In New Orleans, the dead talk and the living listen.
Giving ghost tours on the decaying streets of the French Quarter isn't exactly a high-profile career, but the guides at Spirits of Yore Haunted Tours are too strange and troubled to do anything else. They call themselves Quarter Rats, a group of outcasts and dreamers and goths who gather in hole-in-the-wall bars to bicker, spin yarns, and search for belonging in the wee hours of the night after the tourists have staggered home.
Through the ghost stories they tell, their own haunted lives come into focus. Like the city they call home, these tour guides are messy with contradiction: they suffer joyfully, live morbidly, and sin to find salvation.
Weaving together real New Orleans folklore with the lives of eleven unforgettably vibrant characters, Ash Tuesday is a love letter to America’s last true bohemia and the people, both dead and living, who keep its heart beating.
“There’s something about New Orleans. Maybe you can trace it to Latin America or the Caribbean or maybe not, maybe you can’t define it at all. The divine? The diabolical? I don’t know what to call it. But there’s magic, here.”
In New Orleans, the dead talk and the living listen.
Giving ghost tours on the decaying streets of the French Quarter isn't exactly a high-profile career, but the guides at Spirits of Yore Haunted Tours are too strange and troubled to do anything else. They call themselves Quarter Rats, a group of outcasts and dreamers and goths who gather in hole-in-the-wall bars to bicker, spin yarns, and search for belonging in the wee hours of the night after the tourists have staggered home.
Through the ghost stories they tell, their own haunted lives come into focus. Like the city they call home, these tour guides are messy with contradiction: they suffer joyfully, live morbidly, and sin to find salvation.
Weaving together real New Orleans folklore with the lives of eleven unforgettably vibrant characters, Ash Tuesday is a love letter to America’s last true bohemia and the people, both dead and living, who keep its heart beating.
“There’s something about New Orleans. Maybe you can trace it to Latin America or the Caribbean or maybe not, maybe you can’t define it at all. The divine? The diabolical? I don’t know what to call it. But there’s magic, here.”
It’s the same every night: when the ghost tour is over, the guides start drinking. Around ten we all begin to gather in the courtyard of the Quarter Rathskeller to talk over each other and argue and suck down beers and shots, and as the night edges toward midnight the courtyard starts to feel like the stage of a play, a little tragedy we’ve all been putting on for years. Tonight is Thursday, and the show is beginning right about now.
Traditionally, I guess, a “rathskeller” is a tavern below street level. In this case the term is hilariously inaccurate, because in New Orleans nothing is below street level except briny groundwater saturating the dirt and bringing up the skeletons of old St. Peter Cemetery, which is paved over now but which still shoots up a body or two or thirteen every time someone tries to put a swimming pool behind their condo. That’s one of the reasons we started using above-ground tombs in the late 1700s: as soon as it rains heavily, anything below the surface that can float (i.e., a coffin) just pops right back up to the top, like a Jacques-in-the-box. That’s a joke I make on my tour — pretty stale by now, but the dads always like it. Anyway, I don’t know why this bar is called the Quarter Rathskeller when it’s very much above ground; normally we refer to it just as the Quarter Rat, which coincidentally is also a term we use to describe ourselves. It’s appropriate, I guess. We scurry around in the shadows after dark, darting in and out of our little hole-in-the-wall bars, trying to outsmart the traps but rarely succeeding.
But look, the Rat isn’t necessarily a dive. In fact when you really look around, notice the matching amber pendant lights and the decent tables and stools, none of them wobbly or with rips in the vinyl, you realize it’s as nice a bar as any. But most of us don’t spend time in the bar itself. The courtyard is where we gather, on stools around the big wooden hi-top tables which are long enough to accommodate however many of us there are at any given moment. It’s wedged between the bar’s interior and the dimly-lit bathrooms, surrounded by high brick walls that make it feel so enclosed that sometimes you even forget you’re outdoors.
I’m sitting in the courtyard over in the corner while Vik shouts at James across one of the hi-top tables. It’s not angry shouting; tour guides shout self-righteously, sure, but rarely angrily. You’d think that maybe after hearing the sound of our own voices for hours at a time we’d relish a little quiet over our post-tour beers, but that’s not the case. Vik in particular enjoys shouting, and he’s shouting now about the beat poets.
“Sociopaths, every one of them!”
“What do you mean, sociopaths.”
Vik lists them off on his fingers. “Kerouac was a raging alcoholic, Ginsberg was a pedophile, William S. Burroughs killed his wife—”
“Well you can’t dismiss their work just because they were awful people,” James says in his Kentucky drawl.
“But their work sucks too. Naked Lunch? Meaningless, pornographic gibberish.”
“Maybe you’re just not intelligent enough to understand it.”
“Don’t you conflate intelligence with edginess! Although I’ve got plenty of both, dammit.”
“Yes, dear, you’re very smart.”
Vik takes a drag on his vape and aggressively blows out a cloud of scented mist. “I’m just saying. Despicable people writing about despicable people, what’s the point? Art should be meaningful. Redemptive.”
“Life isn’t meaningful, why should art be.”
“God, you’re such a cynic.”
“I just know human nature,” James shrugs. “And the beats did too, you can’t fault them for that.”
Vik grumbles. He’s handsome, with thick messy black hair just barely graying at the temples, high cheekbones, stubble, and intense gray-green eyes. He dresses for the job better than any of us, with his combat boots and black skinny jeans, the leather vests, the earrings. The look is maybe a bit questionable for someone past thirty, but he pulls it off for now. He likes to brag about how all the bachelorettes who take his ghost tour fall in love with him.
He changes the subject. “So how was your tour?” he asks James, who’s peering into his gin and tonic like there’s something wrong with it.
“Pretty good. Sixty five in tips.”
“I saw that group, it was all blue-hairs,” Vik says, rolling his eyes. “Old people just like your Tennessee Williams shtick.”
James smirks. “What can I say, everybody loves a New Orleans queer. Local flavor and all.” He takes off his trademark leopard-print trucker hat and runs his hand through his thinning, dirty blond hair. He’s stocky, with a proud mustache and surprisingly long-lashed eyes, too pretty for his personality.
“You gonna ask how mine was?” Vik says.
“Your what?”
“My tour, ya feeble-minded faggot.”
“Oh. Forgive me. How was your tour.”
“Excellent,” Vik says loudly, slamming his hands on the table. “I am a damn good tour guide.”
“You’re a damn conceited tour guide.”
“You should have seen their faces during Axeman. Anyone who thinks what we do isn’t art—”
“Art? Hah.”
“It is art, goddamit! It is theatre.”
“Oh please. We tell ghost stories for a living.”
“It’s folklore.”
“May I point out that you’re wearing a hoodie covered in pentagrams and a denim vest with a giant applique of— what is, that, a maggoty skull?”
“So what?”
“I’m just saying, you’re a far cry from Laurence Olivier.”
“At least I’m not a hack like you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I heard you the other night, pointing at the Cabildo and telling your group that Napoleon had an affair with Andrew Jackson there.”
“Oh,” James shrugs. “Yeah. They were wasted, I just wanted to mess with them.”
“It’s disgraceful. You don’t take it seriously.”
“It’s a ghost tour.”
Vik growls, and James tries to be a little more polite. “So how were your tips tonight, Peter O’Toole?” he asks.
“Eh, fine. Fifty.”
“People will be tipping okay for another week or so,” Poppy says from across the courtyard. There are three hi-top tables back here and she’s alone at one of the others, the rolls of worn-out skin on the underside of her arms jiggling faintly as she lays out a line of tarot cards. “The ones in town now have money to spare, but the ones who just come in just for Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras day will tip shit,” she says without looking up. “Same every damn year.” Poppy is over fifty, and unlike most of us younger lot she’s been in the Quarter almost all her life. The years have not treated her kindly. She’s fat and wrinkly, skin softened and tanned to buttery leather by a lifetime out in the Louisiana sun, and she’s missing a tooth. Like most of us, she always wears black. Tonight she’s in a worn-out black tank top that says “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women.” She wears that one a lot.
It’s 10:15 PM now. City law says tours have to be off the streets by ten, so everybody from Spirits of Yore is finishing up and making their way to the bar. Ruby comes into the courtyard in a huff, tossing a wad of tips onto the table. She’s skinny and pretty and usually mad.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Vik asks with an exhale from his vape. Something is always wrong in Ruby’s world. She had a pretty bad breakup a few months ago, which I don’t really know the details of, but you can see that she carries it around. She looks tired all the time now, her eye makeup always smudgy and her skin breaking out.
“This fucking group!” she snarls, tossing back her reddish mass of “white girl dreadlocks,” as James calls them. “Eight of them left at the bar break, so I only had like ten people at the end. And half walked off without tipping.”
James peers at the bills she is roughly flattening with her red, raw fingers. Ruby picks at her cuticles constantly, leaving scabby gashes from her nailbeds to her knuckles. “Doesn’t look like you did too bad,” he says. “You got a twenty.”
“One twenty and a bunch of singles. I really do not have the patience for shitty tours right now.”
“Do you ever have the patience for anything?”
Ruby shoots him a look and then turns on her heel to go back in the bar, just as Ralphie comes out.
“Hey guys! What’s up, buddy?” He gives Vik a high five and slaps James on the back.
“Hello, Ralphie,” James says with something like disdainful endearment. Ralphie’s a human puppy, energetic and friendly and sort of a mess. He’s odd-looking, with droopy eyelids, a hook nose, and a lopsided smile, but his eyes are the brightest, most sparkling blue you’ve ever seen. He often comes to work with his shirt inside out, and it was a big deal when I taught him how to scramble an egg. He was my best friend, once.
“How was ya tour, baby?” Vik asks. Sometimes Vik puts on more of a Yat accent than he needs to. He’s not even from here.
“Great. Good group, they loved me, awesome energy. This crazy thing happened at my bar break, though—” Ralphie embarks on his tale, hard to follow because he always talks too fast. He often misses consonants or whole syllables, to the point that I sometimes wonder how his tour groups can even follow what he’s saying. When I first met him I thought his rapid, slurred speech was an indication of unintelligence, but now I’m sure it’s the opposite — his mind goes a mile a minute, so fast his mouth can’t keep up.
Vik has no patience for it. “Slow down and start over!” he yells.
Ruby comes back from the bar with a drink, interrupting him. “Ugh, that’s a little better,” she announces, sipping her vodka as she flounces over to the table and sits. “But seriously, does Avery not like me or something? I feel like she always give me such a light pour.”
We all know that the reason the bartenders give Ruby light pours is that she tips shit, but no one says a word. Ruby is louder and angrier than anyone when she wants to be, and none of us feel like feeding that tiger right now.
And then, surprisingly, Angela comes in. She doesn’t usually hang out back here after tours. Angela’s tall and thick with dyed white-blonde hair, and she dresses immaculately, always wearing elaborate makeup and Victorian clothes. Angela is probably actually the best tour guide at our company, with her encyclopedic knowledge of New Orleans history and the occult. No one likes her.
“Heeeey, Angela!” Ralphie says cheerily as she walks through the courtyard on her way to the bathroom. No one likes her except for Ralphie, that is — Ralphie likes everybody. “Nice to see you back here, you gonna have a beer with us? Thursday niiight!”
“Actually I just dropped in to visit the ladies’ room before my walk home, I have rather a lot of errands to run in the morning and I’d like to get started quite early.”
“Oh darn,” Vik mutters.
“—But now that you mention it, it might be nice to rest my feet a bit and enjoy a libation before I begin my journey. Beer has never appealed to me, but perhaps a cocktail or a glass of wine.” Yes, she really does talk like this. “Let me take my little sojourn to the ladies’ room, and then I’ll join you.”
She goes into the bathroom and James glares at Ralphie. “What on God’s gay earth did you do that for?” he hisses in a stage whisper.
“C’mon, she’s one of us.”
“Personally, I was not in the mood to spend the next hour of my life bingeing The Angela Show,” Vik says.
James makes a face. “And what is that transatlantic accent she does? Like girl, you’re from Ohio, why do you sound like Gore Vidal?”
Vik snorts in laughter. And then in comes Sofia, one of the newest and youngest tour guides. She and Ruby exchange a little girly hug, they’re friends, and she sits down next to Vik, they’re dating. At least in theory they’re dating. They don’t really express affection publicly, and most of the time they seem to be arguing. Sofia is mixed race, Cajun and Latina, and very pretty — small and curvy, with big doe eyes and jet black hair dyed ombre into teal blue. The only imperfect thing about her appearance is her teeth, which are a crooked mess.
Vik asks how her tour was and James gets up. “Anybody want anything?” he calls out. Poppy requests a brandy, Ralphie wants another Abita Amber. It’s so easy to just sit here all night and drink. The bar gives tour guides a steep discount, you can get completely shitfaced for like fifteen bucks.
But I’m not drinking tonight, not even really making an effort to join in. I feel distant, lately, tired of hearing the same conversation over and over. All dialogue at the Quarter Rat is essentially a competition, a series of one-ups, about who tells a particular story best or who knows the most obscure bits of New Orleans history or who handled a heckler the most savagely. Vik is telling a story now about how he shushed a loud, drunk woman who disrupted his tour tonight. At least he says it was tonight. I feel like I’ve heard this story before.
“And she says, ‘Are yew shushin’ me? Ah know yer not shushin’ me, son.’ And I said, ‘You know, ma’am, I’d show up at your place of work and behave like an inebriated idiot if I could, but that’d probably get me kicked out of Walmart.’”
Everyone laughs except Ruby, whose jaw drops. “That’s my line.”
Vik scoffs. “What? No it’s not.”
“Yes it is, I said that like four fucking months ago to some idiot outside my first stop, and told everybody, and now you’re acting like you came up with it? The fuck!”
“Jesus, calm down,” he says.
She stands. “Calm down? Fuck you.”
“Goodness! What’d I miss?” James says as he returns with everyone’s drinks.
“Ruby’s throwing a fit for no reason,” Vik says.
“He stole my line!”
James’ blond eyebrows crawl up his face. “Wow, can we all just simmer down a little, please?” Ruby flips him off and goes into the bar.
“I saw that guy in the Pikachu costume take a piss tonight,” Ralphie grins, trying to break the tension. “Right in front of my group, by the LaLaurie Mansion.”
“At least it’s too cold to smell it,” Poppy says drily from the other table.
“I’ll take the smell of piss over these God-awful temperatures any day,” James says. It’s been dipping into the thirties, lately, not very pleasant for people who have to work outside at night.
“Agreed,” Sofia says with a little shiver. Vik’s leather jacket is draped around her shoulders, and she pulls it closer. “I hope it warms up for Mardi Gras.”
“Yeah, come on weather, get your act together!” Ralphie hams, shaking a fist at the sky. “You’ve got ten days!”
“Twelve days,” Angela corrects.
“Twelve whole days til Mardi Gras? I don’t know how I’ll make it,” James says with a little sniffle. “Especially in this terrible cold.”
“It’s good for Julie, though,” Sofia says.
“Yeah. I only tell that one in the winter,” Vik says. Julie is a tragic love story about a young free woman of color and her white lover, and it is traditionally set on the coldest night of the year.
“Oh, I prefer to tell Julie in the summer,” Angela says — she’s gotten a glass of white wine from the bar and is now sitting at the table next to Vik, who looks positively miffed about it. “A well-crafted tale about the cold can have a striking mental effect. I believe it actually allows the group to forget the heat.”
“You can’t ‘forget’ how hot it is in August in New Orleans,” Vik says.
“You haven’t heard my Julie, then.”
“And what a tragedy that is.”
“You’re welcome to follow my tour any time,” she says brightly. Social cues and Angela aren’t terribly compatible.
“I feel weird telling Julie,” James says. “Isn’t it kind of racist?”
“Racist? How?”
“It’s all like, oh, free people of color, they’re so important in New Orleans and they had so many rights blah blah blah, except the women still had their lives and agency and sexuality totally run by white men? And let’s romanticize that? No thanks.”
“Well sure, Plaçage operated within a system of white privilege,” Vik says. “But that doesn’t mean none of it was real.” Here we go. This usually happens once or twice a night, everybody nitpicking some little historical detail, a competing chorus of former liberal arts majors showing off their useless degrees. I’m glad I’m over here in the corner. They’re all just talking over each other and I’m not feeling very social at all, tonight. I’m in a pretty dark mood, and I have this weird pain in my side.
“Just look at some of the tombs,” Vik continues, launching into one of his monologues. “For example. In Lafayette Number 1, there are two tombs belonging to the Toledano Family that are side by side, each surrounded by their own little iron fence. Story goes, Christoval Toledano never married, as he had fallen in love with a quadroon girl named Basilice Barbay and interracial marriage was illegal. Well, alas, Basilice precedes Christoval to the grave by ten years, but as she was a woman of color and obviously not married into the family, mom and pop deny Christoval’s request to place her into the family tomb. So what does he do? Builds a second Toledano tomb right next door, puts her in there, and then himself and the kids too when it comes to be their turn. Why would you do something like that if it’s not true love?”
“Well actually,” Angela says. “If you look more closely at the records, there is no indication that Basilice Barbay was a woman of color at all.” She continues like this, and everyone sort of pretends to listen for a minute— everybody except Ralphie, who is pacing the courtyard and carrying on a conversation with himself under his breath, which usually starts to happen two or three drinks in. But eventually the last vestiges of politeness wane and James just straight up interrupts her, screeching “What is this?” as he looks up in horror at the speakers on the wall. The song has just changed.
“Seriously, is this like, Blink 182? My God.” James pulls out his phone to change it. The bar has a digital jukebox that you can use with an app, and James likes to be in charge of the music. A few seconds later Alanis Morissette is on, singing Ironic.
“We’re just gonna continue with the nineties throwback vibe, then,” Sofia says.
“Were you even alive in the nineties?” Vik says into his beer as he takes a sip.
Angela is still talking about Plaçage even though no one is paying attention to her anymore, and James is smiling and swaying with the music, eyes closed. “I love Alanis,” he says. “She helped me through a really difficult time in my life.”
“I thought Jesus helped you through a really difficult time in your life,” Vik says.
“Him too.”
Ralphie stops pacing for a second. “Wait, James, you’re religious?”
James opens his eyes. “Oh hell no, not anymore. But I was a born again Christian in my late teens.”
“No way.”
“Oh yeah, just briefly. The great thing I realized about being a Southern Baptist? It doesn’t matter what I put up my nose, doesn’t matter how many dicks I suck, I’m still going to heaaaaven,” he says in a singsong voice.
“You motherfucker,” says Vik.
“Shut up, you love me.”
“I despise you,” Vik says, smooshing his lips against James’ cheek and peppering him with kisses.
“I was actually raised Catholic,” Angela begins. “And Catholicism is of course a very guilt-driven religion. In fact I was only six years old the first time I was forced to go to confession. Imagine me, just a small child, trying my hardest to come up with some sin that I had committed—”
James rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure that was just as hard as growing up gay in rural Kentucky.”
“So what are y’all doing the rest of the night?” Ruby asks, coming back in from the bar with another vodka. She seems to have calmed down.
“I think I’ll probably just go home,” Ralphie says. “Unless anyone has any coke?” He looks hopefully at Ruby.
“All I have is weed.” Ruby is our resident drug dealer, she’s always pulling somebody into the bathroom to exchange eighths of weed and, occasionally, little dime bags of cocaine. I did the same thing in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but the fact that I sold drugs certainly increased my social cachet. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any drugs though, probably a year since I’ve even smoked weed. Now I just sit here sober, watching everyone else get fucked up.
“What about adderall?” Vik asks Ruby.
“Nah, my guy’s out of town.”
“Goddamit. Mine too, and I’m almost out. Got any other sources?”
“Talk a little louder about your drug deals, by all means,” Sofia says.
“Oh who the fuck cares,” James says.
“Just saying.”
“Like I said, all I have tonight is weed,” Ruby says, getting annoyed.
James is stroking his chin. “I kinda want to go to the Corner Pocket.”
“You’ll spend all your tips,” Ruby says.
“That’s true, I will. But I’m kinda drunk, so I kinda don’t care… wanna come?” he asks Vik, who is proudly bisexual.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Sofia crosses her arms. “That’s what you wanna do tonight? Go to a male strip club?”
Poppy’s metal stool makes a screeching sound on the courtyard’s flagstones as she hauls herself to her feet. “Give Julio a good tip for me if you do. He’s a sweetheart.”
James makes a wicked face. “The cute Mexican? Oh, I’ll give him more than the tip…”
“Eww!” Sofia exclaims.
“Oh grow up, Dora the Explorer.”
“Goodnight,” Poppy sighs, the tattered edges of her gypsy skirt brushing the ground as she shuffles through the courtyard toward the bar. The skirt covers her ankles, but I know they’re so badly swollen that they spill out over the sides of her shoes. Poppy doesn’t give too many tours anymore. Her body is failing, and she’s almost always in pain.
“Goodnight, Poppy,” they chorus.
I watch her leave the courtyard. Before heading out to the street, she stops and chats for a minute with Jeremy, who’s sitting there inside the bar, alone. He and Poppy are about the same age, and they’ve both been giving tours forever. But unlike Poppy, Jeremy doesn’t hang out back here, doesn’t talk to us younger guides at all. There’s something really eerie about him that I can’t put my finger on, and it’s not the fact that he has vampire fangs. Lots of people in New Orleans tout themselves as “vampires,” even the weird little guy Elijah who works in the Curiosity Shop next door, it’s a whole subculture here. Jeremy dresses like a character out of an Anne Rice novel, always wearing a red or black shirt with billowy sleeves and tight black pants, and he has long stringy hair. I hear he used to be really sexy a couple decades ago, but these days he’s just creepy. After Poppy goes, I watch him stare into his wine for a few seconds before taking a long drink, and then I guess he feels my eyes on him because he suddenly glances toward my dark corner of the courtyard with an intense but hard-to-read expression.
Vik has noticed Jeremy in the bar, too. “Since when does Jeremy hang out at the Rat after tours?” he asks James.
“Oh shit, Jeremy’s in there? Eesh.”
“Go talk to him. I dare you.”
“Me? No way. I do not vibe with that gentleman,” James says.
“It would be a fun experiment, don’t you think? To just talk to him and smile at him and pretend like he’s a regular human being? Maybe eventually he’d be nice,” Sofia muses.
“Or he’d rip my spine out through my chest and eat it like a shish-kebab. No thanks.”
“Oh come on, he’s just a person,” Ruby says. Nothing scares Ruby.
“Vampire,” Ralphie corrects.
“What a loser.” Vik rolls his eyes.
“You’re just jealous because he gets more good reviews than you,” James says.
“Actually,” Angela announces, “I have more five-star reviews than anyone at the company. Two hundred and seventy six, in fact.”
“Pretty sure I have over three hundred,” Vik says.
James takes a sip of his drink. “People with no other hobbies or ambition do tend to accumulate them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Vik says.
“Oh hush.”
“I have hobbies.”
James smirks, and Vik gets mad. “And what’s your great contribution to society, James Baker? What new frontiers in macaroni art did you explore with the octogenarians today?” James teaches art at a senior center a couple times a week.
“Simmer down, it was just a joke,” James says, picking up his phone.
“Personally, I have many hobbies,” Angela announces. “I have a blog, I write fan-fic, I cook, I grow my own vegetables...” She goes on like this for a minute, and everyone ignores her. Ruby leans over and watches James messing with his phone.
“Who you texting?” she asks. “Knockoff Alexander?”
Vik snickers. “Good one.”
“His name is Landon,” James says. He has a serial fondness for slender 20-something boys, and the one he’s hooking up with now happens to look almost exactly like the last one, a med student named Alexander. “And you know, he asked me to be his boyfriend the other day.”
“What did you say?” Sofia asks.
“What do you think.”
Ruby laughs. We all know James and commitment don’t mesh. “So I’m guessing you’re not doing anything with your boy toy for Valentine’s Day?”
“Ugh, is that tomorrow? Don’t remind me.”
“You’re so cruel,” Vik says. “All these little chickens fall in love with you and you just break their hearts.”
“Chickens?” Ralphie asks.
“Young fags. Which means James here is what they call a chickenhawk.”
James gasps with mock offense. “How dare you presume my gay taxonomy, sir! I am a platypus, thank you.”
“That’s not a thing,” Vik says.
“Shut up, Mr. ‘Bisexual.’ You don’t get to have an opinion about gay culture.”
“Eventually you’re gonna have to pick one of these boys, you know,” Vik says. “They’re not going to be fighting over you forever.”
James flicks his eyes toward Sofia. “You’re one to talk.”
“Hey,” she says. “I’m 22.”
“Besides,” James continues. “I may fuck 21 year olds, but at least I don’t think I am one.”
“Oh, eat glass,” Vik glowers.
“Cute emo hoodie by the way, it really goes with your receding hairline.”
“His hairline is fine,” Sofia says, and Vik glares at her too.
Angela, oblivious to everything but Angela, stands and announces her departure. “Well, everyone, this has been a lovely evening, but I think it’s about time that I began my journey home.”
Vik glances up at her. “Oh no, however will we manage without you.”
“I’d be happy to join you all again another night,” she says brightly. “Ta ta!”
“Kisses!” James shouts very gayly and very sarcastically. She goes, heels clicking neatly on the flagstones.
“Thank the dark lord Lucifer in hell,” Vik exhales as soon as she’s gone.
Sofia gives them a scolding look. “What did that poor awkward lady ever do to any of you?”
“Vik just doesn’t like being upstaged. She’s the only one of us who’s more insufferable than him,” James says.
“Do not compare me to that awful woman,” Vik barks, slamming his hands on the table.
“Alright alright, no need to queen out about it.”
“Do you guys have to fight all the time?” Ruby says angrily. “Seriously, everybody needs to just chill.”
“We’re not fighting, we’re riffing,” James says.
“Speak for yourself,” Vik grunts.
“Well whatever it is, you can keep it to yourselves because I do not have time for this kind of fucking negativity in my life right now.” She’s rooting with annoyance through the tiny purse she carries, bobby pins and credit cards and bits of drug accoutrement spilling out onto the table.
“You don’t have time for this kind of ‘fucking negativity,’ huh?” Ralphie teases.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” he says sheepishly.
Finally Ruby finds what she’s looking for, a chubby little green pipe. James looks over with interest.
“Safety meeting?” he asks.
“Yeah, who’s coming?”
“Definitely. It’s gotten a bit stuffy back here,” James says, pursing his lips at Vik.
“I’ll go,” Ralphie says, wandering over to her side.
“Guys?” Ruby asks Vik and Sofia.
“Nah. I’m just gonna go home,” Vik says darkly.
“Bye then,” James shrugs.
They go into the bar and out to the street, and I can see Ruby’s thin cardigan flutter in the chilly breeze as soon as they step outside. She never seems to get cold, though, even in this weather. They’ll walk a couple blocks to the back of the Cathedral, smoke a little weed, come back waxing poetic about something or other. That’s how it always goes. They didn’t ask me to join, but I don’t care. I don’t have the energy to go with them. Or the desire.
Sofia turns to Vik. “Go home?” she pouts. “But I want to go out.”
“So go out,” he says, picking at his black nail polish.
“Without you?”
“I’m telling you, I just want to fucking go home.”
“Why are you so cranky all of a sudden?”
“I’m not!”
“You—”
They quiet suddenly when someone else enters the courtyard. It’s Max, everybody’s favorite person at Spirits of Yore, and they both soften when they see him. He’s a Black guy in his seventies and he moves slowly, a little hunched over. But despite his age he’s the epitome of cool, always wearing boots and skinny jeans and popping the collars of his jackets. Sometimes he talks about his days in the Peace Corps or his friendship with Malik Rahim, one of New Orleans’ O.G. Black Panthers, but mostly Max just asks how you’re doing and means it. His wife died last year. None of us really knew her that well, but we all went to the funeral and cried at the eulogy he gave. It was the most moving thing I’ve ever heard.
“Hey Max,” Vik nods.
“Hey there, kiddo,” he says in his tobacco-ravaged baritone. “And Sofia, aren’t you a picture.” She smiles.
“You’re out late,” Vik says. Max usually catches the bus home right after work.
“Got caught up talking with a couple who took my tour. Good people.”
“You need a ride home or anything?” Vik asks.
“Oh no, my bus is right around the corner. Just came in to get my umbrella, I think I left it back here. Haven’t seen it, have you?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Vik frowns, scanning the courtyard. “Certainly wasn’t here when we sat down.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” Max says. “Guess I’ll have to locate myself a new one.”
“Sorry about that, man.”
“Well, a lost umbrella’s not so terrible, in the grand scheme of things. See you both tomorrow.”
“Have a good night, Max.”
“Same to you. Y’all be safe out there.” He says those same words to me before my tour every night. Be safe out there.
I watch him go, his slow gait a little off kilter as he makes his way back into the bar and then out into the cold street. I don’t like to imagine him under the fluorescent lights of the bus alone, going into his empty house alone, getting into bed alone. At least he has a dog.
Sofia lays a hand on Vik’s arm. “Is it because James was being a dick? The thing about…?”
He pulls away. “Jesus, can you just leave it alone? You’re so fucking overbearing sometimes.”
“If you want to just go home, I’ll go with you. We can watch a movie or something.”
“Not in the mood,” he says, sucking down the last couple gulps of his beer.
“What about tomorrow? Are we doing anything for… you know…”
“What? Oh — Valentine’s Day? Christ. You care about that?”
“Well—no, but—”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Buncha made up corporate bullshit.”
“I just thought we could hang out.”
“Maybe.” He stands. “I’ll text you.”
“So that’s it? You’re just leaving?”
“Yeah, I’m just leaving.” He gestures to the leather jacket still draped over her shoulders. “Can I have that back?”
“Seriously? I have like nothing on.”
“So learn to dress better.”
She takes it off and shoves it at him.
“You don’t have to be such a jerk, you know.”
He turns and leaves the courtyard, pulling on the jacket without even glancing back.
“Wow, really?” she calls after him. When he’s gone, she puts her face in her hands. I think she might be crying.
Then a young man enters the courtyard, and Sofia gets up and rushes to the bathroom.
The kid sits and checks his phone. He’s probably 21 or 22, slender and smooth-skinned with a trendy haircut, buzzed on the sides and floppy on top. His face lights up when he hears James’ voice approaching from inside the bar; it sounds like he and the others are back from their “safety meeting.”
“Hey!” the boy says, standing in greeting as they come into the courtyard.
James’ smile fades slightly when he sees him. “Oh… hey. What are you doing here?”
“We said we were gonna go out,”
“Yeah, but… later. I told you I was still at the Rat.”
“I thought I’d come meet you,” he smiles, reaching out to touch James’ back. His hand lingers there for a few moments and then falls away again.
“Cool. Uh… guys, have you met Landon?”
“Do we ever meet any of them?” Ruby says dryly.
“Hey buddy! I’m Ralphie,” Ralphie says, with a friendly wave and a grin that seems to get stuck on his face for too long after the words have left his lips. He’s so drunk and stoned that he’s forgotten how to manage his facial muscles. I’ve seen it happen a million times.
“Nice to meet you. Y’all give the haunted tours too?” the boy asks politely.
“Yep,” Ruby says.
“What you do, buddy?” Ralphie asks, slurring his words.
“Oh, I wait tables.”
“Let’s get out of here, yeah?” James says quietly to the boy.
“Whatever you want.”
“You’re leaving? Where you going?” Ralphie asks.
“We’re gonna go to the Corner Pocket and then probably the Phoenix.”
“Can I come?
“To the Phoenix?” James laughs.
“Why’re you laughing? I like to hang out.”
“Oh you sweet summer child.”
“What?”
“It’s a gay bar, Ralphie. There’s orgies and stuff,” Ruby says.
“Oh.”
“Wait, though,” she adds. “Wasn’t Vik gonna go with you?”
“Yeah actually, where’d he go?”
Sofia emerges from the bathroom, red-eyed from crying. “Vik left.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. But I’m going home too.”
“Goodness,” James says. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Are you okay?” Ruby asks Sofia.
“Yeah. See y’all tomorrow,” she says, avoiding eye contact with them as she pulls on her little glittery backpack with the bat-wings and leaves. James turns to the others, eyes wide with potential gossip.
“Oh, don’t start,” Ruby says. “You’re so catty.”
“I didn’t say a word. Anyway, we’re out of here too. Stay cute.” James leaves the courtyard, boy in tow.
“Nice meeting you!” Ralphie slurs after them. The boy turns to smile and wave.
“So much drama,” Ruby sighs when they’re gone, sinking into a chair at one of the shorter tables. There are a couple regular height tables back here with two chairs each, usually used only when the group has thinned.
“Yeah,” Ralphie says, although I’m not sure he’s even listening.
“I’m just tired of it, you know?” She’s getting angry again. “Like, people need to just shut up and be cool and live their lives, you know?”
She sees it too, the tragedy we put on. We all show up night after night to posture and strut and recite our lines, and no one ever really listens to each other, and no one ever breaks character.
“You wanna shot?” Ralphie asks.
“Sure.”
Ralphie goes into the bar and comes back with two over-full shot glasses pinched between wet fingertips, and gives one to Ruby. They shoot.
“That’s the business,” she says, slamming the shot glass down and wiping her mouth.
Ralphie sways on his feet for a moment, blinks slowly twice, and then says, slowly, “Do you think we’ll ever…”
“Ever...?” Ruby waits for him to finish. “Ever what?”
“Like… do something.”
“...Define ‘something.’”
“You know. With our lives.”
There it is, the infamous question. It’s like asking somebody’s age or weight or how much they pay in rent — kind of private, a little taboo. I assume we all think about it regularly, but we don’t bring it up much. I’ve actually been asking myself this question quite a bit, lately. Will I ever make anything of myself, and do I care enough to try? Sometimes I feel like I was doomed from the start. Maybe we all were. Most of us have too many issues — mental, emotional, social, whatever — to contribute to society in any meaningful way. Ghost stories are all we’ve got to give.
“Hey, speak for yourself. My life is pretty fucking baller,” Ruby says.
“So you’re doing — doing okay then?” Ralphie hiccups.
“I’m doing great. Kicking ass, taking names, going hard.”
“Cool. Cause you seem—”
“What?” she says, an edge in her voice. “I seem what?”
“Nothing,” he burps. “Glad you’re, glad you’re havin’ fun. But me, I should go. That last shot… whew,” he says, and pulls out his car keys.
“Wait, you drove here?”
“Mmhmm.”
“You can’t drive home, you’re way too drunk.”
“I’m fine. I’ll sober in the sit — sit in the car. Sit ‘n sober up.”
“Seriously, Ralphie. Especially after—”
Ralphie holds up a finger, closes his eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ say it.”
“Jesus, wow. Okay.”
“I just don’t need that right now.”
“And you know what? I don’t need to sit here and babysit you,” she snaps. “So, bye. Try not to get a DUI. Or, y’know, kill anyone.”
Ruby stands, gathers her purse, and struts through the bar to the street in her high heeled boots. How the hell she gives tours in those is a mystery.
“So thass how it is, huh?” he shouts after her, but she’s already gone.
Ralphie and I are the only ones left now. He’s not acknowledging me; we haven’t been on good terms for a while. But he’s so drunk, I’m not sure he even notices I’m still here. He sits down, puts his head in his hands for a minute, then gets up and staggers out. I’m pretty sure he forgot to close his tab.
And so it looks like tonight’s performance is over, to be repeated again tomorrow. The theatre goes dark, and I am here alone.
I guess I should leave too. But I just can’t muster the energy to get up. I sit for a minute, maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. Who knows. Who cares.
And then I catch a glimpse of somebody coming into the bar off the street. Somebody wearing bedazzled sneakers, pink harlequin pants, a skin-tight snake-print top, a furry pink coat, and big pink sunglasses, all of it very obviously secondhand. It’s Veda, there’s nobody else in the world it could be, and she’s coming to the courtyard. I realize she’s the only other Spirits of Yore tour guide who hasn’t been back here yet tonight.
“Hi Veda.”
She looks around for a moment, wondering where the voice came from, before her eyes come to rest on me in the dark. She looks a little surprised to see me.
“Hi,” she smiles. Veda is a trans-girl, not that you could tell if you didn’t already know. She’s very feminine, with messy black hair, tiny inch-long bangs, and pretty caramel skin. She’s Native American. “Are you the only one here?” she asks.
“Everybody else just left. Did you give a tour?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Kind of a weird one.”
“Why weird?”
She takes off the bug-eye sunglasses, which I see now say “Bride” in big curly letters around the side. Her eyes are ringed in heavy red eyeliner and her eyebrows are painted blue.
“There were just a lot of portals open in the French Quarter tonight. I think it’s because Mercury is going into retrograde.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say with fake understanding. Veda is one of these people who does magic rituals and meditates to other dimensions or whatever. A few of the tour guides believe in that sort of stuff — Ruby is always burning palo santo back here to cleanse people’s auras, and Poppy is a for-profit witch — but Veda takes the cake in terms of full-hearted commitment to weird-ass woo-woo shit. I don’t really get it, but I love her anyway. She’s an old soul.
“Look at what I just found in the river,” she says reverently, pulling something out of her pocket. It’s a little pink comb, missing a few teeth at one end, and there’s a picture of Big Bird on it. She holds it out to me, cupped in both palms.
“I told my spirit guides I needed an amulet, and this just manifested. And it’s pink! Pink is my favorite color.”
“I know,” I say. “I can tell by your outfit.”
“Oh,” Veda laughs. “Yeah.” She’s so young, so sweet and chubby-cheeked, and her clothes are always crazy, all ratty and frilly and dripping with glitter. The boss tried to get Veda to stop wearing such freaky shit to work, but gave up after a while.
“Did you want a beer or something?” I ask.
Her eyes widen. “Oh, no. The only alcohol I drink is strawberry champagne.”
“I don’t think they have that here.”
“They don’t,” she shrugs. “I just wanted to come and see if any of you were still around.”
“Just me.”
“It’s really nice to see you,” she says, then frowns a little. “Are you alright?”
“I dunno. I’ve been feeling a bit weird.”
“I can tell.”
“Yeah. I don’t mean to be antisocial, but... ” I look around at the dim, smoky courtyard, then out through the bar to a dirty little sliver of French Quarter street. “Everything just feels so pointless, lately.”
“Well. Maybe it’s time for you to move on to bigger things.”
“Maybe.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You can talk to me anytime,” she smiles.
“Thanks.”
“Well,” she says, looking up at the moon in the slice of murky night sky between the high courtyard walls. “It’s getting late. I should probably go home.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Veda.”
“Goodnight.”
I feel a sudden wave of fatigue and close my eyes for a moment. When I open them again, Veda is gone, and I’m still here. I’ve been here all night.
I am consumed, sometimes, by darkness. Not the darkness of evil, but the darkness of absence. A heavy gray veil that settles over everything, desaturating the colors and dimming the light until everything’s the same bland monochrome, so dull that I’d rather just close my eyes. And when the darkness comes, which these days is more often than not, I just can’t get fired up about being miserable for another four or five or six decades and then ceasing to exist. Sometimes I get the urge to just duck out early.
The French have a term for this feeling: l’appel du vide, the call of the void. It’s why you get that startling little urge to jump off the platform in front of the train, why you might itch to yank the steering wheel towards oncoming traffic. Succumb to the inevitable, and leave the rest behind. “Morbid curiosity,” I guess you could call it. But I have a suspicion that it’s something more than that. See, I think that the urge to jump is actually a brief and profound realization of how easily all the drama and pain and mundanity could just — poof. Disappear. Frightening, isn’t it? To realize how thin the line between life and death is, and how close the end can be, if we want it. Oftentimes, it’s no more than a few inches away.
Of course, this momentary realization is entirely pointless. Because very few people ever accept that invitation, the call of the void. In fact, most of us go to great lengths to ignore it. We spend our whole lives sticking our fingers in our ears and humming as we lay brick after brick after brick along that razor-thin line between us and it, trying to build a wall, refusing to acknowledge how easily it could crumble.
I don’t totally get why, to be honest. It’s not like we’re happy here. The fact that everyone’s actually pretty fucking miserable most of the time has got to be the worst-kept secret of the human experience. Even here in the courtyard, amid all the joking and negging and drinking and debating, it’s undeniable, this deep and restless unhappiness in all of us. It always settles in by the end of the night.
I should quit giving tours. Leave these people, leave this city, move on.
But I don’t know how.
It is the final week of Mardi Gras and the guides of Spirits of Yore ghost tours have a story for you. Walk the crumbling streets, stay on the sidewalks, don’t lean on the buildings, and listen as the history of the French Quarter unfolds through the ghosts who haunt its streets, and the guides who keep their tales alive.
Each chapter of Ariadne Blade’s Ash Tuesday follows a different guide as they struggle with their personal demons, celebrate their small triumphs, and share their favorite ghost stories with the tourists who deign to wander their city for a short spell. As with any great novel set in an old city, Ash Tuesday makes New Orleans herself, with all her chaotic beauty and horror, as much a character as any person walking the page. Blade lives and New Orleans, and has worked as a tour guide in the Quarter, and her obvious knowledge of the geography of the city, the kinds of people it attracts and repels, and the kinds of ghosts that linger there is obvious in every line.
This is a book for lovers of New Orleans, lovers of ghost stories, and lovers of history, but more than that it’s a story for lovers of people. The net of characters, tour guides, acquaintances, sometimes-rivals, frenemies, and lovers that Blade brings to life are wholly unique, each with their own, rich lives that readers are privileged to see. The good, the bad, the baffling, and the in-between all come to life (or death) between the covers of Ash Tuesday, and the inescapable humanity of it all is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.
Blade is an author with an ear for dialogue, a heart for creating characters, and enough grit under her fingernails to get the texture of her setting right. There are dozens of canned phrases to throw around about how spectacular Ash Tuesday is, but at the end of the day the highest praise I can offer is: I bought a copy of this book for someone I love.
Ash Tuesday is a novel worth sharing, and this reviewer can only be grateful that Blade chose to share it with the world.
For those who like trigger warnings, they should know that Ash Tuesday contains graphic, on-page assault, discussions of grief, and mental illness.