Suddenly the sky became smoky. Sunlight penetrated the haze in narrow shafts.
“Where's all this smoke comin' from? You see all right, Lula?”
“Must be a fire nearby. Burnin' debris, maybe.”
“That girl Mabel Wildrose?” said Beany. “One who was kidnapped?”
“What about her?”
“She lived to be one hundred years old. Lived all the rest of her life in the house in Pass Christian.”
“She's lucky she didn't have to live to see it smashed in the hurricane.”
Beany nodded, then said, “I'm glad as blazes nobody ever took me and locked me up in a steamer trunk when I was a little girl. I'll bet Miss Wildrose never got it out of her mind for the next ninety years.”
29
As they approached the Huey P. Long Bridge on their way into New Orleans, Lula began to cry.
“What is it, baby?” asked Beany.
“It's why I made you drive this last stretch,” said Lula. “This is where Sailor met his demise, on the Old Spanish Trail.”
“Oh, sweetness, of course it is. You go on and sob, then. You don't mind, though, I'll cut on OZ, get us some local sounds.”
Sonny Rollins' strident tenor barked at them from the radio as Beany nosed the Nightcat onto the bridge.
“Wowee! I was expectin' Mac or Irma, not this bughouse bad boy!”
Beany switched the station and settled on the 1946 Xavier Cugat Orchestra playing “Perfidia.”
“Listen to them strings, Lula. Sounds like rain slidin' down windows to the soul.”
They drove without talking the rest of the way across the bridge.
As they left the river behind them, Beany asked, “What's that address Pace give you? I forgot it.”
Lula struggled to regain her composure and said, “Orleans Street, number 926. Close by Burgundy, I believe.”
When they got to the Quarter, Beany remarked, “Ever'thin' looks so normal. Never know there'd ever been a hurricane here.”
“It's mostly everywhere else got pasted, 'specially the Lower Nine. Pace says it's a ghost town over to St. Bernard.”
“Yeah, saw on CNN Fats Domino's house was submerged. The shotgun, anyway, not that motel-type structure behind.”
“Heard he got rescued off the roof by a helicopter.”
They were surprised to find a parking place on Orleans directly across the street from 926.
“What's the woman's name owns it?” Beany asked as they got out of the car.
Lula opened her purse and found the little piece of paper on which she'd written the information Pace had given her.
“Marnie Kowalski. Pace said she's a good lookin' little blonde, about forty. Lives in the front house and rents out two rear apartments overlook the courtyard.”
“Girlfriend of his?”
“Maybe, but I don't think he's keepin' special company these days.”
Lula pressed the buzzer marked Kowalski. She pressed it again thirty seconds later.
“One of you gals Pace Ripley's mama?”
Lula and Beany looked up and saw a woman's head sticking out of an upstairs window. Her hair was blonde and clipped short.
“She is,” said Beany.
The head disappeared for a few seconds, then reappeared.
“Catch!” the woman said, and tossed down a key, which landed on the sidewalk.
Beany picked up the key and said to the woman, “You Marnie Kowalski?”
“Marnie as in Hitchcock and Kowalski out of Tennessee Williams. Let yourselves in. I'm buildin' a gumbo up here.”
Just as Beany had turned the key in the front door lock and she and Lula were about to enter the house, someone spoke to them.
“Y'all live here?”
Beany and Lula looked around and saw a short, thin, dusty bituminous-colored girl of about twelve or thirteen wearing a red dress with white polkadots standing on the sidewalk.
“Who're you?” asked Lula.
“Eclair Feu, French for fire. Used to I lived on Mystery Street, close by Esplanade. I'm almost fourteen years old. My house was destroyed in the flood and my mama and baby sister, Byzantina, livin' now in Texas, I think.”
“Don't you have any other family here?” Beany asked.
Eclair wore her hair in braids and they whipped around as she shook her head. “Naw, everyone gone or drown.”
“Why didn't you go to Texas with your mama and sister?” said Lula.
“Went without me. Took 'em a bus to Houston's what I hear. Ain't heard more.”
Beany and Lula looked at each other, then Beany said, “Why don't
you come in with us, Eclair? We'll figure out what to do for you after while. I'm Beany Thorn and my friend here is Lula Pace Fortune Ripley.”
“Miz Beany?” Eclair said. “I be hoodooed.”
“What's that?” asked Lula. “What you mean?”
“Hoodoo man name Cap'n Funeste spell me, lay a curse on my head, say I be dead soon. Just gon' fall down and die.”
“Why would anyone put a curse on you, Eclair?” Lula asked.
“Didn't do him right, I guess,” said the girl.
“Let's go in,” said Beany, “sort this out.”
Eclair Feu extended her long, skinny arms to the sides, her body began to vibrate and her eyes rolled back in her head. She urinated on the sidewalk, stuck out her tongue and started to whirl. The child spun around several times before she stopped. Her eyes came back into place and stared blankly straight ahead for a few moments. Eclair then turned right and began walking rapidly away in the direction of Rampart Street.
“Eclair!” Beany shouted, but the girl kept walking.
Marnie Kowalski poked her head out of the upstairs window again.
“You ladies comin' in, or what?” she said.
“We're comin',” Beany answered.
“Like you said,” Lula said to Beany, “everything looks normal.”
30
I have been having some mighty disturbing dreams of late. Last night I had one where someone was following me or was with me and at first I couldnt see who it was and then it turned out to be Mamas old friend and suitor Johnnie Farragut the private detective. We were in a snowy place and I met a girl who was from Czechoslovakia she said lived with her parents in a big apartment with wind blowing through cracks in the walls and windows next to railroad tracks in a northern city. She took me to her home and Johnnie followed behind. In the dream I was much younger than I am now maybe in my 20s or 30s and Johnnie was just as he always was somewhere in between not young or old just shuffling along behind the way he did after Mama so many years. The girl wanted me to meet her parents who did not speak English they wanted me to help them they were afraid to leave the apartment. I dont know how or where I met their daughter on the street I guess. The parents were dressed like country people from the forests of Eastern Europe the mother with a big black shawl over her head and shoulders and father in a shabby gray suit jacket and pants over a stained dirty long underwear shirt he had a big mustache and four day beard. Finally I understood that they wanted me and Johnnie to take them to a boat going to Egypt but it wasnt really Egypt it was an even more ancient place Mesopotamia maybe. I wouldnt take their money it was very little anyway and Johnnie tried to explain to them we couldnt get them there. The parents got angry the woman was shouting at us and the girl said nothing so Johnnie and I had to run out of there into the snowy street. This Marnie Kowalski sure is a character as Mama would say a tough talker but a hell of a good woman I believe and Beany does too. She no sooner had gotten us fixed in the upper right rear apartment on the courtyard which is nice with a little fountain water comes out of the mouths of bluebirds than here come Pace who Marnie called right after Beany buzzed her. Hes looking good losing more hair on top and in back but in shape from working construction these last few months. Marnie and he are best buddies were lovers once upon a time and somehow come out of that with good feelings towards one
another a small miracle. Sat us down to a good meal of gumbo and corn-bread. Pace had to get back to the job he and his crew are doing in Gentilly Terrace for the famous Mexican Japanese artist Arturo Okazaki y Pintura rebuilding his studio Pace said the water went up eight feet wrecked forty years of the mans work. Hard to imagine losing so much in a sudden see your whole life float away like that. Beany and I are having a rest and will see Pace later tonight. Marnie Kowalski bakes cakes for a living along with renting out her apartments. She has a tattoo of a red scorpion on the back of her left hand I asked her why a red one and she said so nobody would ever mistake her for an easy woman.
31
Lula, Beany, and Pace were in Saint Wolfgang's Lounge on Iberville Street sipping snowflake rickeys, a concoction created by Saint Wolfgang's owner, Koomgang Lee, a thirty-five-year-old North Korean defector, which combined Koomgang Lee's version of white lightning with lime and Schweppes. The North Korean proprietor, who claimed to at one time have been a commander in Kim Jong-il's supreme personal service brigade, had named his establishment Saint Wolfgang's because he had opened it on Halloween, his favorite Western holiday, which also happens to be Saint Wolfgang's Day.
“I been comin' in here regular,” Pace told the women, “since I run into Marnie again. She's pals with Koomgang Lee. Baked him the first birthday cake he ever had, bittersweet chocolate, Barbancourt rum, and pineapple.”
Billie Holiday singing “I Didn't Know What Time It Was” lingered in the air. Koomgang Lee, Pace explained, was besotted by American culture of the 1940s and '50s, and was a jazz fanatic. He encouraged patrons to smoke, providing gratis each table in the lounge a mahogany case containing only unfiltered cigarettes: Lucky Strikes, Pall Malls, Chesterfields, and Camels. His vision of America had been formed by the movies, the viewing of which was a secret pastime of the North Korean dictator's, and one Kim Jong-il often enjoyed sharing with his closest associates, including those preferred members of his supreme personal service.
“Koomgang told me he smuggled himself out of North Korea buried under a heap of stinking fish guts used as chum on a shark trawler. Made it across the Yellow Sea to Quingdao, China, then walked a thousand miles to Shanghai. He presented himself at the US consulate there and offered information about the North Korean nutjob leader and the North Korean military in return for a visa to the United States. Two years later he settled in New Orleans.”
“Heck of a story,” said Beany.
“Blessed be he that fleeth from the fear,” said Lula.
“Amen,” said Pace, holding up his glass.
Lula and Beany raised their glasses, too, and the trio imbibed their snowflake rickeys.
“Tomorrow I'll take you on a tour of the ghost lands,” Pace told them. “That's what we've taken to callin' those parts of town mostly abandoned now.”
“It makes me so sad thinkin' about all those people forced to relocate and can't get back,” said Beany.
“Not much to come back to in lots of cases,” said Lula.
“Read where a mess of black folks were airlifted to Utah,” Beany said. “Any of 'em been heard from since?”
“I know a lot of people, white and black, don't intend on comin' back,” Pace said. “Most went to Texas, Houston in particular.”
Lula nodded. “We met a young girl right when we arrived told us she got separated from her mama and sister who she figures got taken to Houston.”
“Crime rate there's tripled, Kinky Friedman says,” said Pace. “Blames it on exiles from N.O.”
“He the Jewboy run for governor of Texas?” asked Beany.
“Exactly. Had a rock group called the Texas Jewboys. Writes mysteries, too. I read a few, they aren't bad.”
“Talented fella,” said Lula.
“Ready for another snowflake?” Pace asked.
“Not me, son. Beany, how 'bout you?”
“Seein' as how I ain't drivin' and I'm three and three-quarters past twenty-one, why not?”
Pace was about to signal for a waitress when Koomgang Lee himself came over to their table. He shook Pace's hand.
“How remarkably gracious of you to stop in this evening, Mr. Ripley,” said Koomgang Lee. “Is everything to your satisfaction?”
“Absolutely, Koomgang. I'd like you to meet my mother, Lula, and her good friend, Beany. They just come in from North Carolina.”
Koomgang smiled and nodded to the women. He wore his jet black hair combed straight back and was clean-shaven except for a dyed purple soul patch. His jaguar-like smile revealed even rows of very small teeth the color of balsa wood. He was wearing a gray sharkskin suit and a silver chainmail tee shirt. A Star of David hung from a gold chain around his neck.
“So pleasing to have you here in my home,” he said to them. He sat down in a chair at their table.
“Pace,” said Beany, “you didn't tell us Mr. Lee was such a sharp cat. Not tall but cute as hell.”
“I was savin' the best for last just for your sake, Beany,” Pace said. “I gave 'em the short version of your comin' to America, Koomgang.”
“I have been reborn here, as you say,” said the proprietor. “Now I am doing all I can to help rebuild those parts of this city that were mutilated so severely by the flood. People here have been so good to me, I am thankful for the opportunity to return the favor.”
“Koomgang brought in a group of investors from Singapore to construct a new hospital,” said Pace.
“You certainly are well-spoken, Mr. Lee,” said Lula. “Did you know our language before you came here?”