Back in the Quarter, on a street called Pirate Alley, I wandered into William Faulkner's former house, now a bookstore, and bought a copy of Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter. The novel, set in early 20th-century New Orleans, tells the story of a jazz musician and a photographer. I bought the book for three reasons: first, to read a novel set in New Orleans; second, to support an independent bookstore; and third, how could I resist? This was a former home of William Faulkner.
By two o'clock I was hungry again and, back at the Food Festival, I gobbled up a piece of fried catfish and a scoop of potato salad. This had me parched and sent me into Ye Old Absinthe Bar, where I quaffed a mug of amber ale as quickly as one might a glass of water. Back at the hotel by three o'clock, I had a shower and...oh yes...slipped like a love note into my pure white envelope of a bed and drifted off with thoughts of dinner.
When I awoke I called William back in L.A.
You okay?
Sure.
What are you eating?
Trader Joe's frozen dinners.
Okay.
You?
I'm great. I mean, eating my way around the city and writing.
In New Orleans I took to sending emails home to friends as I'd not done since our Hong Kong trip. It was in this writing that I started to consider another book. The writing my teacher Eunice Scarfe liked to call "the story behind the story." Maybe there was something there since I wasn't entirely certain how to repair the novel that I'd finished then shoved to a corner deep in my computer.
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