The Map of Moments Read Online Free PDF

before the storm, and had not left since. There was something about him that attested to that, some New Orleans quality that Max had just started to recognize in people before he fled back to Boston.
    “If you're not going to answer—”
    “Bar's called Cooper's. I've been drinkin’ there some thirty years, and it was there long before that. Cooper's long dead an’ gone, but his boys still run the place. It wasn't the nicest place you'll find in the city, even before, but …it's one of the best. You can smell the honesty when you walk in. Know what I mean?”
    Max didn't, but he saw where the old man's non-answer was leading. “All right. We can talk when we get there. But do I get to learn your name?”
    “You can call me Ray.”
    “Ray,” Max repeated. The framing of the answer wasn't lost on him. He'd asked for the old man's name, but he hadn't given it. Just something Max could call him.
    Ray gave that haughty, one-shouldered shrug again, and kept his eyes on the road, the little coupe crawling along the streets of New Orleans.

    Cooper's looked dead. The sign had been blown away, leaving a bent metal hanger above the entrance door, and most of the windows were boarded up. Three others were exposed, glass grubby and surrounded by what Max first tookto be bullet holes. Then he realized that they were nail holes, punched into the frames and walls when the windows were covered before the storm. Behind one window was an old neon beer sign, swathed with brightly-colored paint to give it some semblance of life.
    Someone had spray-painted WE SHOOT LOOTERS across the façade, the double “oo” of “shoot” missing now that the entrance door was unboarded again. Just below that stark warning, two feet above sidewalk level, was the grubby tide mark that Max had already noticed around the city. It showed how high the waters had come. The limits of life and death.
    The edge of the sidewalk nearest the road was piled with broken things: air-conditioning units, smashed-up floorboarding, picture frames, chairs, ceiling fans, and the remains of a wooden bar, all of them tainted with filth or swollen from immersion in water. It looked like someone's insides laid bare.
    “Place got off lightly,” Ray said. He slammed the car door and stood beside Max. He was a good eight inches shorter, but a palpable energy radiated from him. For someone so old who drove so slow, he certainly seemed very much alive.
    “Doesn't look that way.”
    Ray pointed along the street. “Ground level falls the farther you drive. Half a mile down there, water was ten feet deep.”
    “I don't want a tour,” Max said, immediately regretting the comment. How could he not expect Ray to want to talk about the storm? The Rage, as he'd called it.
    “Good,” Ray said, and Max knew that he meant it. “ ’Cos life and death move on.” He opened the door to Cooper's and beckoned Max inside.
    You can smell the honesty when you walk in,
Ray had said, and Max had not really understood. Upon entering, however, he knew exactly what the weird old man had meant. This was a place where the sweat and blood of life were laid bare, and the lie of casual acceptance had no place. It no longer looked like a normal bar, if it ever had. Floorboards had been replaced with thick plywood flooring, joints rough, nail holes already filled with dirt and cigarette ash. The furniture was a mishmash of plastic garden chairs and tables, wooden benches, a couple of church pews, metal chairs with timber seats tied on with wire, and round tables made from piled car tires and circles of the same plywood used for flooring. Flickering candles sat on each table and on rough shelves across the walls, providing a pale illumination.
    Along the back wall was the bar itself: beer crates stacked five high, and an open shelving unit screwed to the wall and containing dozens of liquor bottles. A tall, thin black man sat on a stool beside the pile of booze, a cigarette hanging from his mouth and