Read The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story for Free Online Page B

at least five glasses at his place—but they did not seem particularly bothered by their misfortune and I certainly wasn’t. Galatoire’s, like New Orleans itself, was a theater, a place in which time, context, and the rest of the world had little meaning, and they were the show—a good one. Before they left they asked their waiter to fill huge “to-go” cups with cognac, so that they could make their way down Bourbon Street to the Absinthe House and watch Jeopardy! on the bar TV, a ritual they referred to as “Jeopardizing.”
    Now, suddenly, I was no longer the wry observer, but heavily invested in the city and its citizens, along with the serious flaws and entertaining foibles of both. There is nothing like a big chunk of real estate to immediately focus the mind, but I had no regrets. The things that had drawn me to the city in the first place were still right here. So that night, our first night as homeowners, McGee came over and the three of us sat cross-legged on the kitchen counters, eating take-out Chinese and drinking more Champagne out of the heavy glass Lucullus flutes I’d brought over from Bourbon Street. McGee had lived in New York for most of the time I had; when she left her husband—and the suffocating confines of Westchester County—she came straight to New Orleans and eventually bought her own house, a lovely Uptown duplex with a garden in the back and a couple of cats. Now here we were, the former Gunga Den-goers, finally (sort of) grown up. I don’t think I’d ever been so content. It was August 2004, a little over two years since we’d married and a month shy of my forty-fourth birthday. Before we left that night, I washed the glasses and put them, a tad prematurely, in one of the kitchen cabinets. I didn’t know it yet, but it would be almost a year before we’d actually move in.

4
     
    T HERE WAS A lot to do, but one of my strengths, which can sometimes be a serious weakness, is that I think I can make pretty much anything happen by the sheer force of my will. Also, my instincts about people are usually on the money. I was convinced, therefore, that I would be the only person in the universe who would have an on-time, under-budget, and stress-free renovation working side by side with a brilliant contractor whom I adored. I’d done it before, in New York of all places—though the job, admittedly, had been far smaller. Also, we had survived the debacle at Betty’s with our marriage and our mutual sanity intact—how much worse could it be?
    There was also the fact that our contractor, Eddie, had been recommended by Patrick Dunne, whose taste I respect enormously and who had successfully worked with him on smaller projects in the Quarter. Patrick had brought Eddie to another house we’d looked at but did not buy, and I liked him immediately. He was tall and thin with longish gray hair, a laid-back affect, and what seemed to be a sense of humor—at one point, he told me, he’d been a stand-up comic in L.A. and had appeared in a movie of the week. More to the point, he responded to everything I asked about that day with “doable” or “no problem.” He wore faded blue jeans and scribbled constantly on a legal pad, and I decided he was totally cool. In the car, John’s response, as always, was more guarded—which, as always, irritated me. What is your problem, I wanted to know. I’m the one who’ll be dealing with him every day, he’s clearly the guy, why look any further? In our marriage, the joke—and the truth—is that John’s the tortoise and I’m the hare and when we bought the house I didn’t want to waste another minute on pesky tasks like screening other possible contractors. John didn’t object, so I called Eddie. A week after the closing, he turned up with his crew, and the nightmare began.
    The first phase, demolition, actually went pretty well. We had hired my friend Lewis Graeber, a Mississippi architect who had practiced in New Orleans for years and who