"My father never knew about the real life of Uncle Mickey. My mother's mother told me to show me what airs my father put on, and what a fool he was, and how humble his origins had been."
"Yes, I see."
"My father had loved Uncle Mickey. Uncle Mickey had died when my father was a boy. Uncle Mickey had a cleft palate and a glass eye, and I remember my father showing me his picture and telling me the story of how Uncle Mickey lost his eye. Uncle Mickey had loved fireworks, and once he'd been playing with firecrackers and one had gone off in a tin can, and wham, the can hit him in the eye. That's the story I always believed about Uncle Mickey. I knew him only from the picture. My grandmother and my great-uncle were dead before I was born."
"Right. And then your mother's people told you different."
"My mother's father was a cop. He knew all about Roger's family, that Roger's grandfather had been a drunk and so had Uncle Mickey, more or less. Uncle Mickey had also been a tout for a bookie when he was young. And one time, he held back on a bet. In other words, he kept the money rather than placing the bet as he should have, and unfortunately the horse won."
"I follow you."
"Uncle Mickey, very young and very scared I imagine, was in Corona's Bar in the Irish Channel."
"On Magazine Street," I said. "That bar was there for years and years. Maybe a century."
"Yes, and the bookie's henchmen came in and dragged Uncle Mickey to the back of the bar. My mother's father saw it all. He was there, but he couldn't do anything about it. Nobody could. Nobody would. Nobody dared. But this is what my grandfather saw. The men beat and kicked Uncle Mickey. They were the ones who hurt the roof of his mouth so he talked as if something were wrong with him. And they kicked out his eye. They kicked it across the floor. And the way my grandfather said it every time he told it was, 'Dora, they could have saved that eye, except those guys stepped on it. They deliberately stepped on it with those pointed shoes.' "
human could be that cold. I had sopped up the winter's worst as though I were porous marble, which I suppose I was.
"Dora, Dora, Dora," I whispered. "How he loved you, and how much he wanted everything to be right for you, Dora."
Her scent was strong, but so was I.
"Lestat, explain about the Devil," she said.
I sat down on the carpet so that I could look up at her. She was perched on the edge of her chair, knees bare, black coat carelessly open now, and a streak of gold scarf showing, her face pale but very flushed, in a way that made her radiant and at the same time a little enchanted, as though she were no more human than me.
"Even your father couldn't really describe your beauty," I said. "Temple virgin, nymph of the wood."
"My father said that to you?"
"Yes. But the Devil, ah, the Devil told me to ask you a question.
To ask you the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye!" I had just remembered it. I had not remembered to tell either David or Armand about this, but what difference could that possibly make?
She was surprised by these words, and very impressed. She sank back a little into the chair. "The Devil told you these words?"
"He gave it to me as a gift. He wants me to help him. He says he's not evil. He says that God is his adversary. I'll tell you everything, but he gave me these words as some sort of little extra gift, what do we call it in New Orleans, lagniappe? To convince me that he is what he says he is."
She gave a little gesture of confusion, hand flying to her temple as she shook her head. "Wait. The truth about Uncle Mickey's eye, you're sure he said that? My father didn't say anything about Uncle Mickey?"
"No, and I never caught any such image from your father's heart or soul, either. The Devil said Roger didn't know the truth. What does it mean?"
"My father didn't know the truth," she said. "He never knew. His mother never told him the truth. It was his uncle Mickey, my grandmother's brother. And it was my mother's people who told me the real story—Terry's people. It was like this, my father's mother was rich and had a beautiful house on St. Charles Avenue."
"I know the place, I know all about it. Roger met Terry there."
Yes, exactly, but my grandmother had been poor when she was She stopped.
"And Roger never knew this."
"Nobody knows it who is alive," she said. "Except for me, of course. My grandfather's dead. For all I know, everyone who was ever there is dead. Uncle Mickey died in the early fifties. Roger used to take me out to the cemetery to visit his grave. Roger had always loved him. Uncle Mickey with his hollow voice and his glass eye. Everybody sort of loved him, the way Roger told it. And even my mother's people said that too. He was a sweetheart. He was a night watchman before he died. He rented rooms on Magazine Street right over Baer's Bakery.
He died of pneumonia in the hospital before anyone even knew he was ill. And Roger never knew the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye. We would have spoken of it if he had, naturally."
I sat there pondering, or rather picturing what she had described.
No images came from her, she was closed tight, but her voice had been effortlessly generous. I knew Corona's. So did anyone who had ever walked Magazine Street in those famous blocks of the Irish heyday. I knew the criminals with their pointed shoes. Crushing the eye.
"They just stepped on it and squashed it," said Dora, as though she could read my thoughts. "My grandfather always said, 'They could have saved it, if they hadn't stepped on it the way they did with those pointed shoes.'"
A silence fell between us.
"This proves nothing," I said.
"It proves your friend, or enemy, knows secrets, that's what it proves."
"But it doesn't prove he's the Devil," I said, "and why would he choose such a story, of all things?"
"Maybe he was there," she said with a bitter smile.
We both gave that a little laugh.
"You said this was the Devil but he wasn't evil," she prompted me. She looked persuasive and trusting and thoroughly in command.
I had the feeling that I had been absolutely correct in seeking her advice. She was regarding me steadily.
"Tell me what this Devil has done," she said.
I told her the whole tale. I had to admit how I stalked her father and I couldn't remember if I had told her that before. I told her about the Devil stalking me in similar fashion, going through it all, just as I had for David and Armand, and found myself finishing with those puzzling words, "And I'll tell you this about him, whatever he is, he has a sleepless mind in his heart, and an insatiable personality! And that's true. When I first used those words to describe him, they just occurred to me as if from nowhere. I don't know what part of my mind intuited such a thing. But it's true."
"Say again?" she asked.
I did.
She lapsed into total silence. Her eyes became tiny and she sat with one hand curled under her chin.
"Lestat, I'm going to make an absurd request of you. Send for some food. Or get me something to eat and drink. I have to ponder this."
I found myself leaping to my feet. "Anything you wish," I said.
"Doesn't matter at all. Sustenance. I haven't eaten since yesterday. I don't want my thoughts distorted by an accidental fast. You go, get something for nourishment and bring it back here. And I want to be alone here, to pray, to think, and to walk back and forth among Father's things. Now, there is no chance this demon will take you sooner than promised?"
"I don't know any more than I told you. I don't think so. Look, I'll get you good food and drink."
I went on the errand immediately, leaving the building in mortal fashion and seeking out one of those crowded midtown restaurants from which to purchase a whole meal for her that could be packed up and kept hot until I returned. I brought her several bottles of some pure, brand-name water, since that's what mortals seem to crave in these times, and then I took my time going back up, the bundle in my arms.