Emily

I have to admit that I had never been to an art gallery opening before so when Jimmy, my son, suggested that we go to his friend’s gallery for some free champagne and to see the folks who were acting uptown while downtown I agreed.



He put on his black suit and tied back his hair. His nails were painted black and rings lined his fingers. His earrings needed polished but he was styling. I found a black skirt and a black top and off we went. I must say I felt out of place. I wandered around the place, accepted and vodka and tonic and found a seat on a very expensive divan and had my first look at the creatives of New Orleans.



One woman walked in dressed in red with a hat that would make every woman in the Red Hat Society jealous. She waved her gloved hands and looked like it was her time to be courted so she would spend her money on the featured artist. I was both appalled and attracted to her at the same time. Her face was like a painted caricature and she had more bling-bling jewelry as tacky as a rhinestone collar on a Chihuahua. It had to be worth more than I had made in ten years. Funny, I don’t even remember her name but I remember her southern decadence and neuvo riche style.


The curator, owner of the gallery was blond and over-the-top as she polished up the buyers and created the buzz around the artist. You could tell she was a Leo and she was queen of her artistic domain. Alexandria, a southern belle and dreamer, I would learn had Cancer and was maintaining her business while trying to heal. Jimmy would often come and fix her hair for her and add her hair piece so her Leo ego would not feel compromised. Maxine liked to keep young men around to do work and wait on her but I never thought she was sexually interested in them - maybe because of her age or maybe because of her passion for her divorced husband an art dealer in Europe.


All of a sudden I heard this voice. “You look just like me.” I looked at this amazing woman with blond hair dressed in black with an accent that sounded all too familiar. This was my first meeting with Emily Adams. We sat and talked for hours as others did their gallery schmooze. Turned out Emily’s family was from Ironton, Ohio about an hour from Athens, Ohio where I had lived before I came to New Orleans. A friendship was forming that lasts till today, although, I have no idea where she is after the blowing forces of Katrina.


Emily lived in on Jackson Square in the Pontalba Apartments. Alexandra had lived there until some politician’s daughter wanted her apartment and she did not have her lease renewed. The Pontalba Apartments were exquisitely beautiful. They were finished in 1850 and the architect the rich Baroness de Pontalba. The oldest apartments in the United States and, probably, the first designed and built by a woman. The Baroness ordered cast iron to be made in New York and shipped down the Mississippi. Her maiden name and her last name began with an "A" and a "P" which are winded in the railing which can still be found on the buildings. The beautiful row houses were intended to serve as both very nice residences and fine retail establishments, which they did until August 29, 2005 when Katrina shook up the old city.


Emily was an interior designer and was, like our mutual friend Susan, a woman who had one foot uptown and one foot downtown. Emily and I would often sit on the balcony of her apartment, drinking chilled white wine and watching the gypsies and artists plying their trade on Jackson Square. Emily’s spirituality was amazing. She had studied Buddhism for years and was also an amazing channeler. It would sometimes freak people out when she would all of a sudden start speaking in tongues. Emily knew colors, she knew design, she knew antiques, and she knew people. She knew how to party but she often did not know when to stop.


I remember sitting in the Blacksmith Shop over on Bourbon Street. Emily and I were chatting up with the folks, when Emily ordered a Jack Daniels. I knew it was time to leave or experience some hell on the streets of the Quarter. Emily could really get mean. People who have lived with her knew to go to the back of the apartment and lock a door and not come out till morning when Emily was into her drinking. The cops around the Quarter would watch out for her and she always made it home except for one night when she was standing outside my bar, Sin City on St. Phillips Street. Emily was attacked by a street kid and knifed and robbed. I did not hear until a few days later after she had returned from the hospital that she almost died.


Emily, like all veterans of the French Quarter knows how to survive. Fortunately she knows how to survive both uptown and downtown. I never quite got the knack of southern society but she had it down with style and glamour. I don’t know there is something about pretentious rich folks that get on my nerves. Maybe I just haven’t hung around them very much. People like Susan, Emily, and Alexandra were all right but the others gave me a sense of being in the presence of Queen Elizabeth on crack and with a southern accent.


I do thank Emily for sharing some important information with me. Noni Juice is the best hangover cure in the world and when you live in New Orleans you appreciate such knowledge.



I hope Emily was able to save her beautiful horse and is safe somewhere probably in Texas.