drunk or stupid enough to swallow it.
Furious with himself, still hazy with alcohol but at least lucid, he slogged to the riverbank and climbed out.
Bullshit,
he thought.
Hallucinations. Can't be anything else.
But Max had always been a child of logic, and as strange as it had been, he'd never heard of hallucinations like the ones he'd just had; a single, richly detailed scene peopled with characters. A single moment.
The Map of Moments,
Ray had called it.
He patted his pockets. His pants were soaked through and the shoes he'd worn to the funeral were ruined. Somewhere he'd lost his jacket. He touched the bulge of his wallet, but money would dry out. Then he felt the outline of hiscell phone and his gut turned to stone. Taking the phone out, he tried to turn it on. A strange, unpleasant clicking noise came from inside the plastic, and then nothing. He tried it several more times.
“Fuck!”
A bird fluttered from a nearby tree and took off across the darkening sky, roused by Max's curse.
He cocked his arm to throw the phone into the water, then paused. Maybe if he swapped out the battery, he could get the phone dried out and working again. He slid it back into his pocket, thinking about what he would do when he found Ray. The man had a lot to make up for, and a lot of explaining to do.
Max located the map in his front right pocket. He stood at the foot of the bridge and unfolded it carefully, not wanting to tear the wet paper, mostly just trying to figure out the quickest way back to the French Quarter. He figured the ink would have run badly and become illegible, but it was worse than that: the First Moment had vanished altogether.
But a Second Moment had appeared. He was certain this new blocked area had not been on the map before, but now, as though drawn in invisible ink and made to appear by New Orleans’ still-dirty waters, here it was.
The Second Moment:
The Pere's Kyrie
November 2, 1769
For several seconds Max stared at this new marking, but the last of the day's light was fading, and he could not understandthe words. Or perhaps he didn't want to. With the setting of the sun, the November night had become cool, and he was soaked from the waist down.
Max shivered as he folded the map, glancing nervously at the bridge and across the narrow river at Scout Island beyond, picturing in his mind the almost primordial landscape he'd hallucinated. The wildness of the land in a bygone age. Watching the trees for birds, he slid the map into his back pocket, telling himself he didn't care if the dampness ruined it, even though he didn't believe that would happen. Not until it had served its purpose.
He retrieved the bike and walked it to the path before climbing on. His stomach ached and for a moment he feared another hallucination, or whatever that had been. Another drug-induced vision. Then his stomach grumbled, and he remembered that he'd eaten almost nothing all day.
Uncomfortable, pants stiff and heavy with water, leather shoes tightening on his feet, he pedaled out of City Park, all concerns for his own safety forgotten. Except that, in the back of his mind, he kept a rough image of the location of that Second Moment, and he made sure to go nowhere near.
Max abandoned the bike three blocks from the hotel. His thighs were painfully chafed and he tried his best not to walk like John Wayne. The exercise had burned off enough alcohol that he was practically sober by now, and starving. Questions crowded his mind but he forced them away. It had been a day for impossibilities, but he couldn't thinkabout them until he had a hot shower, a hot meal, and dry clothes.
Walking through the lobby, he tried to pretend there was nothing at all strange about his appearance. He'd kicked a lot of dried mud from his shoes, but they were still filthy, as were the cuffs of his pants. His shirt was untucked, but that couldn't hide the fact that his pants were still wet. He probably stank of muck and whiskey. But he kept his gaze
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