“You're freaking yourself out, Edith,” she said to her reflection. It had to either be her imagination or some effect that would wear off.
She hurriedly finished drying off and threw on a green summer dress that she had laying around. When she walked into the living room Mars was lying back in the loveseat, her eyes barely open as someone on the TV was explaining how all your problems could be solved by simply buying his set of sponges for fifteen dollars plus shipping and handling.
“You awake?” asked Edith.
“I'm alive.”
“I left a towel and wash cloth out for you. You can use the robe in there if you want, and rummage through my closet in the hallway for any clothes you feel like wearing. And there's a trash bag for you clothes. I think the goo will wash out of them, but we should probably take them to a laundromat so we don't break my building's washing machine.”
Mars pointed the remote at the TV and turned it off, then groggily got to her feet. “Sounds like a plan.”
Edith walked past her, smirking at Maurice laying limp and passed out on his little bed, and then went into the kitchen. She opened up the cupboards and rummaged around for an idea of what to make.
“Edith.”
Edith spun around and looked at Mars, who was standing by the loveseat.
“Thanks for helping me out, and letting me into your place. You didn't have to do that.”
“You're welcome. Us bank robbers have to stick together.”
Mars smiled. Edith had seen her laugh before, but not just smile. “We do, don't we?” For an instant Edith fully realized just how young this girl was. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five, but maybe she was even younger. Mars knew more about this weird world Edith was reaching into, but Edith wasn't even sure how much Mars knew. She carried herself so convincingly, like she knew where she was going and how to get there, and like nothing had a chance of standing in her way. But under the ram tattoo and the crusted goo and the battle-worn face of hers was a pair of young, fresh eyes. No matter how much of the world she'd seen, she couldn't cover up the newness of her eyes.
“Is there anything you don't eat?” asked Edith.
She shook her head. “Right now I'll eat anything.”
Edith nodded. “Well, no need to rush. I'm not going to be moving very fast myself. My whole body's still pretty sore.”
“Mine too.” She started to turn down the hallway, then stopped. “Edith, I'm sorry.”
“What? Mars! Nothing was your fault.”
“It kind of was. Some of it was my fault.”
“Look, I forgive you then. Now go take your shower and relax.”
She nodded and then walked down the hall.
While figuring out what to make, Edith took out her cell phone and called her assistant manager Jason, telling him that something came up and he'd need to take care of things for the next day or two. She hoped she'd be able to go back to work soon, but as it was she felt like she could sleep for days. After dodging several of his questions, she hung up the phone and started cooking dinner. She could count on two hands the number of times she'd cooked for someone in the last several years. Edith found herself really enjoying all the ways her life was being shaken up, even if it only lasted a day or two.
She grabbed the fourth and final Guinness from the fridge, cracked it open and enjoyed it while she cooked. She'd found a bag of thawing catfish fillets in the fridge. Edith felt like she'd put them there a week ago, but realized it had to have been only two nights ago. She cooked them along with some vegetables and rice. She hadn't been paying attention to the time, but it was getting dark outside when Mars came back into the living room. The girl looked both tired from the day and vibrant from the shower, exactly how Edith felt. She was in one of Edith's robes (of the sea foam green variety) and her red dreadlocks were soaked and heavy.
“Hope that crap didn't fuck up my hair too much,” said Mars. “I got most of it out, but I've got special shampoo at my house that'll hopefully get the rest out.”
“Turn around,” said Edith, and when Mars did she checked out the back of her head. “I don't see any goo.”
“Thank the gods.” Mars laughed. “Sorry about the robe – I was looking through your closet, but the food smelled so good that I couldn't concentrate. I was afraid I'd come out wearing a Bourbon Street shirt and a Mardi Gras jester hat.”
“Ick. Good luck finding those in my house.” She was glad to see that Mars seemed a little more herself.
They sat on stools at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room while they dined, and neither one of them said a word. The food was refueling them, filling the voids left by the goo sucking everything out. They both finished quickly, and both had a second helping of rice because it was the only thing Edith had made any extra of. Both of them also downed two large glasses of water. Edith was considering making more food for them when her body started feeling more satiated, the hunger dying down as the realization that it had been fed slowly sunk in.
“Holy crap I was hungry,” said Mars.
Edith sat up straight in the stool and stretched her back. Looking around, it suddenly occurred to her that all she'd been doing recently was working or hanging out in her house, and she was feeling a bit claustrophobic. “Feel like going to a bar?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“Well there's a dive bar a couple of blocks away.”
“It's New Orleans. There's always a dive bar a couple blocks away.”
File 12 :: [Edith Downs]
The bar had a small front, peeling green paint and tinted windows with an old sign above the open door that read, CHURCH. If not for the glowing Pabst Blue Ribbon and Abita Beer signs in the windows, it could very well have been taken for a poor, decaying church that somebody had opened up in a normal building. A little sandwich board on the sidewalk read: “Open 24/7! Every Hour is Happy Hour in Church,” with a small note below it reading, “Except 9am – 10am. If Entering During This Hour, Beware!”
Mars laughed. “Holy crap! So this is where Church is. I've always wanted to come here, for the name alone.”
There are various species of bars in New Orleans as well as several sub-species of dive bars. This dive bar is of the Mannequins-and-Stuffed-Animals-on-the-Walls-and-Lit-Only-by-Christmas-Lights variety. Edith had been to at least five of them, so she was sure there must be at least a dozen. The first time you hang out in one of these dive bars is a surreal experience – especially if you go there during a bright summer day. The place is so dark that it takes at least a few minutes to see anything. By then you're already sitting at the bar sipping a drink and talking to whoever you went there with, and as your eyes adjust and the drink kicks, you look around and see the weirdest things in plain sight, like Gizmo from the movie Gremlins in the clutches of some half-metal-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator, or a mannequin with strange words written all over its face holding a surfboard.
Church was one very long room with a bar that ran down most of one side and a pool table at the end. On the side opposite the bar were a few tables with old church pews serving as booth seats (Edith always enjoyed this detail, but actually when you looked around you could find plenty of bars with church pews in them). There were really two details that made Church stick out for Edith – the paintings of saints and other religious depictions scattered amongst the other bits of strange clutter, and the jukebox – because, while having the normal array of Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Tears For Fears, it was wired to play gospel music about every third or fourth song.
There were only a few people in Church when they sat down – a couple who were talking to each other at one of the pew-booths and three lone drinkers at the bar, one of whom was in a long conversation with the bartender – a muscular woman with a large Gaelic cross tattooed on one shoulder. Edith and Mars took a seat at the far end of the bar and ordered drinks – a glass of Pinot Noir for Edith and a Jameson on the rocks for Mars.
“You can say that again,” said Mars, then they both took a drink.
Mars smirked at Edith's wine glass. “So, Edith, did you always want to be a pastry chef?”
“Never.” She swirled the wine around in her glass. “I never wanted to be a pastry chef. But I don't know that I've ever said that to anyone before.”
“Really? Why would you do something you didn't want to?”
Edith shrugged. “Had to do something. And it seemed an interesting way to use my abilities. Being a pastry chef was the most obvious road for me.”
“So you really use the memories to bake?”
She nodded. “I've been collecting vintage and antique cooking supplies for a while. Since I was a little girl, really. And the best ones I came upon were instilled with the memories of pastry chefs. I thought I would learn more about pastries myself, and become good on my own.”
“Why can't you?”
Edith smirked. “It turns out I don't actually like making pastries. I thought it would grow on me, but the little bit of joy I had in the beginning didn't last very long. And I'm also just bad at it. Most of the time I sit in my mind and plan things out or work on business matters while the different pastry chef memories are at work in my body.”
“Sounds dull.”
“I hate it, Mars. I like my customers, mostly, and my staff. I like the building and the interior and the music and the smell even. But it's not my life.”
“Well, you've got things way more put together than I do. I barely even work. Just a day or two a week filling in at a frame shop. Can't stand working for people or having customers breathing down my neck. And then I also do... um, acupuncture. Kind of.”
“Hm... 'kind of' acupuncture. Sounds dangerous.”
“It's a gift, like your memory-sight. And I don't charge for it. Anyway, I really just want to work on my photography in peace and quiet. But life hardly works out that way.”
Edith caught the bartender's eye and ordered another round.
“So Mars, how long have you known The Function?” Edith couldn't believe she was getting used to saying that silly name.
Mars was quiet for a moment and then took a long swig of her new glass of whiskey. “When I was little, he saved me. Always said it was an accident, but I don't believe him.” She smirked and looked at Edith. “Lets just say I'm not the first crazy person in my family. F pulled me out of harm's way before my family exploded like a time bomb. As messed up as my life is, I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for him.”
“Wow, I would have never guessed.”
“Barely anyone knows that.”
“How old is The, uh, F?”
Mars shrugged. “Older than he looks. I used to think he doesn't age, but he does.”
“What do you mean you used to think he doesn't age?”
“Where are you from, Edith?”
Edith knew very well that Mars was changing the subject, but decided to go with it, at least for the moment. “Oklahoma.”
“What brought you out here?”
“Boredom, mostly.”
Mars laughed. “Well, that's the one thing this city is a guaranteed cure for.”
“So what's this Agency thing all about?”
“It's a group that helps the city. They're called The Agents of Fateful Encounters, but I think their name changes, maybe every few decades or so. I'm not sure why. They've been around for a long time, and they deal with keeping the strange inner workings of the city from collapsing in on themselves. Roman is an Agent, and this guy named Julius, who I've only seen a couple of times. There were other Agents, but they all died about four months ago.”
“Holy crap. What happened to them?”
“I'm not sure – something out in the swamp. Rumor has it that one of them betrayed the others.”
“Jeeze.” Edith looked down at her wine glass. “So the Agents are government employees?”
“They work for the city, not the government. It's not something that's cut in stone. Their names aren't on any list in the capitol building, for instance. It's more like working for the essence of the city, rather than for any human organization.”
Edith shook her head. “Yeah, I don't think that sounds like it's for me.”
Mars shrugged. “I totally understand. I hope you still talk to Roman though. I'm sure he can explain things a lot better than I can. Most of what I know about the Agents comes from stories that F told me when I was a kid.”
“So F is an Agent too, right?”
“No. I think he used to be, but there was a split. He works for one of the entities of the city, someone named Serendipity, though I've never seen her. And the giant mosquito – his name is Scape, and he's F's partner. There really isn't a name for the two of them, but everyone in the city knows them. They also help save the city, like the Agents, and I'm pretty sure the two groups usually get along.”
“So what exactly are the Agents saving the city from?”
Mars shrugged. “All kinds of things - nightmares that have come alive, ghosts, banshees, the constantly deteriorating fabric of space and time, entities that have had a bad decade and then go all nutso.”
“You've mentioned 'entities' a couple of times. What are they?”
Mars raised an eyebrow, then proceeded to roll a pair of imaginary sleeves up her arms. “Well, let me put on my lecturing face – even if you don't become an Agent, you should definitely know about entities. There are lots of different kinds, but basically they're the spirits of places. They look like people and walk around talking and doing things, but they're actually made up of the feelings and memories instilled into a certain space. You ever walk into a room and suddenly feel good or bad, or maybe get the creeps?”
“Of course.”
“Well, sometimes that's from the vibrations of the place – the memories and emotions from its past. When those vibrations get strong enough, sometimes they take on a persona. That persona can look as weird or as normal as anyone else on the street – and they're usually called entities or Caretakers, because they often 'take care' of the place they're a spirit of.”
“How many of them are there?”
Mars shrugged. “Too many to count, that's for sure – they're everywhere. In all of New Orleans, I'd say there are at least a thousand entities. Walking across The Quarter on a random day, you'd probably walk right by five of them.”
“And they're not ghosts?”
“Nope, they've never been alive. They're made from people – from memories and thoughts and events – but they've never been a person. They're weird to interact with at first, since they seem like a person but you can feel that something is just off about them – but you get used to it. Some weeks I interact with entities more than I do with real people.”
Edith took a sip of wine, trying to soak all of it in. “Why is that?”
“They're my acupuncture customers. That's why it's 'kind of' acupuncture – because I use acupuncture to heal and strengthen the lines of energy that run inside of an entity, by pushing needles into their back.”
Edith closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Edith, I can talk about something else if it's too weird.”
“No, I want to know more.” Edith smiled and opened her eyes. “So your gift... is to heal places? Is that right?”
Mars bit her lip. “Yeah, kinda. It ends up being like therapy for them. All those random emotions and memories from the past decades or centuries, they get all shaken and twisted up sometimes. With the needles I knock them all loose so they can hopefully get back into place.”
“And you don't charge for it?”
Mars smiled. “If you stay on this side of the fence, you'll realize that money isn't all it's cracked up to be. Most of the time you just work in trade and favors.”
“Holy shit,” Edith whispered. “It's a lot to think about.”
Mars laughed and headbutted Edith'
s shoulder. “Then don't think about it, Edith! You worry too much!”
“You just headbutted me,” said Edith, and then they both burst out laughing.
* * *
A few drinks and five topics of conversation later they stumbled out of Church and into the night's street. Edith hadn't been that drunk in years. She said something to Mars about letting her sleep on an air mattress and Mars began rambling about the stars in the sky and that the spiderweb of streetcar tracks is still laced throughout the entire city underneath the streets. Then Mars took out an ancient, tarnished coin and held it out. Soon an old, red streetcar pulled up and squealed to a stop right next to them – but there hadn't been a streetcar or even rails on that street for at least fifty years.
The accordion door opened and there was an elderly black man smiling at them from behind the wheel.
Edith asked Mars about keeping in touch. Mars said she had left her cellphone at home, but that she'd be by the pastry shop.
Mars walked up the steps of the streetcar.
The driver looked Mars up and down. “Burning the candle at both ends, I see. No harm in that!” Then he looked over her shoulder at Edith. “You need a ride home too, Miss?”
“No thanks. I only live a few blocks from here.”
“Suit yourself.” He pushed the lever and the door folded shut.
As the streetcar rolled its way down the street, Edith watched the tracks rising up from the black, cracked street right in front of it, then lowering back into the street as it passed. She stood there under the humming old-fashioned streetlights, under the mighty oak trees and the moonless sky, feeling like she'd just stepped into a completely different kind of life than she had thought possible.
File 13 :: [Roman Wing]
It took several hours for Roman Wing to find where Julius Marcos, the leader of the Agents, was hiding himself. He'd checked all of Julius' favorite bars and haunts first, even some of the bars that his past incarnations used to frequent. In the end he found Julius in one of the Agents' underground headquarters; more specifically, the headquarters that they had abandoned because Rachel knew its location. When she had turned on them, they'd been forced to abandon their headquarters underneath Armstrong Park and revert to their older headquarters underneath Spanish Plaza, along the river. So it was in the endless metal hallways beneath Armstrong Park and the Treme that Roman first smelled the familiar stench of whiskey and human. It was dim in the common area kitchen where he found Julius sitting at the dining table with a few bottles of Jack Daniels and a dirty glass half full of whiskey.
The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1) Page 9