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.The jilted ex, much too old for the dead girl to begin with.No longer able to fight its pull, he at last focused on the coffin that sat on the ground beside the open grave.It was a shabby metal box, but he suspected it was better than a lot of those interred at Holt would have.He stared at it, trying to imagine that Gabrielle lay inside, and could not.His throat closed up, emotion flooding him.How could anyone not have loved her? How could he ever stop?“Are you all right?” Michelle asked, appearing beside him.Max flinched, then slowly nodded.“I will be.”“You don’t look it.”He smiled, keeping his voice to a whisper.His words weren’t meant for other ears.“I thought I was a fool, coming down here.What kind of guy travels this far for a girl who slept with someone else, you know? But I’m glad I came.”Michelle touched his arm gently.“She was hard to understand.”That was the understatement of the year.Max glanced at the other mourners.“I thought you said it’d be just us.”“It is.Father Legohn’s congregation is mostly gone.The one with the nice shoes is the undertaker.The others are what’s left of the church, just here to help carry her, say a prayer, and put her in the ground.”The truth of this hit Max hard.Despite the warning Michelle had given him, the idea that there was nobody left in New Orleans who cared enough to say good-bye to Gabrielle was bitter and ugly.Except there was one other person, Max noticed now.A little white two-door coupe that looked forty years old had pulled up on the cemetery road.The man who stood by the car must have been thirty years older, with hair as white as his car and skin darker than his funeral suit.When the funeral ended, the white-haired old man approached the graveside.“You’re Max Corbett,” he said.His skin was so dark his hair looked like snow on top of tar.Of all the things Max might have expected to come out of his mouth, this wasn’t it.“That’s me.Who are you?”“You have questions for her,” the old guy said, and it wasn’t a question.“Things you wanted to ask her.”Uncomfortable, Max glanced at him.“Why? Did she talk about me? Give you a message or something?”“Some, but nothing like what you mean.” The old man reached out and touched the thin metal of the coffin, stared at it a moment, then looked back up at Max.“I’m just saying if you have questions you want to ask, it might not be too late.”“Look, no offense, but—”“Your lady’s gone,” the old man whispered.Max glanced at the coffin, thinking he meant Gabrielle.But then he heard the sound of a car starting and looked across the cemetery to see Michelle driving slowly away.She didn’t turn around, didn’t look at him, but neither did she seem in a rush to leave.Almost as if she’d forgotten he was even here.“Time to talk, Max,” the old man said.Max was not sure whether it was posed as a question or a statement.“How’d you know my name?”The old man shrugged, in a smug way that Max knew would become bothersome very quickly.“And what do you mean when you say—”“I know a nice little bar,” the old man said.He stretched, and Max was sure he actually heard bones creaking.“Not far from here.Least, used to be nice.Since the Rage, the whole place has gone sour.”“Rage?”The man rolled his eyes at the clear blue sky.“The storm.Katrina.Such a sweet name.”“Why would I go anywhere with you?”“’Cause you’re intrigued,” the man said, shrugging again.Then he smiled.“And ’cause your lady’s gone.”As he climbed into the passenger seat of the white coupe, Max realized that he had made no plans beyond the funeral.He’d arranged the trip, booked the flight and hotel, spoken with Michelle about her picking him up from the airport, but his focus had always been on the moment that had just passed.He had watched Gabrielle’s coffin as words that meant little to him were spoken, and now that it was over, he was lost.Three days left in New Orleans, and nothing to do.Max closed his eyes for a moment and saw Gabrielle’s face, and the thought that he would never see her again seemed to cut him in two.Since leaving, he had lived with the certainty that she was out of his life forever, but at least she had still existed in the same world, still shared the same atmosphere.He was still aware of her.Now she was gone, completely and finally, and he sucked in a breath that contained nothing of her.The old man drove slowly from the cemetery, steering around grave markers that had been washed onto the road.He turned left, eventually edging them past the muddy ruin of City Park and driving so slowly that Max thought they could probably walk faster.He glanced across, and the expression on the guy’s face was one of quiet contemplation.“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, they 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.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.The guy seemed to sidestep every question, and this was no exception.When they reached the bar, the place 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 took to 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 facade, the double “oo” of “shoot” missing now that the entrance door was visible again.Just below that stark warning, two feet above pavement 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.“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 off him like heat.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 further you drive.Half a mile down there, water was ten feet deep
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