attention, because she squirmed slightly and tucked in a little tighter.
She waved, looking lapsed and uncomfortable. Out of her element. She’d been waiting for quite some time.
St. Aloysius was a decrepit thing, had been even before Katrina, and was slated for demolition some ten years prior, but any structure that survived the Big K was suddenly a treasure. Even brutalist grammar schools from the seventies were subject to the preservationist urge.
I approached our girlfriend. Pebbles tried to smile but it came out crooked and strained. “They’re already loading in,” she said, nodding to a side entrance where a pair of ugly metal doors were propped open with a cinder block. I extended my hand and she took it, unfolding to her feet.
She flashed a quick smile at Val and looked away. Still stinging from last night.
Val stepped forward and patted her on the back. It was a weird thing for him to do, but she stood still for it, all the time staring hard at the church doors so as not to frighten him off. Like he was an autistic child. Or a deer.
I asked her, “What sort of crowd?”
“Scary. I think.”
As if to validate her impression, a trio of elderly women in tennis outfits strolled by. Two of them held hands, and they’d all bought their platinum wigs from the same cheap supplier. Sisters. Together forever. Next came a gentleman who appeared as if he’d stepped out of a cartoon OTB parlor. His checkered polyester suit was festooned with fabric pills, and he reeked of cigars. My enthusiasm plummeted. I was on the verge of suggesting we skip the event when an ivory town car took a reckless, squealing turn onto the street, rushed towards the front of St. Aloysius and lurched to a stop in front of its startled parishioners.
The vehicle was spotless with tinted windows and fresh new tires. When the driver emerged, he showed himself to be a caricature with blonde hair and golden skin under a black cap, sunglasses, jodhpurs, and boots. He flashed a grin for no one and everyone before taking a little nazi skip backwards to open the rear door for his passenger.
“Mirella?” said Val. “Now I’m impressed.”
Mirella emerged in her Sunday best, a knee length, lime green leather dress tailored so precisely it looked as if she’d simply hollowed out another woman and buttoned the husk up over her own. It was a threatening garment with a narrow collar and hem that cut into Mirella’s perfectly maintained skin. Mirella was one of those one-name-only individuals whose ethnicity was elusive; today she wore her thick black hair piled up on top of her head with a pretty Chinese stick run through it. Her eye shadow was the same shade of lime as her dress, but her heels were basic black, no less than six inches. Like weapons.
The most successful stripper-entertainer in New Orleans, Mirella was possibly sixty to eighty years old. Mirella might also have been a man. If not presently, then some time in the past. It didn’t seem to matter. She held our attention regardless, occupying a realm beyond sex; she was a creature of the fourth dimension, with better practices and more interesting options than any of us fools could imagine. Her driver man cupped her elbow to guide her to the church. The crowd made way, and she smiled like the queen she was. She and the driver ducked through the propped open metal doors, and I no longer had any doubts.
“Let’s get a decent seat,” I said.
Pebbles asked, “They just gonna leave that car in the street?”
“No one’s going to touch it.”
Within, rows of folding chairs were filling fast. This was a banquet room and not the church proper, windowless and dim, save for the furthermost row of ceiling lights illuminating a podium on a slim talent-show style stage. I could not imagine Queen Mirella resting her perfection on cold, gray metal, and indeed she was nowhere to be seen amongst the unwashed. Rather, she was arranged atop a stool set off to the side from the rest of us, where she was quite fortunately backlit by an emergency exit sign. Somehow she managed to draw the light forward like a stole around her shoulders. Her man stood behind her, all but invisible.
Mirella posed her long dark legs at an alluring angle, one knee a little higher than the other and both legs pressed close to each other in a hungry kiss, almost entwining at the ankles but not quite. All she needed now was a microphone and a sax player.
Oh, and one more detail. She smiled down at the rest of us like the God-damned Mona Lisa. I remembered something that I’d heard back when Death Wishing still lent itself to giddy gossip: that Mirella intended to OD and wish the sky orange. And now to be this close to her? The hairs rose up on my neck.
Val led us to seats at the front, but close to the exits. Eventually there were fifty of us in that stifling, dark room, most being unrepentant “characters” from the mid-low end of the economy. Not a normal workaday soul in the group. Of course since Katrina, everyone looked a little rough, a little raped, and even new-bought clothes tended to hang from the shoulders like government issue from an island nation you never heard of.
Enter Rollie, my queen-like weight loss leader. That is, before she got caught up in the Wish Local movement. Rollie was in her sixties, had kept her weight off for twenty four years. She was no nonsense, almost militaristic, and I missed her like hell. I’m sure her social views were gruesome, but her courage and knowledge of exotic fruit were impressive. She strolled in from a moldy antechamber wearing a sculpted periwinkle linen skirt suit, white stockings, and periwinkle flats dyed the exact shade of her outfit. I think there was even a slight periwinkle tint to her short white hair. I wouldn’t put it past her.
So Rollie in her breathtaking, ready-for-heaven ensemble, and Mirella in her assertive lime leather. The rest of us? Filthy monkeys.
And Rollie wore that same smile, Mirella’s smile. The women nodded to one another, and we all held our breath in the presence of such supreme collusion. Val’s appreciation was cool, but Pebbles gazed like a child in awe. She wanted to be one or both of these women when she grew up.
Rollie took the podium. No notes. No amplifying device, no power point set up. Someone closed the door and we were sealed in.
“Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, my family.”
Val made a face.
“We’ve gathered today to acknowledge the truth.”
“Amen,” called a voice from the shadows.
To which Rollie cautioned, “I do appreciate we’re in a church, but let’s not allow mystery and faith to confuse our mission. We have work to do.” Her remark provoked some uncomfortable shifting, and we looked to Mirella the way one might peer into a flight attendant’s face during turbulence. Mirella was solid, unmoved, eyes forward.
Rollie said, “You all know about the houses on Tennessee Street, right?”
And how could we not? Tennessee Street ran through one of those tragic Ninth Ward neighborhoods virtually erased by Katrina. Think of that famous photo of the two hundred foot barge squashing a school bus—that neighborhood. Used to be a street full of kids, old women and gangsta rap. Then for a while it was just wreckage, feral cats, and crickets. Have you ever seen a city street that was utterly dark at night, and silent? Because there is no electricity and there are no people? Of course you haven’t. No one ever had, until the storm.
“The Tennessee Street event marks the sixth documented wish to be implemented,” said Rollie. She took a breath. “In Southern Louisiana. The government will issue a report this week that will detail the demographics of enacted wishes, and one of the things that report is gonna say is that a disproportionate amount of wishes come from our area.”
That was newsworthy. We shifted, muttered amongst ourselves like worried hens. The Tennessee Street event occurred after one of the original residents brought in a pre-fab home to set it up on his old land and declared it time for the neighborhood to return. And it did, but not in the way that he expected. While it had taken him more than a year to reclaim and rebuild his home to a livable condition, his great aunt, who had lived on Tennessee since before the great white flight of the sixties, managed to rebuild the rest of the neighborhood