Shelter from the Storm

I never saw the guy coming, out of the darkness of an alley in New Orleans

By the beginning of 2020, I had been a lot of places. Kathmandu. St. Petersburg. Mumbai. Zagreb. But somehow I had never made it to New Orleans, a situation we decided to rectify last February.

I know. Cue the ominous, viral music. In my ears, it was then merely an annoying background whine, like yet another Zika or West-Nile bearing mosquito, buzzing n…