A Circle of Celebrations: The Complete Edition by Jody Lynn Nye Page B

rushed out of the door of the hotel, into a shouting crowd. A couple of men were fighting in the street, with the others egging them on. Police on horseback were advancing on them, the water cannons that cleared detritus off the pavement in their wake. The men paid no attention. But a lone fistfight wasn’t enough to cause despair in one of the seven deadly Sins.
    Pride spotted Envy in the crowd.
    “Where is Anger?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “He feels as if he is everywhere.”
    It did feel as if the entire city was filled with rage. The water cannons blew the garbage to the gutters, but to Pride’s amazement, they could not knock over the two men brawling. He had never seen such a thing before. Their anger kept them upright against the torrent. When police moved in to try and remove them, the men pulled them down out of their saddles and began to attack them. The police struggled to their feet, ankle deep in water, and started pounding their aggressors.
    The last chime of midnight rolled, and the sky fell silent. Pride waited. The fight should stop now. Anger’s influence should fade, as would each of the other Manifestations, but it didn’t. More people waded into the battle, some to rescue the police and some to defend the original combatants.
    Anger was not there, but his influence overspread the city. Pride turned his back on the fight and headed toward the strongest feeling of fury. It came from the direction of the riverfront. Gesturing to the others to follow, he pursued it. Once Pride crossed Chartres into Jackson Square, he found the center of the emotional maelstrom. A crowd of thousands of people, all punching and pushing one another, jammed the grassy square at the center, thronged the cobblestoned streets, and threw one another up against the gracious buildings that ringed them. Every color, male and female, straight and gay, striking out in every direction, their voices raised in absolute fury.
    “You ran away when the hurricane hit!” an old black woman shouted at a uniformed policeman, striking him in the chest with a bony forefinger. “I was stuck in my attic for three days!”
    “The drug lords took over!” he bellowed back. “They shot at us. They shot at our goddamned helicopter . We were trying to help save you! No one helped us.”
    A burly white man in jeans and a plaid shirt pushed between them. “We wanted to help! We drove for hours to be here. We brought our goddamned fire truck and all our medical supplies. Our town needed it, but we came here! And a hell of a lot of thanks we got.”
    The old woman took him on as well. “You think we wanted to stay? They shut us in the stupid, cursed Superdome that fell apart over our heads. You said you would shoot us if we crossed the bridge.”
    A slender man in tight jeans and an open lame shirt regarded them all with rage. “Aren’t you ever gonna get over the damned hurricane? We’ve all moved on!”
    A black teenager took him by the shoulder and spun him around. “How dare you think we can just move on? Like it didn’t never happen? We live here!”
    “So what? That gives you any special privileges?” More people got into the argument.
    “What do you out-of-towners think you’re doing, coming in here and pissing on our streets? Do you think we’re some kinda frickin’ Disney World? You throw you hurricane cups all over the place and you insult our women? This is our heritage!”
    “You call this a real town? This is an amusement park!”
    “You all ate up all kinds of resources, and you don’t even get jobs!”
    “You think we don’t want jobs? We want jobs and decent houses, and you want us to leave half our city as empty lots when we have a housing shortage?”
    And from every one of them, a challenge to the others who faced them: “Who the hell do you think you are?”
    Pent up anger rolled out in waves. Untapped oceans of hatred and fear and resentment had been boiling beneath the surface here for