Free Catacomb by Madeleine Roux

stretching to the horizon. It felt like an alien world, like civilization had disappeared underneath an apocalyptic level of consuming water.
    “My mom hates it,” Jordan added. “Makes her feel claustrophobic.”
    “I can understand why.” Abby sounded less than thrilled from the backseat. In the rearview mirror her complexion had taken on a green tint. “What happens if there’s an accident? Or your car breaks down?”
    “Do you really want to know?” Jordan asked.
    “No.”
    Twenty visible miles of utter isolation. For the first time in days, Dan felt himself relax. Nobody could get to them here. Who would want to? They could just drive and drive, nothing but oblivion on either side.
    But the causeway didn’t last forever, and soon ragged green strips of land reached out toward them like fingers from the mainland. Boats large and small cluttered the shore; rickety docks, some half-demolished, stuck up from the murky low water.
    To the left, a few tall buildings crawled out of the misty humidity, and then the city sketched itself in beneath them. It was a low city, but it still made an impression, and everywhere Dan spotted the same kind of Southern idiosyncrasies he hadseen since they’d hit Kentucky—old brick architecture sliced up here and there by the odd modern building.
    And as their destination, it brought along a breath of relief. Jordan was right, there was only so much fast food and camping a person could take before he started to go a little crazy.
    They stopped outside of town for breakfast, convinced by Jordan that the hotdog-in-pastry rollups he called kolaches were suitable for any meal. At least they were fast. Then it was back on the road to head east and into New Orleans proper.
    Dan had seen plenty of photographs of the old quarters of the city, but nothing could prepare him for the feeling of the place. A streetcar jingled by, tourists clinging to the posts and windows as they ogled the bright, plant-strewn balconies ringed in white filigree ironwork. It was about as close to Europe as one could get in the United States, Dan decided, that feeling from the Pontchartrain Causeway returning—the sense that he was in a foreign world, a place where he maybe didn’t belong but wanted to.
    Even the streets were odd, cobbled and bumpy. The roads were charmingly crooked, some of the signs as off-kilter as the tourists sloping drunkenly down the sidewalks. It wasn’t yet ten in the morning, but that didn’t seem to be stopping anyone. Maybe these people still hadn’t gone home from the night before. Dan peered down the alleys and streets, hearing snippets of music starting to seep out of storefront niches, songs as good as anything he’d heard on the radio recently.
    “Oh my God,” Abby said from the backseat. She had rolled down the window, Dan saw, and she was busy snapping photos from the car. “I love it already.”
    The street music died down as Jordan navigated them through narrow, busted-up streets cluttered with pedestrians who took their time moving to the side. Most of the roads were only wide enough to allow one car and a bicycle through at the same time, and it was slow going, giving Dan plenty of time to take in the archways and stonework, the white plaster statuaries and planters tacked onto almost every pillar and post.
    “It’s like Disney World,” he whispered.
    “But with more drunk people,” Jordan finished for him.
    Uncle Steve lived in the French Quarter, which Dan had always imagined to mean the nice part of town. But his building, which had no parking except for on the street—a situation that made Abby understandably nervous about her car being sideswiped—looked a lot less glossy and tourist friendly than some of the others they had passed on the way in. The red brick, two-story apartment building was right next to a tobacco shop and something called Hernando’s Hideaway, which, judging by the chintzy window decor, was almost certainly an adult movie