So I said to Lopez, “Will you come with me to get a cab?”
“Sure.” He turned away from the ceremony with me and put his hand on my back—but then a small explosion behind us made him turn back to the action.
I saw that the mambo was throwing powder into the brazier, and it was creating small explosions.
“Jesus, I think that’s gunpowder,” Lopez said. “Hang on. I think I’d better deal with this.”
“Of course,” I said.
As Lopez maneuvered his way through the dancing throng, heading toward the mambo, Max came up to me.
“What is she doing?” I asked him as another explosion made my head start to ache.
“She’s asking Ogoun to join us,” he said. “ He’s the loa of—”
“War, fire, and male fertility,” I said, remembering what Catherine had told me.
It suddenly occurred to me that the anthropologist wasn’t here. That surprised me. I’d have expected to see her hovering nearby, taking notes.
Then again, maybe after you’ve done that at a few hundred rituals, the fun starts to wear off. Perhaps she had decided to stay home with a good book tonight.
Lopez was approaching the brazier as the mambo threw another handful of gunpowder into it. He fell back a step and looked a little dizzy for a moment, as if the resultant explosion had affected him.
“What’s he doing?” a familiar voice asked me.
I turned to see Jeff by my side. I said, “There you are. You disappeared for a while.”
“Should he be that close to the brazier?” asked Jeff.
I looked again. Lopez was standing still in front of the mambo now. Not talking, not making her put down the gunpowder . . . Not doing anything.
Jeff said to me, “He doesn’t act like a guy who dumped you.”
I had no idea why Lopez was just standing there. He seemed to be swaying a little.
“He didn’t dump me,” I said. “He gave me up.”
“He acts more like a guy who’s cutting you out of the herd and putting up a fence to keep the other stallions away from you.”
“Huh?”
“We’ve been in this room since, oh, a different geological era, I think,” Jeff said. “And this is the first time he’s moved more than eight inches away from you.”
I turned to face Jeff. “Tell me about the Imperial Food Forum. I don’t understand why you lied to me about it.”
“I didn’t lie. I just . . . omitted a lot of information and let you think whatever you wanted to think.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I really
hadn’t
thought about it. So I said, “I assumed you were in a play.”
“I was broke when I came back from LA, and another actor I know—Frank Johnson, in fact—told me about a job that was available. He said he wasn’t right for it, but maybe I might be, since I’d been keeping fit out in LA.”
“And?”
“And it was full-time work, and the money was pretty good.” He shrugged. “And if the floor show keeps going well, we’ll do some TV commercials. And that’ll be better money.”
“We all do things to pay the bills, Jeff,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a part on a great TV show. I’m wearing a thong and playacting with a sword in a glorified supermarket.” He made an awkward gesture. “So maybe you can understand why I didn’t just come out and tell you.”
“
D-Thirty
is the only work I’ve had all summer,” I pointed out. “I’ve been waiting tables most of the year.”
“
Singing
and waiting tables,” he said with a teasing smile.
“
Do
you get cold in your thong?”
He gave me a mock punch on the chin, then he put his arms around me, and we hugged. As we pulled apart, Jeff peered over the heads of the crowd and looked into the center of the hounfour again. His expression changed so abruptly that I turned to look, too.
Jeff said, “Holy shit!”
I cried, “No!”
Lopez has stripped off his shirt. Bare-chested and gleaming with a fine sheen of sweat, he knelt before the brazier and plunged his hands into the pile of glowing red coals.
I screamed and tried to lunge forward. In sheer reflexive fear, Jeff kept a firm grip on me, stopping me from moving.
Lopez pulled the iron rod out of the brazier, raised his arms overhead, and held the burning rod in his bare hands, his facial expression completely blank.
18
“L
opez!” I screamed in horror.
He remained kneeling on the floor in front of the glowing brazier, his naked torso gleaming, his muscular arms raised high overhead as he held the glowing iron rod in his hands. His eyes were half-closed and unblinking, his face relaxed and strangely blank.
“Let me go!” My nose twitched from the irritation of my gris-gris pouch as I struggled with Jeff, frantic to get to Lopez and—and—and . . . Actually, I wasn’t sure what I would do. But getting him to let go of the red- hot iron bar seemed like a good place to start.
“Holy shit!” Jeff repeated, still restraining me.
Mambo Celeste was standing next to Lopez. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him to look at her, but I heard her voice raised exultantly and was aware of her swaying in a dance around his kneeling form, her arms spread wide as she chanted and shook her rattle.
His face still calm, almost sleepy, Lopez suddenly leaped to his feet and whirled around in a circle with the glowing rod, twirling it overhead with his hands, then letting it slide down his arms so he could make the thing dance around his torso, moving like a martial artist practicing with a bamboo staff.
That was when I finally realized that he wasn’t getting burned. His flesh was unmarred, and he seemed to be in no discomfort at all.
“Whoa!” said Jeff. “He works out, doesn’t he? Very flexible.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
I watched in numb shock as Lopez tipped his head back and plunged the fiery rod into his mouth. The crowd cheered, clapped, and chanted with ecstatic enthusiasm as he eased the glowing rod into his mouth, inch by inch, like a sword swallower, until an alarmingly large portion of it had disappeared down his throat.
“Has he ever done this before?” Jeff asked me.
“Of course not!” I snapped, panting with fear and panic.
When Lopez finally pulled the iron bar all the way out of his mouth, it was still glowing.
“How did he
do
that?” Jeff wondered.
Then Lopez held the rod like a spear and, with a guttural war cry, threw it across the room, over the heads of the worshippers. Flying straight as an arrow, it crashed into Napoleon’s cage, causing the glass to shatter. The breaking glass and startled cries of the nearby people were loud enough to make me look reflexively in that direction. The boa constrictor was unharmed, but it was frightened enough to move off its branch and tumble out of its cage.
“So now that snake’s on the loose in a room packed with people,” Jeff said. “
Great.
What was your friend
thinking?
”
“He’s
not
thinking! Can’t you see?” My heart was pounding so hard I felt dizzy, almost nauseated. “He’s possessed!”
“Seriously?”
I felt a hand grasp my arm and turned to see Max standing beside me, his gaze fixed on Lopez. “He has become a cheval.”
“A what?”
“A cheval—er, a horse. That’s how it’s described in Vodou. He has been mounted and is being ridden by Ogoun, the god of fire and war.” Max squeezed my arm reassuringly. “I know it looks frightening, but it’s a blessing. A sign of great favor.”
Jeff said, “It looks damned dangerous, if you ask me.”
Lopez accepted a bottle of rum from a smiling celebrant, raised it to his lips, and tilted his head back. Throat working rhythmically, dark golden skin gleaming, he didn’t even pause for breath, but simply drank the whole bottle, draining its contents. When he was done, he tossed the bottle aside, wiped his mouth with his forearm, and—speaking in Creole—demanded more rum. Someone gave him another bottle. He drained that one, too.
“Max,” I said desperately, “he’ll get alcohol poisoning!”
“Maybe the fire god can handle it?” Jeff said doubtfully.
“There usually aren’t any ill effects afterward from being ridden by a loa,” said Max.
“Usually?”
I repeated.
I watched the mambo chanting loudly in Creole and waving her rattle around Lopez as he swayed and his eyes rolled back in his head. As she encouraged him to take yet another bottle of rum, I remembered that I thought she was an evil bokor and a murderess.
“I’m putting a stop to this!” I said.
“Esther, no!” Max grabbed my arm again as I tried to move forward. “That could be very dangerous!”
Jeff grabbed my other arm. “He’s right! A lot of people here are guzzling rum, not just your boyfriend. They seem happy and harmless, but do you really want to risk spoiling their ceremony now that they’ve had a few drinks?”
“You shouldn’t disturb someone who’s in the middle of a possession trance,” Max warned. “And insulting a loa who has mounted a celebrant is fraught with potential peril!”
“Would this thing hurt Lopez?” I asked anxiously.
“Ogoun has a fiery temper,” Max said. “Forcing him to dismount could be dangerous for
you
.”
The man dressed as Baron Samedi poured a bottle of rum all over Lopez’s arms and torso while the mambo, using a thin piece of burning wood, followed him around Lopez’s body, setting the rum alight so that Lopez’s flesh was covered with rum-soaked flames. His skin still glowing with fire, he seized the bottle from Baron Samedi and drank more rum.
The mambo rubbed fire and rum into his skin while he drank thirstily, her palms moving along his naked torso and over his shoulders while people around them danced and sang.
“Well, I don’t care if the loa
is
offended!” I told my companions. “I want that woman’s hands
off
Lopez. Right now!”
“Oh, crap,” Jeff said as I tore myself out of his restraining grasp and starting forcing my way through the crowd. The swinging gris-gris pouch made my eyes sting. I ignored the discomfort and stayed focused on Lopez.
“Esther!” Max cried. “Wait!”
“No! This has to stop!” I shoved people aside as I forged a path to the possessed police detective. “It’s dangerous! And so is that woman!”
I forced my way into the center of the ceremony and crossed the floor to Lopez’s side. I grabbed the bottle of rum as he was about to raise it to his lips again.
“Stop!” I said. “Lopez! Can you hear me?”
He kept his grip on the bottle without any apparent effort, though I was trying hard to pull it out of his grasp. He swayed a little as he looked at me. He seemed to see me, but there was no light of recognition in the blue eyes that met mine.
“Lopez?”
The mambo started shouting at me in Creole. After a moment, she switched to English, telling me to leave him alone, to go away.
When she grabbed me, I shook her off, saying, “Don’t touch me! And don’t you touch him again, either!”
She grabbed me again, and this time I slapped her hand away. She hissed at me like a cat.
Lopez’s heavy-lidded eyes watched this exchange impassively. Then he grinned, slid his free arm around my waist, and pulled me against his naked chest. He ground his hips against mine, and I gave a startled gasp when I felt the unmistakable evidence of his arousal. I suddenly recalled that Ogoun was also the god of male fertility. Flustered and embarrassed—we were surrounded by people—I tried to push him away. It was like trying to move a boulder.
His lips came down on mine, and his kiss was bold and lascivious, his mouth hard, his tongue thrusting and stroking. I struggled, and he bent me backward over his arm until I was disoriented and dizzy, clinging to him for balance as he plundered my mouth with hot insistence, filling my senses with a fog of rum, fire, sweat, warm skin, and hard, flexing muscles. I couldn’t breathe or move or find the floor with my feet. My head swam with darkness and heat as he went on kissing me greedily, taking what he wanted and draining me of my will.
By the time he stopped, I was so desperate for air, I thought I would faint. Even so, when he lifted his head, my mouth followed his, craving more punishment from him. He noticed, and it pleased him. He gave my ribs a ruthless squeeze, then laughed and raised the bottle to his lips again, downing more rum. With his head tilted back and his throat working, his hand slid down to my buttocks and he pulled my hips tightly into his again, then thrust against me with graphic intent.
I drew in a sharp breath and struggled again, trying to pull away while I choked on a cloud of cayenne pepper rising from my gris-gris charm. Lopez lowered the bottle to look at me. His smiling lips shone wetly with rum, and his liquor-soaked breath was probably a fire hazard. His long-lashed eyes were seductive with sleepy amusement as he held the bottle to my lips and murmured suggestively to me in Creole.