NOLA Notes

Nola starts her day aware that she has an early morning appointment.  The appointment goes off without a hitch.  Well, except for the tears.  Nola’s client is teary over the demise of her marriage.  The client leaves, but the negative feelings stay with Nola.

She moves on to reading her e-mails, including a reminder that a friend is due in New Orleans in the afternoon.  Her friend wants to have tea at the Ritz Carlton.  Even this early, Nola knows she’ll want something stronger than tea.

The day passes.  Nola tells her husband her friend is due in but she’ll still be home no later than 6pm.  She immediately thinks, “This won’t go well if I am late.  And drinking.”

In the early afternoon, Nola gets an e-mail from another client asking her to revise her will to take into account her recent marriage.  The irony of her morning appointment is not lost on her.

An hour earlier than is her usual time to quit the day, Nola leaves her office to meet her friend at the hotel.  She drinks Sazaracs, her friend, Bloody Marys.  They talk about love, marriage, divorce, name changes.  And careers and children and traveling.  Time slips away as the sunlight disappears through the frosty windows.

Then Nola gets a call from her husband.  It is 20 minutes after the time she’d said she’d be home.  She wants to stay with her friend and enjoy the freedoms of, well, freedom.  But she instead calls for the bill and the friends part.

Nola enters her quiet home.  She sees the bathroom door closed and knows her husband is bathing their daughter.  She enters the bathroom, hugs her husband and marvels at how much her husband and daughter resemble each other.  She inquires about their day and is given a babbly description of their trip to the park to feed the ducks by Sun, as interpreted by Captain Sarcastic.

She gets a cup of milk ready and takes Sun into her ready arms.  Sun is already falling asleep.  Nola carries Sun to the nursery and lets the music of the lullabies fill the air content to let the world pass by her as though through the windows of a moving car.  Nola’s life, as viewed by an outsider, is dull and uneventful.  She is grateful for the interludes into her clients’ lives, but grateful more for the peace her own life gives her.