The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  I find myself face-to-face with two frat boys wearing khaki pants and Ray-Ban aviators, waving their pistols at me.

  Two frat boys with faces unmarked by time or hardship.

  “Are you joking?” I say. “Is this some kind of joke? Because it’s not very funny.”

  They don’t answer me. They just put their guns to my head.

  One of the boys is wearing a bowtie. The other’s chin is covered in pimples, and his wrists are covered in friendship bracelets. They are both waving guns so shiny and silver that they look like toys.

  “I don’t even have a wallet,” I say.

  “Shut up and put your hands against the car,” Bowtie says.

  I put my hands up and turn to their yellow fratmobile.

  My first thought is that I should try to burn these boy’s faces into my memory: catalog the Bluetooth headsets in each of their ears, the blue and yellow striped bowtie, the harelip scar on the blond boy’s lip, the mole next to the left nostril of the other boy.

  The word “Seriously.” falls out of my mouth as Bowtie pats me down and touches my junk.

  “Where’s the necklace?” he says.

  “The necklace?” I say.

  “Yes, the necklace” He pushes the gun at me. “Where is it?”

  “It flew away with the birds,” I say.

  He clocks me hard in the nose.

  Black stars.

  I can’t see. I can’t think. I can’t speak. I can only spin and blink.

  “Get in the car!” He points the gun at my head. “Get the fuck in the car!”

  And just when I’m about to do exactly what the frat boy is yelling at me to do, the cold metal of his gun is mashed into my right ear, and my arm is twisted behind my back. I am falling into the open door of the frat boy’s gumball-yellow FJ Cruiser.

  Gay André is passed out inside. I slide in next to him, but Gay André doesn’t rouse. The kid in the bow tie pushes in next to me while he keeps his shiny gun pointed at my face.

  Meanwhile, the zit-faced kid jumps in the driver’s seat and throws the car into gear. He peels out. I look over at Bowtie and his baby cheeks. I try to muster up the courage to ask him if he works for The Loup Garou or The Unseen Hand.

  “What the fuck you looking at, bitch?” He breathes in my face. His breath smells like peat moss and dog shit. I turn away and look over at Gay André, who I realize is not sleeping nor is he passed out.

  There’s a bullet hole in Gay André’s head, and his warm blood is soaking into the seat of my pants.

  * * *

  Zit Face drives his gumball-yellow FJ Cruiser across the Pontchartrain, and it’s not long before the blur of all-too-familiar landmarks cause my stomach to flip. He is driving to the McMansion. These assholes know where I live. More than likely, these are the ones who turned the raccoons loose in my house and left behind my mother’s necklace. They’ve got her, and they’ve been watching me. They most likely know everything about me: where my kids go to school; that my wife goes to yoga at 8, picks up PJ’s coffee at 9:30; how I drive into the city to go to Superior every Wednesday to drink myself under the table with Gary and the rest of my co-workers. But if these are the fucks who set the raccoons loose in the house, why do they want the necklace back?

  Zit Face pulls into the alley and Bowtie forces me to open the gate to our giant cedar privacy fence. Bowtie pushes me into the backyard with a barrel of his gun pressed hard against my left kidney.

  Zit Face hands me a shovel from the back of the FJ Cruiser.

  “Start digging,” he growls.

  I just stand there, trying to process what’s happening.

  “He said fucking dig!” Bowtie hits me in the temple with his fist.

  That fist to my head rattles me, but this surge of adrenaline speeds up my thinking: They are making me dig my own grave.

  “Dig!” Bowtie yells. “From here to here.” He paces out about seven feet.

  I dig. I stab the wet dirt, and I dig. I shovel, and I think. I dig, and I dig this seven-foot plot, and I try to will myself sober.

  How do I get out of this? I could use this shovel as a weapon. But how do I swing it fast enough to knock the guns out of their hands without getting shot? Better to get them talking, make them delay the killing, appeal to their greed, perhaps tell them I have cash inside the house and then get my neighbor’s attention or, better yet, lock myself in the panic room.

  “I lied,” I say. “The necklace is in the house.”

  “Oh, the necklace is in the house. Good to know,” Bowtie says. “What room?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain. Why don’t we go inside, and I can get it for you?”

  “Yeah, why don’t I make a brain slushie outcha ass and go find it for myself.” Bowtie holds the gun to my temple.

  “It’s in a safe,” I say. “I’ll unlock it for you.”

  “Just dig,” Bowtie says.

  So I dig.

  After almost an hour of shoveling, I have dug a three-foot hole big enough to lie down in. I want to tell them this is pointless. That nothing stays buried in New Orleans. That eventually they will be caught.

  “Keep digging!” Zit Face yells at me. “Don’t make me shoot your bitch-ass! Dig!”

  As I pile the dirt higher and higher, I watch Bowtie drag Gay André’s body from the car, across my green backyard. Long red streaks of blood paint the grass behind Gay André’s head.

  “Get out the way.” He pushes me aside while Zit Face keeps his gun on me.

  Bowtie pulls Andre’s body into the hole that I thought I was digging for myself.

  “Now cover him up!” Bowtie shouts.

  I throw dirt over Gay André, that poor, sad, little homophobe who loved my mother enough to risk his life to try to help me find her. So here I am burying the mobster in in my own backyard, and I realize I have no choice. I’ll be damned if these two college kids are making me dig my own grave.

  So I take the business-end of my shovel and swing it as hard and as fast as I can at Bowtie. I knock him to the ground. Zit Face stands there with his mouth open, and his gun pointed at me.

  He unloads his clip.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  As I fall back onto the ground, all I can think is that those shots sounded like someone knocking at Mama’s front door, like a crime boss knock-knock-knocking because he has some urgent, dark news that only Madame Melançon can fix.

  White light and smoke everywhere.

  I am on my back in the grass.

  The seconds stretch like taffy, and all I can think about is that raccoon that I shot in my driveway.

  Is this is what it felt like for her?

  Everything burns and bleeds. Everything dies.

  White light and smoke everywhere.

  The swish of Mama’s black velvet robes.

  The blur of her red satin slippers.

  The splatter of blood on a blade of grass.

  Everything fades to black.

  17

  Everything Hurts

  I open my eyes. I’m lying face-down, but not in a shallow grave or hospital bed. I am in the front yard of Mama’s house, in the tall grass. I am not bleeding. My head is not full of bullets. I am fine. I have a splitting headache, but otherwise, I am fine.

  I get up and dust myself off.

  With New Orleans being New Orleans, none of these midday passersby or the police or even my mama’s neighbors have found it the least bit off-putting that I have been lying here for God knows how long, passed out in front of a palm reader’s house. Judging from the sunlight in the leaves above me, it’s probably sometime in the late afternoon.

  I stagger towards The House of the Neon Palm. I hold my temples with each step. My head is killing me. Visions of last night’s cheap drinks and Cherry Bombs are making my jaw ache and my stomach ride. I make my way up to the porch, and into the front door, with one very clear desire: a big, tall glass of water with fistfuls of Advil.

  I be
gin to shake uncontrollably and have to hold onto the wall not to pass out again.

  My family is in the parlor watching the Fox News coverage of the Spill. La La is eating a bowl of ice cream, pretending to be Christina Aguilera while Emily is sitting next to her, texting and watching our boys hypnotize themselves with their iPads. Daddy’s in his chair, and Cactus and Stevo are tangled up with each other on the floor, doing God knows what.

  “Duke.” Emily’s eyes are full of tears.

  “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” Stewart keeps saying.

  Emily bites her lip and looks away.

  “Somebody’s been a bad, bad boy.” Stevo is laying on the carpet while Cactus weaves white daisies and baby’s breath into his long, black beard—an act so oddly intimate and profoundly annoying that I want to shout at them both to go home, to just go back to the state park and their hippie caravan.

  “Duke!” Daddy yells out from his La-Z-Boy. “Where da hell ya been, T’boy?”

  “I was kidnapped.”

  “Are you kidding?” Emily says.

  “Two college guys. They wanted Mama’s necklace.”

  “Mama’s necklace?” La La says. “Did they take it?”

  “No.” My head hurts too much to say any another word. I wave her off, and I keep walking to my room.

  “Duke! I’m talking to ya, son!” Daddy shouts.

  I just keep walking to the stairs, to my old bedroom. I need to shut my eyes.

  I open the door and crawl into the lower bunk. I wrestle the covers over my head, pull my knees into my chest, shut my eyes. I feel the earth spin beneath this house while the neon palm sign buzzes and pops outside the window.

  * * *

  I wake up with warm slobber all over my cheek. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and my two boys are doing a little of both. Stewart is talking to his Thomas the Tank Engine and making choo-choo noises. Jo-Jo is happy and giggling on the floor and, from the smell of things, needs a serious diaper change.

  Emily is bustling around, closing and opening drawers, frantic to find the diaper bag.

  “Daddy’s awake!” Jo-Jo claps.

  “Yes, Daddy is.” I smack away the awful cherry taste from last night.

  “Come play twain!” Stewart holds up his Thomas the Tank Engine. “Come on, Daddy!”

  “Daddy’s going to get some coffee first, guys.” I hold my head in my hands.

  Emily looks up at me with a fresh diaper in one hand and Jo-Jo’s ankles in her other.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Emily folds up Jo-Jo’s dirty diaper into a hermetically sealed white football.

  “You okay?” she says.

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

  “You slept for almost 12 hours.” She fastens the new diaper around Jo-Jo’s waist and puts him back to his trains.

  “Oh shit.” I get up from the bed. “I gotta call Gary.”

  “I emailed him for you,” she says. “Stomach flu.”

  “That’s what I told him on Mother’s Day.” I look at Emily.

  “Sorry.” She shrugs. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll call him in a minute and straighten it out.”

  “Daddy, this train is Phillip.” Stewart holds up a green boxcar. “Tell Jo-Jo he can’t play with him.”

  “Honey,” Emily touches Stewart’s shoulder. “Go take Jo-Jo and your trains and go show them to PawPaw downstairs. He loves trains. Daddy and I need to talk for just a second.”

  And the good boy that Stewart is, he picks up his green box car and grabs his brother by the arm and does exactly what his mother asks of him. He’s a good big brother. So smart. So kind.

  “What happened?” She shuts the door behind the boys. “What is going on? I am freaking out.”

  “There were two guys. Preppy. Looked like Tulane students or something. In this yellow Toyota. They had guns, and they killed one of Mama’s clients. They had him in the backseat with me, and then they drove me to our house in Covington and buried him in our backyard….”

  “I told La La we should have called the police” She dives into her phone.

  “Wait. Let me talk to Yanko first.”

  “Duke. I’m calling the cops.”

  “Okay. Call the cops. Fine.”

  I look down at my feet. It’s the black matchbook that Gay André was playing with. It must have fallen out of my pocket while I was sleeping. I reach down and pick it up.

  Give matchbook to fishwife, the line from Mama’s prophecies pops into my head.

  “What’s that?” Emily asks.

  “It’s the dead guy’s matchbook.” I open it. “It’s got a phone number in it.”

  “Do not call that number,” she says.

  I don’t answer her.

  “You’re giving that to the police. You are done playing Sherlock Holmes.” She holds her iPhone to my face and then dials 911. “We can’t mess around here. This is serious stuff, Duke. These people mean business.”

  “Obviously,” I say.

  18

  May 12, 2010

  Mama has been missing for eight days

  Detective Mary Glapion sits across from Emily and me in my mama’s parlor. She’s wearing a gold coin necklace similar to Mama’s. It’s just a coincidence, or maybe it’s a telling sign from the Melissae. I don’t know anymore. Perhaps even more significant than the gold coins around her neck is her black leather backpack, the one she carries instead of a purse. It has a TED logo on it, obviously some kind of swag from the brainiac conference she attended. With her thick frames and her old school BlackBerry, Mary Glapion looks more like a college professor than a cop.

  In fact, Detective Glapion is not exactly the kind of person you would ever expect to live in New Orleans. Her considerable biceps make it apparent that she steers clear of the beignets and the étouffées, but instead carries tractor tires and climbs ropes at 5 a.m. It’s hard to imagine why someone so obviously ambitious, so intellectually driven, so maniacally fit would ever live in The Fat City. Much less be part of a system so historically broken, bureaucratic, and racist. This question hangs on my tongue, but I’m not the one asking the questions. Detective Mary Glapion is.

  “So let me just get this straight, Mr. Melançon? You were forced to bury Gay Costello’s body in your backyard yesterday at approximately 9 a.m.?” She studies me, probing my face like a fortune-teller would for telltale signs of lying, like touching my mouth when I respond or averting my eyes, or worst of all, over-explaining the obvious.

  “Yes. That’s what I said.” My hands start trembling so bad that I have to fold my arms to keep them still.

  “Tell her about that matchbook you found,” Emily says. “Show her the matchbook.”

  “Matchbook?” Glapion looks at me hard.

  “It’s nothing,” I say.

  “It’s got a phone number in it,” Emily says. “It’s from the guy they killed. It’s got a phone number scribbled inside.”

  “You mind showing it to me?” Detective Glapion gives me about three seconds of too much eye contact.

  “Yes, I do mind.” I look away.

  “Duke. Just show it to her.” Emily says.

  “Aren’t you an attorney, Mr. Melançon?”

  “I am.” My heart is racing so fast that my thoughts can’t keep up. I can’t think of a comeback. So I just sit here.

  “Do you feel like you need an attorney to continue this series of questions?” She actually smiles when she says this.

  “Why would he need an attorney?” Emily puts her hand on my knee.

  “I am questioning your husband about a body that he buried in your backyard. I just want to make everyone aware of their rights.”

  “Are you reading me my rights?” I say. “You are. You’re about to read me my rights. Is this where this is headed?”

  “Mr. Melançon, I am simply trying to help you.”

  Emily looks at me with wide eyes—ocean-green eyes that telepathica
lly say, “Can you believe this?”

  “You know, Detective, I think we are done for today.” I stand up. I am shaking so bad that my teeth are chattering. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My heart is beating in my ears.

  “Mr. Melançon. Please.” She stands up and smoothes the wrinkles from the dress.

  “We are done for the day, Detective.” Everything starts to vibrate.

  Mary Glapion’s BlackBerry chimes and she puts her nose close to the glowing blue screen. She reads an incoming email while moving her lips. Finally, she glances back up and looks me in the eyes.

  “There isn’t a body buried at your house, Mr. Melançon,” she says.

  Everything feels wrong, really wrong, like I-am-going-to-die wrong.

  “There’s nothing in your backyard at all,” she says. “No grave. No blood. And definitely no dead body.”

  “I dug the hole.” A hummingbird is trapped inside my chest.

  “I sent a squad car over to Gay Costello’s house.” She turns her phone to show me a picture texted to her. It’s a shirtless Gay André standing in his front door. “He’s still very much alive,” she says.

  Her eyes soften. It’s a look of pity. “Mr. Melançon, has this ever happened to you before?”

  “What do you mean has this ever happened before?” I say.

  “Does he have a history of this?” Mary Glapion looks at Emily.

  “History of what?” Emily blinks at her.

  “Drugs,” she says. “Mental illness. Anything that would explain this kind of delusion.”

  Emily shakes her head no.

  The room spins. I close my eyes to remember, to see what happened in my backyard with the shallow grave and the frat boys yelling at me, but everything is thin and watery, like trying to remember a dream after being shaken awake. The only thing I can truly recall is the lightning flash of my mother’s red satin slippers scattered in the St. Augustine grass.

  “Mr. Melançon,” Detective Glapion taps me on the shoulder, and I open my eyes. She’s standing two inches too close to me.

  “You okay?” she asks.