Welcome to Bordertown (43 page)

“D
amiana!” Beti used her hands to part the veil of rag strips she’d strung from the cone-shaped hat she was wearing. The veil covered her face completely. I didn’t know how she could see where she was going in that costume of hers. “Juju in the air this morning, oui?” she shouted over the brassy music from the camel-drawn omnibus. It’d been repurposed as a moving platform for some of the musicians in the parade.

I smiled. “Juju weather for true, yes!” Beti and I had only met four days ago, but she’d already learned the phrase “juju weather” from me. She mangled my accent, though.

I scanned up and down Ho Street as far as I could see. Which wasn’t very far, what with the parade floats and banners and, apparently, all Bordertown spilled into the street to celebrate. Around us, people were dressed up like devils, like dragons, like whatever the rass they pleased. All of us were dancing, strutting, jamming, chipping, rolling, and perambulating down Ho Street however we might to the rhythms blaring from the various bands marching the parade route. The racket was tremendous.

I couldn’t see Gladstone anywhere near us. I blew out a sigh
of relief. Beti wanted nothing more than to find Gladstone, her new girlfriend, in all this comess, but Gladstone was pissed at Beti and was cruising to do some bruising.

The camel bus had a black banner draped around it. The lettering on it was made to look like bones, and read “We Dead Awaken.” Through the windows we could see the musicians, all of them wearing funereal black suits, including top hats tricked out with black lace veils. Even the musicians were playin’ mas’. It was a brass band, instruments shouting out the melody to a song I almost recognized.

Today was Jou’vert; the daylong free-for-all we were pleased to call a “parade” ushered in the week of bacchanalia that was Bordertown’s more or less annual Jamboree. Word had gone around town that this year’s theme was “jazz funeral.” I was dressed as a Catrina from the Dia de los Muertos—a gorgeous femme skeleton in sultry widow’s weeds, complete with a massive picture hat.

I suppressed a sneeze; my sinuses were tingling. Juju breeze for true, blowing a witchy front of magic from the Realm into Bordertown. Juju weather always made things in Bordertown especially … interesting. My fellow human friends made mako on me when I said I could sense the pools and eddies of magic as they wafted through Bordertown. Only Gladstone, half Blood as she was, had ever backed me up. And now her new girlfriend Beti, too. Or possibly her newly
ex
-girlfriend Beti. Beti, who might be from the Other Side, or who might just be a young brown girl playing out her own personal power fantasy.

Gladstone’s life could get complicated.

Gladstone could deal. It was Beti I was concerned for, so young and so naive. Newbies to Bordertown never believed they were as out of their depth as they really were.

Beti swung a turn around me. She was completely covered by multicolored strips of old clothing that Gladstone had helped her collect from the discard bins at Tatterstock, the trashion clothing place in Letterville. Her voice growled softly from her whirling dervish center: “Do you see Gladstone?” It made my heart ache. Poor baby butch Beti. In the few days I’d known her, I’d already learned that her gruff voice came out lowest when she was trying to play it cool.

“Come,” I replied, “lewwe go further down the road. I sure we going to buck up on Gladstone soon.” Over my dead body. Glads was gunning for Beti, certain that Beti’d betrayed her. Striding to the beat, I set off down the road, weaving my way through the other mas’ players. Beti followed me obediently, a little devil dustling sticking close to its mummy.

When I ran into Gladstone last night, she’d been propped up at a table at The Ferret, well into the snarly phase of a drunken bout with her favorite flavor of self-pity in a bottle—Mad River water chased with anisette. Gladstone sober was the best friend a person could hope to have. Gladstone on a binge was a snake-mean nightmare best avoided. I had a scar on my chin to keep me from ever forgetting that. I intended to make sure that this town—and Gladstone, my dearest friend—wouldn’t ride roughshod over Beti, shiny as a new copper penny, with not the slightest hint of silver to her eyes or her hair. It was kinda funny the way the three of us had bucked up on each other just four days ago:

*   *   *

Screaming Lord Neville sashayed over to greet the customer who’d just stepped tentatively in through the doorway of the Café Cubana. “Table for one, sweet thing?”

The sweet thing was a sturdy, burnished brown tomboy with that leonine Bob Marley face you find on a lot of Jamaicans. She gave
him a shy nod. She was wearing fancy runners with the laces not exactly tied, a plain baggy T-shirt, and jeans two or three sizes too big, her hands slipped into their back pockets. One of the newest styles to hit Bordertown since people had started flooding into it from the World last month, claiming that Bordertown had disappeared for thirteen years.

“This way, sugar.” He led the way, practically voguing as he went. He had reason to show off. He was a tall, light-skinned brother with the kind of figure that could carry off any look. Today he was decked out in a shimmering purple confection of a satin gown, an off-the-shoulder number with deep décolletage—I had to admire how he pulled that off—a nipped-in waist, and a full, bouncing poodle skirt made even fuller by a froth of lavender and sage petticoats peeking out from under it.

The girl slouched along behind him as he led her to a booth. She glanced at me, and more than glanced at Gladstone, who didn’t notice. I was on the alert, though. Any rude gesture from that girl, any comment about Gladstone’s halfling looks, and I’d be on her like a dirty shirt.

Instead, she said, “A good day to you both.” She smiled at me, practically beamed at Gladstone. I nodded a greeting. She was almost to her table before Gladstone realized someone had been talking to her and mumbled a hasty “good morning.”

I leaned over and whispered to my friend, “How you figure baby girl keeps her pants up?”

That barely earned me a smile. Gladstone had a fragile look to her this early Noneday morning. The skin around her eyes seemed thin, the blue threadworm of veins there showing even through the rain-soaked-earth brown of her skin. Outwardly, Gladstone looked anything but delicate. She was sporting the usual threads: black leather boots; loose faded jeans encasing her strong, flared thighs; a
worn red flannel shirt with the arms cut raggedly off to display broad shoulders and biceps sculpted by her work as a navvy. All topped off with a close-cropped nap of silver hair, thick as a silverback’s pelt, and a—usually—shit-eating grin that flashed a single gold tooth. Her eyes were also silver, from the Trubie side of her family, and they only strengthened her overall studly glamour. Many a femme and the occasional butch went all weak-kneed and tongue-tied in Gladstone’s presence. Me and Gladstone had had a thing once. That was long over—too many years between us, two different worlds of experience. Now our thing was that kind of staunch, comfortable friendship where neither one of us had to mince words. No, me and Gladstone story done. It’s Beti’s story I’m telling you now.

*   *   *

I swung aside the skeletal bustle that was the skirt of my gown just in time to get it out from underfoot of a staggerline of Trubies, every one of them dressed to pussfoot in gleaming white canvas bell-bottoms, sailor shirts, and beanies. All that silver hair only made the white suits seem even whiter in the Jou’vert morning sunshine. The line of them careened toward me in time to the road march tune. What was that chorus? It was nagging at me, half remembered.
The prettiest … the prettiest …

A twenty-foot-tall stilt-walker wearing horns, red body paint, and not much more did a nonchalant daddy-long-legs step over the Trubies and proceeded on down the parade route, her bud breasts bouncing as she went. Two of the Trubies grinned at me and called out, “Jamboree!”

I gave them back the response,
“En battaille-là!”
and swung my noisemaker around on its stick so its racket sawed at the air. I shook my head at the silver flask one of them slid out of a back pocket to offer me. She was only being friendly, but they had a way of forgetting that some of the things they drank for pleasure
could cause humans serious pain. The line of them changed direction, stumbling cate-a-corner off in the opposite direction, zigzagging through the crowds of people jumping up to the music. I said to Beti, “Truebloods playing Drunken Sailor mas’! What a thing!”

Beti stopped her dervish whirling long enough to peer at me through the strips and tatters of torn cloth and reply, “But they are not masquerading as the dead. Shouldn’t they have obeyed the edict?”

“It was a
suggestion
, not an edict. Too besides, some of them had white skull faces painted on. Not that you could notice white face paint so easily on that lot.”

Beti was pogoing now. I picked up the hem of my gown and followed her, chipping down the road to the music. Edict! Jeezam peace. I was getting used to the weird-ass things that Ti’Bet could come up with. Is not like anyone was going to police what people wore. Nobody coordinated or organized the Jou’vert parade; it just happened. Nobody picked an official theme for each year’s parade; word just got around. And half the masqueraders completely ignored the theme and wore whatever pleased them. I even saw someone dressed up as a cell phone. The new, teeny kind. New to Bordertown, anyway. We’d learned about them last month, when newbies started flooding into the town again after a two-week absence. Only all the newcomers swore it had been thirteen years that Bordertown had disappeared from the World. And now here they were, chattering on about tweeting and MyFace and complaining that they couldn’t “text” anyone with those ridiculously tiny portable phones they carried everywhere.

*   *   *

I said, “Neville, we ready to order over here.” I’d tried making conversation with Gladstone, but I was only getting one-word answers.

“You mustn’t address me as Neville today,” announced Neville as he came over.

I turned my face to one side so he wouldn’t see me roll my eyes. (Always some drama with Neville.) He slipped a pencil from behind his ear and produced a small, neat notebook from somewhere amongst the frills and flutters of his outfit. “Today, my darlings, I am the Beneficent Miss Nell. Your order, sweet children? I just put a pot of the house special blend to steep—fresher than your old uncle Charlie with the wandering hands! And the raisin cake is good today. The cook was in a nice, nice mood this morning.” He leaned in closer. “Only whatever you do, darlings, don’t order the scones. Cookie was never any good at those. He say is English people’s food, all starch and no flavor. I mean to say, Cookie is a sweet man, sweet can’t done.” In a stage whisper he continued, “But he have his little blind spots, you know?” Then he burst into a gleeful cackle. He was the selfsame cook, but he never ceased to tire of his joke.

A gruff voice called out, “What is in the house blend?” It was the handsome mannish girl tomboy, sitting alone in her booth. I couldn’t place her accent. Not Jamaican, then.

Neville—Miss Nell—beamed at the question. “Oh, sweetheart. The house blend have ginger grated fresh by the nimble fingers of a certain handsome young man; dried nasturtium petals, squash blossoms, and rose petals, all grown when magic permits in the summer garden of the best-looking negro this side of Soho; and nuggets of dried apple as sweet and lingering as that brown man’s kisses. The house blend will fix anything troubling your heart, darling daughter. And for finger food, too besides, we have ripe banana dipped in sweet batter and fried, and green banana to boot. Cookie does fry them up nice-nice in olive oil, sprinkle them with a little coarse salt and some cayenne, then drench them in so much butter, you going to be licking your fingers and wiping grease from your mouth with the back of
your hand and belching one rude belch, and thanking the stars in the heavens that you find your way to Café Cubana at long last.”

By the girl’s frown and her baffled look, Miss Nell had lost her early on in that flight of language. She pointed at Gladstone and said, “I want what that one has.” Her two eyes made four with a startled Gladstone’s. Not a bit of shyness to the butchling’s gaze this time. It was Gladstone who blushed and looked down. I ordered our usual: roasted hazelnut and hemp tea for Gladstone, with fried ripe bananas. Madagascar Muckraker for me, with fried green bananas, extra butter. No scones for either of us.

Like a seven-foot hummingbird, Neville—Miss Nell—flitted and flashed from customer to customer, taking orders and giving banter. From what I could tell, he did so in at least five languages, including High Middle Elvish and La’adan, which was popping up everywhere now that the River Rats had for some reason taken a shine to it.

A tinny tinkle of a tune came from somewhere about the girl’s person. She pulled a cell phone out of the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt, flicked it open. She spoke a greeting into it, in a language I didn’t know. All around the café, people smiled, shook their heads. Another newbie come to check out Bordertown now that it was open to the World again. She would find out soon enough; over here, a cell phone might take it into its head to dance a jig, to loudly broadcast the audio from the last time you’d had sex, even to ring. What it would not do was allow you to have a conversation with another person. Not for long, anyway.

Gladstone, still looking like someone had stolen her puppy, muttered, “Last year, me and Charlotte marched in the Jamboree Jou’vert parade together. I was dressed in Pierrot Grenade, and she was my Pierrette.”