The Scintilla Project, Day 6. Brandi.

Day 6.  Write about a chance meeting that has stayed with you ever since.

I was an idiot.

I know, I know, that's not really saying anything new.  But this... perhaps it was the rush of my first trip taken by myself, or just the massive amount of booze I'd managed to get into my bloodstream.  But for whatever reason, I'd decided that since I was too blitzed to find my way back to my hostel, sleeping on the sidewalk somewhere on the edges of the French Quarter was a good idea.

It wasn't.  When I woke up, she was there, sitting on the stoop next to me, cleaning her fingernails with a butterfly knife.  "They were tryin' to rob you," she drawled in that Lousiana cadence that slays me to this day.  I never found out who 'they' were.

"Thanks," I mumbled as I checked my pockets.  There were things missing, but I'd be fucked if I could remember if I had them on me when I passed out.  I had my wallet, at least, and whatever dregs of cash and cigarettes the previous night left me.  I smelled like the NYC subway in summer, and my head felt like a walrus in the back seat of a Jetta.  I offered to buy her breakfast.  It was the least I could do in exchange for her vigil.

Her name was Brandi.  She sounded like the start of a Disney movie.  Fresh out of the orphanage, homeless on the streets of New Orleans with nothing but a deadbeat sister to call kin.  She got by on the kindness of strangers and odd jobs for the roadside vendors.  And for the next couple of days, she was my constant companion.

Checking out Tulane, going to Jazzfest - the things I flew down there for fell away as I strolled the city with her.  We crashed the shelter to get out of the midday sun; I played cards with a Korean War veteran missing his arm from the elbow.  His son had kicked him out when he couldn't find a job.  She showed me off to her 'family', the collection of buskers and gypsies that hawked their wares in St. Peter's Square.  I sipped coffee with a man with a flawless mustache, class in a top hat and vest, dying of AIDS and a lack of health care.  I went dumpster diving for lunch with a couple begging for gas money to get to Baton Rouge.  Mike was taking Sara away from a father who raped her every Sunday while her mom was in church.  Mike played the guitar; Sara had a beautiful voice.

And I spent the afternoons kissing her on the banks of the Mississippi, her tongue lazily tracing my lips as she drew slow arcs on my chest with the edge of her knife.  We raced down Bourbon Street to see who could get through the crowds faster.  We fucked quietly on the bottom bunk in a four-bed hostel room.

These were good people.  Kind people who looked out for their own.  People who gave freely, broke bread with strangers and shared stories in the dim-lit alleys.  Who lived and laughed and died in the gutter, unseen by the moneyed masses.  People who were free because they had so little to lose.

Sometimes I think about Brandi.  There was no fairy tale ending for her.  There never is.  The homeless, the drifters, the forgotten - there by circumstance or fault, they're people.  They're all still people.

Try to remember that.