M Sellars: The End Of Desire

Me, on the other hand, I was just along for the ride. Still, she didn’t let me off the hook too easily. This meant that I spent a good part of the time playing the role of her pack mule-tirelessly plodding through the streets behind her, toting her padded, lens-laden bags, and at her demand, handing over a freshly loaded camera body or switching out the optics. But, I didn’t mind. We were together, which was the most important thing to me; and besides, I was getting to see the sights with both eyes.

Just as our days were spent wearing down the soles on our walking shoes, our evenings generally consisted of tossing back hurricanes of all varieties. Frozen, on the rocks, in fishbowls…pretty much any way the restaurants and bars served them. Okay, to be honest the hurricanes actually started around midday with a trip to a random bar, but who was watching a clock? This was New Orleans, and that is how things were done in The Quarter.

But, like I said. That was then. This was now, and now was very different-on many levels.

I shook off the memory and gave myself a mental shove back into the here and now, a process easier imagined than done. My brain stumbled a bit, regained its footing in the present but refused to fully surface from the pleasant remembrance. Of course, I’m sure that as much as I needed the normalcy of the thought, it was also being fueled by a simple mnemonic.

Hurricanes.

Hurricanes in a glass…

Hurricanes on the gulf…

I’m certain the residents of the area would agree that the former were certainly preferred to the latter. Especially after the three seemingly back-to-back storms that had so recently rained destruction down upon this magickal city, Katrina being the worst of all.

Even though the sun had already set, gazing out the windows of my rental car as I drove from the airport to my motel in Metairie a few miles outside the city proper, the aftermath had been evident. In fact, the motel itself might have even seen its own share of damage. Looking around, I couldn’t be entirely sure if that was the case or if the Airline Courts had always been in such sad shape.

Storm damage or not, the accommodations certainly wouldn’t garner a rating in the Michelin guide. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that a large amount of work would have been required to simply bring them up to standard with the most basic building codes. However, under the circumstances, I suppose I had no right to complain. The room was mine, and there didn’t appear to be any leaks over the bed. The bathroom was a different story, but I could work around that. I hoped.

Given the short notice, I was actually surprised that I had found a room at all. After my first few calls, it seemed that anything with four walls and a roof was occupied by someone holding a Federal Emergency Management Agency ID card. They had been crawling all over the city in response to the disaster, though if you asked around, the opinion was that they hadn’t arrived soon enough and were accomplishing even less now that they were here.

Upon making it to the Airline Courts however, I was more than just a little amazed that they had accepted a reservation at all. Especially once I saw the sign in the smallish lobby that advertised their hourly rate, as well as individual condoms for a dollar apiece. Of course, profiteering knew no bounds, and the price I was paying for the all but condemned space definitely spoke to that fact.

Again, I shook off the thought and tried to keep my mind from wandering. I was tired. Actually, no, I was exhausted, and on top of everything else that was happening in my life at the moment, I’m sure the fatigue had a lot to do with the sluggishness of my brain. I was fully aware that I was having trouble staying focused, and that was something I couldn’t afford right now. The problem was, whether I could afford it or not, I was too worn out to do anything about it.

I padded over to the side table in the corner and picked up my bottle of water. The mere removal of those few ounces of weight caused the piece of furniture to shift and rock onto one of the back legs, making the lamp that adorned its surface thump against the wall. It was obvious that not only was the rickety hunk of pressboard and chipped laminate unbalanced, but also the room itself wasn’t even close to level. I pressed on the surface of the table with a very slight touch of my fingers. It rocked forward and then back as soon as I removed my hand, causing the tassels-those that remained anyway-on the torn and discolored lampshade to swing back and forth. Why I had bothered with the exercise to begin with I couldn’t say-nervous boredom I suppose or maybe just my mind wandering yet again. Whatever the case, I did it twice more but didn’t find enough amusement in it to continue past that.

As if in reply to the clunk of the lamp, a somewhat spastic thump began against the opposite side of the wall, random at first, then falling into an increasing, though halting, rhythm. It was accompanied by muffled words of encouragement-of the x-rated variety-as well as some thoroughly unconvincing moans.

I glanced at my watch. A few minutes from now the disharmonic symphony would stop, and shortly after that would be punctuated by the sound of the toilet, followed by the room door opening and closing. The flushing toilet would follow that once again, and then the whole process would start over. If I was lucky, there might be fifteen minutes of semi-peace in between.

Of course, there was no mystery at all about what was going on. In fact, my room was probably the only one in the complex not seeing that sort of action tonight, though I’m sure it normally did. It definitely smelled like it.

Letting out a heavy sigh, I looked down at the overpriced bottle of water in my hand, then twisted the cap from it and took a swig. Wandering back around to the end of the bed, I rooted through my carry-on and extracted a container of aspirin. Popping the cap, I poured some into my palm, nudged the excess back into the neck of the bottle, then tilted it and allowed a couple of them to fall back into the pile again. I didn’t count them so much as look at the size of the heap resting in my hand to judge the self-prescribed dosage accordingly.

The exercise was probably futile in and of itself. I knew the pain in my head wasn’t one that could be remedied with over-the-counter medications-or prescription drugs either for that matter. It was born of an ethereal source and for the most part would remain staunchly unaffected by the pharmaceuticals of the mundane world.

I also knew my stomach was going to hate me-fact is, it already did since I’d been more or less living on the bitter analgesic and coffee for close to a week. Now that I thought about it, I would probably need to avoid any serious injuries as well, lest I bleed out, given the amount of salicylate coursing through my system and thinning my blood. Still, aspirin itself seemed to be the only thing that would at least take the edge off, and I had to do something in that respect. Right now my head was pounding just as it had been ever since the plane touched down. Actually, it had been for the past few weeks, but arriving here had made it thud even harder. If I was going to stem my exhaustion, I was going to need to dull the pain enough to get some sleep. Something else of which I was severely lacking.

Of course, that might not even be possible with the continuous traffic next door. I suppose I should be grateful that this room was at the end of the complex. Otherwise there was no doubt in my mind that the strictly adult soundtrack would have been in stereo.

I popped the handful of pills into my mouth, gave them a quick chew and then took a swig of water and swished them around before swallowing. My hope was to get them into my system a bit faster than they would by simply swallowing them whole. The acrid bitterness caused my mouth to pucker involuntarily, so I took a fresh pull from the water bottle and swished again, trying to rinse the residue if not the taste from my tongue.