The Bad Places
by Tara Jill Ciccarone

Zachary Bowen's murder of girlfriend Addie Hall made the national news cycle-- another grisly New Orleans tragedy; locally, there was more empathy, but it was still just another Quarter tale. For NOLAFugees Senior Correspondent Tara Jill Ciccarone, the story went deeper.

In the old Hideout, now Aunt Tiki’s on Decatur Street, a lime withers with the date September 25 written on it in black magic marker. It is Saturday, October 23, and I’ve been on Decatur Street on and off for 24 hours. I order a PBR and hope my equilibrium will maintain. I don’t know how to react when the bartender shows me the lime, but fortunately, my position doesn’t require me to say much. The lime is there because earlier this fall, when Zachary Bowen got back together with Addie Hall, the bartender collected $75 on a bet he made when Zack broke up with her. When she heard they’d gotten back together, the bartender called Matassa’s, where Zack worked as a bicycle delivery guy, and ordered one lime. When Zack delivered it, he made good on his bet. This exemplifies the public nature of their relationship.

In another bar where Zack and Addie were regulars, the jukebox plays “Take Five”, and someone who knew them probably not so well tells me it was Zack’s favorite song, and that if someone dares exploit them by making a movie, he hopes they have the decency to play the song at the end of it all. You know the details, the catapult that has devastated so many who knew this couple.

This is the type of lore that surrounds the Zack and Addie story, a tragedy that leads through the Quarter and the Marigny, to the bartenders and the gutterpunks and the dealers and the mimes, through the night and the blue dawn and the next day, until at some point while interviewing those who knew them, I asked them mostly, “Were they in love?” The answer was always yes.

A close friend of theirs breaks down in the street. She and her ex have many of Zack and Addie’s things and this young woman’s grief is displaced. She waits for a poetry reading/wake to carve out a space for it. “They were beautiful, artistic people who wandered into the bad places,” she almost cries, trying to hold it together. “I saw love in both of their eyes.” Her reaction is indicative of a subculture consumed by shock.

Some reactions are less abstract, because details, it seems, are easier to discuss. Abstraction requires comprehension, an internalizing of events, and it can be a long time before a person is ready for that. When I ask a gentleman who knew them the question that has materialized as my focus, my own way to approach this—“Were they in love?”—he tells me that during the time before the lime, before they got back together, Addie had taped notes to every post in the French Quarter between his home and his job. I Love You, they said.

I find this detail out on Friday night, around the time that I realize this is not a story you can write by going to one bar and eavesdropping; it is the kind of story in which you need to invest not only time, but more importantly, a part of yourself. I buy my source a beer, swallow the last of my own, and realize I will need a reinforcement of stamina if this investigation is to continue. I have a few hundred bucks and nothing else to do, so I go to the place where I can buy what I need. I bring an escort, an emotional trail of breadcrumbs.

When I leave the Marigny for the Quarter, someone who has seen Zack's and Addie's business spill out in the bar reiterates, “They loved each other.”

So there was love in a volatile relationship often fueled by alcohol, one that sometimes spiraled into violence. And through the next few days as I sort through the testimonies, the tears, the bitterness and the shock, that is the one consistency I can find.

*

There's no need to acknowledge who said what; instead, what's important is the current in the air, the presence left behind, like a residue that permeates the lower part of the Quarter. This is a story about how this has affected a community, and where that community goes from here, and I write this to let those who volunteered their perspectives have some rest.

New Orleans heals, in a way, by remembering its dead. It will be days and weeks and months before those who were close to them can even articulate what happened. It is intimidating to even tread into such a private circle. When I go back out after a few hours of sleep, my boyfriend offers to take off work to accompany me, sensing that this sort of inquiry is like stepping into the void.

I am already a bit rattled by the subject matter, afraid of exploiting them. We decide to make it more of a role playing event, to create a buffer through which I can observe this microcosm without wanting to fucking cry and stop thinking about the whole sad thing. He suggests I wear a negligee under a vinyl raincoat and black goulashes. At this point, the outfit, the drugs and the High Lifes I know I’ll buy are a sort of crutch. Because people inevitably cry of get angry when they talk about Zack and Addie, as they should, and I am suddenly terrified of the responsibility I have taken on.

It is raining, something I’m glad for because the sun seems inappropriate, especially when I’m looking in the shadows.

*

The Omni Royal hotel; Zachary Bowen threw himself from the roof following his murder of Addie.

They were my age, around the cusp of thirty in a post-Katrina New Orleans that is still shaping us, still fucking with us. We are at the mercy of a sort of disturbance in the force, and we’ve been there for so long, we’re accustomed to it. New Orleans was never like the rest of America, which is easy to forget, but now, especially after a year, there seems to be a tendency to accept madness as norm, fragments as wholes. While this may only be the natural adaptability of the survival instinct, it is dangerous. Another bartender asks me to buy her a shot, which I do, and tells me that since the anniversary, people have been more out of control than after the storm. For Zack and Addie, who fell in love the night Katrina hit, I have no idea what normal was, cannot even speculate, but if they were anything like the rest of us, they could have begun to accept the surreal and the apocalypse as normal. Adaptability can contradict survival instinct at times.

Like many of us, they drank; like some of us, they did the drugs we’ve been guilty of doing. They sometimes fought too much and lost it, maybe crossing that line between life and the bad places, fire-walking into the land that friends forgive the first few times by saying, oh, she’s a good person, she just had too much to drink. What has begun to terrify me is the inability those around me have to reconcile their actions when they cross over that line with when they are in their right minds. There is a reason my ex-boyfriend said we could never keep a gun in the house. I can’t begin to understand Zack and Addie and what happened to them, but I have begun to sympathize with them, with the nights of bar coke and Jameson and a spiraling out of control.

This is what I think as I leave Cosimos, where a few customers speculate that they argued heatedly, he put his hands on her throat, and it went too far. A young man there is coming unhinged, so I tell him that I’m not quoting anyone. He asks me to say that people who were close to them believed this was the turning point, the proverbial straw; Zack had cheated before, but when he cheated with a man, Addie couldn’t take it. After much hesitation, I have decided to include that detail, not to sensationalize any more of the drama, but to suggest that there were issues so complex and confusing that that situation, along with the circumstances (Katrina, life in the Quarter, drugs and alcohol) demanded chaos. The sensitivity required to deal with a changing sexual identity may have been lacking. A few people who claimed to know Addie well said that she couldn’t deal with Zack being with a man. Maybe he couldn’t deal with her inability to deal. “She had more balls than he did. She wasn’t afraid to be herself,” someone said of her.

But who were they? Over and over, those who agreed to speak with me were adamant that they were only talking to me because they wanted it to be known that Zack was not a monster, that Addie pushed him until he snapped. And the funny thing is, even as a woman who does not blame the woman in a situation of domestic violence, I began to feel as much sympathy for Zack as for Addie. I didn’t know them, and I don’t know what percentage the group I’ve interviewed represents, but I couldn’t help but feel for both of them.

He was on bar coke and whiskey and beer and he woke up and she was gone. Imagine waking up from a blackout and finding your lover dead. She’s gone. And then realizing that you did that.

A close friend of theirs, a woman who has a lot of their stuff, tells me on Sunday that she didn’t think Zack could comprehend what he had done, despite his suicide note. Anyone who writes knows that writing is an artificial attempt at form. As she tells me this, I am wearing a very tight T-shirt bearing the word “SLUT”, a negligee, and a vinyl trench coat. For the past two months, all of my possessions have been in my car or in an apartment I can’t go to anymore, and I’ve had no place of my own to live. I’m running out of money. As much as I am happy, I can’t fully comprehend my own life, especially the occasions when I’ve ventured into the bad places.

And this is love, something that can turn life into a storm. And it gets so hard to tell whether it’s the person who drives you to madness or whether or not you’d gotten on that train without even knowing it. So I buy that Zack didn’t comprehend what he’d done.

What people close to them have speculated is that he went too far and wanted to hide what he had done, probably as much from himself as from authorities or associates, but as someone who was close to them said, it takes a long time to cook meat, and as it sunk in, he obviously couldn’t live with it. That plummet, that switch he flipped off, was an act of decency with which he redeemed himself. Killing himself was his final act of humanity, as my boyfriend Justin says to me on the street at dawn, because to not be able to live with yourself after a crime like that exemplifies remorse.

*

New Orleans heals by remembering its dead.

It’s Sunday and dusk is approaching now. My head is spinning, but I’m good at rationing drugs, and I have enough money to afford two more bars. A woman wants to interview with me, but it’s in a bar far away, where there’s going to be some kind of wake and poetry reading for Addie, and so we walk. Justin and I take Bourbon Street, and after I explain my rule, that anyone who touches me gets punched in the face, I realize I don’t mind Bourbon Street so much because my identity has shifted. I’m starting to believe I am ballsy to the point where I can shrug people off and hurt them and make them go away without being volatile. That makes me think of Addie, who has been described with the word volatile all weekend. Not for the first time, I wonder how much or how little I had in common with them. I wonder how much you can blame the drugs and liquor in the end, and if some people have potential to lose it, and why.

The bar does have the atmosphere of a wake. A few somber women sip beer, and the bartender’s voice bleeds a trace of sorrow. It is not a time to play pool or darts. Someone who knew Addie wants to talk, so I listen, writing away with the black pen and notebook I pride myself on keeping on my person.

I am hoping to get insight into Addie, who I’ve heard has been banned from bars for violence, who broke a bottle on somebody. What I get is an earnest account that’s tinged with deep sadness. My source isn’t judging Addie, but she explains a quality of Addie that others hinted at: Addie was ruthless to those who hurt her. She had a history of abuse, and if you hurt her, she’d destroy you. She was talented, an artist type, kind of tired in a way, but yet again, that dark side is mentioned.

Only now, it makes me wonder if she didn’t embody New Orleans in a way, somewhat bipolar, able to love and welcome you, but spit you out a minute later. That’s always been the city’s personality, and are we, especially those who stayed during Katrina, so inextricably linked to the city that New Orleans’ dark side can manifest itself in them?

A young couple who was close to them arrives for the poetry reading which is obviously not going to happen because there are only four of us in the bar. It’s clear everyone needs a catalyst, and afraid of becoming that because I am so fucked up, I suggest that the young lady write a poem. I’m about to call it quits, go home and watch dumb television, play with my neglected dog, do anything to get a little distance, when somebody new shows up.

My first source knows her. She’s an intimidating woman, someone who I can sense at first sight is better read than I and has figured out all the mysteries I still think are big.

I can’t write fast enough. The lady, probably around 50, is wearing Addie’s sweater but won’t tell me what her relationship with Addie was. So I am including this with the disclaimer that I really couldn’t tell if this woman had some sort of vendetta for Addie or not, but like most people I spoke with, the lady, who I’ll call S. from here on out, was on Zack’s side, if you can say people are taking sides.

I leaned on the pool table writing as she rambled, seemingly not caring who she was talking to. According to S., there was Addie, a bipolar manipulative woman who could never love a man as much as she could hate him, a woman who twisted Zack for so long that he snapped. When I asked S., she said that Addie loved Zack as much as she hated him and found men weak enough to manipulate because due to her abusive past, she couldn’t have a healthy relationship with a man. According to S., “Addie was looking to get murdered because her sexual encounters [due to abuse] were murderous.”

And I’m not saying whether I believe that or not. I state that only because that is a part of the disturbance in the air. There seems to be a temptation to place blame, to make things easy and hold someone accountable.

*

I didn’t know Zack and Addie. I don’t know what they were like or who can be blamed. What became clear to me was that there is a chaos of the heart and mind and spirit in issue here. It may be the reason I’d been avoiding the bad places, but I can’t demonize either of them. A bartender who was kind enough to speak with me asked me to emphasize that in the last two months many people have grown unhinged, and that it’s important to remember to let those you love know you are there.

So many people have said it was love, a word that’s easy to throw around. I believe that love can inspire a sort of madness, and I believe that just because things spiral out of control, a person isn’t a monster. I believe everyone who said they were in love, even if that may be as much of a crutch as a bunch of 40 bags and a vinyl raincoat. Perhaps I focused on them being in love because instinct drove me to sense that it offered them grace and dignity. I sometimes think that viewing them through the lens of love makes it seem less macabre, but mainly, I believe what those who were close to them had to say: they were in love. These things can happen. To some of us, anyway.

My sources may or not represent the truth, or even a prevalent opinion. Finally, this is too much to comprehend, except in recognition of the potential in New Orleans, especially now, for a line to be crossed. A bottle can be thrown or smashed. A gun can be pulled. A person with good intentions and heart can awake to the splintering reality that they have destroyed someone, although they will never remember it and will spend days and weeks trying to retrace the logic that got him to that point. That ability to slip and do things you can’t take back, things you only try to pretend didn’t happen, I don’t know where it comes from except for the drugs and the alcohol and the way they bring the bad pocket of the mind closer, but what I can say, and what I hope I will be forgiven for saying of Zachary Bowen, is that mistakes can be made, demons can grab a hold of a person.

Epilogue -- Halloween night, 2006

Since interviewing so many people with me, Justin has been telling me that he has a bad feeling about Halloween. He wants to stay in. He’s creeped out about Zack and Addie and the whole experience of interviewing people. I tell him not to worry. We’ll see the parade with our friends. We’ll be fine, I say, and we head toward the Quarter.

Around 2 a.m. we end up in the apartment that Justin’s been fixing for us to live in. It’s just about done with marble tile in the bathroom. We’re drinking whiskey and getting along just fine. A friend of ours is there with us. After he leaves, I realize it’s late and that we should go across the street to the temporary place we’ve been staying.

I can’t say I remember what transpires in the next few minutes, but I know I wasn’t angry at him. I know that I didn’t have a chance to fight back. When the police show up, I am bruised, hysterical, and covered with blood. They arrest him immediately, but not before he smashes my cell phone to pieces. They want to take me to the hospital, but I am afraid to go because I won’t be able to call anyone. So I go and I find my friends. I don’t clean up nice.

In the days that follow I do a lot of crying and drinking. People I didn’t know cared about me approach me. I have a black eye, which isn’t as bad as the gash above me eyebrow. “Say the word,” they say. But I don’t.

The new landlord tells me that I can’t live in the new apartment. He also tells me that Justin has no recollection of what happened. I am in no way justifying what he did, but the parallels don’t escape me. It’s almost like he knew he was capable of this somehow. I do believe the landlord when he tells me that Justin has remorse and that he says he is sorry. He’d better be.

I find a note on the windshield of my car. I love you, it says.

I cannot comprehend what has happened yet, anymore than I could comprehend what happened to Zack and Addie. I can say that this is something I never saw coming, and that it adds to the Zack and Addie lore that Justin and I could have channeled whatever dark force they channeled on that last night. But that’s just another attempt to give form to something. I know I am lucky that there were neighbors who could hear and called the police. They don’t always.



Tara Jill Ciccarone is a Senior Writer for NOLAFugees.com.