A Courtyard of Villains

Note: This story was originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

~ Friday Hampton should have been thinking about the squad of NOPD cops swarming

over the courtyard, or the hungover, costumed houseguests they’d sequestered in India House’s various nooks and crevasses. She should have been concerned about the body beneath the sheet at the picnic table with the iron shears embedded in his throat, or at least worried that the killer was probably one of the people she’d partied with last night.

But the thought that kept repeating over and over again in her head was, Dad’s going to kill me. ~

When I was twenty-five, I spend two weeks living in a backpacker’s hostel in New Orleans. The highlight of the trip was Halloween night, because no city in the world does Halloween quite like the Big Easy. It was one of the most amazing, transformative times in my life, and the only downside to it is that I will never ever be able to go back.

Sure, I could go to New Orleans for Halloween next year, but the people I met all those years ago are long gone. Even the hostel, the legendary India House, has changed: new paint, clean floors, all the trappings of civility. But most of all, I have changed. When I was twenty-five, I slept peacefully on a plywood bunk (think the basement in Fight Club) with twenty other men and women, at least two of whom were having sex (or vigorously exercising on the same bunk in the middle of the night). Now, if the ceiling fan squeaks or my second pillow is a little too firm, I toss and turn all night.  

They say you can never cross the same river twice.

But they are wrong. When I write, it is all still there, living and breathing and wonderful. The city, the house, the people are all still alive. I sit down to type and can hear the jazz, smell the beignets. I can even visit some of the characters. Best of all, I can share it all with strangers. Isn’t that a kind magic?

So if you would ever like to visit New Orleans in the late fall of 1998, pick up a copy of EQMM and stop by India House with me and young Friday Hampton. There’s a body on a bench... and a courtyard full of villains.