There are people here. She gave me

some wine and told me to go into the den. Everybody had

already eaten.

People looked up when I came in. We were just talking

about the deluge, one fellow with in a yellow shirt said. He

expected me to tell stories, was giving me the assignment. I

could tell he had been at a very safe distance. In a way I

resented it, being the one with the harrowing anecdotes. I

realized I hadnt talked to anybody in person for months who

hadnt been through it, who didnt know what it was like.

But they encouraged me, and Annie seemed to want it.

I said lately it seemed like a million years ago Annie

and I were up on the tower porch, and the t.v. first went out,

and then the phones, and at a certain point we realized

everyone we knew was gone. And then the wind, and things

starting to fly. Next, the water rose, we didnt know why.


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The guy on the radio finally explained half the city was

swallowed. After that, the signal died.

Annie jumped in, she said the third night that I cut the

tulle off a vintage dress of hers---her sister had given her

that dress, she loved that dress-- to make a mosquito netting

which I duct-taped to the balcony ceiling so we could sleep

outside. I hardly remembered doing that. She said I started

the law of lying low at six when the guard marched by, so we

wouldnt be found, and dragged away. She said I insisted on

that hush for hours after. She couldnt make a peep, not a

sound.

I said, it was so hot, and so dry, ice was money. And for

whole days, it seemed we were the only two people in the

world. Sometimes I was wildly happyI knew that was crazy.

But it was true, it was true.

She said, Thats it. Not to me.

She remembered thinking that the sound of guns

popping in real life was hollow, not deep like in the movies.

She remembered the abandoned dogs howling, and the

black helicopters clatter. She remembered going with me to


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the pharmacy in a boat to steal her migraine meds and food,

and seeing that man, that dead man draped over the

mailbox.

She was so tough, so brave, I said to these strangers.

That was catatonic, she said.

Her friends laughed, but just for a second.

Because Annes voice came out like a punch. Just why

did you insist? Why did you have to stay? Why did you

make me do it? Hole up there with you in that tower like a

prisoner? Did you know something like this would happen?

You did. I know you did.

She was changedshe was as scared as she was

certain. Or maybe, furious. It might be that was Annie,

furious. I had not seen it. In fact, there was something about

her face that was unfamiliar, confusing. In some sense, I may

have forgotten what she looked like. She wasnt as pretty.

Her jaw had tightened, pushed forward a little. And the way

she said, this, as if the storm were right in the room. As if Id

brought it with me.


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To me, it had happenedthe lake rose up, morphed.

The walls to hold it back gave way. Out of the blue,

causeless, or the cause of it was so far backsome wave of

a wind in Africa, on the other side of the world or some

Army Corps guy in Vicksburg working on the levee design,

had a bad day, a fight with his wife--that it wasnt something

you could name anymore, the cause, I mean.

In fact, Ive come to think since that cause-and-effect,

are over rated. That their relationship, in general, is not at all

what people say it is. Something happens, that is random,

and not at all necessary, and people come up with a hundred

reasons. As if it had to happen. Afterwards. So they can

swear the world makes sense. I used to do this myself, all

the time. I used to proclaim that things were how they were

because they had been designed that way. The reasons were

lined up with the results. That it was all going to fit together

in the end, and being alive was like finding the pattern. But

maybe that isnt the truth of it. That things just happen, and

we go around all our lives stringing them into causes and

effectsbut that is a lie, it has nothing to do with the facts


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on the ground. Which come out of nowhere. I mean, fucking

nowhere. And you can string them together any way you

want, it really doesnt matter. This whole business of being

alive is chance. Pure chance.

But that night, I started to reminisce, describing the fall

of 2005, the one that never happened. In that life, Annie had

just finished her art degree, and was moving her studio out

of the art building at the University, and she and I were

setting up her workspace in my tower. I got most of my

clients taken care of early, and spent the rest of the time

working on the house. In the afternoon, we rode our bikes to

Lake Pontchartrain.

At this point, I realized I wasnt really reminiscing, but I

couldnt stop. You had to keep going, didnt you? You had a

certain course, you had decided to live in a certain place,

and, with that place, you had formed a kind of friendship, no,

a bond, the same as you would do with a person, there was

such a thing as loyalty--

The oyster emporiums at the lakeside marina were

bursting. Annie and I joined the couples huddled on the


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benches looking out at the little waves lapping the steps

beneath us, quietly, as if it could do us no harm. But we

will have that next year, I finished. At that moment, I knew

it was true. I knew it. I also knew I saw her softening. I felt

better--ebullient, even. Everything back the way it was.

Exactly-- I called her darling, I kept going.

I think I said the city was a huge person, I guessed a

woman, but actually bigger than one gender, and it had

been in an awful accident, and now it was on life support.

People all round the edgesin the outer parishes, from all

over the country, the world, were coming in, and helping to

set up the IVs, the feeding tubes, starting the therapies that

would wake it from its coma. Even the Prince of Wales had

come. To give the city a kiss, I think I said. To wake it. I

believed the treatments would work, eventually. Cities were

much longer lived than people, after all, that was the fact of

it. Everybody in the world except for a few senators wanted

New Orleans to come back to life. And the thing was, it

would, of course it would, everything back the way it was.

Starting with Annie coming back with me tonight.


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I thoroughly believed this when it came out of my

mouth. The whole damn speech, every single word.

Especially the part about how inevitable it would be that

everything would right itself again, the city, me and Annie,

etcetera, etcetera.

But then, she looked at her friends, not at me.

She couldnt even look at me.

None of them knew what to say. Nobody in the room

had a word, not even a word of consolation, for me.

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