The Trinity Game

up, cheek by jowl, in a cramped Uptown shotgun that Mom kept ruthlessly clean.
    Young Tim grew to hate his father for how easily the old man resigned himself to failure. He vowed to make a million, and he had, many times over. The rickety childhood house on Ursulines would probably not be standing after today. But this place would shrug Katrina off like a bad idea.
    Trinity refreshed his drink, wandered downstairs and faced the front door, which rattled a little against the gusting wind and lashing rain. But the door was three-inch cypress and it wasn’t going anywhere. He raised his glass in a toasting gesture.
    “Fuck you, storm,” he said. “Do your worst. You can’t touch me.”
    He took a long swallow from the glass and realized that he was drunker than he’d intended to be. Walking back upstairs required some concentration.
    He missed the rest of the storm. He’d passed out, fully clothed, atop leopard-print silk sheets on his king-size bed in the second-floor master bedroom.
    But he dreamed the fury.

I n his dream, Trinity lay on his back, lengthwise in the middle of the railway tracks just riverside of Tchoupitoulas, while a freight train thundered over him, inches from his face. The sound was earsplitting and the turbulence threatened to jostle his body against the wheels. His heart pounded against his ribs, and he forced himself to breathe. Then there was another sound, like an elephant groaning, and he turned his head to the right, looking through the blur of rushing wheels toward the mighty Mississippi. A wave rolled down the length of the river, cresting the banks. Then another, and another, and with each wave the river swelled over the embankment, and now water flowed steadily into the basin of the rail yards, toward the track where Trinity lay. It seemed the train would never end. He guessed that maybe twenty cars had passed over him, but he couldn’t raise his head to look down and see how many more cars were still to come. The water was flowing fast now, splashing against his side. If the train didn’t end soon, Trinity would surely drown.
    And in a flash, he knew. The train would not end in time, and he would drown. And he knew why. Trinity knew this was God’s punishment for his unbelief.
    He woke from his nightmare in the silence that followed the storm and realized it was the silence that woke him. The storm hadpassed. He shook off the dream’s residue, grabbed the flashlight, and staggered to the bathroom, his head pounding. There was a box of BC headache powders in the cabinet, and Trinity fumbled a couple out of the box and poured the bitter powder onto his tongue. He spun the faucet and stuck his mouth under the tap. Nothing.
    Then he remembered.
Right, of course. There wouldn’t be.
He reached for the jug he’d placed next to the sink and guzzled warm spring water.
    The house was like a sauna. Out in the hallway, he aimed the flashlight down the stairs, expecting to see a little water. He saw a lot. The entrance hall was waist-deep and rising. He watched as a chair floated by the staircase.
Shit.
He moved back to the bedroom, opened the hurricane shutters, and stuck his head outside.
    The sky was a solid sheet of blue, the sun white-hot on his face. The air was thick and heavy and smelled of salt and mud. Aside from the soft murmur of moving water, there was no sound. No barking dogs, no chirping birds, no human voices, and no machinery of human civilization. Nothing. Most of the trees on the street were down, and those that stood were stripped of their leaves, naked limbs hanging down like broken arms. There were no power lines, and the poles stood at odd angles, like drunken sentries guarding the abandoned neighborhood. The entire street was a lake, and the muddy water flowed so quickly he thought he could see the level rising as he watched.
    So much water.
    Trinity craned his head to the left. The water was about chest-high against the doors of his garage. Behind the doors, his tricked-out Cadillacs would be underwater, ruined.
    He turned away from the window, switched on the shortwave radio. The radio told him that the worst had indeed happened.The Seventeenth Street Canal levee had given way, and Lake Pontchartrain was now fulfilling its destiny, annexing Lakeview and flooding on into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park…
    Fifty-two other levees were breached, over 80 percent of the city now flooded or flooding.
    So much water. And it kept on coming.
    A few hours