The Map of Moments Read Free

vulnerability, or the libertine air of sexual and epicurean excess and music that fueled the tourist trade, while sixty percent of the city remained illiterate, and thousands lived in shotgun houses slapped together like papier-mâché? New Orleans had two faces: one of them a stew of cultures and languages, poverty and success, corruption and hope; the other, the mask it showed the world.
    How could he have been fool enough not to see that Gabrielle also wore a mask?
    Max had asked himself that question far too many times while back in Boston. He ought to have been settling in, enjoying the preparations for his new job, and trying to move on. At his sister's Fourth of July barbecue, he should have listened when she'd told him her single neighbor, Jill, had taken an interest in him. But he'd been too lost in that question to pay attention, beating himself up, wondering how he had fallen in love so fast and hard. Wondering how long it would be before it stopped hurting.
    And then August had come, and with it, hurricane season.
    Watching the television reports as Katrina moved into the Gulf of Mexico, he'd wondered why no one seemed as terrified as they should have been. Weren't they watching the same reports down in Louisiana? Couldn't they see the monster about to make landfall? But even as those questions rose in his mind, he understood. Some of the people in New Orleans would put their faith in God, others in luck, and others would simply chalk it up to fate. If the storm was meant to take them, it would. And some would just be stubborn; until someone called for a mandatory evacuation, they weren't going anywhere. And maybe not even then. Someone would have to round them up to get them out of there.
    For too many, no one ever came.
    Max had sat in his little faculty apartment on the Tufts campus and watched the anguished aftermath of the storm.
    He had little faith in the spiritual, but Max had felt a soul-deep certainty, in those initial few days, that Gabrielle had not survived Hurricane Katrina. Days turned to weeks, shock turned to numbness, and numbness to mourning.Hurricane Rita arrived at the end of September, flooding parts of the city all over again. Chaos had still not released its hold on the Gulf Coast, and it seemed order might never be restored.
    On the 18th of October, just over seven weeks after Katrina, Max's phone rang. Without even realizing it, he had gotten into the habit of holding his breath when he glanced at the caller ID window. That night, the readout had said
unknown caller,
but what struck him was the area code: 504. Louisiana.
    Max had picked up the phone. He'd hated himself for the hope in his voice when he said, “Hello?”
    “It's Corinne Doucette.”
    And he'd known. “She's dead, isn't she?”
    For a moment, the line went silent. Then, just as he'd begun to think they'd been disconnected, Corinne spoke again.
    “I told her to get out of there, but she wouldn't go. Said she couldn't leave, that it was the only place she'd be safe. They were saying all the neighborhoods in the bowl could be flooded, but she just went up into that damn attic and wouldn't come down. I told her she was crazy, Max, but you know Gaby. No talking to that girl.”
    Corinne's voice had broken then.
    “The water got that high?” he'd asked.
    “High enough.”
    Max had listened to Corinne as she told him about evacuating to Houston, and how she'd called and tried to get the police or someone,
anyone,
to go by and check the house on Landry Street. Most of her family had left New Orleans,and of those who planned to return, none of them wanted anything to do with Gabrielle, dead or alive. Except for Corinne, her family had written her off years before.
    In late September, Corinne had reluctantly returned to New Orleans. And so she'd had to identify the body.
    At last, when Max had heard enough, he'd finally spoken up.
    “Why did you call me?”
    It had brought her up short. “What?”
    “After what happened. Why