The Chaos of Angels

Abstract

First, there was the 2 a.m. heartbeat. The sound of relentless waves kept me from sleep, so I left my bed for the comfort of the heated outdoor pool and the sounds of my own breathing. In New Orleans, during February, delicate lukewarm rain falls. Fog exists. The night sky, neon and purple-red fire, compete for the senses. In the central courtyard of the old world hotel, green French shutters hang on eighteenth-century windows. A black woman peered from behind a shuttered window. She stares at me floating alone in the heated outdoor pool. The gilded black figure threw a red swatch of cloth tied with chicken feathers out the window. The cloth flew away. I continued in silence, pretending to ignore the tease. Intrigued only by steaming water. Intimate only with my own nakedness. Again, there was a summons. A moment of red. A moment of deafness and a crowless rooster flew from the arms of the black woman. She is craving attention. She will get it. Enough is enough. Onto the courtyard with much ado, marched green-footed doormen, with bluetattooed mouths. Heartbeat for heartbeat, two-by-two they are turtles in disguise. Ancient ones, out of the mud of the Mississippi River, they stand ready and watching over me. They are to remind her that the conquering hordes only thought the Choctaw camps were abandoned and that the dogs were mute and the stains on their hands, red-colored and blue, were sweet-scent. After all, I whispered aloud, have you ever seen what a turtle does to the reckless fowl who lands in its water space? Soon the black woman departs, laughing. The joke was on her.