“Seriously. So Addie meets Zack while they’re both bartending in the Quarter. According to people who knew them, she liked to give him a hard time and play the mean girl as her way of flirting, but in all honesty, it was just a test to see what he could handle, to see just how far she could push him. Addie had an ugly side of her own. Her diagnosis included bipolar disorder, and taking the medication to treat her mental illness irregularly caused horrible, uncontrolled outbursts. Many of their friends remember their outrageous fights, saying they had a tumultuous relationship from the start, which was fueled by drugs and alcohol,” I continue, taking a sip of my coffee.
“Fast forward a couple weeks, they were together a while before Katrina started making its appearance in the Atlantic. Zack had every intention of evacuating the city and holing up with Lana and their kids so he could get out of the storm. The thing about hurricanes is you can see them coming days and days ahead of time; you just can’t tell how terrible and where exactly it’s going to make land once it’s here. But it was forecasted to be so disastrous that Lana even welcomed Addie to evacuate with them.”
“Wow. That was… pretty fucking nice of her. You don’t really hear about an ex-wife offering such a thing to the new woman,” Curtis inserts, and I nod.
“Not too often. But Addie, being Addie, refused the offer. Her independence and need for a life all her own with Zack far exceeded any need she had to leave the city. On his way out of town, Zack went to check on Addie, and he ended up not being able to leave her, so they decided to weather the storm together in her apartment. The category five hurricane hit our city dead-on, leaving catastrophic flooding and nearly two thousand fatalities in its wake,” I explain, shaking my head.
“You didn’t stay behind, did you?” he asks, and I look up to meet his serious expression.
“Hell no. It was 2005 and we were fresh out of high school. Emmy and I hightailed our asses to Houston,” I reply, seeing his look of relief.
But then he winces when he asks, “Was there a lot of damage to your home when you got back?”
“Miraculously, no. The majority of the French Quarter was unscathed, just fallen tree limbs, broken signage, and scattered debris. But back to Zack and Addie—they gathered the few people who waited out the storm, and they all made dinners together over campfires, drank booze, and stayed up late singing songs. Some of the survivors mentioned looking up and being fascinated by all the stars they couldn’t see before because of the streetlights and brightness of the city. But our star-crossed lovers were so swept up in the romance of it all that they were completely oblivious to the chaos just blocks away at the Superdome and surrounding areas. They fell deeply in love and made a life for themselves in the weeks following the destruction in the empty French Quarter. They were inseparable from that point forward, made a name for themselves as they served alcohol and meals to their fellow survivors, and were even photographed for national magazines and newspapers, interviewed for their choice to stay in the city instead of joining the mandatory evacuation. They felt like King and Queen of the Quarter during those blissful weeks,” I tell him.
“I mean, I can see that. It sounds like some kind of apocalypse romance movie or something. I can’t believe this actually happened, and right here! Not like, in some other country. Right. Fucking. Here.” He gestures out with his arm, and I can’t help but look out across the street to Jefferson Square, the cathedral glowing beautifully behind the tall hedges and iron fence.
I nod. “Hell of a backdrop, huh?”
He gives a sad smile as he looks toward the Square as well, wiping his hands on his thighs and leaning back in his chair. “So what happened when they gave the all-clear for everyone to come back home?”
“Well, when the lights in the city turned back on and the stars disappeared once again, reality set back in and the clean-up began. Zack and Addie were forced back into their old life, a life neither were ready to have to live again. Bills, job schedules, responsibilities—all that replaced the bonfires in the middle of their street that they cooked on, the comradery with their fellow survivors, and all the time in the world to just sing songs and… be. And on top of all that, Addie just wanted Zack. She didn’t want the responsibility of his children and ex-wife. Their time on a deserted island was over, and they dealt with everything as they always had, with vast amounts of alcohol and drugs, their addictions growing exponentially over the months to come.”