Quesadillas

Jeremy Trager

photo credit: Jeremy Trager

I’ve neglected this porch. I’ve ambled down streets like a mule and greeted neighbors as they swayed to a good book, smoked cigarettes and sipped rye on rocks, yakked over the clatter of WWOZ, and dozed off to the subtropical enticements of jasmine and not giving a fuck. I’ve done everything but sit on the porch.

Before All This, a parade of drunken tourists, bedazzled hipsters, thumping cars and second lines shuffled by seemingly ceaselessly on a circuitous conveyer belt. Occasionally, I’d have to step over someone to get to my front door. Now, without a schedule, without a purpose, I finally kneel and rest on my stoop.

I watch. I wait. I wish.  

An unexpected breeze tickles my chin. The temperature drops. The blue sky muddies with gray. A storm is coming. Hurricane season creeps toward me. Ten months ago, I drove a U-Haul from Chicago as Barry bore down on the Gulf, leaving me waylaid at a seedy motel in Memphis. I pulled off a rain-lashed Mississippi highway, suffocating in panic, wondering if the New Orleans I would arrive in would be the one I remembered watching around the clock on the news back in 2004.

Now, a young boy rides past on his bicycle. Usually I’ve seen the boys double up here, one on the handlebars or on the pegs screwed into the back tire. Now they ride alone. A woman spins through on her bike, too. Her jaw is point-blank, stoic, indifferent. A man nips by. Clumps of sweat clench his forehead. He cradles his phone in one hand, flicks it incessantly with the other. None of them see me. They are strangers. In Chicago, there would be nothing unusual about watching people pass. Here, it’s disorienting. Here, people talk to strangers. Engage them. Make cohorts of them. Now the street corners are silent; trumpets sleep.

I notice my neighbor down the block standing on a step ladder, fussing. He usually sits on his stoop with a chihuahua in his lap. I pass in front of his house often to get a glimpse of the tiny dog’s endearing underbite. The man and I always exchange pleasantries.

The other day, I stepped over the ruptured, uneven terrain by his house. The sidewalks, often called banquettes, have been uprooted by live oaks and centuries. The man sat in his usual spot. No dog. I recognized the aria ringing out from his radio.

“La Bohéme, eh?”

He looked at me through matted white strings of hair, his eyes reddened and distant. The corner of his mouth quivered. I could not discern whether he was attempting to smile or trying not to cry.

“Quesadillas,” he said blankly.

I searched for meaning. I found none. He sat there like a skeleton draped in leathered skin, crumpled, resigned. Our brief, mutual gaze lapsed; away I strode.

I consider walking down the block to say hello to him now. To replace quesadillas with hi, how are you? To make sense again. I stand. I look. Something crumbles in me. I don’t want to move, to talk, to see. I retreat into my house. I twist the lock and secure the latch. The thunder comes. The rest  is silent.  

 Jeremy Trager is an MFA candidate at the Creative Writing Workshop of the University of New Orleans, with a specialization in playwriting. His plays have been read at the UNO Playwrights Festival and Bailiwick Chicago.