Wednesday, August 31, 2005. Early Evening.

The promised hour of six o'clock arrived, with several hundred people lined up on both sides of Royal and around the corner onto Bienville. There were families with small children including infants, old people, couples, singles like me, and small groups. Overflow storm-water filled the gutters to the top of the curb, making the sidewalks narrow and difficult to navigate with all the people and suitcases. An empty shopping cart filled with trash was parked just at the end of the line.

Two New Orleans Police cruisers were parked in the middle of the intersection of Royal and Bienville and five flak-jacketed shotgun-totting officers stood around them. I suppose two hundred-fifty hotel guests with their possessions out on the street in the dark made a pretty tempting target for looters, so I appreciated the hotel management for looking after our security. It was good to see the police finally out of their vehicles, which also indicated the risk was real.

I sweated in line with everyone else, scanning for the buses. Now more guests from the Holiday Inn pulled bags up the street and joined the line including several old people being pushed in wheel chairs. A forklift from the other hotel drove slowly by, deposited a bench for the elderly and went back for another load. We all intently watched this slow motion migration.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard the forklift coming back, and when I looked over, a three hundred-fifty to four hundred pound man was being carried like a load of potatoes on the front. He was sitting sideways, facing us, and his right arm was wrapped around the vertical bar that the lift rides up and down. His feet were bare, his ankles wrapped in what looked like gauze, and his shoes were in his lap. He was talking to the driver, and paid no mind to us. "More power to you buddy that you've got the inner strength to do whatever it takes to get yourself out of here." I thought.

We were all exhausted, so our collective reserve of compassion for our fellow man, no matter what their size, was low. I heard one of the women behind me say, "Just look at how fat that man is. I hope he doesn't sit next to me." Her friend wondered aloud if he had had to buy two tickets because of his great size, and how unfair it would be if he only had to buy one.

The forklift operator carefully set him down by the seniors, whereupon several men standing by moved him over to the bench. Once this was accomplished, the driver turned around to collect his next load.

By now it was nearly 7:00 p.m. and Dave, the manager, who seemed to be the one most in charge, stepped into the middle of Royal and asked us to listen up. He had just spoken to the lead bus driver, the buses were on the bridge, and would be here within fifteen minutes. We could just about feel that air-conditioning. He spoke up again to remind us: “If you don't have your ticket or if you rush the buses, you're not going." I knew I wasn't going to do anything that would sink my chances.

For the first time, I could actually start to imagine that this would all be over soon. Mind you, it only lasted a second, and the relaxation did nothing to dial down my revved-up-third-born-competitor who was hell-bent on getting a good seat.

At dusk the buses were nowhere in sight, and the Louisiana mosquitoes appeared. That's when they come out, you know. I must have gotten half a dozen bites in the first few minutes.

The only light came from the fluorescent overhang above the hotel's front doors. Its green and white awning was torn, twisted and hanging down in pieces. Plywood covered one of the front windows. With all the people, trash, and standing floodwater, it looked like an evacuation scene from Bosnia. But where was the evacuation?

The closer we got to 8:00 p.m. the more the collective anticipation grew. I now had time to rethink my best-place-to-stand-to-insure-a-seat-strategy. Maybe I was not in the pole position. What if they came in from the opposite direction and the bus doors were on the other side of the street?

I asked the Canadian gal to watch my bags before I jumped over the floodwater moat and found Dave. I asked him where we "should be" lined up. He said that, yes, the buses were coming from the opposite direction, and would drive up Bienville. I thanked him, turned around, thanked the Canadian for her help, picked up my bags, and found a place on the curb on Bienville.

I was there no more than five minutes, when people began to queue behind me. A tall gum-chewing teenager planted himself across the street. Every ten seconds or so he would disrupt the quiet city (no power nor many cars) with a loud pop. "If I sit next to this kid on a bus for the next eight hours I'll go mental." I knew right then that my patience was now, officially, gone.

As I was strategizing to board a different bus from the Gum Popper, four guys lined up next to me. One of them looked familiar. "You guys getting on the bus?" I asked him as he sat down on the curb.

"Yea, my name's Steve. I run the bakery cafe around the corner on the walkway."

It was Mr. Bread Pudding. It all fell into place. Not only had he and his girlfriend given me the bread pudding, but he was also the guy that I tried to buy a cup of coffee from on Sunday. He and three of his buddies had decided to head for a relatives house in Arkansas. Steve was then going to catch a flight back to New York, where he was from, and figure out his next move.

"What about your girlfriend?" I asked.

"She decided that she couldn't leave the pets. I told her I couldn't handle it anymore and had to get out of here," he said.

"Man," I thought, "that can't have done much to move the relationship forward." What would I have done in that situation, how do you start that conversation, I wondered.

Steve asked me what I thought would happen to New Orleans. Did I think it would be out of commission long? How soon did I think it would take the tourists to come back? How long before he should return from New York? Did I think he should reopen his shop or just close up and leave New Orleans? Of course, I could only offer, "educated platitudes" which hardly helped Steve feel better.

There must have been something about sitting on that dark curb, waiting for those buses that enabled a conversation like that. Maybe it was more a "right here, right now is all we have" frame. Regardless, I didn't think Steve would be coming back to New Orleans anytime soon.

It was now around 8:15 p.m. and I could hear a commotion from around the corner. Several blocks down, in the opposite direction from where Dave said the buses would be coming, I could see headlights. When we could finally make out that these were in fact the buses, we cheered.

Wait a minute: there was only one bus. Where were the other nine? What was happening? What the...!?

It, a yellow school bus, pulled in front of us. There were only about a dozen people on it and Dave boarded to talk to the driver. We gathered around. After an eternity, he stepped off to talk to the police and then went to the driver again. As this was going on, the bus enveloped us in a cloud of diesel exhaust.

Dave walked back over to the police and the other manager. One of the guys near me had overheard part of the conversation and told us that the driver was offering to drive anyone to either the Convention Center or Baton Rouge for a hundred and fifty dollars. I was offended. So were my four buddies. Here we were, stuck and this guy was trying to take advantage. "Why would I pay $150 to go to Baton Rouge without air-conditioning, when I've got a $45 ticket for an air-conditioned super-liner that's going to take me all the way to Houston?" I said. No thank you.

The driver eventually closed the door and slowly drove off into the darkness, leaving us, once again, sitting on that curb. I was growing more restless and more worried.

Nine o'clock came and went as did nine-thirty. Dave had made one announcement that they didn't know exactly what had happened, but they were doing everything they could to get back in touch with the driver. That gave me some confidence. Besides, Dave had a way about him that signaled that he was in charge.

Just past 10 p.m., it was hot, pitch black, mosquito-ridden, and still no buses. I saw a baby asleep on his daddy's shoulder, another child asleep on its mother's lap, and two children lying on a blanket. The police were still ready with shotguns adding an element of menace to the scene.

I saw Dave conferencing in the middle of the street with one of the other managers before walking over to the police. I decided to trail Dave and listen in. "The damned buses aren't coming," Dave said to the police. "We have to figure out what to do with all of these people." My heart came completely unhinged and dropped to my feet.

"It seems to me that the only thing we can do is send them over to the convention center," said the other manager. I instantaneously moved from eavesdropper to full-bore active participant.

"Hey, hey, hey. You can put us right back into our rooms, no problem whatsoever," I blurted out. No one in that circle had noticed me until now.

Every head snapped my way, and the large, beefy senior officer said, "Sir, you're going to have to step back. This is a private conversation." His tone meant business, so I turned and walked back over to Steve and the others.

"The buses aren't coming. They have no idea what happened to them," I said.

"No way. Are you kidding me?" Steve asked in disbelief.

"Yea. They're talking about what to do with us right now. The one guy wants to send us to the convention center." At this point, we were the only ones who knew.

"What are you going to do?" Steve asked me.

"I don't know. I'm going to wait and see what Dave has to say."

Dave now finished with the conference, walked halfway down the middle of Royal, stopped and shouted, "I need your attention. Everyone. I need your attention.” Slowly, word spread down the line that Dave had some news. Everyone got quiet, waiting. "The buses aren't coming. We have no idea what happened to them. You're all going to have to go back into your rooms. Wait. Wait. We're going to keep trying to find them and we'll make an announcement over the PA system if we do." All hell broke loose.

"What do you mean the buses aren't coming," shouted one.

"We want those buses," called out another.

"We want our $45 back!" said someone else.

"We're not going back in our rooms!" a woman next to me shouted. There was a cacophony of cries, shouts and sobbing.

"Now hold on, hold on!" Dave shouted over the noise. "Alright. You don't have to go back into your rooms. You've got a choice. You can go down to the convention center." And with that, the reality of our situation began to weigh on my chest and I found it hard to breathe.

"Now, since we zeroed out all of the door key codes, you're going to have to line up in the lobby and get a new key card for your room." And with that, Dave headed for the lobby.