“Just runs in the family now, doesn’t it?” Mayor Connick remarked. “Doesn’t he have a lounge act in Vegas?”
“At the Luxor.”
“You know, the National Weather Service keeps sayin’ that Harriet is headed for Houston. It’s not that we don’t appreciate the help, but if it gets out that I’m evacuatin’ NOLA on the word of a Vegas lounge act?”
“Well,” Bubbles said, “I’m certain the secretary-general has other sources.”
“You and the Reverend be sure to mention that at the press conference. And when we get there, launch all the bubbles you can in the air, make a big show for the cameras. Remember, this here’s NOLA. If we want people to pay attention, what we need is li’l lagniappe. Before you go onstage, I’ll have a garbage truck ram you as many times as you want.”
The Reverend Wintergreen gave her hand a gentle pat. “I can do it instead.”
“What about me?” asked Aliyah. “I can help.” She stepped back, laughing defiantly, and raised her arms. “You can’t kill the wind!” Her fingers crumbled, blowing away into sand, the particles whipping around as the wind arose and she spun like a dervish as she drifted and shifted into the sandstorm of legend.
Don’t drop the shirt! Ellen thought frantically. The earrings! If we can’t touch them, I can’t channel you! Perspective was odd and crazy, and it took Ellen a moment to realize that as a whirlwind, Simoon saw the world as a 360-degree circle, their eyes a band at the top of the cone. But Aliyah was an old hand at this, and Ellen became aware that all her things were whirling around in the funnel, a crazy Wizard of Oz swirl of haute couture and luggage, Jonathan’s joining hers as he dissolved, a cloud of green wasps taking their place in the eye. Ellen dimly remembered this trick from the “Crazy Ace Antics” bonus feature of the American Hero: Season I DVD.
Simoon whirled over the city until Ellen perceived a portion of the lakeshore where a forest was popping up like time-lapse photography. They spun down, Jonathan Hive’s wasps swarming from the zephyr’s funnel, going to where a tall young black woman in blue overalls walked scattering acorns from Johnny Appleseed pouches at her hips. Farther on, a young Hispanic woman crouched, one hand on the ground, the other clutching her necklace as the muck and silt heaved themselves out of the water. The wasps buzzed around her then up, a living green marquee, one word swarming into the next: EARTH * WITCH * TIRED * GET * SAND.
Ellen observed silently as the whirlwind scoured sandbars and silt from the lake and then the river. As the day’s work continued, Gardener and Earth Witch and Simoon raising the banks and embankments, Jonathan Hive’s wasps scouting for likely resources and scattering Gardener’s seeds. At last, light was fading and everyone was spent. Aliyah re-formed, swirling down into the skirt, spinning the funnel on into the shirt, and finally coalescing back into Ellen’s usual form . . . with both earrings in her left ear, her cameo off to the same side, and her slip hanging out. She squelched a few feet to where her shoes had landed in the muck.
“Well, I think we’ve done some good work here today.” Gardener yawned as she got up from the base of one of her huge oaks. “Let’s hope it holds.” She smiled at Aliyah. “Nice work, but we better get you some different clothes. Those aren’t made for gardening.”
Earth Witch looked troubled. “Your power . . . it’s the same as a girl I knew.”
“It is the same.” Aliyah smiled hopefully. “I’m Ali. I’m back.”
There was a long silence filled with uncomfortable glances.
“I’m not a rotted corpse!” Aliyah yelled. “I’m just in the body of some flat-chested old lady!” She then burst into tears.
Ellen let the dead girl have her cry. It had taken a lot out of her, Ellen realized, to control her wind that finely, to keep contact with the tokens that tied her to demi-life while at the same time moving mountains or at least tons and tons of sand. It probably didn’t help that Ana and Jerusha were similarly exhausted from the use of their powers.
Jonathan put his arm around her shoulder, letting Aliyah sob into his jacket as they walked. By the time she’d cried Ellen dry, the smell of river mud and greenery had changed to sweat and alcohol. Jerusha and Ana had gone. Now college students in Loyola sweatshirts and other bon vivants walked by slurping daiquiris from yard-long plastic flutes.
Bourbon Street.
Jazz music floated out of clubs and revelers wandered by in masks, gorgeous with sequins and feathers, like old newsreel footage of Jokertown before the Wild Card Pride movement. Or maybe after—Aliyah noted that one of the Loyola students had cloven hooves. Nearby, a woman with a beehive of flamingo heads peddled cups of shrimp cocktail. And next door, under a green awning marked LAGNIAPPE: THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB WITH SOMETHING EXTRA stood two men—one man—two men. Aliyah was having a hard time figuring it out, seeing two aging bodybuilders from the waist up, but from the waist down, one grotesquely wide joker with extra-wide black wingtips. Even more disconcerting were the twins’ T-shirts, the one on the right reading JESUS SAVES! and the one on the left SHOW ME YOUR TITS!
“Good sir,” cried the Jesus freak twin, waving a Bible at Jonathan Hive, “do not go into this vile pit of depravity, this veritable Sodom! These joker Jezebels have sin in their hearts, and it would imperil your nat soul to even gaze upon them!”
“Don’t listen to Momus here,” said the other twin, who affected a goatee. “Listen to Comus. Come right in! We’ve got chicks with extra tits! We’ve got chicks with dicks!”
Oh, my God, thought Ellen as Aliyah looked at Comus and Momus. It’s Rick and Mick.
“Huh?” said Aliyah, catching the eyes of the twins.
The first paid no attention, but the second one pointed. “It is the Witch of Endor!”
Rick or Mick—the one with the goatee anyway—rolled his eyes. “Excuse my brother for being a pussy. He got beat up by a mute hooker and now he thinks he screwed a zombie.”
“Oh,” said Jonathan Hive drily. “Can we see that on YouTube?”
“Yea, the dead shall rise to chastise the wicked, for Hoodoo Mama is their mother and the pigeons are her eyes!” Mick or Rick waved his Bible dramatically at some rather moth-eaten pigeons watching him from a nearby awning. “She’s older than grave dirt and comes riding a pale horse—a fucking dead one—but Jesus Christ Joker is my shepherd and I shall not want!”
“Pussy,” added his brother.
Jonathan began shepherding Aliyah away. “Lilith needs us at the Children’s Hospital by nightfall. She’s taking all the kids away, but she can only do a few at a time.”
The pigeons cocked their heads, one of them fluttering off, and Aliyah nodded, drained emotionally as well as physically. She let herself be led through an arch to the Place D’Armes, a small preserve of historic homes, and upstairs in one to her own private room. And with great relief, Ellen observed her take off the T-shirt and then, hesitantly, one earring, then the other.
Herself again, Ellen tuned the old Philco-style radio to soft jazz, then quickly and numbly took a shower, touching the fixtures as little as possible. Most were authentic eighteenth-century elegance, coming with a history. One Ellen was in no mood to relive.
Instead, she dried her hair, did it up in a crown braid, and donned a man’s suit, cool white linen, summer weight and sixties style. A tie hid her cameo and choker, and an old fedora slipped neatly over the braid. Hey, Nickie . . .
“Hey, Elle.” He took in the brick walls and spindly legged furniture. “Where are we?”
New Orleans. There’s a hurricane coming. She paused. I’ve joined the Committee.