Club Storyville

by Riley LaShea

  Though I had never been in a club before, as far I could see, the place was as segregated as every club in the South would be by law.

  “Evening, Mr. Caster.” A colored lady came up in something of a show costume, skirt much shorter than my too-short skirt, tightly-fitted, with ruffles around her hips and a bodice that hugged her, looking as if she’d stepped off a vaudeville stage.

  “Evening, Sunny,” Desmond said, and, though Sunny seemed overly-excited to see him, Desmond's smile was pleased only to an extent that was respectful of his wife, and I liked him more for it.

  “Going downstairs?” Sunny questioned, looking at Ariel and I with something like amusement.

  “We were thinking about it,” Desmond replied. “Everything all right down there?”

  “So far, so good,” Sunny replied. “Just a bunch of good people havin’ a real good time.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Desmond said. “I’ll see you again on our way out.”

  “I hope so,” Sunny declared, hand stroking down Desmond's shirt, but, his arms preoccupied with Ariel and I, Desmond could only step out of her touch, before leading us away. “Have yourselves a ball, Ladies,” Sunny called after us. “But make sure you mind your manners. Desi’s wife means business.”

  Her carefree laughter ringing strangely in my ears, I wondered what the bar lady thought we would try. Even if Desmond wasn't a married man, and my feelings weren't directed past him to Ariel, the other obstacles were insurmountable.

  Despite what his grandfather claimed.

  Men bragged. I knew it from Edward and Scott. They bragged about all the girls who vied for their attention, about all the girls they kissed. I doubted either of them had kissed as many as they said. Why wouldn’t Old Desmond Caster make up the story he’d had relations with Nan when she wasn’t around to tell anyone any different?

  That was the belief to which I clung, the one that made sense to me, as the eyes followed us across the club. By the time we were walking the long, back hallway past the restrooms and kitchen, though, my belief was already wavering, and it was no more than an illusion by the time we reached the door marked “Danger: Storage,” and I realized the door with the danger was the one we were about to go through.

  Forced to let Desmond go in order to navigate the narrow staircase behind Ariel, the way didn't open much for us at the bottom of the stairs. Shuffling onward, past the large white freezer, the shelves that stored the napkins and extra dishes, the mops and the cleaning supplies, I came to a stop when Ariel did, turning with her to the door marked “Janitor” that was the only place left to go.

  Stepping between us with a smile, Desmond knocked in such a fashion it sounded like a password of sorts, and, feeling my heart in my throat as I awaited whatever stood on the other side of the door, I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when a giant of a man in a gray workmen’s jumpsuit, appearing like nothing more than the janitor himself, met us in the tiny throwaway room that was probably a place to grab a few minutes of sleep or a nip of booze between shifts.

  “Mr. Caster.” The man reached instantly for Desmond’s hand, eyeing Ariel and I with circumspection, despite the company we kept. “It’s been a while. Are you coming in tonight?”

  “You know we are,” Desmond said. “I’m looking to show these ladies one of our city’s finest establishments.”

  “Evening, Ladies,” the janitor at last greeted.

  “Good evening,” Ariel returned, but, despite the reply bringing an easy grin to the janitor’s thick face, it didn't make him any less cautious.

  “What brings you to Café Beni?”

  “They're all right,” Desmond prevented us from having to answer. “I vouch for them. This one’s harmless,” he tilted his head toward me, and, though it was exactly what I'd been raised to be, it didn't feel much like a compliment. “This one,” he drawled, glancing Ariel’s way, “I’m less certain about.”

  “Seasoned, is she?” the janitor laughed, and Ariel’s deep chuckle in response sounded it.

  “They’re just here looking for some answers,” Desmond said. “Elizabeth’s grandmother spent some time with Paps here in New Orleans.”

  “Is that right?” the janitor looked curiously at me, and I ducked my head in discomfort at all the man's eyes seemed to see. “You sure you’re ready for these answers?” he asked, and, not sure what answers he expected me to find in a four-by-six windowless cell in the basement of a colored nightclub, I was suddenly irritated he would look into my fears without asking.

  “Well, I guess I won’t know that until I can get to them,” I declared, watching the man’s eyebrows soar into his hairline, as surprised by my response as I was when I heard the words come out of me.

  “You sure she’s harmless?” the janitor turned his eyes back to Desmond, but Desmond no longer seemed so sure of me himself as the janitor took a step back. “Come on in.”

  Squeezing into the dark, tight quarters with the janitor's hulking frame, it didn’t feel like much of an invitation, and, as I felt Ariel’s arm against mine, it made the situation all the more frustrating, as I realized, even in the most inopportune of moments, her touch could catch me unaware.

  Floor quaking beneath our feet in a way I hadn’t noticed in the hall, I could feel a rhythm in it, a percussion of sorts, though, as hard as I listened, I could hear nothing as the janitor pushed aside a heavy work shelf to uncover another door behind it.

  Watching him pull a key from his pocket to unlock the padlock that held the door closed, I wanted so much to hold Ariel’s hand. Certain she would allow it, down in the darkness and given the extraordinary circumstances, I also knew, if I took it, she would know how scared I was, and I wanted her to think I had courage, even when I didn’t.

  “You better not be a cop,” the janitor glanced to Ariel as he pulled the padlock free and reached for the latch that held the heavy door shut before us.

  “I'd rather be the criminal,” Ariel laughed, and the statement was nothing I would have ever expected to hear from her.

  “You step through this door, you will be,” the janitor promised, heaving back the heavy barrier.

  The silent janitor’s closet filled suddenly with music so loud I could scarcely hear anything else, I realized the janitor wasn’t a janitor at all. The strapping body, concealed by the gray uniform, was the muscle at the gate to a place of no return.

  Finding no fear in his words, Ariel was first into the dim world beyond the door, and I was pulled through it more by my need to follow her than by any desire to know what was inside.

  When I was a little girl, I had an incredible imagination. Over time, I got over the useless habit of losing myself in fantasy, except for those moments when Scott came to me for a character, or Edward needed an audience for the big band he played with inside his head, or I thought about Ariel and a life that could never be.

  Before I learned to control my desire to escape, though, I went off a lot to a place I called the Big World. I could get there from anywhere. Whenever I wanted, a door would appear in my bedroom, or in Nan’s kitchen, or in a field, and when I opened it and stepped through, the whole world was different. The sadness and moderation and logic, all that went away, and things that could never happen happened.

  Butterflies five-feet-wide went by. Trees sang. Unicorns and pegasi walked and flew. When I was seven and sick for many days, a fever burning my forehead, a unicorn from the Big World came through the door to lay down with me, letting me rest against its side and nuzzling me like its own foal until I was well enough to leave my room again. That could happen with the Big World, because everything broke the rules.

  It had been so long since I had been there, I had forgotten all about my childhood place. Until I walked through the heavily-guarded door below Café Beni and into a world that didn’t exist.

  Though there were no giant butterflies, unicorns, or singing trees, the sights were every bit as unreal to me, and nothing at all like the world we h
ad just left behind.

  “Ladies,” Desmond stepped into the narrow space between Ariel and me, his arms sliding onto our shoulders just more proof the place wasn’t real. “Welcome to Club Storyville.”

  Unsteady on my feet as I looked about the room, I could think of no more suitable a name. On the stage, a white trumpeter sat in with the black band. At the tables, different colored faces laughed together, not just black and white, but colors I had seldom seen in person, some with features of the Orient.

  “Have you ever seen a place like this?” Desmond asked, and I couldn’t believe there even existed such a place as I watched the patrons on the dance floor intermingle so intimately, I knew they must have been breaking a dozen laws at once. Black and white, and every combination in between, men danced with men, women with women.

  My eyes locking on two women dancing so close I could see no light between them, one brown-skinned with a dark braid down her back, the other with short blonde hair who seemed perfectly comfortable in men’s pants - my mother would die if ever wore men’s pants in public - my cheeks caught fire.

  “I have.” Ariel’s response was about the only thing that could draw my attention away.

  “So, you do know the underground,” Desmond stated as if he could sense it on her the entire time.

  “I’ve spent some time below street level,” Ariel acknowledged.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Desmond asked, and I wondered why I was,

  I knew how different Ariel and I were. She was like Nan, crafted more of Earth and steel than sugar and spice. Seeing her as she was back in Richmond, though, the way she took care of Nan and laughed with Scott and had been so kind to me before things went bad between us, she didn’t seem the type of woman who would be found in such a place.

  I wondered if it was possible to be two such different people.

  I wondered if I knew Ariel at all.

  Glancing back at the entrance when I felt alone and adrift in my innocence, I discovered it had all but disappeared into the dark wall behind us, and it occurred to me, with that door locked as it was from the outside, I didn’t know my way out.

  “That’s my friend,” Desmond declared, and, following his gesture across the room, even after all I’d witnessed, I was still surprised to see a white man signaling us through the noise and people. “Go meet him,” Desmond said. “He’ll get us a table. What can I get you to drink?”

  “Whatever you're having,” Ariel returned.

  “I hope you don’t regret saying that,” Desmond grinned at her. “How about you?” Overloaded as my mind was by all the new sights and information, it was too difficult a decision to make. “Soda?” he suggested, and, nodding numbly, I didn't think what kind of woman Desmond had determined I must be.

  “Hello there,” Desmond's friend shouted when we made it over to him, though he stood no more than a foot away.

  “Hi,” I heard Ariel return, before the tiny word was swallowed up in the rhythm of the band.

  “Right over here,” the man led us to a small booth with a glittery round black table and a white vinyl bench that curved in a half-circle around it. “This is Desi’s favorite table. You ladies from around here?”

  “Richmond,” Ariel responded, and, hearing her answer with my place of birth instead of hers, I wondered which of the two Ariel considered home.

  “Well, welcome to New Orleans,” Desmond's friend said. “Hope you have a great time.”

  “Thank you,” Ariel replied, and the man left us to the boisterous atmosphere.

  Focusing my eyes on the brightness of the stage, where the incongruous musicians played, it didn’t take long for pulsing curiosity to pull them back to the dance floor.

  When I found the two women from before, I couldn’t take my eyes off them, all but hypnotized by the way their bodies moved against each other. By the way the dark one’s hands moved over the blonde’s back. By the way the blonde’s knee pushed against the dark one’s skirt to sink between her legs. There was a moment of nervous anticipation, as the dark one twirled back into the blonde, when I was certain they were about to kiss. Oddly let down when they didn’t, I worried what I had become, why I would want to see something that was meant to be kept private.

  Averting my eyes to prevent further inappropriate desires, it was two men I saw kissing first, and, as my eyes adjusted to what it was they were seeing, I struggled to breathe.

  “Ariel,” I clasped her wrist to make sure she could see them too, and my imaginary world wasn't sucking real people into it, a sure sign of genuine insanity.

  “Well, well,” Ariel was unflustered as she spotted Ronald and Marcus from the boarding house in the most amorous of embraces. “I guess it was us who took their room.”

  “Ladies,” Desmond made it to the table just as I was realizing the noises I’d heard the night before were exactly what they sounded like. “Your drinks.” As he set them down before us, I looked at the fizzing bubbles through my glass, deciding something stronger would be better after all. Glancing to Ariel’s and Desmond’s glasses, I envied the fearlessness they held. “So, what do you think?” Desmond took a small sip and slid his glass onto the table as he sat down across from me.

  “This is quite a place,” Ariel seemed to genuinely approve. Taking a drink, though, she looked less approving, her eyes closing for a moment as she forced the alcohol down with a small cough. “Is that moonshine?” she asked.

  “Yes, Ma'am,” Desmond laughed. “One hundred and thirty proof, New Orleans-distilled white lightning.”

  “Oh, that is a cruel drink,” Ariel gave a small shudder.

  “Yes, it is,” Desmond agreed, reaching for his glass. “Burns like gasoline, and will get you lit in two sips if you're not used to it.”

  “Then, I think I'll have to stop at one,” Ariel declared, pushing the glass to the center of the table, and, suddenly more satisfied with my soda, I took a drink.

  “Is this where they met?” Shock finally starting to fade, I remembered why Desmond brought us there, and it occurred to me he was right to do it. If I wanted, I could still believe it untrue, his grandfather’s story, but, the glass in my hand, the booth solid beneath me, neither of them my imagination, I could no longer think it impossible.

  “No,” Desmond leaned in to be heard over the music. “This place wasn’t even around back then. This is an homage of sorts. You’ve never heard of Storyville?”

  Glancing to Ariel to see if it was a place I should have heard of, I could tell she hadn't either, and I felt slightly less alone as I shook my head.

  “The real Storyville was just up and over,” Desmond told us. “Have you been by Iberville?”

  “We drove through there today,” Ariel said.

  “Well, they built all that housing after they tore down the old neighborhood,” Desmond explained. “Back when Paps and Mary were here, that area was called Storyville, or The District. It was a... a free zone. It was popular mostly for its houses of ill repute, but there were also dance halls and burlesque shows and places to eat. It was integrated. It wasn't entirely exempt from the law, but it was a place people could go, to talk or to dance or to...” Breaking off, Desmond got lost for a moment, and I wondered if he had a make-believe world of his own. “To love each other,” he finished with a smile. “A place where people would look the other way.”

  Burdened by all my notions, absorbed from everyone around me, about what type of people would choose to do their dancing in dark, hidden nightclubs instead of in brightly-lit, well-chaperoned hometown dance halls, it hadn’t even occurred to me the other reasons one might seek out a place like Storyville.

  Why Ariel must have sought such places.

  There were those who went looking for illegal moonshine or women for hire or whatever other unseemly things they might find. Then, there were those who went looking for freedom from convention, for affection in the only place they knew they wouldn't be punished for finding it.

  “Like here,” I breathed, and,
as my eyes scanned the dance floor, I saw the people on it differently. Not as a bunch of radicals, just looking to sidestep the law, but as human beings who felt and wanted things no law books would ever understand.

  “Well, we do try to capture the feel,” Desmond responded. “But it’s hardly the same.”

  “You own this place?” Ariel asked him.

  “Partial ownership,” Desmond answered. “I used to be more involved, but you’ve seen how Patricia feels about it.”

  “Do you know how long they were together?” I didn’t mean to interrupt them, but, enlightened as to how Nan and Desmond's Paps could have made it work, I was filled suddenly with so many questions, I didn’t know how I’d ever have time to ask them all.

  “Almost three years,” Desmond answered.

  “Three years?” The words exhaling past my lips, it hurt to think Nan could leave out such a huge chunk of her life. Then, realizing it had taken me until that moment to accept not everyone who stepped foot into a club like Desmond’s did so with immoral intentions, I understood why she did.

  “Paps said they met not long after Storyville opened up to the public,” Desmond said. “He was a struggling musician then. Would play just about anywhere for free. Mary must have been the kind of woman who didn't mind going places other people wouldn’t go.

  “The way Paps told it, she walked in and he wrote a thousand songs about her at once in his head. Can you imagine that noise? I guess that’s what they mean when they say a woman will make you crazy.”

  Oddly enough, I could imagine the noise. Glancing to Ariel, I could even hear it.

  “If they were together that long...” I tried to focus back on the conversation. “What happened? Why did they just split up?”

  “They didn’t just,” Desmond said. “The early part of this century, New Orleans was a dangerous place to be. We’d managed to avoid a lot of the animosity that plagued our neighbors up until then. People just went about their own business, not really thinking too much about who they did that business with. That's what Paps said. Then, the laws came, and a black man shot some white folks, and all those tensions that had never been spread like wildfire.