Nightwork, page 8
On the third week they had the lesson over his first attempt at crawfish étouffée.
“You could get a job as a cook. I know places.”
“It’s no fun if you have to do it. And I’m slow at it, only got a handful of things I can make. Besides, I’m not looking for legit work yet. I asked my aunt to come for Mardi Gras, and I want to show her around, have the time for her.”
“Tu as un bon coeur.” She tossed her mass of hair back as she looked around the apartment. “You’re clean, and you have a pretty face. I tell you not to move on me, and you don’t. You have manners. I think you know this from the lessons, and the song. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”
He picked up his wine, took a careful sip. “I’m a heterosexual male. You’re beautiful, sexy, fun, smart, and you’ve got that body. You’ve really got a body. So. Absolument.”
“I don’t want romance. I don’t have time for it. I like you—a friend, a clever friend. If you fall in love with me, I’ll break that good heart. And be sorry for it.”
“I don’t want romance. Ah … Je ne suis pas prêt. Je vous aime.”
“Je t’aime bien,” she corrected.
“Je t’aime bien,” he repeated. “Maybe you’ll fall in love with me, then I’ll be sorry to break your heart.”
“We’re safe there.” She held out a hand. “Amis.”
“Amis,” he agreed.
“Is your bedroom clean like the rest?”
“Yeah.”
She got up, held out her hand again. “Montre-moi.”
CHAPTER SIX
The long, wild party that was Mardi Gras began for him with Mags’s arrival. Maybe only a couple of months had passed—though it felt longer—but he found himself ridiculously happy to see her.
His crazy aunt with her maroon hair streaked with candy pink enfolded him in arms tanned from the desert sun. The inside of her right forearm now bore a compass tattoo with a red heart in the center.
“What’s this?”
“The symbol of my wanderlust.” She gripped him again, hard. “With all the miles you’ve put in already, you might get one yourself.”
He really didn’t think so.
“I’m going to get one of my spirit animal when I decide what it is.”
“I thought it picked you.”
She just laughed, pulled back to study his face. “You look good, pal. Jesus, you’re taller. You’ve got another inch on you.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, my butt. I figured you’d stopped sprouting. Now, let’s see this place of yours.”
With her bags—a pair of enormous floral duffels—dumped by the door, she stepped away to survey the apartment.
“Nice, very nice for our boy’s first apartment. Great location, nice light. I like the art, the French Quarter street scenes.”
“Those are mine. I didn’t mean I did them,” he said when she turned to stare at him. “The place came furnished, but I hung some pictures I picked up. Bought,” he qualified. “Lots of artists in the Quarter.”
“Shows good taste, and supports local artists. Sparkle clean, too.”
“I guess that’s in the DNA.”
“Oh yeah. I miss her so much.”
“I know. Me, too. I didn’t tell you, but I took some of her ashes with me. There was this spot in the Smokies where I let some go, then this beach on the Outer Banks where I sent the rest out to the ocean.”
Mags let out a sigh, then pointed to herself. “Painted Desert, Pacific.”
“Really?”
“I guess we’re more alike than either of us figured, Harry.”
“I’m Silas here.”
“Right.”
“Let me put your bags in the bedroom, then I’ll give you a tour, take you to lunch.”
“I’ll take the couch.”
“My Mags doesn’t take the couch in my place.” To settle it, he hefted the duffels and walked them into the bedroom.
“Okay, this is adorable. I’m all about the slanted ceiling, and look at you with Maxfield Parrish prints on the wall.”
“Flea market, out of a calendar or something.”
“More good taste.”
It wasn’t a room you could wander, given the size, but she did a turn. “And daffodils on the dresser. For me. Somebody raised you right. Silas.”
“Two people raised me right. Or right enough.”
She gave the light stubble on his cheek a rub. “Better give me that tour before I get sloppy and ruin my makeup.”
“You’ve never made it here before?” he asked as he walked her out.
“First time. I think the universe decided I should have my first experience in New Orleans—and at Mardi Gras—with my nephew.”
“How’s Vegas?”
“Warm and lively. But I’m going to give Santa Fe a try. Heading there when I leave.”
“What about the phone business?”
“That’s the beauty, my friend.” Outside, she took a deep gulp of warm, humid air. “As long as there’s a cell tower, Madame Magdelaine’s in business.” She laid a finger on her tattoo. “So she goes where the spirit drives her.”
“Desert winds for you.”
“Apparently. And heat, humidity, and water for you.”
“Yeah, so far. But I think I have a thing for hills, mountains, too. For a city, this hits the bell. I want to try New York, DC, San Francisco, and I may have an excuse to see Santa Fe, but this is the highest rung city-wise. Because it’s not a city, not this part of it anyway. It’s an experience.”
Tourists swarmed the shops, the streets, the bars. They tossed coins in the hats and instrument cases of sidewalk musicians as the sounds of horns, accordions, a cappella voices wound through the air.
They strolled along cobbled streets under lacy balconies strewn with flowers and gold and purple beads. He introduced her to his favorite carriage horse and waited while she hunted in a shop selling crystals and candles and incense to add to what he knew was her already heroic collection. Waited again while she selected a Mardi Gras T-shirt.
Before she could drag him into another shop, he steered her into a cramped, fragrant restaurant most tourists wouldn’t give a second glance.
Mama Lou’s held a dozen tables and offered counter service. Lunch meant every chair or stool would have an ass in them, but he’d arranged a table.
Little Lou, Mama’s daughter, hailed him when he stepped in.
“Where you at, cher! Assis-toi, assis-toi. Mama! Silas is here, avec sa tante.”
She scurried over, a bony fortysomething with gleaming dark skin and a headful of braids, while he shuffled Mags to the table by the single tiny window. The prime spot.
Little Lou rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Mama wants to meet Miz Mags. She got one big crush on this boy.”
“Mutual. Mags, this is Little Lou, Mama’s daughter, and the second-best cook in the Quarter.”
“’Cause Mama, she comes first.” She let out a laugh. “I’ll get your drinks right away. Silas wants his Coke, c’est vrai?”
“Merci. Vin blanc pour ma tante, et une bouteille d’eau pour la table, s’il te plaît.”
“Bien, bien.” She scurried off.
Mags leaned over the little wooden table to poke him in the shoulder. “When did you start speaking French?”
“I’ve been taking lessons. Here comes Mama. She’s like no one else.”
Mama Lou, a wide-hipped woman who topped out at five foot nothing, sashayed around the little tables like a queen in her white bib apron and pansy print dress. At sixty, her brown skin remained smooth and her haunting green eyes sharp.
Silas rose, and as he had after he’d first tasted her jambalaya, took her hand and kissed it.
He stuck with French—formal French because he knew it pleased and amused her. “Mama Lou, permettez-moi de vous presenter ma tante, Magdelaine Booth. Et merci, merci beaucoup de l’accueillir. Elle m’est chère.”
She gave him a nod, then a pat on the cheek. “Bien, cher.” Then she offered Mags a hand. “This is a good boy,” she said in a voice that flowed like liquid flowers. “My daughters, they are too old, and my granddaughters too young, or I’d steal him for one of them. I’d take him myself, but mon mari would punch his pretty face for it.”
“Can’t have that. Thank you for helping look after him. I like knowing he’s in such good hands.”
“Still too skinny.”
“Yes, but not as skinny as he was.”
“You’ve come for Mardi Gras, so laissez les bon temps rouler.” She shifted just enough for her daughter to serve the drinks. “Now, Tante Mags will have the gumbo, and Silas a shrimp po’boy. And you split so each has some. And bread pudding for dessert. Bon appétit.”
Mags watched her sashay back to the kitchen. “Like no one else, you said, and you’re not wrong. Does she always tell you what you’ll eat?”
“Only when she likes you.”
“Okay then.” She picked up her wine, sipped. “Not bad. Now, tell me about this French business. How do you learn to have conversations like that after a few weeks?”
“A really good teacher.”
“I guess. I remember you always aced Spanish and could rattle off like a toreador. The magic memory’s handy. A college class, adult education?”
“Private tutor. A friend. You’ll meet her tonight.”
“Oh.” Mags drew that syllable out, meaningfully. “A friend.”
“Yeah. You’ll like her. She’s a tarot and palm reader. Tends bar a few nights a week.”
“A friend, with benefits?”
His answer to that was a shrug. “It’s nothing serious, on either side.”
“Good. You may speak three languages now and run your own life, from what I can see pretty damn well, but you’re still too young for serious. I’ve got to ask, it’s my job, but are you thinking about college?”
“I’m thinking about auditing or taking a few classes at Tulane. After Mardi Gras, and maybe next fall if I’m still here.”
Little Lou brought out their lunch, added a basket of hush puppies.
“Holy God, that’s a lot of food.”
“You don’t go hungry at Mama’s.”
Mags sampled the gumbo. “All right, this is amazing.” Then a bite of her half of the po’boy. “And again. Are you looking to move on anytime soon?”
“I don’t know, I just know, not yet. I gave myself a tour of the University of North Carolina when I was up there, and that’s a strong pull, so eventually. I’m looking at some others. I’m not looking for a degree, Mags, just learning more about what appeals to me.”
“I’m the last person to argue that one. You’re not happy yet—me either. It takes as long as it takes. But I’ll say you’re in a good place, and not just on the map. Me, too. So good for us.”
That night, they walked the parade route. They caught beads, tossed beads. Mags, being Mags, danced in the street with total strangers. They ate shrimp kabobs and hot beignets while they cheered the floats.
A man in nothing but a jester mask and purple boxers did a boogie on a balcony and earned some applause.
“Where has this been all my life?” Mags shouted over the din.
He steered her into the bar where Dauphine and a second bartender mixed, poured, and served, and tonight’s band played zydeco.
Dauphine spotted them and called out.
“Tito, you’ve warmed that stool long enough. Get up and let the lady sit.”
A robust man with sleepy eyes stood, turned to bow at Mags.
“Why, thank you, sir.”
“Mags, this is Dauphine, my friend and French tutor.”
“If you mix drinks as well as you teach French, I’ve got to have me one. Silas is spouting off like he was born here.”
“He has a gift for languages, I think, but more to learn. What can I get you?”
“You pick. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I’m up for anything.”
“I like an adventurer.” The two women studied each other a moment, then Dauphine nodded. “I know what you need.” She called out in French to the other bartender that she was taking a short break with friends, then took out a cocktail shaker. She chose lemon wedges and mint, poured in something from a bottle before she began to muddle it.
“So, Miz Mags, are you enjoying New Orleans?”
“I’d be crazy not to. Are you from here?”
“I am. All my life is here.”
“This week probably isn’t as much fun for you.”
“But profitable.” She added a scoop of crushed ice, something from another bottle, some club soda, then began to turn the shaker back and forth. “You do physic readings, by the phone.”
“Yep. Profitable.”
Dauphine grinned at her. “Do you read the cards?”
“I do a spread while I’m talking to the client. Silas says you read the cards for a living.”
“At Five Fold.” She poured the drink into a lowball glass, topped it with a sprig of fresh mint. “Taste. If it’s not right, I’ll make you something else.”
Mags sipped, smiled slowly. “Magic! What is it?”
“A Creolo. Sophisticated and refreshing, as I think you are.”
“Oh, I like your friend, pal of mine. Let’s have dinner tomorrow. Take us on a date, Silas.”
“Um. Sure.”
Dauphine smiled at her, got out a fresh bowl of bar nuts. “He cooks. He cooks good.”
“He was always better at it than me. Cook us dinner, cutie.”
They bonded. They bonded fast and they bonded strong.
For the next three nights, Mags out-partied him, and topped off the night at the bar testing out a new cocktail.
On the first day of Lent, and Mags’s final night, he made them jambalaya—and attempted hush puppies for the first time.
He didn’t have to add much to the conversation when they got together. They talked movies, books, art, fashion, and, despite his presence, men. If they, and they did often, veered into sex, he made himself scarce.
It was just too weird.
“I’m going to take out the trash,” he said as they huddled together at his little table. “And maybe take a walk.”
He stepped out and walked around the block a couple of times in the post-party quiet of the Quarter.
When he came back, it surprised him to see Dauphine reading Mags’s cards.
“How much are you charging her?”
“We’re doing a trade. I read hers, she reads mine.” Dauphine reached over to take Mags’s hand. “She watches over you. You see? I think she always will. This is female strength at the root, and the sorrows of the past, the change, the endings that hover still. But she’s with you. And here he is, the son you shared. I have a little piece of him for now, but yours is for always. He looks ahead, ambitious, restless. So do you, look ahead to the next and the next. His feet might one day plant, but yours, they wander unless love plants them. And even then, love must be willing to go with you.”
She smiled, traced a finger over a card. “Love isn’t a goal, but a wish. I feel the same. It’s a gift you can open or leave tied and wrapped. It must be a choice or it doesn’t hold for you. Voyages and journeys, and you must have the wheel. Security? What’s the point without the adventure, the new, the next?”
He came over to watch, as he’d never seen her do a reading. He knew the cards only because Mags had sometimes fiddled with them.
“You may travel as you will, and alone physically, but you take your roots with you. You know how to transplant them, to grow where you want, until you want somewhere else. This is freedom. I admire that. And the bounty you have? Your cup never runs dry. Love fills it, again and again.”
She sat back. “You’re a fortunate woman, Mags, and one who brings the fortunate with her.”
“My sister gave me a gift. Not that I knew what the hell to do with it at the time. Not that I didn’t like babies and kids. Dana was a mother down to the bone. I think I was born to be an aunt. It surprised me to see some of me in Silas. The brains? I don’t know where the hell he got those. Or the scary memory.”
“I could ask you about some Cubs’ outfielders’ stats and you’d rattle them right off.”
“That’s not scary memory, pal, that’s baseball. Let’s have another glass of wine, Dauphine, and I’ll read yours.”
Dauphine smiled. “Let’s.”
After Mags drove west in her VW Bus, Silas made his way to Tulane. He had his paperwork—carefully, even meticulously generated—and Silas Booth’s backstory firmly in place. It didn’t take much work to gain permission—with fees paid—for the few courses he wanted to audit.
Through the rest of February and right up to April first, which he spent with Mags in Santa Fe—he kept his head down and his mouth mostly shut and studied English literature, the Impressionists, and computer programming.
He felt, almost, like a regular undergrad, walking the leafy green campus, strolling by azaleas exploding with color. Though not required of him, he did assignments, wrote papers. And he learned.
His French lessons with Dauphine progressed to evening conversations and occasional sex. He learned computer hacking from Jacques, through his own reverse engineering, and stumbled onto an online course on Italian.
It seemed like just the thing to add to his résumé.
Then as warm, moist spring slid toward hot, drippy summer, he met Sebastien Picot.
He sat on a bench at the Fly in Audubon Park, out of the syrupy hustle of the city, and watched the great river and the steamboats that plied it.
Behind him people picnicked or tossed Frisbees or just napped on the grass. He wore his Green Wave T-shirt—just another college kid on a steamy May evening.
He’d come to meet Jacques, at his forger’s and sometimes fence’s request. Since he’d started prepping for another job—the wealthy grandmother of a student in his lit class who loved to brag about her grandmama’s jewelry—he planned to discuss the liquidation of the multistrand diamond necklace his mouthy classmate looked forward (with considerable glee) to inheriting.
Jacques plopped down beside him, held out a hand for a low five. “My man.”
If Silas’s build ran thin—he had the dumbbells, and worked on that—Jacques was a scarecrow in basketball shorts. Even sitting still he pumped off energy. Silas figured Jacques burned off more calories taking a nap than most did jogging a mile.
