Fables of the Reconstruction
by Jennifer H Daniel
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Clark calls at 1:30 a.m. CST. When I say hello -- in a moony haze -- she gulps, and she talks like fizzing soda spilling out of a kicked-over can:

“We have no where to go,” she says.

“What?”

“We were kicked out of the hotel because they have customers. They have customers who have reservations.” Customers, she says again, like she is spitting.

I yawn and shake my head and grab my glasses and get up out of the bed.

“Who?” She asks me. “Who is visiting New Orleans?”

My first thought is the obvious and then the outrageous.

“What about another hotel? A camp ground? I can bring down my dad’s RV.”

I am talking out of my ass. I want to help, but I don’t have what my friend needs: a home. And I am half-asleep.

“There are no other hotel rooms,” she goes on, frustrated with me. “I look for houses everyday on my lunch break, and when I pull up to a for-sale sign to write the number down, at least two other cars stop and do the same thing. It’s just... it’s just crazy down here.”

I think, Katrina is a home-wrecker.

“Where are you now?” I ask.

“In the Volvo. In the Kroger parking lot.”

I freeze, and then there are tears on her end.

“There are no fucking showers in your car, you know. And it is nice, you know to be able to take a shower before you go to work.”

She exhales and changes the subject.

“How’s your story coming?”

I laugh. She asks the question like she is asking about athlete’s foot.

“It’s not, I say. “Come stay with us. As long as you want.”

Clark says: “We have to work, you know that. Come on, now. I want to hear about your story -- your big, gonzo adventure. Tell me something other than mine.”

I can hear her husband talking into his cell phone in the background. He sounds like he is talking to his mother. Dave Grohl is singing on the radio. It is not important for Clark to know that my story is stalled, that it is nothing but flowery descriptions saved in a Word document. She is expecting insight, an unraveled thread, a glimmer of hope -- or, at the very least a flaky, blue sky adventure from her friend to make her forget about her troubles. I have none of the above.

“I want to kill it,” I tell her. “I don’t know what to say about any of this -- the before, the after, the reconstruction."

“Me either,” she says.

“Katrina is a home-wrecker,” I say out loud.

Clark is a pharmaceutical rep. In the morning she will exit the car she sleeps in and calls me from, and she will get in the car she works in and drive around all day. Most of the doctor’s offices she visits have suffered damage from Katrina, as did her apartment which is now unlivable and vacant. What was left of it was looted, and now Clark has to remember to pick up things like a can opener if she wants to cook something inside her hotel room for dinner. FEMA sent a check awhile ago for the tab stacked up at La Quinta, but houses are few and far between. Tensions are high. It doesn’t help that CNN runs goading segments that ask viewers whether or not New Orleans should be rebuilt. As if there is a question. As the power blinks on and off and the traffic is out of control, the gas sparse and the groceries selling out as soon as they come in, one thing still works. Cash. Clark eventually finds a small rental in Metairie. She offers to pay six months up front and a $500 deposit. And a hundred bucks just for the trouble. And this is reconstruction in New Orleans.

I want Clark to start the car and come home, to live her life where it is easier and the wheels turn at normal speeds and there are plenty of jobs and houses for everybody. I think that Reuter’s is right: It is staggering that 237,000 jobs have been lost because of Katrina the home-wrecker. Whereas the New Orleans unemployment rate was at almost six percent before the hurricane, it is now at 14.8. It is amazing that Clark and her husband have jobs at all. So I don’t say anything and decide to tell her my story. Because she asks.