Jefferson Darby was a man of pious schedule. At 5:45 AM every morning, his alarm clock would wail, and after rubbing the stiffness out of his eyes, he would whip his arm to its many buttons and fumble until the clock turned silent. Then he would rise and savor the running warmth of the shower as it threaded down his dark back. After bathing, he would don a starched and ironed cotton shirt with tie, and slip on a matching sports jacket and pleated pair of pants. And if the inspection at the mirror gave proof that all was neat and sharp, he would stroll through the apartment’s front door to the shadow-lined, cement streets of New Orleans.
	From there, he would turn either left or right. If it were not Sunday, Darby would turn left and walk to his law firm’s building. Darby, Moody & Scofield, they called themselves. On Sundays, though, he went to his right, and trudged up an incline to the Our Lady of Guadalupe chapel. One block away from the church, he would eat breakfast at a small hole-in-the-wall joint he thought of as “his little secret,” and read the Times-Picayune until 7:30 when Mass began. He never missed Mass, and in the afternoon, after having completing a week of work, he would deposit his earnings at the bank. He could see the bank’s skyscraper from his home’s balcony.
	Jefferson Darby was a man of pious schedule. It had led him to his quick success, he believed. For these first forty-two years of his life, he had kept to his plans with a rigorous determination, and not even a hurricane, much less an evacuation order, could force him to budge. The storm was a regular occurrence of nature; his apartment had originally been constructed as a home for Napoleon’s nephew and had stood a good while, through worse storms than this hurricane. So on Sunday afternoon, he took a trip by the bank, and on Monday morning, awoke at 5:45 AM to find the carpet of his French Quarter building’s first story submerged in water.
	This is the most fucked thing I’ve ever seen, he thought, and a sigh escaped from between his tumid lips. Letting fall his head, he cradled his forehead in his palms and ran his fingers over the globe of his rough, shaven head. His room remained dark, with only the blink of lights from his battery-powered alarm clock flickering. Outside, the vacuum suck of wind cried and rumbled against his windows. Christ, you’re sweating like a dog, he told himself. You’ve got to get yourself into that shower and to work. Never mind the delay. You need to work; today is a Monday.
	His feet shuffled across the wooden floorboards and into the tile-patterned bathroom adjacent to his bedroom. He pulled the coldmoist undershirt over his head and kicked off his boxers to the shady black corner against the wall. Under the showerhead he stood naked, black, waiting for the water to rain down onto his broad shoulders.
	“Christ, I’m losing my mind,” he muttered to the darkness when he realized that he had not yet turned the shower handle to the on position. He did so, and still no water came. “Come on, come on, come on,” he said. Darby closed his eyes for a moment and, opening them, looked back at the vague contours of the shower handle. It was turned completely counter-clockwise so that the shower should be running.
	“Well why isn’t the damned thing running!” he shouted.
	A gust replied with a moan from outside, and flat kite of plywood batted against the window, scattering tumbling shards of glass across the bathroom floor.
	Jefferson Darby again cradled his head in his palms and lay in a naked, curled heap on the floor of the shower stall, juxtaposed against its dirty white.
	
	His eyelids flitted open later that afternoon, but the room still remained under a shrouding dimness. Trudging down the stairs and wading through a foot of brown, he reached into the cabinet and took a packet of instant noodles as well as a metal pot. After sweeping aside the glass on the bathroom floor, he started a small, licking fire on the tiles and cooked the noodles over it with water from a glass at his bedside. When he finished his meal, he fell in and out of slumber. In this way, he spent the next two days.
	Darby decided to leave his apartment when the world outside sounded calmer; the world outside met this condition on 5:45 AM, Thursday. After waking, he walked out onto his balcony and glanced at the bank’s building. Just as he began to turn away, a group of four men caught his eye. One stood near the bank’s steps holding three garbage bags while the others ran in and out through the entrance carrying boxes, the contents of which they dumped into the first man’s trash bags. 
	Upon seeing this, Jefferson Darby donned a starched and ironed cotton shirt with tie, and slipped on a matching sports jacket and pleated pair of pants. The inspection at the mirror gave proof that all was neat and sharp, and he waded through the apartment’s front door. By now, the water had risen to his waist, but like a serene, navy-blue mirror, it rested over the city streets. There was little wind.
	In the water he felt a frigid tingle climb up his spine, and the steps he took felt labored against the water’s weight. Crooked cigarettes floated by in the thousands, a great parade of trash and litter to celebrate New Orleans’ decadence, its hubris.
	Now I am poor, he thought. The storm took most of what I had, and those men took the rest. Everything I have is gone, and it’s all because my schedule had to be thrown off, but that’s not my fault, and what am I going to do now? Every Sunday I give five dollars to the donation at Mass, which is more than almost anyone else gives so if I take the money, won’t I be in the right? Hell, I’d be taking back my own money, and, besides, I’m poor now, and the donations are supposed to be for the poor. They took the money from my bank, but no looter would touch the bank of God, and no storm would touch it either. Besides, Our Lady of Guadalupe is at a higher elevation than this area so that just proves that He is protecting it all for me, the poor.
	Darby trudged for nearly an hour to the chapel. Once, trying to avoid the peaking rooftop of a black sedan, he caught his shoe on a toppled motorcycle and plunged into the cold darkness. His ankle twisted in pain, and for a moment, he believed he would drown there. He pulled free, though, and lost only his Penny Loafer. His shoulders trembled the rest of the way, but he had no further accidents.
	Coming to the chapel, he looked inside and felt the sting of dismay, the cold horror from the realization that Our Lady of Guadalupe contained a swirling brown bulge of water to his knees. He ripped off his sports jackets and moved as quickly as he could into the church and tripped over a wooden pew. Finally, Darby came to the donation box. It was unlocked.
	Why is it unlocked? he thought. Father Bougeois wouldn’t have left it unlocked. He couldn’t have been that much of an idiot, the old fuck.
	He flung the aureate door open and peered inside. He found nothing. Closing his eyes, he cradled his forehead in his palm. Then his legs began to tremble. He fell onto his knees, his head jutting out of the water, which splashed against his neck. . . .

	Jefferson Darby is a man of pious schedule. He picks himself up and walks around the chapel. He thinks, Maybe I can find it. Maybe it was just misplaced. Jefferson Darby does not find the donations downstairs, and he even searches under the water. He rummages through the tabernacle and then throws it into the water. It looks like a broken birdcage floating in the water, except that it’s made of gold. Who would keep a bird in a golden cage? A bird owner can do one of two things: an owner can reward the bird and allow him to fly away, or the owner can punish the bird and throw him into a cage. Who would punish a bird with a golden cage? Jefferson Darby hears a noise upstairs in the attic and walks upstairs to the attic. He sees a man. The man wears ragged clothes and huddles behind wooden boxes. Water leaks from the ceiling of the church. “You motherfucker,” Jefferson Darby says. “You stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker.” The poor man says, “What? Ple’sa help me. Ple’sa, sir.” Jefferson says, “You stupid motherfucker. You took everything, didn’t you? You stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker.” Jefferson Darby remembers he has something in his hand. It is heavy. Jefferson Darby tackles the man behind the boxes and holds down his neck. Jefferson Darby is a man of pious schedule. Jefferson Darby hits the man, hits him again and again. Wine flows from the man’s neck. Jefferson Darby drops the bludgeon on the attic floor. It is a crucifix. It is heavy.
	Jefferson Darby runs from Our Lady Guadalupe chapel. He stands atop a car and yells at helicopters. One sees him. Thirty minutes later, the helicopter brings Jefferson Darby to the Superdome. He falls asleep there with his palms cradling his forehead. The next morning he awakes at 5:45 AM.
	Jefferson Darby is a man of pious schedule.