Now Let's Talk of Graves Page 5

  “Her Majesty. His Majesty. Ladies. Lords.” In a plummy voice the master of ceremonies tried to get everyone to settle down.

  “Is that Bert Parks?”

  “Nah. But he does have the same tan.”

  “And the same toupee.”

  Now the stage was aswirl with scores of masked lords and ladies pantomiming a scene from The Winter’s Tale. Bowing. Scraping. Mincing. Posing.

  “Isn’t it a riot?” Kitty grinned.

  “Sort of like the pageant in Mrs. Roussel’s class—third grade.”

  “Exactly. And they’re so serious. They’ve been practicing for months. It’s the high point of their year.”

  “And yours?”

  Kitty made a rude noise.

  Sam laughed. “What’s Zoe’s take on all this?”

  “Pretty sanguine. I get her out of here once in a while. To New York. Out to the Coast. She’s got a fix on it, that outside of N.O. this means jack. You tell people you’re going to be Queen of Comus and they say, Do whut? But these folks”—Kitty waved a hand—“they’d die if they suspected this wasn’t the very epicenter of the universe.”

  So why do you stay here? Sam wanted to ask. Why do you do this year after year? But that was grist for a long sitdown. Not now. Not here.

  The lords and ladies pranced for a while longer, then the tableau ended and the orchestra struck up. The king and queen took the floor.

  “Let the dancing begin!”

  “Miss Cynthia Butler!”

  “Mrs. Archibald Ross! Mrs. Ross!”

  “Miss Penelope Addison!”

  Black-coated committeemen sporting yellow boutonnieres circled their section, calling out the names of the chosen ladies, who rose to take the arms of masked and costumed gentlemen.

  “Did they forget us?” Sam poked Kitty, reminding her she hadn’t come all the way from Atlanta to sit.

  “Just wait. I told you, wives first, then mistresses and/or widowed mothers. They’ll get to us after that.”

  Sam hated cooling her heels. A dancing fool since she was big enough to bop, she wanted to be out there.

  She closed her eyes for a minute, and Sean waltzed in on another wave of memory. Her sweet, redheaded Sean O’Reilly, San Francisco’s hip-popping, slipping, and sliding chief of detectives, her own true love. They’d made lots of good moves together.

  “Miss Samantha Adams.”

  They’d had a date to go dancing the night he’d flown up into the air above rain-slick Van Ness Avenue, tapping his way up into the sky, falling back dead. Stopped in the middle of his twirl through life by a drunk driver.

  “Sam!”

  Kitty was hissing in her ear. She snapped to. Easy does it. One ball-and-chain, one buck-and-wing at a time. She stood, ready to put her little foot right there.

  “Miss Adams?”

  A tall masked man in a golden costume was waiting. Giving her his arm. Leading her onto the dance floor. Now, this was more like it. Dancing with a stranger whose face you couldn’t see was a hoot, the stuff of fairy tales.

  “Mademoiselle.” He bowed and brushed his mask above her hand in a kiss, took her in his arms, and whirled her out and about and around, her silk skirt swinging.

  This was more like it.

  Until he stumbled and almost fell.

  Then she caught a whiff of whiskey from under his mask. Dragon breath.

  Ditto her second partner.

  Both drunk as skunks, having imbibed widely and deeply at the in crowd’s bar behind the stage. Boys would be boys even if they were dressed up in fancy white tights and cloth of gold.

  Fairy tales, indeed.

  No Prince Charming for Miss Samantha in this bunch. Not tonight.

  Nope, she was afraid that as in many things, her anticipation—shopping for the turquoise ballgown, flying over from Atlanta, primping and prettying—was the best part. The reality was a bunch of drunk snobs playing at court.

  For fairy tales were just that, the stuff of young girls’ and fools’ dreams.

  *

  A couple of blocks away, General Taylor Johnson drove her great-grandmother, Ida, up to her house on St. Ann in the Quarter. They sat in the bright red ZZZ Service ambulance pulled up beside a NO PARKING ANYTIME sign at the curb.

  “I don’t know why you had to go to all this trouble, cutting your ambulance through police lines. I told you I could get home my ownself,” Ida was saying.

  “Maw Maw, if you don’t beat all. First you think you’re taking the bus, which isn’t running downtown tonight anyway. You think you’re gonna get yourself down here practically right in the front yard of the auditorium—which you couldn’t get near tonight if you were God Almighty. ’Less He happened to know somebody in Rex or Comus. You’d think you gonna fly? You got that kind of gris-gris, old woman?”

  Ida just sniffed and shot G.T. a look. Then she reached down somewhere inside her clothing and pulled out a little pouch, dipped some snuff behind her bottom lip, said, “Let me get on in my house, where ain’t nobody fussing at me.”

  “In a minute. I want to finish telling you about what happened.”

  “Okay, go on. So the little skinny white boy you picked up fainted out at the airport is laying up in the back of the ambulance.”

  “And Arkadelphia and I—you know who Ark is?”

  “The big fat white boy from up north Louisiana you drive with sometimes.”

  “Right, Ark and I are just cruising. You can tell there’s nothing seriously wrong with the boy but the cops say haul him, we haul him. We’re stopped at a red light right after we get onto Williams Boulevard headed toward St. Jude’s. Next thing we know, people one car over start hollering.

  “Ark, I said, we can’t help those people no matter what their problem, we got a full house here, when finally I make out they’re talking about our rear door.” She turned around and pointed at the back of the ambulance.

  “Lord have mercy, Ark said, we’ve done let him roll out in the middle of the road.

  “But it wasn’t that at all. The little dude had taken that opportunity, had flown.”

  “Just got up off that stretcher?”

  “Like he had good sense. And I stood there in the street, the people in the next car pointing, and I see him, a little speck in the distance, making tracks like the devil’s on his tail. I mean, moving.”

  “Tee-hee,” Ida laughed in her high little-old-lady laugh. “I’d like to seen that. I bet it was cute.”

  “Well, it wasn’t cute when we had to fill out the forms. There’s eleventy-hundred forms on everything in this business. And the ZZZ folks don’t take too kindly to our just losing a customer. We don’t even know who to send the bill to.”

  “Well, won’t you be glad, girl, when you in medical school. Don’t have to be putting up with all this nonsense. Little white boys running away in the middle of Williams Boulevard.”

  “You don’t think there’s ever a place where there ain’t crazy folks, Maw Maw, now, do you? Going to be the same folks I cart to that emergency room. Now, stop fumbling with that door. I’ll come around and help you.”

  G.T. handed her great-grandmother out, feeling how frail she was, like a bird. She hated to think about that; besides, she’d been dreaming about weddings—a sign somebody close was going to die.

  Then Ida—who had taught her her first chants and charms, how to light candles, build an altar—picked up on her vibes. “What you afraid of, girl?”

  There was no use lying. Maw Maw saw right through her, easy as water-gazing. “Somebody passing.”

  “You been working the charm?”

  “Twenty-third Psalm, morning and evening, three times each. Got my seven-day white candle going in a saucer atop my Bible open to it.”

  “Well. It’ll work. Dark angel either pass us on by or the chosen’ll go over peacefully.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Rest your mind, child, you think it’s me. I’d tell you if it was, but it ain’t my time.”

&n
bsp; G.T. relaxed. That was indeed what she’d been afraid of. “Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that, Miss Ida. Now, why don’t I let you get on inside to take care of your company—how are Teri and the baby doing?”

  “Just fine. I started her on the nine baths soon as you left her last night. Did the white bath to wash away the hurt her husband—what you say his name is?”

  “Jimbo.”

  “That Jimbo laid on her. Let her know the goddess’ll help look after her. The blue tonight’ll calm her nerves. Need to get shut of that anger, put her at peace. Need to make her see she’s got to protect herself.”

  “I apologize having to leave her with you. I couldn’t rouse anybody else what with Carnival. All my altar sisters are out partying.”

  “What do you mean, child?” From the front porch she pointed at a sign on her building that read MARIE LAVEAU APARTMENTS. “Mam’zelle’s here always was a safe house for women and children.”

  “Yeah. But Mam’zelle’s been dead over a hundred years, and this house wasn’t hers—just built on the same site.”

  “What makes you think she ain’t here? Lord knows I talk to her every day, and not just when I’m working the mother either.”

  “What’s Teri think about all this? I bet she thinks you’re a crazy old black lady talking trash.”

  “’Course she does. Least part of her does. But the other part sees her baby calming down. Precious little boy. And herself calming too. She get it together soon.”

  “Well, give her a big hug for me and tell her everything’s gonna be okay. We’ll find her another place to stay.”

  “That’s what I be worried about—what happens that junkyard husband of hers finds her.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge soon.”

  “You hexing him, child?”

  “Well, I sure as hell ain’t blessing him with white light. I’ve warned that sucker more than once.”

  “Like I taught you from you’se a little girl. First law of nature be—”

  “Self-preservation.”

  “Thass right. Now, get on with you. Off my porch, wasting my time lollygagging. Shoo.”

  Six

  AS THE BELLS of the St. Louis Cathedral tolled midnight, Sam watched the King and Queen of Rex (“The folks,” said Kitty) troop over from their own party in the Municipal Auditorium and bow to Comus (“High society and tradition”). That bow was the coup de grâce. The madness, high and low, was ended.

  But there was one more thing: the Queen’s Breakfast at the Roosevelt, which is what the locals called the Fairmont though it had changed hands and names about fifteen years earlier.

  After a short ride down Canal in a light rain, Sam and Kitty flew up the hotel steps, trailing the long black capes that Lee women had always worn to balls. Zoe had already arrived with Ma Elise.

  “Miz Kitty,” nodded the black-and-red-uniformed, brass-buttoned giant of a doorman. In the lobby, gold columns soared up, up to a gilded ceiling. A sea of plush red carpet rolled through to the next block.

  Kitty tapped Sam’s arm and pulled her into the Sazerac Bar.

  “Let’s go in here for a few minutes,” Kitty said. “It’ll take a little time for Zoe to get changed out of her gown before she and Ma Elise come down to the ballroom for the breakfast.”

  The Sazerac was a long room that would have been right at home in an old movie. It was paneled in African walnut and lighted in pink. Hopperesque murals showed Jackson Square, the riverfront, the French Market, a plantation scene.

  It reminded Sam of the Tosca Café in San Francisco’s North Beach, where she and Sean used to go for late night cappuccinos. Both rooms were frozen in time. You expected to see young Scott Fitzgerald or, in a flash of shimmery satin, his beautiful Zelda. Your old friends would wait for you there.

  “Kitty!”

  Sure enough.

  The hail came from the depths of a long gray sofa.

  “Y’all come keep a lonely man company.”

  “His name’s Harry Zack.” Kitty turned to Sam.

  The man stood, and Sam looked into his face and saw the same wide brow, straight nose, and rosy cheeks that she’d admired at the airport.

  “He’s young,” Kitty continued in her ear, “but kind of interesting. You’ll see.”

  Indeed, thought Sam. Oh, yes indeedy.

  *

  The introductions done, Kitty asked Harry, “What are you doing here? I thought you were still in Nashville.”

  “I’ve been back a few months—keep meaning to call you for a drink. And I’m here”—Harry patted a cushion on the sofa beside him—“because I make it a practice to hang out in the Sazerac every Mardi Gras evening and buy pretty ladies drinks.” He motioned a waiter over, then continued. “In commemoration of that Fat Tuesday in 1949 when a bevy of you all, pretty ladies that is, stormed this hidebound and, until then, exclusively male institution. Now, what’s your pleasure?”

  “Fat Tuesday, 1949, my foot,” Kitty fluttered, having earlier had a glass or four of champagne. “You boys always do know the most arcane things.” Then to the waiter: “The usual.”

  “One Sazerac.” The waiter looked at Harry. “Two. And you, miss?”

  “A Perrier. With lime,” Sam said. Harry turned and gave her his slow smile.

  Yep, she thought, it was him all right, the handsome young man from yesterday. Had he come up with an opening line yet?

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Miss Samantha? You over from Atlanta to observe our quaint customs and peculiarities?” he asked with that interesting accent of a cultured New Orleanian, East Coast urban, though the intonation and vocabulary were Southern.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “Customs and peculiarities. That’s exactly it.”

  “And our friend Kitty took you to Comus. What’d you think?”

  Sam laughed. “Pretty quaint.”

  He laughed too, displaying some lovely white teeth with a little gap between the front two. She liked that. And she liked the wide shoulders beneath the tuxedo jacket. He still hadn’t gotten a haircut, and his posture—he slouched into the sofa—could use some improvement. But the drooping right eyelid was very interesting—a little lazy, a lot sexy.

  “Didn’t I see you at the airport yesterday?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Guilty as charged. Of course, I saw you too. I never forget a pretty face.”

  And I’m a sucker for one, thought Sam. Always have been. Probably always will be. A predeliction for male beauty passed down from my mama that makes me weak in the head. And in the knees.

  “Well, hell, I was at the airport too,” said Kitty. “Why didn’t you say howdy?”

  “I was”—Harry paused—“meeting somebody. Actually I was working.”

  “They hiring bands out at Moisant these days?” Kitty asked, then turned to Sam. “Harry writes and plays music.”

  Harry shook his head. “I’ve given it up. No money in my rock ’n’ roll kind of C and W. I’m going straight.”

  “What do you play?” asked Sam, thinking of a drummer from back in her drinking days. She never could quite conjure up his face, but definitely remembered his hands—

  “Keyboard. But as I said—hardly at all anymore. Weekends, maybe. Pickup bands here and there.”

  “So what do you mean, you were working at the airport?” Kitty insisted.

  Harry laughed. “I’m working right now too.” He cocked a crooked grin at Kitty. “What do you think?”

  “You want me to guess?”

  “Working the crowd. Jewel thief,” Sam said.

  Harry laughed, turned back to her. “No, but I like it.”

  “Hotel burglar. Cash. Credit cards. Assorted pretty things,” Sam continued.

  “I like that too. I can see you’ve definitely got me pegged as a criminal type.”

  “Maybe you’ve missed your calling.”

  Sam could see his chest puff a little, going along with it.

  He had a sense of humor. That was
nice.

  “Kitty said you’re with the Constitution. What do you do?” he asked.

  “Write. Crime beat.”

  “Ah-ha! So you definitely can recognize the type.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s all in the eyes.”

  “Really? Tell me what else you see.”

  “This isn’t palm reading, Harry,” Kitty said.

  “You planted a bomb,” said Sam, mock-serious.

  “Nope.”

  “Kidnapping. Here to collect a big ransom. Run away to—”

  “Bali,” Harry said. “You ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Wanta go?”

  “Why, Mr. Zack.” She fluttered her eyelashes just a tad, though in her mind her bag was packed. Swimsuit. Black lace nightie—

  Then: “There you are!” a voice boomed from the door, so loud they couldn’t ignore it. “Kitty Lee, sister woman, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Kitty. “It’s Church, three sheets to the wind.”

  Sam looked up at Kitty’s brother. It had been years since she’d met him, and that briefly. He was a very tall man with a bony, ugly-handsome face and deep circles beneath his eyes. He looked like Abe Lincoln on a bad day. There was a race horse blaze of white in the thick, dark curly hair which he tried to pomade down in a long, old-fashioned style. But the most striking thing about him this particular evening was that he was drunk—absolutely reeling.

  “So this is Samantha.” He leaned into their table now, spraying them with spittle.

  “Now, Church, you’ve met Sam before. Don’t you remember?”

  And suddenly it struck Sam that their most recent meeting had been this evening. “Did I dance with you earlier at the Comus ball? You were masked?” she asked.

  “Well, darlin’!” His fumy laugh was booming, expansive. “I certainly couldn’t tell you that. Though I certainly was at the ball. Did you see my baby girl? My Zoe?”

  “I did indeed. She was absolutely beautiful.” Sam paused. “But I could swear it was you.”

  He leaned over, whispered slyly, “Comus secrets always secret.”

  Now close behind Church followed a round, doll-faced man with wavy blond hair. He extended his hand. “Howdy, howdy. I’m Tench Young.”

  Church said to Kitty, “Haven’t even brought Samantha around. You that ashamed of your brother?”