Free The Nightmare Game by S. Suzanne Martin Page A

park, heading toward the French Market. My wits
now returned to me quickly, as if I had just awakened from a fever dream. What
silliness, I thought, to put such credence into the words of two odd strangers
and a fortune teller. For the moment it was convenient for me to discount any
events that I could not explain.
    For the first time today, I was aware enough of
the real world to be able to take in some of the beauty that I’d come to the
city to see. Life, in the Quarter, at least, seemed to have returned to normal,
the devastation of Hurricane Katrina half a decade ago no longer visible to the
naked eye. The sidewalk artists were out once again en masse with their city
and bayou scenes, their portraits and caricatures. Very little seemed to have
changed here, at least publicly, since I last visited, except that some of the
art was a little bit more contemporary. At the far end of the Jackson Square
fence, I turned left and crossed to the other side of St. Anne. At the light, I
crossed Decatur Street, with its traffic of cars sharing the road with colorful
horse-drawn carriages slowly going about their tours. I stepped up the steps
and found solace in the shade of the awning of the Café du Monde. I’d had my
heart set on washing down a plate full of powder sugar-dusted beignets with a
cup of New Orleans coffee and chicory for so very long.
    No tables were empty but at least I was the only
one in line. For this time of day, it was busy, much busier than I remembered
from those family day trips so long ago. Soon, I spied a couple leaving a table
near the street with a good view of the square and I hustled over to it just as
they walked away. I suppose I should have waited for it to be cleared before
being seated, for the dirty dishes they left behind undid what very little
appetite I had. I needed to sit down, though, because my exercise in denial was
beginning to wear off and the gravity of my current situation was reasserting
itself. I needed a place out of the crowd to be able to stop and sit and think
for a while and even though it wasn’t cleared, this table afforded me a perfect
place to try to sort out today’s upsetting and bewildering events. It felt good
to get off my feet and I realized that this was the first chance I’d had to
reflect on anything since I got off the airplane. There’d been too many bizarre
occurrences since I’d arrived. The ride on the plane now seemed ages ago: it
was so hard to believe now that it had only been a few hours earlier. I needed
to examine my own thoughts and instincts. I needed to try to figure out this
insanity. In a few minutes a waitress came over after taking orders from
several other customers, cleared off the table without really looking at me and
wiped up the powered sugar from the tabletop.
    “So you know what you want?”
     I looked at the menu printed on the side of the
restaurant napkin holder. “An order of beignets and a café au lait, please.” My
voice came out sounding a lot more strained than I’d intended.
    “Be right back,” she said efficiently. Plates and
cups on her tray, she hurried toward the kitchen.
    From my seat facing Jackson Square I looked over
at the Vieux Carre, listening to the lazy hooves of its horse-drawn carriages
and for a moment got a rest from my fears as I remembered how much I loved New
Orleans and how much I had missed her. I was thankful that the French Quarter
had escaped the brunt of the destruction that had taken other parts of the
city, for it was good for my soul to be around such an old section of a city in
a country that had spared so little of its history in favor of bland newness. I
was grateful that some sections of New Orleans had returned to normalcy, even
though I knew that the city as a whole, sadly, might never be the same again.
If I ever made it through this nightmare, I vowed never to go so long again
before coming back to visit. It bathed my spirit to see something normal and
beautiful after the ordeal I