Too bad about the drugs, though the truth was I was weird enough from the strain of the last couple days. Rimbaud on his drunken boat, Alfred Jarry on his absinthe, and Pet on her bus and cigarettes. Perhaps I wasn’t quite in the same league, but still I’d had my moments. Maybe those moments would turn into a life of reasonable decadence and sin. It was the kind of thing you had to grow into, like a chinchilla coat or a necklace of baroque pearls.
I did the makeup bit—too bad they hadn’t invented a light shellac you could spray on your face and keep the whole shebang intact for days. And then I was out the door, out into the night.
New Orleans! Even at night the sky was colorful, reddish as if it reflected from somewhere else, and you could feel the music well up from the sidewalk as you got close to Bourbon Street, as if the water, which was right under the thin layer of the soil, conducted that jazzy energy.
My armpits and forehead began to blossom with sweat, but the feeling was nice: adapting.
This time I was ready for the voodoo shop. Earlier, it was all so abrupt—like Alonso said, you couldn’t stroll right in the front door. You had to find another way.
My heart hurt. Forget Alonso.
The air was heavy with the smell of old water sitting in pools of stone, the broken fountains in the seedy courtyards on either side of the street. When I turned onto Bourbon, the smell of liquor drowned out everything else, and the swinging saxophones, and all those rowdy bodies jostling. One photo display caught my eye: the breasts on the “dancer” looked extraterrestrial. When I was a kid, I thought those big breasts were so lovely—now you could see there was some kind of bad expectation going on here, but exactly what was wrong eluded me. Something about what men expected women to do—images of Tommy flashed through my head, but he was only a pathetic old druggie, what was there to fear from him? Only fear itself, as they say.
And Sammy. Face it: hadn’t Sammy had some of that same kind of weird energy? Would I see him soon? Would he remember me?
Would I ever see Alonso again?
The warmth of the amulet/gris-gris/juju between my breasts.
Goddammit! What was past was history, and you began remaking it the instant it was past! Who knew how it went, it was all imagination, who knew what had ever happened to anybody….
Of course the voodoo shop was closed. Its windows were tidily shuttered down, not even a chink to peek through. And its energy felt in repose, an electric appliance unplugged for the evening.
I rapped soundly on the old wooden door. A grunt and some scuffling ensued, an almost imperceptible altercation in the shutters, and then continuing silence.
I knocked again. This time there was that frozen, palpable silence that clues you in on the fact that someone else is inches away from you but refusing to admit it.
“Please,” I said. “It’s important.”
Boy, that was effective, ha ha. The youthful, timorous accents of my voice didn’t exactly reek of persuasive authority.
But what was the way to get me in?
While I hesitated, my hand went to the juju, burning brightly against my throat.
Just like in a Dracula movie, the voodoo door swung in on creaky hinges.
“Thanks.” I spoke to the door itself since it was apparently the animate object.
The door didn’t answer.
The inside of the shop was the way I remembered: herbs and dolls and trinkets and candles. And the smell—was that odor there before? The connection in my mind was with something else, gone foggy.
The curtained niche to my right was like before, except now it cost three dollars to get into the Voodoo Museum. And the fat man wasn’t around.
Then I knew the smelclass="underline" it was the altar; it was Deane’s room; it was the wheel of fortune that pushed you right along. Deane had smelled just like this, and now this place smelled just like Deane.
“Deane!”
Furious footsteps and then a tall man dressed in a white robe shot through the curtain. “Who the fuck let you in?”
“The door.” Always ready with the witty riposte, c’est moi.
“Then the goddamned door can see you out.” He grabbed me smack on the biceps and yanked me toward the exit.
“Deane!” I bleated again, lamb to the slaughter. My heels bumped along the wooden floor as he dragged me.
“Wait.” The voice was so soft, it was the whisper of wings. Bat wings.
A woman was standing right next to us. Her body was concealed in a dark robe, but her face was conspicuous in the dim light from the street: it was pocked all over lightly, like an orange.
“I am Templa Una.”
And I’m the Dali Lama. Or is it Llama? “Where’s Deane?”
There was an extended silence during which the tall man let go of my arm but remained hovering. I had the strong impression that there was no point in my saying any more; this woman knew who I was and why I was here, though with the striking family resemblance, she didn’t have to be Einstein to figure it out. And the bellowed Deane still hung in the air like cigar smoke.
“You are bound to be disappointed,” she eventually opined.
“All my life.” I wanted to sound tough, one of those California detectives maybe.
“Let me extricate this child from your presence,” the self-appointed bouncer suggested, his voice as glutinous as the sauce in a cheap Chinese restaurant.
“Oh no,” said Una. “Disappointment is its own instructor.”
That was one of those remarks that seemed profound yet rapidly turned to gibberish if you thought about it. Or it could be one of those remarks that disintegrated and then came back, say three days later, and you wake up in the middle of the night thinking of course.
“Now then. Who is this Deane and why should she be here?”
I sighed. Patience was never one of my top qualities. “I saw her working here this afternoon. And she’s my sister.”
Una gave me a fierce, penetrating look, which gave me the willies. It was like something they taught you in Evil School, where the stare-ee begins to feel that a fish hook is pricking the base of his neck. “I don’t believe that’s possible. I was the one working here this afternoon.” She turned away to examine some bottles of St. John the Conqueror. “Myself and Rondo.” She inclined her palm.
At least my body was off the hook. “Deane was here too. She’s got long black hair, lots of eye makeup. And she looks like, uh, me.”
Una raised and dropped her shoulders. “Sorry.”
Damn it to hell! They almost had me believing I’d made that up, too. “Please let me see her!”
Una turned back and smiled. “Of course, you must have mistaken her for someone else, a customer perhaps. By the way, child.” She draped her arm over the top of my shoulders and then I knew what the willies really were. “Do you need a place to stay for the night?”
Rondo grunted in disgust.
First thing in my mind: those torture machines inside the museum. And the main part of that smell, the altar smell—fresh blood.
I was halfway out the door before I dared turn back and face her. “I’ll be back in the morning. And if you don’t have some information about my sister, I’m getting the police.” Even to my own ears, especially to my own ears, a festival of hot air.