3:AM Magazine

by Lisa Linquist.

I live in a nameless city. My days are boring. My days consist of walking around, going to work, going to college, walking by the lake, and then I walk home, alone. I have finally moved out on my own. I have returned to the U.S. from Europe, refreshed and confused. One year ago, when I returned, I’d just completed a 3-year stint as a Junior Foreign Service Officer at the American Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. I worked in the Public Diplomacy section, trying to spread American culture to many people who didn’t speak English, a job which my roommate calls, “a b.s. job.” My father worked at the Embassy too, but we rarely saw each other. My roommate’s name is Serkan Smith. Coincidentally, he is a Turkish/British American born International Development graduate student at Tulane University. Just like me, except for the Turkish part.

My name is Brian Jean Batiste. Son of Claude-Jean Batiste, and Emma Norton, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Queens, New York, respectively. Fifth descendant of Antoine du Batiste of Alsace-Lorraine, France, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 18th century, I believe.

The neighbors are not exactly people I can relate to. I walk past them each night as they drink lager and smoke illegal substances on their porches. I usually have to run up to the convenience store in the evenings, and I take my bike so I won’t get mugged. Before I arrive at the store, I stare at the plants that line people’s porches and yards. On my way home, the same mysterious skate boarder always passes me. I recognize the board, but the skate boarder moves so fast I can’t see his or her face.

Sometimes I pass the apartment of the love of my life, Darcy. She goes to Tulane, too. She has left me for another man. Or so I say. We have never actually dated, so my friends say I shouldn’t be mad at her. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met. We met because she was curious about a shirt I was wearing that said “Ankara 2000” on it. She wondered where Ankara was. We started talking. One day, I was falling in love with her and imagining a little future. Two seasons later, I held our memories in my hands, and tried to shake them off.

I keep having this recurring dream: I leave my apartment, and walk down to Darcy’s apartment, which is over a restaurant. I call up to her window, “Bonjour! If I show up at your door, will you kiss my feet, and tell me I’m home?” And then I add, “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” She replies by opening the window; she says something trite, like, “I am with Ray because he has more money than you!” Then she smiles, and lets the silky white curtains fall down over the window, and then she slams the window pane shut.

Laissez les bon temps rouler. It’s what we say in this city, our famous slogan; it’s French for, “Let the good times roll.” It figures that a phrase so cheesy would end up in my dream. But, sometimes I think this is not a dream. After all, Ray does have more money than me. Oh, yeah, at the end of the dream, I always say, “Things must change. They will have to change.” But in my life, things never change. I come home from anywhere. My roommate argues with me about butter. I barely make rent. Our apartment building is rumored to be about to be condemned. And my neighbors are like dogs, always fighting.

Tonight, my roommate decides to go out. He is out of his fifty-pack of diet soda. Before he leaves he says, “You need to stop obsessing about her.” If there’s one thing my roommate has that I don’t, it’s common sense. I haven’t talked about her in two months, and somehow Serkan knows I still haven’t gotten over her. I will never get over her.

I remember when I first moved here. I knew about this city from when I used to visit my aunt and uncle, when my family still lived in Queens. Back when my mother taught at Hunter College, and before my Dad became a diplomat and we started to move to foreign countries. My aunt and uncle lived nearby over in le Red Stick, Baton Rouge, but they’re passed on now. Well, I wanted to experience the big city. New Orleans. O.K., my city does have a name. My sister and her beau came down from New York, to get married here. I was just as new to this city as she was. They had a nice, big wedding over at some rented mansion on St. Charles Avenue.

The wedding was a big, overblown $100,000 extravaganza, consisting of lavish catering and cucumber sandwiches and a cheesy rehearsal dinner on a tourist ferryboat. Both sides of the family partied around town for three days, and after the wedding was over, the young adults toured the local bars. I was the only one who stayed sober, and I watched my sister’s college friends drink too many Hurricanes, and go off with strangers. I noticed how distant I’d become from my sister, ever since she’d gone off to the States to attend Brown University, while I stayed in Ankara, and attended Bilkent University. It was near Halloween. I watched the college students dressed up as fairies, talking to locals dressed up as cavemen.

That night after the wedding, and after we’d partied, I walked back to the Ponchartrain Hotel, where everyone was staying. Along the way, I noticed that Bourbon Street smells like an unfortunate combination of vomit, alcohol and stale air. And its bricked road is filled with strange people wandering lost, drunk, and trying to look cool. I found some purple beads on the ground, on the way home. Everyone told me not to touch them, but I picked them up and wore them on my head, anyway. It was my temporary crown for that year of 2004.

This year, I’m all alone in this strange town, with no family, no parties, no Mardi Gras, and just the realization that if I don’t work, I will end up in one of our city’s many homeless shelters, one of which I volunteer at, on the weekends. I always thought after college I would be needed somewhere such as Pakistan or Kazakhstan. But since I’ve been in the United States, I’ve started to see how much people need help right here at home. Yet helping them out here hasn’t made me feel any better about being in this city.

I remember the night before my sister’s wedding, how her mother-in-law had received the room on the top floor of the Pontchartrain for free, and we all sat outside looking out over New Orleans on the ninth floor balcony. The sky glittered like Paris at night, like a great dark veil full of shiny silver stars. The stars blazed over the buildings, the sports Dome, and the casinos that wrapped around the city. I haven’t seen a view like that since. New Orleans looks ugly from the streets. I live in this tiny apartment. All my friends are people in punk and honky tonk bands, and bartenders. All you ever see is giant homes you can never afford, crime, and tourists wandering through the main streets with hard liquor in red plastic cups.

I sit back on the couch. I never normally watch television, but maybe a little Conan O’Brien will help me forget about Darcy. The evening news is on. The weather man is talking about some storm brewing. I think about how I hate rain. But it’s nearly the end of August, and it’s so dry, I think we need the rain. The weatherman babbles about some possible flash floods. I’m not going to worry about it.

Serkan doesn’t know it, but I’m moving out, before tomorrow. I’m moving back to New York. He will find out by my two-weeks-notice piece of paper on his bedroom door. My bags are all packed; they are hiding in my closet. I will leave behind an unfinished summer school semester, and a restaurant manager who hates me. And Darcy, who doesn’t care about me. And the neighbors, who I hate. I say good-bye to Serkan’s cat, though I’ve not yet left.

I turn off the television and look out the window. My taxi is here. It takes me three trips to get all my bags out into the car. The driver starts to make small talk, but I soon tune him out, and watch the great city float slowly away. What is this city, viewed from the streets, to me? My caving-in apartment complex, at the outskirts of the city. Café du Monde. French Quarter.

It’s a city of contradictions. Run-down neighborhoods, beside million-dollar shotgun houses, by run-down neighborhoods. A maze that never ends. Walk down one street, you’re safe. Turn a corner and it’s a different story. You may run into prostitutes. Or a group of corrupt politicians. Or perhaps even both. Groups of people wearing masks made of plastic or exquisite beads, trying to hail down taxis, leaving or going to an endless party. And college tourists out to get their kicks before they return to colleges in different states. Goodbye, past year of my life, I think.

I feel my life start to speed up as my taxi passes all these scenes. And yet, I feel I won’t be able to catch up to my life. The memories just fly past me as the taxi nears the bus station. I even think I see that familiar skate boarder’s silhouette whiz by, as we roll into the station.

I get out, pay the driver, and then start the long trek off to get my bags onto the bus. After I get on, I feel like going to sleep. But I decide to think about what I’ll remember the most about this place, first.

The old lady wearing a wool beret, who’d been knitting as she sat right next to me, suddenly turns and says, “Son, where you headed?” She is a real Cajun, and her accent makes me feel comfortable. I tell her Queens. I add, “Nearly a year ago tonight, I was standing on the top floor of the Pontchartrain, and you should’ve seen the moon, over the bridge. It was huge, a great orange harvest moon. Lit up the whole city, you know? Made it so beautiful.”

She smiles and looks at me like I’m crazy, then she turns away, and looks out the window. Then she turns back and says, “Son when you say you see dat moon?”

“Last October, near Halloween.”

“Son,” she says, “dat wasn’t no harvest moon you saw. Da harvest moon occur in September. Dat moon you saw was a hunter’s moon – a lunar eclipse.”

I think about it for a moment. Then I say, “Well, it was beautiful.”

She smiles at me, and then looks out the window again. I start to wonder how she knows so much about that moon stuff. But then I remember that New Orleans has fortune tellers, walking amidst the everyday people.

I thought about how it was the kind of moon our local voodoo queen, Marie Laveau, must have danced under, during one of her ceremonies. Maybe my ancestor, Antoine, once danced with her, too. Well, that’s what I’m going to remember about this city. Because when that moon shone, that night, it helped me forget my cares for a bit. To forget my struggles, my 25-year-old youth, my poverty, my bad luck.

Anyway, I’m going home. I’m going to go see my mother in Queens, who couldn’t take the life in Ankara any longer. Perhaps she will make me some tea and biscuits, just like her British mother did for her. Perhaps she will yell at me, in her Mid-Atlantic accent, and tell me how I am throwing my life away. She says that, sometimes. I think it’s because she regrets having given up her own career, for Dad’s life in the Foreign Service. But I will start over, just like she did, I guess. And maybe I’ll even find myself. Because I sure didn’t find myself here. Although I looked for myself.

I start to think about what I’m going to do, when I get back to Queens. I don’t even know where I’ll work, or go to school. At this point, I can only relate to the Turkish community, or any foreign community, for that matter, better than the American community. New Orleans may not have been the best place for me, but I can say that it’s unlike any other city I’ve ever lived in. But for now, thinking about Queens is making me feel very happy. Like a new start in an old place.

The bus starts to pull out of the station, and I feel the lure of sleep draw me near. Right before I drift into sleep, I imagine the curling white and pink arches of the French Quarter architecture. I almost hear the soothing, cool music of the jazz street musicians, playing their saxophones and their steel banjos. Music that evoked the soul of Louis Armstrong. This music my friends and I loved so much here.

I thought of how one day, the previous summer, I’d been walking through the Quarter with Serkan, and we came upon a tea and gift shop. A fortune teller followed us down the street to the shop and offered to read Serkan’s fortune for free. She told him he would have three children and that he would be married within a year. We came back the next week, so I could find out my fortune. But the tea shop had changed into a cigar shop. And the only thing following me along that day was my shadow.

In my head, I hear Serkan’s crazy laugh, the laugh that occurred after most obscure jokes. And I see his greased-down Elvis hair. Then I see the flaxen blond locks of Darcy’s hair, shining in the bright sunlight. Then I feel her soft hand letting go of mine, that last afternoon we walked as friends, down Magazine Street last Spring. As she said a good-bye that I did not know would be her last. I feel I must soon sleep to forget these memories that I know I’ll never really forget. I feel the last remnants of the city fall off of me, onto the bus floor. And as I close my eyes, I think to myself, well, at least I’m going to get out of this town before the rains come.

The moon’s eerie light follows me down the main road that exits from the city. It dances off the tires. It is the kind of light that could lure me back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Linquist grew up in the United States and London, England. She studies Political Science at a university in Virginia. Some works have been published in The Beat.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Saturday, April 12th, 2008.