The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  “What if the drones open fire?”

  “Did you call me to argue?” She lights a cigarette with one, two, three flicks of her lighter. “Or did you call me because you know I’d know what to do?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I say. “Be ready.”

  “I’ll be waiting with bells on.” She exhales a long dragon breath of smoke into her phone. “The Melissae have been waiting for this moment all my life.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket and know that things are in La La’s realm of expertise (unexplainable weirdness). I hold the hope that my sister does, in fact, know what to do with these drones, and I am not making yet another mistake in a life long list of mistakes.

  “I need you to take me to Napoleon and Magazine,” I tap on the plexiglass partition. “But slow down. Just let them follow us. It’s okay. ”

  The cabbie lets off the gas, and just as he slows down to the speed limit, one of the white quadcopters lowers itself to the driver’s side window; its robotic cameras twitch and scan. I duck in my seat to escape their gunfire. But instead, the drone pulses its camera flash into the cab.

  “Oh, look at that thing.” The cabbie points at the drone now buzzing outside his window. “Takin’ my picture. I ain’t gonna show you my titties, you little bastard. You ain’t gonna make me famous on the goddamn internet!”

  * * *

  The old Italian pulls up to The House of the Neon Palm, and I stay inside the car because the air is now brown and buzzing with a swarm of bees.

  “What is up with dis?” The cabbie turns on his windshield wipers, smashing and spreading bee guts all over the glass. “Dey everywhere.”

  The swarm has taken over Mama’s front yard. And they are attacking the three drones that have followed us from the Quarter. The bees, despite the quadcopters’ chopping propellers, begin to take over the flying drones, congealing into undulating mounds.

  The drones drop, one by one, into the tall grass of Mama’s front yard.

  “Now if that don’t beat all,” the cabbie points at the struggling quadcopter.

  “Here’s the extra twenty I promised.” I hand him a wad of cash.

  “Thanks.” He shuffles and counts the bills. “You want me to drive around the block, so you don’t get stung?”

  La La runs outside onto the front porch, waving for me to come inside.

  “Nah, I think I can make it,” I say.

  “They gonna sting you.”

  And as if on cue, the swarm fades. They are magnetized to the mounds now covering the downed quadcopters.

  In the normal world, when bees swarm like this, they are typically following an old queen, dividing the colony, multiplying their numbers and amplifying their odds. This much I know. The old me would argue that these bees are the hipsters’ fault. This part of town is swarming with them as well, with their double-decker bicycles and their chicken coops and their beehives in their backyards. This cloud of bees that just saved me from these drones is here because some bearded jackoff is too busy getting drunk off his homemade beer to stay on top of his beekeeping. But the new me, the guy who sabotages oil CEOs and tracks down mobsters, knows these bees are here because my sister somehow beckoned them.

  “Okay, I’m gonna make a run for it,” I say.

  “Just don’t let them in the cab!” he says.

  I bolt out of the cab, slam the door, and run up to the front porch where La La is standing. She holds and shakes Mama’s gold coin necklace up to the night sky. Now I know that La La, and whoever the Bee Maidens are, actually had a plan and just like she promised, the drones aren’t going to shoot us. I look out the front window at the quadcopters that are now ruined by beeswax and honey, downed in the tall grass of Mama’s front yard.

  The swarm once again takes flight and scatters. It flies high above the glowing red palm, and the bees move east, following the old Italian’s yellow taxicab down the street and away from The House of the Neon Palm.

  36

  Mysterious Drones & Sudden Honeycombs

  Detective Mary Glapion is wearing her badge around her neck, snakeskin high heels on her feet, and blue rubber gloves on her hands. She arrived in an unmarked Chevy Volt within ten minutes of me calling the police.

  “This is crazy. It should have taken weeks for the bees to build this much honeycomb.” She picks up the beeswax-entombed quadcopter. She holds the disabled drone away from herself to keep the honey from dripping onto her expensive shoes.

  “Then how do you explain it?” I ask.

  “Not sure. Bees are nature’s 3D printers. There was this brilliant talk about biomimicry at TED. I should send you that video. It explains how bees do this. But not this fast. Never this fast.”

  “Less interested in you sending me a TED talk,” I say, “And more interested in you finding the people who tried to kill me with these drones.”

  “Oh, sorry. Just trying to make sense of these bees, Mr. Melançon. Not every day you see something like this,” she says. “I’ve seen some weird stuff in this city, but this takes the cake.”

  “Those drones tried to kill me,” I say.

  “How many times did they shoot at you?” She seals the ruined quadcopter into an oversized Ziploc evidence bag.

  “None,” I say. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Then technically they didn’t try to kill you.”

  “I was chased across the city by three armed drones. How is that not someone trying to kill me?”

  “I just want to be clear on legally what is going on here. The city doesn’t have a lot of laws around drones. The FAA does, but we don’t.” She picks up the second drone from the grass. It too is covered in honeycomb. “And are these your family’s bees that did this?”

  “No,” I say. “We don’t own any bees.”

  “They were sent from the Bee Maidens,” La La speaks up.

  “The Bee Maidens?” The detective holds the small dripping quadcopter between her finger and thumb. “Who are the Bee Maidens?”

  I glare at La La to shut up.

  “Kind of hard to explain,” La La says.

  “Try me,” Mary Glapion drops the second drone into an evidence baggie. “I’m a direct descendant of Marie Laveau. I’m very familiar with things that are hard to explain.”

  “The Melissae speak to me.” La La points to the gold coin earrings. “They brought the bees.”

  “Do they go by any other names?” Mary Glapion asks.

  “Sometimes they call themselves the Thriae. Sometimes they call themselves the Bureau of Humanity. But mostly they tell me they are the Bee Maidens—those who shall protect us from the grip of The Great Unseen Hand.”

  “Bureau of Humanity?” I say. “When did the Bee Maidens start calling themselves that?”

  “They always have,” La La says. “Always.”

  “You never told me that,” I say.

  “So why do you care now?”

  “Vonnegut. He kept rambling on about some Bureau. Some Bureau of Humanity sending Mama the cat.”

  “I told you you should have listened to him.” La La blows her bangs off her forehead with a heavy sigh. “I told him.”

  “I still have one last drone to collect. Can we continue this discussion after I do that?” Detective Glapion walks over and picks up the last honey-covered drone. The ruined quadcopter begins to buzz and hum. It sputters back to life with its propellers flinging honey and beeswax everywhere. Mary Glapion throws the drone into the street. It lands with a scratchy slide into the gutter.

  “Get down!” She pulls her gun from her holster and stalks the thing—her firearm aimed and ready to shoot.

  La La and I run onto the front porch and watch.

  Mary Glapion carefully approaches the drone. And when it’s confirmed that it is still too heavy with wax and honey, Glapion stomps on it, over and over, crushing it to bits with her fancy snakeskin shoes.

  “It’s okay. It’s dead!” She waves at us to come out of hiding.

>   “You might want to take the batteries out of the other ones!” I point to the baggies she left on our front lawn.

  “Good idea!” She re-holsters her gun and picks up the crushed wires, beeswax, and robotics out of the street, and drops them into another baggie.

  * * *

  Detective Glapion sits in Mama’s parlor and sips her green tea latte from an enormous Starbucks cup. Her apricot-brown lipstick stains the plastic lid. The detective has made herself at home on Mama’s fainting couch. She smoothes the antique purple velvet and smiles at me.

  “Is that Dom DeLuise or Paul Prudhomme?” She points to Mama’s photo wall by the China cabinet.

  “Dom DeLuise,” I say.

  “Is he even still alive?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “You know a lot of people loved your mama.” The detective sighs. “But a lot of people were scared of her. ‘Don’t disrespect the Lady’ is what I hear.”

  “I ain’t apologizing for that,” Daddy hobbles by. He’s got his hearing aids in. “Don’t come into my house and tell me that I should be apologizing for my wife.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Melançon, I’m not asking you to,” she says.

  “It’s been months and we haven’t heard shit from you people,” Daddy says.

  “Mr. Melançon, I can assure you we have been very active with this investigation,” she says. “I have been on this family’s side from day one.”

  “How have you helped us?” I ask.

  “Keeping you out of jail for one.” She hands me an Orleans Parish court envelope.

  I open it.

  “Restraining order?” I read aloud the big black words printed on the manilla envelope.

  “They thought there was a bomb in that cake,” Detective Glapion says. “You’re lucky I’m not putting handcuffs on you right now.”

  “You put a bomb in a cake?” Daddy shakes his head. “Why the hell you building bombs and putting them in cakes?”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “It was just a cake.”

  Detective Glapion pulls out her phone and shows me the pics of the Mandala Spill Cake that I left for Christopher Shelley at the Ritz. There it is with the blue and black icing smeared on the concrete and chocolate cake scattered everywhere. The next photo is of members of the New Orleans Bomb Squad, smiling, giving a thumbs up to the demolished cake.

  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you sending crazy cakes to people?” Daddy says.

  “You’re not to get within 100 feet of Christopher Shelley, Constanze Bellingham, or Gary Dubois. Don’t call them. Don’t leave them cakes. If they show up at a bar or restaurant that you are in, you are to leave without making contact with them. You are not to be within 100 feet of any Mandala property. That includes gas stations,” she says.

  “It was just a cake,” I say.

  “It was just a touch crazy.” She smirks. “And be glad I understand these things or else we’d be talking to Homeland Security right now.”

  “What do you mean you understand these things?”

  “The Bee Magic tonight. The cake and the curse. Be careful,” Detective Glapion holds up her gold coin necklace from beneath her blouse. “I know your mama’s world, and I can tell you that when you call upon the darkness, it has a tendency to answer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This was quite an occurrence. The bees and all that honeycomb,” she says. “Are you tracking what I am saying, Mr. Melançon?”

  I look down at her snakeskin shoes and try not to think about my python dream or my ayahuasca vision. I try my best not to attach meaning to this coincidence, but it’s impossible.

  “What are you going to do with the drones?” I point to the baggies by her feet.

  “The FAA has a registry. I’ll try to find out where they came from. Then press charges if I can,” she says.

  “And that’s it?”

  “Trust me, Mr. Melançon. My ancestors and I are helping you in ways you might not ever understand.”

  “You mean Marie Laveau?”

  “Yes.” She smiles.

  “You’re nutso. Just like everyone else. You’re crazy,” I say.

  She laughs. “You have to be to do this job.”

  “What do you know about The Loup Garou?” I ask.

  “You mean Banksy?”

  “He’s Banksy?”

  “Graffiti is how people like Banksy and your mother communicate. It’s a form of code talking.”

  “So he works with my mother? How do you know all this?”

  “Works for. Did he say where she is? If anyone would know he would.”

  “No. He just kept wanting me to mail things to newspapers six years from now.”

  “Did you do it?” Her eyes widen.

  “The drones came. He took everything back.”

  She looks shocked, horrified actually.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “You need to find Banksy again,” Mary Glapion says.

  “Isn’t that your job?”

  “He’s Banksy.” She sips her Starbucks. “No one finds him unless he wants them to.”

  “If I find him, then what?”

  “Listen, next time,” she says. “Listen to what he tells you to do. Let’s just start there.”

  “Who are you?” I say.

  “I’m Detective Mary Glapion.”

  “No, really, who are you?” I point to her gold coin necklace. “What’s with the coins?

  She clasps her blouse closed.

  “Perhaps we knew each other in a past life. Perhaps that is why I make you so uncomfortable,” she says. “I’m a flicker of memory that just won’t go away. Maybe that’s why I am here trying to help you, even though you don’t remember me or care.”

  “What are you talking about? You think we knew each other in a past life? Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Duke, I’m glad you don’t remember me. I’d give anything not to remember you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective. I remember you. I remember you threatening to throw me in jail. You don’t ever forget that.”

  “Duke, one day I will make sense to you. One day, my husband, you will know this pain— the pain of a loved one looking at you without tenderness or even recognition because you never met, because your job took that opportunity from you because it was for the greater good.”

  “Husband? Whose husband? What are you talking about?”

  She tears up. “I need to go. I need to deliver this evidence to the station.”

  “This is the strangest conversation I think I have ever had.”

  “Trust me, it’s not.” She turns and walks away. “Not nearly the strangest conversation you will have this lifetime, I can promise you that.”

  37

  June 6, 2010

  Not a word from the police

  After Detective Glapion’s bizarre visit, I am rattled in ways I didn’t expect to be. She knew me in a way that I didn’t know her. I can’t stop thinking about how sad she was, about how strange it was to see her like that. But why do I care what some crazy cop lady says? But I do care and I can’t stop thinking about her, worrying if she is okay. Her sadness was contagious somehow and the days after her visit run together into a smudge of depression naps and compulsive Facebooking. Without the structure of a workweek, without the constant pings of Gary and Constanze, without Emily and the boys I am lost. Mostly I hole up in Mama and Daddy’s bedroom pouring over Mama’s books, searching the passages for clues, and when I’m not on Facebook, I am re-reading the words written on the Babineauxes’ phone bills and past-due statements, trying to pull clues out of Mama’s impossibly bad poetry.

  I try to figure out what kind of game Mama is playing here or if she is at this point even playing a game. If perhaps, she got in too deep this time and got herself killed. But so far, the letters only seem to speak to my job at Mandala, about my lack of being a faithful seventh son
of a seventh son. Nothing really points to Mama being abducted or killed. In fact, her language is so grand that it seems like she has and will live forever. Parts of the letters read like vague clues while others are so specific, it seems like Mama spoke these rhymes to Jean Babineaux as if she was watching all of this unfold in her mind’s eye.

  * * *

  Today Daddy sits in his bed complaining about his phantom leg, practicing the clarinet, playing Words With Friends, and calling his brother to argue about the weather. La La and Cactus work downstairs attending to the steady stream of the heartbroken who show up because the neon palm is once again glowing from our rooftop. Stevo and his boys have decided to tinker and hammer. They are banging around the old house, repairing rotted floorboards and replacing rusty hinges.

  Stevo sings to them the same old Russian songs that Mama sang to us. His boys sometimes sing along. To get my mind off this overwhelming sadness, I force myself to get dressed and I go down into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast.

  Since nothing is changing and I am diving into what I can only describe as a deep depression, I decide to make one last ditch effort and heed Mary Glapion’s demand to set up a meeting with The Loup Garou. So I text Gay André to cash in on his promise to do just that.

  *Where you at?* He immediately pings back.

  *You promised me a meeting* I text.

  *I got you a meeting.*

  *Where?*

  *Napoleon House Today at 5*

  *Seriously.*

  *Get a table on the patio if I am not there.* he replies.

  *Ok.*

  *He says bring the necklace.*

  *Why?*

  *Bring it.*

  I am not stupid. I am not bringing Mama’s necklace. Whatever that thing is to them, I am not going to risk them bashing me in the head and taking it. I can’t fathom why this old piece of jewelry is so important to these people, but I keep it locked away with La La. Instead, I drive down to the Quarter to settle this with my fists if I have to. I park my Prius in the World War II Museum parking garage, and I push through the crowds of fat-asses in their Daisy Dukes, past all the gray haired looky-loos gawking at all this pre-packaged sin, and I start the long walk to that tourist trap that Napoleon Bonaparte never even stepped foot into, The Napoleon House.