Ganymede tcc-4

by Cherie Priest

  The street rails were halfway between a streetcar and a proper train, running on standard rails but lighter than any long-distance freight or passenger movers, and without the creature comforts of a Pullman car. But they were quick by anyone’s standards, able to take people between Metairie and New Orleans proper in twenty minutes on a good day, and thirty on a bad one.

  A smallish station had been erected, again almost halfway between a streetcar stop and a train depot. Mostly it was open, with a tall roof overhead to shield the waiting passengers from sun and rain — and a set of enormous propellers set into the roof’s underside to keep the airflow circulating. It didn’t do much to cool the station, but it kept the diesel fumes and coal smoke from collecting, and that was something.

  “Why do I smell both diesel and coal smoke? Are there street rails leading in and out of the city everywhere, or just here? Is that a cemetery across the street? How much longer until our streetcar comes?”

  “Does he ever shut up?” asked Kirby Troost.

  Cly defended him. “If he doesn’t ask questions, he’ll never learn.”

  “I never asked questions like that. And I didn’t grow up to be no dummy.”

  The captain kept his eyes on the rails, watching Track 6 for any sign of an incoming transport. He picked Houjin’s two easiest questions, and he answered them. “Huey, you smell coal and diesel because some of the streetcars are coal powered and some are diesel. I reckon one day they’ll make them all one thing or the other, but it hasn’t happened yet. And yes, that’s a cemetery.”

  The boy whistled, drawing the attention of a small colored girl seated on a bench with her mother at Track 7. The child’s eyes went wide, but her mother said, “Don’t stare. It’s not polite.” She stared anyway, and Houjin gave her a wave that she sent back with a dubious flap.

  “It’s a cemetery? Must be about a million dead people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so big.”

  “Not a million, but a lot,” Cly told him. “They call it the city of the dead.”

  “A whole city full of dead people. Hey, we’ve got one of those back in—”

  Cly whomped him on the arm and gave him a look that said to shut up.

  “Ow,” he complained. “Well, you know what I was going to say.”

  Fang rolled his eyes. Kirby Troost said, “We all know, yes. Maybe you could put a lid on it, eh, kid?”

  Fang gave the captain an elbow jab and pointed at the tracks.

  “Here comes our car,” Cly said. “We’ll be in the city soon. Save up a few questions for when we get to town.”

  “Can I ask just one before we do?”

  “One. Just one.”

  “Where will we stay while the Naamah Darling gets her work done?”

  Troost said, “Actually, that’s not a half-bad thing to ask. Where will we stay, Captain? That lady friend of yours has a boarding house, doesn’t she?”

  Cly rose to his feet and stretched. “We won’t be staying at the Garden Court. It’s not that kind of boarding house.”

  Troost said, “Ah,” and Fang looked relieved.

  Houjin didn’t get it. “Why not? If she’s an old friend, and if she has rooms—”

  “We’ll find someplace else. I’d hate to impose. Let it go, Huey. The Vieux Carré is full of places we can stay. Hotels by the score. We’ll pick one.”

  Soon Track 6 was host to a street rail car called Bayou Bess. Houjin rode the whole way to town up front, hanging over the rail and watching the scenery change. Cly, Troost, and Fang sat on a bench behind him, taking it easy since they didn’t know when they’d next get the opportunity. The wind blew through their hair and clothes, and even though it was every bit as warm as Cly had promised, they were comfortable riding along beside the main road, past the swampy parts of earth that filled up the space between grasslands and forest.

  Fang nudged the captain, and since no one was paying much attention to them, he signed. Someone has to teach him, someday.

  He said under his breath. “Not me. Not now.”

  One of the women at the Garden Court?

  “God Almighty. His uncle would never let me hear the end of it.”

  They arrived at the downtown station just past Canal Street late in the afternoon, and upon debarking they headed toward Jackson Square, a few blocks nearer the river. “That’s strange,” the captain observed, watching someone draw down the shutters and begin the work of closing a restaurant.

  “What’s strange?” asked Troost.

  “I remember this as more of a round-the-clock town. Folks seem to be shutting up shop early.”

  From the stoop of a narrow, unmarked store that smelled of incense and coal, a stout black woman with a broom informed them, “It’s the curfew, closing us up. Costing all kinds of business, too — not that the Texians give a sainted cuss about it.”

  Cly and his crew members stopped, and the captain asked, since she sounded happy to share—“What curfew?”

  “The city goes home at sundown,” she said, swooshing the broom back and forth, clearing a day’s worth of dust from the two short steps. “Ever since those two Texians went missing. As if the world ought to stop for a pair of brownbacks without the sense to come up from the river at midnight.” The woman spit fast and hard, leaving a damp spot on the cobbled walkway.

  “I didn’t know,” Cly admitted. “And if that’s the case, we need to find ourselves some rooms for the night. Could you recommend anything?”

  She stopped her sweeping and appraised the group before saying, “Other side of the Square is the Widow Pickett’s place. She puts up men, soldiers, sailors. Folks like yourselves — airmen, I’m guessing?”

  The captain said, “That’s right.”

  “And a couple of Chinamen like you got there — they shouldn’t be a problem for her. She takes negroes and Creoles and everyone else, as long as you can pay. Or if she’s all full up, I think the Rogers place on Esplanade could take you.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Kirby Troost told her. He touched the front of his hat as they walked away, on toward the Square at a somewhat quicker pace. As they walked, he added to the captain, “Shame we can’t just stay at the Garden Court. Can’t cost that much more.”

  “Don’t you start, now.”

  “Who’s starting? He’s what — sixteen, seventeen? I was younger than that when I got married for the first time.”

  “When you—?” Cly gave him a confused gaze, then shook his head. “Forget about schooling Houjin. Leave that up to his uncle.”

  “Back in Seattle, where there are about fifty men to every woman?”

  “More men than that, if you count all the fellas in Chinatown — and there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”

  “And the women who’re there, you could count ’em on one hand … most of them so old, they could be his mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with learning from an older woman, mind you.”

  “Can we change the subject now?”

  “Sure. Why can’t we stay at the Garden Court?”

  “How about we don’t talk at all. I like the sound of that even better.”

  To the captain’s left, Fang laughed, silent except for a series of soft snorts.

  “Not you, too,” Cly complained.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “What are you talking about?” Houjin had been walking ahead, eyes up on the brightly painted buildings with their brilliant white latticework balconies and tumbling planters full of gardenias, daisies, and flowers with bright pink petals like trumpets.

  “Nothing,” Cly said quickly. “Turn left up at the next street, will ya? We’re almost there.”

  The Widow Pickett was not precisely what anyone had expected, but Kirby Troost in particular was quite charmed to meet her acquaintance. Said widow wasn’t thirty unless she was practicing witchcraft. She had a figure to inspire envy in ladies and lust in gentlemen, with a tall pile of hair the color of wheat and strawberr
ies. As the black woman on the storefront stairs had predicted, the widow had no problem whatsoever providing shelter to the oriental men or anyone else, and before long two rooms were arranged, paid for, and settled in.

  Fang and Houjin shared one two-bedded room, for Houjin could ask all the questions he wanted and Fang never appeared to mind; the captain and Kirby shared the other — though the captain never did bother with the skinny, too-short bed. As a matter of habit, he pulled the mattress onto the floor and flipped the frame up against the wall. He’d hang off the padding one way or another, but there was no reason to let his feet dangle in midair.

  “You may as well settle in for the night,” he told Kirby Troost. “Go downstairs and see about some supper. The sun’ll be down in another hour.”

  “You say that like you don’t intend to do likewise.”

  “I figured I’d head over to the Garden and have a real quick business chat with my old friend.”

  “You’re headed to the whorehouse without me?” he asked accusingly.

  “Yes, but I can’t stay long, not with the curfew, and—”

  Troost nodded knowingly. “And that’s why you want to go now. Shit, man. You must be scared to death of this woman.”

  “Am not.”

  “I’m coming with you. Maybe I’ve got the pocket cash to stay the night and you can have this whole room to your lonesome.”

  Cly threw up his hands and said, “Fine. Suit yourself. Let me go tell Fang and Huey we’re headed out.”

  Fang agreed to stay behind, and Houjin was so excited about eating the big weird bugs called crawdads that he was prepared to miss almost anything for the adventurous culinary fare. They planned to meet again at sundown to discuss the next day’s duties, and Fang signed, I’ll keep him out of trouble.

  “Thanks. I do appreciate it.”

  On their way out the door, Kirby Troost asked, “But who’s going to keep us out of trouble?”

  “I didn’t know you understood his signing.”

  “I’m picking it up as we go. It’s one-part Native, what they use between two tribes — and one part deaf-man’s hands, and one part something that’s just between you two. But it’s not so hard to figure out, once you get a few of the phrases down.”

  Cly said, “It’s worth your time to learn it, I suppose — if you plan to spend any time with us.”

  The walk to the Garden Court was only a few blocks, ten minutes of ducking beneath balconies, dodging the tickles of hanging plants, staying out of the path of the rolling-crawlers, and ignoring the insistent last calls of every tavern and pub house in the Quarter.

  Troost hesitated in front of a sign advertising in no uncertain terms the availability of women and alcohol both, but Cly ushered him past it. The engineer complained, “It isn’t right — imposing a curfew on a place like this. This is a town made to stay up all night and toast the sunrise.”

  “That’s one of the things it’s made for, but not the only thing.”

  “I’m still right.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t,” the captain said. “I don’t know why Texas has done it, but I’m sure there was a good reason.”

  Troost’s eyes didn’t believe him.

  Cly sighed. “Whatever their reasoning, it doesn’t matter to why we’re here. And I’m frankly glad for it right now, because I don’t want to spend more time in the Garden than I have to.”

  “You’re a madman.”

  “I’m … happily attached.”

  “So you agree with me.”

  Cly escaped answering with a pointing jab of his long index finger at a swinging sign. “Look, that’s it.”

  “Just like you remember?”

  “The paint’s new.” He hesitated, standing still on the sidewalk and making two small, dark-skinned boys walk around him. “Otherwise, it looks pretty much the same.”

  “You’re stalling. But we came all this way, and here we are. Let’s get inside and take a look around.” Troost set off down the walkway.

  Cly surged forward and caught up to Troost with only a few long strides — just in time to open the door and propel himself inside it first. Kirby couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused, but settled for amused and followed the captain into the plush, pretty lobby.

  The carpets were red and maroon, laced with a buttercream trim, and the curtains were thick but colored to match. All the visible wood was dark with polish, age, and imported glamour. A long couch with a back curved like a sea serpent was pressed against the far wall, and a matching love seat was propped for cuddling inside the door to the right. Two plush solitary chairs that should’ve held one body apiece were spaced between the larger pieces of furniture, but in the nearest chair were two lovely colored women on the lap of a white-haired Texian — identifiable as such by a fluffy mustache that might have been made of a dove’s wings … and then by his accent, when he exclaimed, “Newcomers, girls.” Then to Cly and Troost, he said, “Y’all come on inside and make yourselves comfortable. Hazel or Ruthie will be downstairs in a minute.”

  The women on the Texian’s lap smiled in welcome, but he showed no interest in letting them leave, so they stayed.

  “Thank you, sir, I do believe I’ll do exactly that,” Kirby Troost declared, taking off his hat and making himself comfortable on the love seat. Cly was less certain. Partly for the sake of comfort, given his size — and partly because he’d rather not be crushed up against the engineer in such an intimate setting — he retreated to the couch and folded himself awkwardly, looking and feeling like a grown man sitting inside a dollhouse.

  The captain asked the Texian, “You said Hazel and Ruthie. Is … is Josephine still here?”

  “Miss Early? Oh, sure. She’s the woman in charge, but she’s not around — not right this moment. I believe she’s out with a family emergency of some sort,” he said vaguely. “Ruthie went with her, but she came back last night. Anyway, for what it’s worth to you, I don’t think Miss Early takes customers too often anymore.”

  “No? I mean, no — that’s not … that’s not why I ask. She’s invited me here, to hire me for a job.”

  “What sort of job?”

  “I’m not too rightly sure yet. But I’ve finally made it to town, and I mean to ask her about it.”

  The fluffy-faced Texian nodded and said, “Perhaps Hazel or Ruthie can help you out. They’re real competent girls themselves, and so’s Marylin. They’re the ones she usually leaves running the business while she’s out.”

  “Good to know. Thank you, sir.”

  A slender mixed-race woman who was more white than anything else chose this moment to descend the staircase and enter the lobby, a vision in pink taffeta and ivory lace, with her hair tufted up and fastened with elaborate combs. “Mr. Calais,” she said to the Texian, “you surely do look comfortable, sir.”

  “Couldn’t be happier, Miss Quantrill!” he assured her, though when he reached for his scotch, it was barely beyond his fingertips. The girl upon his right knee retrieved it for him and leaned so that he could squeeze her close and take a swallow at the same time. “And these men here, they’re looking for Josephine.”

  Kirby and Cly both came to their feet, and Troost announced, “He’s looking for Josephine. I’m just looking.”

  She gave them both a demure smile that showed no teeth. To Troost, she said, “You’ll be the easiest to assist. My name is Marylin, and I’ll be happy to make any arrangements you require. But as for you, sir,” she told the captain, “Miss Early isn’t here right now.”

  “That’s what your friend said. Any chance you know when she’ll be back?”

  Before Marylin could answer, a second woman slipped up behind her. The dark-haired beauty was wearing maroon that bordered on brown, and every inch of her shimmered. Kirby Troost’s eyes went wide, and he opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

  She swished forward, taking in Troost’s gaze and discarding it in favor of catching Cly’s. Unabashedly she appraised him from head to fo
ot, and when she felt she’d seen everything she needed, she declared, “Je suis Ruthie Doniker, and I manage the house for Miss Early while she is out. Are you Captain Cly?”

  “Yes … yes, ma’am. I am. Josephine sent for me.”

  “Oui, I know. For a while, she thought you would not come.”

  He hunkered, even though the ceiling accommodated his height. “I do apologize — I tried to reply to her telegram sooner, but I had a hard time getting hold of the taps until a few days ago.”

  “Your message reached us, but she was called away suddenly. She has left instructions. Could you come upstairs with me, monsieur?”

  Marylin gave Ruthie a look Cly couldn’t decipher, but he thought it might mean, Trust me. And she turned with more swishing to ascend the stairs.

  “You won’t be needing me, will you?” Troost asked with optimism dripping from every word.

  “I don’t guess so.”

  So the captain left him there, in the company of Marylin Quantrill, the Texian Mr. Calais, and the two women on his lap who were spoken for; Cly followed the stunning, slim-bodied woman up the stairs while trying to neither knock his head nor stare too hard at the swaying bustle that covered her backside.

  By way of making conversation he asked, “Does she — does Josephine, I mean — still keep an office up here?”

  “She does, oui, monsieur. And that is where we are going.” Ruthie paused on the stairs and looked back at him, appraising him afresh, though the captain didn’t know why. She turned and continued upward, added, “Madame said that she knew you, a long time ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She said you are a very good pilot.”

  “I don’t get any complaints.”

  “She said you were the tall man, and I should know you that way.”

  “Many men are tall.”

  “She said that in any room, filled with any group of men, you were the tall one.”

  As she said this, he swung his head to avoid an old wall sconce that had not yet been fitted for gas, but still held a candle that had melted down to a thumb-sized nub.

  On the third floor, the stairs emptied into a walkway, just as Cly remembered, and he followed Ruthie to Josephine’s office. The office was not quite the same as the last time he’d seen it, but he would’ve recognized her touch anywhere. New curtains, in burgundy instead of green. Two new chairs — no, two old chairs with new striped upholstery. And the desk she’d inherited from someplace or another, half as big as a bed and ornately carved at the corners — where cherubs held harps and the wings of angels curved gently downward to the lion’s-paw feet.