Chapter One

All over downtown New Orleans, dead birds are falling out of the sky. At least, that’s what the newscaster from Channel Four News says when the News Break interrupts the episode of Dateline Walter Mullgrave and his daughter, Audrey, are watching. The anchor, a chubby Asian guy with a toupee, claims that flocks of dead birds have been found near City Hall, Lee Circle, and the Superdome. They cut to a tall blonde reporter posing in front of Gallier Hall surrounded by swarms of people in yellow Hazmat suits. The reporter says scientists are testing the air for gas and chlorine leaks but that no one knows for sure what killed the birds. She also says the dead birds are being sent to the Centers for Disease Control to get tested. When she’s finished rattling on and on about the birds, the anchor makes a stupid joke about how the dead birds might be a sign of the apocalypse.

“Lee Circle?” Walter says. “That’s less than two miles from here. I wonder if the air is safe to breathe.”

Audrey rolls her eyes. “Jesus, Dad. The air is fine.”

Walter has shiny black hair that looks like an oil slick and cheeks the color of red meat. His stomach is polluted with ulcers, so as usual, he’s sipping from a bottle of Maalox.

“Birds don’t just fall out of the sky,” Walter says. He takes a swig from the bottle, wipes a milky white Maalox mustache from his lip. “This could be some kind of biological terrorist attack.”

“Isn’t the whole point of terrorism to kill people, Dad? So far, all I’ve heard about is a few dead birds.”

Walter is actually surprised that Audrey isn’t more upset about the dead birds, mostly because she’s spent the majority of her teenage life protecting animals. She’s been attending Tulane University for the last three semesters, and when she isn’t at school, she’s usually volunteering at the Humane Society, or rounding up friends to rally against some recent act of animal cruelty. She’d seen a documentary on poultry farms in high school, and ever since then she’s been a vegetarian. Audrey’s bedroom is covered with pictures of turkeys cooped up in metal cages, bloody chickens hanging upside-down from hooks, monkeys with metal electrodes strapped to their skulls. Her wrecked Hyundai is plastered with bumper stickers with catchy little sayings like: Club Sandwiches Not Seals and Save a Fox, Shoot a Hunter.

“You don’t find it interesting that all the birds were found near government buildings?” Walter asks.

“The whole downtown area is filled with government buildings. I’m sure there’s some other explanation for it.”

As Walter listens to the news report, he imagines clouds of Anthrax crawling through the air. His face turns pearly white, and he just sits there staring at the TV, terrified, like a rare Alaskan monkey that’s been added to the endangered species list.  “I wonder if Homeland Security raised the terrorism threat level.” Walter flips through the channels in a frenzy, but when he gets to CNN, all he finds is some reporter interviewing Madonna about her New World Tour.

While Walter stares at the television, Audrey grabs the remote and turns the TV off.

“What are you doing?” Walter asks.

“Turning it off. You know you’ll just spend the whole night surfing the news channels and obsessing over this.”

Walter grabs the remote from Audrey and turns the TV back on. “It’s important to know what’s going on in the world.”

“I thought you were going to stop worrying so much.”

“I’m trying, Audrey. It’s just hard.”

For the last twenty-two years, Walter has worked as an Underwriter for United Life Insurance, and during that time, all the little catastrophes he’s spent his life warning his clients about have piled up in the little warehouse of his brain. It’s gotten so bad that he can’t even take a bite of a Big Mac without shooing thoughts of Mad Cow Disease from his head. When the family goes on vacations, he worries about whether or not the sun tan lotion secretly causes skin cancer or whether or not the gas tank in the family car might burst into flames on the way to the beach and burn the family alive. Even when he’s at work, he finds himself looking up statistics on drive-by shootings, shark attacks, serial killers, falling meteors, organ snatchers, and any other disaster he can find.

“I thought I was doing better for a while,” Walter says. “And then the hurricane hit. It just seems like ever since Katrina, New Orleans is so much more dangerous than it used to be.”

“The whole world is dangerous, Dad.”

“I read this interesting article the other day,” Walter says. “Did you know that statistically Disneyland is the safest place in America?”

“So what?” Audrey asks. “You want move to Disneyland? You can’t live there, Dad. It’s a theme park.”

“I’m just saying, statistically, it’s the safest place in America. Do you know only nine people have died at Disneyland since it opened in 1955? And all of those, except one, were accidents. Drunk kids sneaking into the park and drowning, people getting their heads lopped off while riding some roller coaster, stuff like that.”

“What about the other one?” Audrey asks. “The one that wasn’t an accident?”

“Some man got stabbed to death in Tomorrowland. He groped some girl’s breast, and her boyfriend got mad and stabbed him.”

“So what’s the moral of the story?” Audrey asks. “Don’t feel a girl up in Tomorrowland or else her boyfriend will stab you to death?”

Walter flashes a lopsided smile. “Ok, I get your point. I’ll try to stop obsessing.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

Walter flips the channel to a commercial for some product called Booty Pop. On TV, a girl with fake collagen lips is smiling through a pair of bleached white teeth while holding up a pair of foam-filled panties.

“Have you talked to Mom?” Audrey asks.

“I spoke to her on Thursday.”

“When’s her next ultrasound?”

“She just had one a month or so ago. The next one is in two weeks, I think.”

“Is what’s-his-name going with her?”

“Vincent? I don’t think so.”

“Has he even called to check on how the baby’s doing?”

“Nope. Your mother says he doesn’t want anything to do with the baby. He’s married with two kids. I don’t think his wife even knows.”

“That guy’s a real piece of work.”

“Yep,“ Walter says. “He certainly is.”

“What the hell did she ever see in him anyway?”

“Who knows? If you’re so curious, why don’t you ask her tomorrow at dinner.”

“She’s coming over for dinner?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday isn’t it?”

“Are we going to do this every week?”

“That’s the plan.”

Audrey rolls her eyes. “Don’t you think it’s kind of pointless? I mean, you and Mom are divorced.”

“Your mother and I are legally separated, not divorced.”

“Don’t play semantics, Dad. She’s living in Aunt Camille’s rental house, and the only time you see her is when we have these little bullshit dinners where we all act like we’re still a family.”

“Regardless of whether we’re living together or not,” Walter says, “the fact is we’re still married, at least officially. And, who knows, we may even get back together at some point.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Dad. People don’t get separated so that they can get back together. You need to find someone who appreciates you. She doesn’t deserve somebody like you.”

“I know. I just miss her, that’s all. My therapist says that fifty-one percent of all spouses cheat on their mate, so at least we’re normal, statistically I mean.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m just trying to find some silver lining here, Audrey”

“There’s no silver lining, Dad. She cheated on you. And you shouldn’t miss here. You should be glad it’s over. At least now you know the truth.”

“I can’t just stop loving your mother because she cheated on me, Audrey.”

“I know. I just don’t want you to spend all your time pining over her, that’s all. You need to move on with your life, start dating, you know, just to see what’s out there. Rochelle’s mom just got divorced. You’d like her. She’s a complete MILF. She looks like one of the Desperate Housewives, the red-headed one. And she owns her own business.”

“What in the hell is a MILF?”

“It’s kind of like a Cougar, you know, like a hot older woman.”

“I’m not dating any MILF’s, Audrey. Or any Cougars. I just need to be by myself for a while.”

“Ok, but Rochelle showed her mom your picture on Facebook, and she thought you were hot.”

“Really? She thought I was hot?”

“Yep, she said you looked like a younger version of Dennis Quaid with glasses.”

“Dennis Quaid, huh?” Walter smiles to himself. “No,” he says, his face growing serious. “I think I need to be alone for a while. There’s just too much going on right now.”

*     *     *

After Audrey goes to bed, Walter stays up and watches the news for a while.  On CNN, a skinny blonde reporter who looks like a mannequin is talking about a teenage girl who dumped a dead fetus in a trashcan. Walter flips to FOX News, and just before he turns the TV off, he notices a news ticker at the bottom of the screen. It says a man in Italy has been arrested after hatching a plot to poison Rome’s water supply with cyanide.

Walter makes a pot of coffee and searches the Internet for a while. He comes across a site on terrorism called The Chronological History of Biological Warfare. The site explains how in the 6th Century B.C., Solon of Athens contaminated the water supply with skunk cabbage during the siege of Krissa, and how drinking-water wells were poisoned with rye ergot by the Assyrians and Persians during the 5th and 6th centuries. Later, as Walter lies in bed, he thinks about the dead birds. If the air in New Orleans is unsafe, maybe someone has contaminated the water supply too. He thinks about the story on FOX, about the man in Italy who’d tried to poison Rome’s water supply with cyanide. He remembers how the night before he’d noticed a strange taste when drinking a glass of tap water, and as he closes his eyes and falls asleep, he thinks he feels little black molecules of cyanide crawling through his blood.