When he originally decorated the courtyard, he had tried to make it as open as possible, but now he set out to make it as maze-like as he could. He hung plants and masks to make it hard to view all of the courtyard from any one place. He arranged things so that merely walking through the courtyard would involve dodging and ducking, but wherever one looked, there would be a face.
To add to the gurgling noise of the waterfall, he brought out the table top fountain and set it on a windowsill.
And when it was done, he sat down and asked himself if he had done enough. The end result looked like a secret garden designed by M. C. Escher. He looked around the garden and tried to imagine that there would be a response, and he heard the water’s answer. “Yes.”
By this time he had some ideas for marketing. He wanted it to be word of mouth, referrals only, so all that was left was to go upstairs and print some business cards. He wanted a simple, mysterious look on the cards. In small print, centered at the top of the card was his address. He wanted a subtle way to tell who his referrals were coming from so he made four different versions of the card, each version had a different symbol in the bottom right-hand corner, a star, a moon, a comet or the sun. Dominating the card, centered in large type, was the phrase “The Whisper Garden.”
Thursday February 6th
5:30 a.m.
Aldous was inverted on the grass in Riverfront Park. His feet were pointing at the sky; all his weight was on his shoulders. It was a classic yoga shoulder stand, though most practitioners of yoga would never consider doing it dressed in heavy boots and leather pants. Aldous was not like most practitioners of anything. Besides, if he took off the boots, and anyone saw him standing, they might notice that he was not quite as monstrously tall as he normally appeared, and it was important to him to maintain that illusion.
Aldous’ shirt and jacket were lying on the ground a few feet away from him. Despite the temperature hovering in the low fifties, sweat was pouring off his bare skin. Ashtanga yoga is a vigorous workout.
A passing jogger made no effort to conceal the fact she was staring. It wasn’t clear whether she was staring at his lithe, muscular body, his unusual form of exercise or his numerous tattoos, but when her head craned too far she stumbled and then jogged on without looking back.
Besides the crown of thorns, which ran around the back of his head from ear to ear, Aldous had a pair of feathered angel wings tattooed on his back, a bold circle containing eight arrows pointing inward on his left shoulder and the dark half of a yin/yang on his belly. The yin had been tattooed so that the line of its inner curve ran through the nearly invisible scar that marked where his navel had once been. (Because flesh has a tendency to heal to itself, the surgical removal of a navel is not difficult. Aldous had done it himself. He hadn’t even used anesthesia.)
Aldous sweated through the asanas, or postures, and when he was done he picked up his shirt and jacket and began walking toward the Garden District. On a whim, he decided to visit Dexter.
It was a decently long hike from the park to Dexter’s Victorian cottage, and the farther Aldous got from the Quarter, the more people looked at him like he was an animal escaped from the zoo.
When he got to Dexter’s house, he put his shirt back on and walked around to the side. He forced his face into a grin and stared through the kitchen window. Dexter was sitting at a table with his back to the window, eating breakfast and reading a newspaper.
Aldous stared for quite some time until Dexter finally turned his head slightly toward the window. As soon as the periphery of his vision touched Aldous’ form, Dexter jumped. Then he sighed, got up and opened the kitchen door.
“You scared me half to death.”
“If I do that twice, do you stay dead?”
“You know, I’ve never thought that joke was funny.”
“Now that you mention it, neither have I. But the question remains, have we found the perfect way to commit murder… through fear?”
“Why must you always talk about murder and death?”
“Professional curiosity? Murder is my life.”
“Just because you earn your paycheck telling tourists about the most scenic murders the French Quarter has to offer, doesn’t mean that murder is your life.” Dexter hoped that this was true.
Aldous said nothing. He looked around the kitchen. It was tastefully decorated, well laid out, and very functional. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink.
Aldous said, “You really shouldn’t let your dishes sit like that, it’s not healthy.”
“Cooking is one of the greatest pleasures in my life. In fact, it is right up there with eating. I refuse to spoil the afterglow of engaging in two of my favorite acts by doing the drudgery of cleaning. The only exception is my knives; they are too delicate to sit dirty.”
“Then make your wife clean the rest.”
“You know how picky I am. If she cleaned the dishes, I would just have to get up in the morning and clean them again. This way we save an unneeded step.”
“At least they wouldn’t sit there all night, fermenting.”
“My house, my rules.” Looking for a way to change the subject Dexter went on, “What are you doing up this time of day? Don’t you usually slither back to your coffin before the sun comes up?”
“Just because I don’t like daylight doesn’t mean I won’t go out in it if I have good enough reason. Today, I am killing time before my tattoo parlor opens. I took another girl last night … Do you think I should add another thorn to my crown, or another feather to my wings?”
“I think you shouldn’t use your body as a scoreboard.”
“How else am I supposed to remember them all?”
Dexter told himself that getting laid in the French Quarter wouldn’t be a problem for Aldous (or for much of anybody). So why did he always feel like Aldous was confessing more than promiscuity?
“Spare me the details of your love life.”
“If you didn’t want to be a voyeur, why did you move to New Orleans?”
“For the food, for the history, for the feel of the place … to work on my book.”
“You didn’t come here to write a stuffy civil war history, you came here because this is a place where drunk girls lift their shirts for beads, just like all the other dirty old men.”
“I think that Amy might be a tad upset if she heard you say that.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t tell your wife your real reasons, but I can see into your heart, old man ... You sir, are a lech.”
“I can’t deny that, but it isn’t the reason we moved here.”
Aldous turned his attention to the newspaper. “So, did you buy that stock I was telling you about?”
“No, you know I don’t like gambling.”
“Too bad. It’s doubled in the last week. The stock market isn’t gambling, if you know what you are doing.”
“And why should I believe that you know what you are doing?”
“I used to be a stockbroker in a former life.”
“So why aren’t you one now?”
“I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need. Don’t you know I’m worth millions?”
“You keep telling me that, but I just have a hard time believing you are an international man of mystery who works as a tour guide for the groupies.”
“The job has perks. Believe what you want, but I do know the stock market.”
“It still sounds like another word for gambling to me.”
“It is investing. Putting money somewhere it will grow. It is no more gambling than gardening is. If you do it right you find good soil, and plant your seeds and make sure they get water, and they grow. It makes me sick how people use the word investing these days. People call their cars an investment, when they know that all that is going to happen is that the value of the car will drop.”
“My car was
an investment.”
“I suppose it was worth more when it was stolen than when you bought it. But does that count all the parts you put into it? And I’d bet the insurance didn’t pay what you thought it was worth. I have to say it was a sweet ride; there aren’t that many 69 GTOs in such good condition left. Did they ever catch the punk who stole it?”
“Nope. And if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wake up Jenni and Amy. Then I have to get Jenni fed in time for school.” Dexter didn’t feel the need to remind Aldous that Amy didn’t like him, and that it would probably be better if he wasn’t around when she came downstairs.
Aldous grinned. “Sure, I’ll see you around,” and let himself out.
Thursday February 6th
Noon
The Saint Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, and due to local burial customs is still in use, despite the fact that it has been steadily shrinking to development ever since its creation.
The crypts are above ground and show a stunning variety of architecture. There is a pyramid, there are multi-family dwellings, and there are tombs that are literally falling apart in decay. There are empty places where tombs have decayed to the point that the church has had them taken away to make space for new tombs. New tombs are still built.
The term ‘city of the dead’ is perhaps overused, but is probably also the best descriptor. The city is still vital. New bodies are still added, carefully placed in the crypts, displacing their ancestors’ crumbled and jumbled remains. It is truly amazing how many generations can be crammed into a grave.
Marie Laveau’s tomb is easy to identify in the St. Louis Cemetery – it is the one with all the stuff. Her tomb is littered with piles of seemingly random offerings. Hundreds of Xs in groups of three have been scrawled on the whitewash, by ignorant people who think they mean something in the world of voodoo. The three Xs may mean something in Hollywood and, for that matter, might mean something to Marie by now, since so many people come to the tomb wishing and scrawling – but whether they amuse her, please her, or annoy her is something only she could tell. Marie has been dead for well over a hundred years, and is still very popular, even though she doesn’t talk much.
Sarah stood in front of Marie’s tomb, feeling awkward. Her costume felt out of place in the cemetery … no, thinking about it, the costume was in place (she was certainly not the only angel in the cemetery), but it seemed wrong to be wearing a costume at all, especially for her task at hand. On the other hand it was either stop here on the way to work, or make another trip back, and that was more than she cared to think about.
So Sarah stood in front of Marie’s tomb wearing her angel robes, wings and white greasepaint. She looked at the various offerings people had left for the Widow Paris, and she wondered, does one continue to be a widow after you die? Does it matter if you weren’t really widowed in the first place, if you only called yourself a widow to make yourself more mysterious? Marie Laveau, also known as the Widow Paris, had made a career of being mysterious, and that career had lasted well after her death. There was even debate as to whether she was actually interred in this tomb.
“Marie, I’ll be honest with you, I feel kind of silly standing here talking to you, since by this point I know that there isn’t much left of you except maybe some dust.
“But, I know people who say you have helped them, one way or another, so here I am asking for help. I’m tired of being lonely. Help me find love, Marie, or help it find me, and I’ll come back and leave you something, and I promise it will be something good, not like these morons who leave beads.”
She looked at the offerings other people had left. Several clusters of three cigarettes, a candy bar, some flowers, three mint candies, a pint-sized bottle of Admiral Jack rum, a stuffed animal. She wondered how many of these had been left by people who knew the protocol and left the offerings after they had received help, and how many were left by people before they even asked their favors. She wondered where the person had found the rubber ducky beads that were hanging off the tomb, and why they thought they were a good idea.
She stood there for a moment and turned to leave. She found a group of tourists watching her. They were probably too far away to have heard her, but it made her feel funny that they would think something so personal was just part of her act. She took a couple of turns through the maze of the cemetery to avoid them, which was a little annoying because it took her out of her way. They had been between her and the exit. She wondered if they would imagine she had vanished into thin air.
Several hours later a man, relatively well-dressed for being homeless, ambled through the cemetery. Charles basically ambled wherever he went; he hadn’t really had any place to be since he got back from Vietnam. But there were places he would go when he thought about it, places like Marie Laveau’s tomb. He knew that closing time was a good time to visit the cemetery, because people had been leaving stuff all day on that voodoo queen’s tomb, and he knew that she sure didn’t need it.
Ten minutes later, he had a pocket full of cigarettes, a belly full of candy bar and a hand full of a bottle of rum. There was enough stuff that he figured it must have been a day or two since anybody had walked off with it. More proof that the voodoo queen didn’t need it. The pint of rum would only last him a block or two, but finding it was a great way to start the evening.
Thursday February 6th
8:00 p.m.
After spending most of the previous night rearranging his house to fit his plan, Jeremy had spent most of the day sleeping and trying to recover from his hangover. At around eight o’clock in the evening he came to the conclusion that the hangover wasn’t going away, but that he needed to eat something. He also came to the conclusion that he couldn’t stand the thought of cooking anything for himself.
Jeremy wandered out of his house in search of food. Finding food in the French Quarter isn’t hard; the hard part is choosing what to eat. His first thought was jambalaya, but his stomach was shaky enough that he decided to just wander around until something smelled right. Before long he was on Royal Street. The angel was there again, right next to Pirate’s Alley.
He was approaching her from behind, and he stopped and leaned up against a wall, trying to decide if he should say something to her, apologize for his drunken rambling, or just walk by like he had every other time he had seen her.
While he was thinking, a homeless man that Jeremy recognized walked up to the angel. Jeremy had seen the man many times. The guy had an odd and effective approach to panhandling. He would wait until relatively late in the evening to start his begging, until a good portion of people on Bourbon Street were drunk, then he would single out a particularly drunk looking mark and start talking to them. He’d tell them a few jokes, he’d get pretty friendly, then he’d hit them up for money. He was never pushy or aggressive, and it worked. The other panhandlers walked away with pocket change, and he usually seemed to score bills, usually fives or tens.
This time though, Charles was drunker than Jeremy had ever seen him. He was staggering and reeling. He walked up to the angel and looked into her face, or maybe about two feet through it. She didn’t move. He was wearing a rather silly looking set of beads, which had rubber ducks strung on them.
He took the rubber ducky beads off and hung them over one of her outstretched arms. She maintained her posture.
He stepped back and said, “Come on Angel, show me your tits! I gave you beads, now I wanna see something.”
Before he had a chance to think about it, Jeremy found he had positioned himself between the drunk and the angel. He said, “That’s not her act. Why don’t you go find some tourist who cares about beads?”
Charles stared for a moment, then turned, a drunken half-pirouette. He started to walk away.
Jeremy turned to the angel and was just opening his mouth to say something, he wasn’t sure what, when her eyes got big and she screamed.
After
a good running start, Charles hit Jeremy square in the back with his shoulder. Jeremy proceeded to trip over the angel’s tip basket, and then over the angel’s pedestal, and then over the angel herself.
The three of them fell in a pile. Jeremy was struggling to position himself where he could do something when a police officer pulled Charles out of the pile. There are very few things you can’t get away with during Carnival time in the French Quarter, but fighting is near the top of the list. Cops seem to materialize from thin air when a fight breaks out.
The officer knew Charles, and was already talking to him sternly as Jeremy untangled himself from the angel’s dress and the ruins of her pedestal, stood up and helped her up.
The officer asked if anyone wanted to spend the next couple of hours pressing charges that wouldn’t amount to much except a lot of paperwork, and when he put it that way, nobody did. The officer led Charles off, presumably to the drunk tank, though by then the officer and Charles were chatting amicably.
With the drama over, the small crowd lost its focus and returned to being a group of individuals looking for excitement or entertainment.
Jeremy turned his full attention to his angel. In the fall she had torn a large hole in her right glove and was bleeding from a large skinned area. It looked simultaneously insignificant and painful. One of her wings was also hanging wrong, but that didn’t look like it hurt.
Jeremy pointed to her hand and said, “Oh, ouch. That’s right at the intersection of ‘eh, no big deal,’ and ‘owee owee owee.’ I’m no doctor, but you should probably clean it up.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”
“The sooner you do it, the less chance of infection you have. Look, I only live a couple blocks away, and I’ve got plenty of peroxide.”
The Whisper Garden Page 3