Then, this afternoon, something wonderful happened

Wherein New Orleans continues to rebuild

Housing updated from Poppy Z. Brite:

I needed to pick up a couple of eBay books at my old house, and my former neighbor, who'd previously expressed interest in buying the property, had asked if he could go through the house with me next time I was over there. I thought he wanted to buy the property to raze the house and add the land to his own property, and I figured he wanted to go through it to see what fixtures and such he could salvage.

Not so. He wants to save the entire house, to completely gut and rebuild it, and despite the fact that it will be a huge, expensive job, he has plenty of experience with such things and believes it can be done. I suppose I am a very poor businessman, because when he told me -- on the staircase, one of my favorite features of the house despite the pain those risers caused me for several years -- that he wanted not to tear down the house but to rehab it, I threw my arms around him and simply started bawling. Not much chance of dickering now, I suppose ... but I don't really care.

The renovation would not be for us. I don't ever want to live in that house again: it's too haunted with memories of our old lives and the irresponsibility for which I cannot forgive myself, and I want to start a new life in another part of the city, probably the Irish Channel. But for nearly a year now, it has been a knife in my heart that this beautiful old house -- built in 1919 -- would die on my watch.

Now, possibly, it won't happen.