Shortly after the earth cooled, I graduated from college with a degree in English literature, which, as everyone knows, is about all you need to work in a French Quarter clothing shop. I landed at French Connection, a then-hip, now-passe boutique that aims squarely for the post-Benetton, pre-Lerner demographic. While selling stretch-velvet stirrup-pants to overweight hausfraus from Nebraska didn’t allow many opportunities to employ my appallingly vast knowledge of surrealism in the writings of American expatriates from 1910 to 1948, it did allow me to work with a hangover, which, at 22 years old, was a good thing.
The only thing I really hated about working at FC was hauling the garbage to the dumpster, which sat outside our back door, in the Jax Brewery parking lot abutting the Mississippi River. First, my stomach would churn from the stench of the trash bin, then my head would split as the calliope on the Steamboat Natchez roared to life with a rousing rendition of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal” or, if it was overcast, “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” I’d look up, across the levee wall, and see Debbie Fagnano perched atop the boat, her head bouncing in time to the music, and I’d think to myself, “I’ve got a clear shot. I could end my own pain and that of thousands of others. It would be a good deed for humanity!” Alas, despite dad’s repeated offers to load me up with guns–“You gonna need these one day, down in that city of sin!”–I never took him up on it, and Debbie lived to torment me for the remainder of my tenure in retail purgatory.
It’s a good thing, too. ‘Cause, honestly, of all the tiny, creeping signs of revival and regeneration I’ve seen in the past few weeks, none has affected me more deeply than hearing that very same calliope blasting out a ham-fisted version of “Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do” yesterday afternoon. I don’t know if it was Debbie up there–my vision ain’t what it used to be–but it nearly brought a tear to my jaundiced eye. Oh, how a decade or so and an unprecedented natural disaster can change one’s opinion about things.
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