Walking on Sunshine

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “Negotiate with gods? Of course,” I sneered. “For a price. That’s how priests live.”

  “Have I spoken of a price?” the mambo said mildly.

  “You will.” My back was to the wall. I’d put this off for eighty years and here it was again, the way of my mother’s people, both a siren call and a foghorn, pulling me onto the rocks even as it warned me away.

  Now she will mention the price.

  She glanced at Sophie then. I went cold. The child was tiresome, but I couldn’t toss her into this woman’s jaws. She was mine.

  I shook my head, trying to shake that word out of it.

  The mambo said, “It is my house that has paid the price. To prepare someone for kanzo, this is no small thing. And then you took Jacob Pierre away from us. That may not be all.”

  My eyes flared in alarm, wondering what she meant.

  “In the course of a proper burial, you would come home with Jake’s body, to take part with the rest of his family. This will not be possible until we know who and what you have become. I can’t unleash who-knows-what upon my house. I can protect you from the lwas . . . a little. But I must protect my family from you, too.”

  My jaw dropped. “I?”

  She just looked at me. Then she looked at Sophie. “I see that your loyalties are divided. This one has power over you. She may turn your course. Very well. When you know your duty, I will help you, you ungrateful boy.” She rose lithely. “In a few minutes we must begin the next ceremony.”

  She went into the back room.

  Sophie bounced out of her corner. “Should you leave her alone back there?” she whispered.

  Speechless, my heart pounding, I could only shrug.

  “I get that a lot, about my ‘extraordinary potential’ and my ‘destiny.’” Sophie nodded wisely. “My father is all about my destiny and my duty to my family. And everybody else wants my money. So, naturally, they see a huge future for me—in whatever they’re selling.”

  I turned my head at her world-weary tone. A rich, pretty girl like her probably did know a vulture when she met one.

  “I would gladly give her money,” I said. “She wants more than that.”

  There was a knock at the shop door. My nerves leaped under my skin.

  Sophie looked at me.

  I put my finger to my lips. Then I went to the far corner of the window and peeped through the blind.

  Baz lurked outside.

  I went to the door. “What?” I said through a crack.

  He looked at me with resignation and patience. “What’s up? You’re throwing out ‘save-me’ vibes like a drowning cheerleader.” He lifted his chin, pointing behind me. “Is she here?”

  I slipped out, shutting the door in Sophie’s face. The summer air was steamy on my face after the freezing terror inside.

  I hissed, “The priestess is here. That stalker you sent me to find, she is here as well.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Fast work.”

  I took a few deep, steadying breaths of Clark Street’s late afternoon smog. “The mambo—she has some expectation of me.” I felt the cold breath of destiny on my neck.

  Baz frowned. “If those women put their heads together—”

  My eyes widened as I pictured this. In one bound, I reached the door, yanked it open, and snatched Sophie by the arm, because of course she was there with her ear to the crack. She came tumbling outside. I shut the door with care. The bell tinkled.

  “What is your problem?” Sophie scolded, jerking her arm free. She whacked me with her handbag.

  Clark Street was awash with rush hour traffic, yuppies pushing expensive strollers from shop to shop, working people getting off buses, and on every hand someone walking a dog. They ignored us.

  I moved to the entryway of the apartment building next door and leaned against the bricks, sweating ice.

  Sophie yapped at my elbow. “What language was that you were speaking? What does she want you to do? Will you go back to New Orleans with her? I wonder which of the lwas speaks through her? Did you know that sometimes they make new lwas? Jake told me that, but I never learned any of that language she spoke. Will she cremate Jake? Should we go to the funeral?”

  “Okay, buddy,” Baz said, ignoring her. He stood before me with his hands in his pockets. “Breathe.”

  Sophie perched beside me. “She was mean! I don’t think you should leave her alone with all Jake’s things. Can I have the goat’s head in the waiting room if you don’t want it?”

  “Mon Dieu, child,” I groaned, “rest you a moment, if you please?”

  “Who’s the—” Baz gave her a look, then another quick look. Did he recognize her as the singer’s stalker? “Wait, is this—”

  I nodded. I pulled myself together. “Baz, this is Sophie de Turbin.”

  Sophie interrupted. “Wow. You’re Ashurbanipal.”

  Baz did a second double-take. For the first time in twenty years, I saw him at a loss.

  “Oh, wow! Wow!” Sophie’s eyes were big and bright. Her mouth made a pretty O of amazement.

  “Do I know you?” Baz said weakly. These days, he pretended that his brief, meteoric rock’n’roll career had never happened.

  I said, “If you have ever been famous, Sophie knows you.”

  “Oui, I am a bit of a starfucker.” Sophie smiled broadly. “That’s the American idiom, yes?”

  I frowned. “It’s not a ladylike expression.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Baz breathed. He seemed to have recovered his poise. He bent a fascinated stare on Sophie. “So you’re a fan?”

  “But of course! ‘That’s My Dirt!’” She leaped up and played furious air guitar, making noises that were part jet engine, part angry cat. Then she did an absurd dance, shouting out the words to Baz’s hit song, squatting, sticking her arms out, stalking stiffly with her head turned to one side, leaping into the air and spinning wholly around to come down facing the same way, flapping her elbows, and making a rude finger, all with a gleeful grin.

  Baz had covered his face with his hand. Now he raised one eyebrow at me.

  I remembered now that he had offered to seduce her, to get my navel string away from her.

  If he had met her a day earlier, he might have had her and welcome.

  After last night—

  It was only a little love philtre—

  Like a fool, I shook my head, mute.

  Baz raised both eyebrows as if to say, Are you sure?

  “No, I’m not sure,” I said crossly. I wanted to drag her away from him and teach her not to talk to strange men, be they never-so-famous former rock stars.

  Baz turned and chucked Sophie under the chin. “Don’t forget me, sweetheart. Your watchdog won’t always be around.”

  Sophie languished at his touch.

  My teeth ground.

  Baz sauntered away.

  o0o

  “I’ve thought of something,” Sophie announced, turning her full attention on me as Baz left.

  It was like a fire hose, that attention, and me, I had been fire-hosed in jail with Jake more than once. “Yes?”

  “I can tell my father that Jake’s body has gone to New Orleans. Maybe we can get Mme Vulcaine to tell him so. He’ll believe her. Then he will have to follow, and be delayed, and perhaps he will ask for a delay on the court case as well. Oh! And I have remembered something urgent! He has a DNA sample of the real vicomte! That may be a challenge.”

  “He what?” I went cold. How could her father have such a thing? “Don’t tell that woman.”

  “Oh, she will not help him,” Sophie said. “I think I like her. She’s direct.”

  “So is a rifle.”

  “I wonder why she is afraid of you, when you are afraid of her?”

  I rolled my eyes. “She is not afraid of me.”

  “Do pay attention, Veek! About the DNA sample, I am thinking we come back to the shop when she is not there, and we find something of Jake’s, some hair or a fingernail clipping, and you find a
way to copy it.”

  I squinted at her. “Copy?”

  “Silly, with your vodou demon powers. We know that you can pretend to be old—I have seen it. So, now you pretend that your DNA is like Jake’s.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” I said. But maybe I could lie and say I could. Then if I had to give a DNA sample to the court—but what on earth could her father possess that was of mine? I had taken the umbilical cord away with me when I went to Eton, almost ninety years ago. And why would her father have it? Back then, sentimental families sometimes made jewelry of a child’s hair, but I had always been shaved bald, from childhood. No French nurse would have woven my shamefully nappy cuttings into a ring or a locket.

  She was silent for many blessed seconds, apparently thinking this over. “Oh, well. We’ll have to find a way around it. Maybe we can steal whatever it is, his relique, and then we can find a way to make it false. Substitute something else. Or make something of yours match it, the way I said.”

  “Too elaborate.”

  “Or I can get into his laptop tonight and make an error in his next filing. Something that would invalidate it in court.”

  That was a clever thought. “Don’t anger that man,” I said, realizing I was wasting my breath.

  Sophie flapped her hand. “If I didn’t, he would think I was ill.” She tipped her face up to mine.

  I could see she was still open to me. I took her arms in my hands as roughly as I dared.

  She collapsed against me, body to body. Her eyes glowed.

  Instantly I was inflamed.

  Seduce her.

  I pulled her to me for a fast, plundering kiss. Her tongue played hot and quick on mine. She thrust her thigh between my knees.

  I was lost and found, falling and flying, and my cock swelled like to mess in my pants. That fire hose was pounding away all my wits, leaving me battered but somehow . . . clean.

  With an effort I thrust her away. “Find out when your father is not in his suite. We’ll need to get into his laptop, for case numbers and the like. I want to go online and inspect the document filings for this court case.” I also wanted to find that navel string.

  She didn’t look at all disconcerted by that kiss. “Bon. And now we go back to Jake’s funeral.”

  “Am I the wind talking to you?” I demanded.

  “You have a ceremony now. I get to watch.”

  I groaned.

  So much for seduction. I might have a chance when she was unconscious.

  o0o

  For the next two hours, I sat and watched with her. Mme Vulcaine did her part in Kreyol and in the old language, sometimes singing. She made a fragrant smoke with herbs. She lent me a white robe to wear, very beautiful and thickly embroidered. I felt clumsy and ashamed and annoyed, but I hoped Jake slept better to this music. After a while I understood how much he had left behind when he ran away to play vagabond with me. There should be fifty family members here to bid him farewell. But there were only myself, Mme Vulcaine, and this bubble-headed Eurotrash child.

  I, too, had once taken comfort in prayer.

  Sophie sat like a mouse against the wall.

  Mme Vulcaine nodded to me. NowI was supposed to tell a story about Jake.

  I cleared my throat. “Me kouzen and I mek party bon joli gro an.”

  “Speak English,” the mambo said again, nodding at Sophie. “We do this so that he is not forgotten.”

  I thought of Baz, his ancient name now merely the name of a rock band.

  It occurred to me now that if I told a story here, these two women would remember not only Jake but me. Jake’s history was also my own. As much as I could tell them in nine days, that much of my youth would not vanish into the grave with Jake.

  Baz was right. At the funeral of my oldest friend, I was windmilling on the precipice of eternity.

  I began:

  “We were really drunk, and we sneaked up on top of a big cattle truck one night. I fell off the truck on the highway and had to dematerialize and fly after it as fast as I could. By the time I caught up with it, the truck was parked by the road for the night, and the driver asleep in the cab. I found Jake had been letting some of the cows out. He was so pleased with himself for doing it so silently. What a mess! I thought we would be arrested for cattle stealing. I wondered if Samedi was in him that night, but it was probably just Jake.” I smiled weakly. “What a mischief-maker my kouzen was!”

  I hoped that would suffice. But Mme Vulcaine turned to Sophie next. “What is your story about Jake today?”

  Sophie’s eyes were narrowed on me. Don’t tell her how I vanished in the bar last night, I thought.

  Sophie’s chin lifted at me, and she turned to Mme Vulcaine. “This happened about two weeks ago, when I had just come. A customer came here. I sat in the back of the shop. Jake went out and spoke to her—I looked around the curtain and listened—an old—a woman about your age, with good rings and a Louis Vuitton handbag and matching shoes. She complained about her husband. Jake asked, did she want him to be a better soldier at night, and she shook her head. She said she had heard that he, that Jake could sell her something to give her a good dream. A dream of a lover. Jake said he could do that and named a price.”

  Sophie cast her eyes at me sidelong. “It was twenty-five dollars. She said she had heard it cost much more. He said, it does, more every time you come back. She said, the first one is the cheapest, eh? They both laughed. She gave him money. Jake said, you know I need something more. She pulled one hair out of her head and put it in his hand. Then she went away. Then Jake made a phone call and soon this one came.” Sophie’s head jerked in my direction. “In the guise of a young man as you see him now. Jake gave him such-and-such an address, saying, it is for tonight, blah-blah. I did not see her again in all the last two weeks.”

  I was sending Sophie death looks, but she ignored me.

  “I think he liked that woman very much, Jake did. Sometimes women came and asked, but he sold them nothing, told them nothing.”

  I looked to Mme Vulcaine. She gave a little snort. “That’s Jacob as we heard of him.”

  How had she heard of Jake? Had his hellion reputation survived all these decades since we ran away?

  I resolved to get Mlle Sophie under control at the earliest possible moment.

  o0o

  Night fell in Chicago. I went home to the Lair.

  It was time to put Sophie’s stolen hairs to work.

  I closed the door to my room, lay down, and dematerialized with her fragrant hairs in my hand. I breathed in their scent of expensive shampoo and girl. I sought her in her dreams.

  There is a place at the back of the family estate at Montmorency where I used to go to be alone, when I was a small boy. A long-ago vicomte built it for his daughter after they saw what a long-ago Louis had built for Mme Pompadour: a belvedere, a tower, a pretend farm with kittens. While modest, it is lovelier to me than Versailles, because of the marais that surrounds it, many kilometers of wetlands in all directions, lush and fertile, teeming with herons and geese and frogs and the mosquitoes for which the Vendée is famous.

  My mother’s people also came from wetlands. When I lived with Jake at the vodou house, we visited the Louisiana bayou often. The day I saw my first alligator, I was completed. When I was a child I would have been delighted to find alligators in our canals. At fifteen, in the bayou, I knew I had come to a better home even than home: peopled with saints, demons, gods, and dinosaurs, marvelous and terrible. I was enchanted.

  That was before I ate the food of those gods and paid the price.

  My ancestor had built for his lady a grotto, also like the one Louis had built for La Pompadour. He brought in stone by barge, and constructed a great crude maze, not complex, but walled with lichened rocks in fanciful natural shapes. Generations of small aristocratic boys found ways to dig under the walls, creating caves and petits grottos for hiding lunch and slingshots.

  Using the hairs I had taken from Sophie’s hairbrus
h, I sought and found her in the land of Nod.

  Conceive of my surprise when I entered her dreams and found myself in that familiar maze on a summer’s day. The grass was ankle-high and starred with buttercups and orchids. While the sun beat down, I wafted along the twisty paths, following my nose to a great perfumed tuft of salsapareille, whose vines concealed the entrance to an old, old, sacred space.

  Evidently Sophie had found the secret caves of my youth.

  She was inside the cave, asleep even in her dream. She lay naked on her side.

  Sunlight shot down through a crack in the rocks. Where a sliver of sunlight fell on her thigh, her skin glowed.

  Her knees were drawn up, her arms curled in front of her, her hands clasped at her mouth as if she were kissing them, or breathing through them. Her dark ringlets tumbled over her naked back.

  I wanted to eat her. I wanted to protect her.

  I impersonated the scent of her shampoo, faded into the smell of salsapareille, and slid into her body through her little sharp-cut patrician nostrils.

  Her body was as lovely inside as out. She was soft like a baby, without extreme muscle tone, but fresh and new and unscarred. It would be a pleasure to give her pleasure.

  I gathered tiny greenish-white flowers from the vines and crumbled them over her, sprinkling her with fragrant petals.

  She inhaled and expanded, rolling onto her back. Her limbs opened. I hovered, stirring the salsapareille blossoms as if with the wing beats of a butterfly. I touched my softest skin to her softest skin.

  Her knees parted. What temptation! I resisted the desire to plunge in. Instead I hovered, invisible, tickling her with flower petals, and gently pressed my member to her vulva.

  She opened.

  Now I was beginning to feel what she felt, a wash of pleasure like small waves lapping sand, as her softness swelled with her heartbeat, beat, beat, beat.

  I was nothing, a zephyr, a scented patch of air, the notion of a caress—except for my warm member sliding against her vulva like the warm water of the Mediterranean pressing against a weakness in a seawall. She made a squeak like a stretching kitten. In her own voice I whispered in her head, That feels nice.