Club Storyville

by Riley LaShea

  “Good, you're up,” she glanced to me, shutting the door quickly when she realized I had only the sheet for cover and hadn’t put forth a particularly dedicated effort in using it. “We need to get moving.”

  “Why?” I asked, watching her hasten to her suitcase stored against the wall with an inkling of concern. “Where are we going?”

  “Home,” Ariel responded, scarcely looking at me as she pulled the suitcase from the floor, and the satisfied feeling with which I’d woken was aggressively shaken.

  “Already?” I asked. It didn’t occur to me there was some humor in the question when I had been the one so hesitant to come in the first place, and so anxious to leave the first night, until Ariel glanced back with a look that was slightly bemused, before it turned all business again.

  “We did what your grandmother asked us to do,” she reminded me. “We found Desmond Caster, or a Desmond Caster at least. If we hurry, we’ll have enough time to stop by there if you want to give him the box, and…” At her pause, I could see her giving her words careful consideration. “To check on him before we go to the station.”

  Pulling her clothes from the dresser drawer she had made her own, Ariel tucked them into her suitcase in perfect order, and I felt as if my memories of the night weren’t real, as if, in my heightened emotional state, I had imagined something that took the sting out of reality. Searching the room for proof, my state of undress was the only indication the night wasn’t just part of my dreams, as it had been so many times before, and, suddenly uncomfortable, I tucked the sheet more sufficiently around me.

  “Okay,” I weakly uttered, not knowing how we had reverted so quickly from me being naked under the sheet to just barely conversing, and, stopping in her bustle to gather her belongings, Ariel stared into her suitcase for so long I thought she might have frozen that way, before she looked to me again, swallowing thickly as she held my gaze.

  “I thought you would want to get back to Nan.” Her voice was softer, less brusque, and, at the reminder there actually was a reason to rush, I tried to push aside the feeling that Ariel was attempting to escape what had happened between us.

  “Yes. Of course,” I said. Though I meant it, the part of me that knew things would have to change again, that whatever freedom we had found in the underground world of Club Storyville and in the privacy of our room at Buddy’s couldn’t return with us to Richmond, wanted to stay right where I was forever.

  “She’ll want to see you,” Ariel declared, and it was enough to get me out of bed, despite my nudity and Ariel’s strange behavior.

  Or, perhaps, Ariel’s behavior wasn’t strange. Perhaps, this was what a day was like with her after a night in which she had been so open and willing and giving. I didn’t know what else I was expecting. Or why I thought, after everything we had done, she would at least kiss me good morning.

  With the hours Ariel let me sleep in and our train scheduled for afternoon, there wasn’t time for a long goodbye at Buddy’s.

  “It was nice having you ladies here,” he said to us, and it sounded sincere, despite all the inconvenience and worry our presence had to have caused him. “I hate to see you go.”

  “Well, there is certainly no place I would rather have stayed,” Ariel returned, and I nodded my agreement, realizing, after the night we had been through, coming back to Buddy’s brought solace I doubted we would have found anywhere else.

  “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

  “That is my business,” Buddy grinned at me, but we all knew it was more than that. The boarding house wasn’t just business for Buddy. It was a way of being, the tiny light he shone into the world to make it just a little less scary for weary travelers.

  “Ronald and Marcus,” Ariel said suddenly, and I shivered at the realization I had forgotten about them, the two men who had been staying next door to us at Buddy’s, who had shared breakfast with us, last seen in Desmond’s club before the police closed in. “Have you seen them this morning?” Ariel was careful in her questioning. “I was hoping to tell them goodbye.”

  “No,” Buddy seemed to just notice their absence himself. “Sure haven’t. Must still be in bed, or maybe they left early when I was away from the desk. No tellin’.”

  Buddy didn’t know it, but he was right. There was no telling what happened to Ronald and Marcus, or anyone I saw dragged from the courtyard, it occurred to me, and I put my hand on my stomach to try to calm the sudden upsurge within it.

  “When you see them,” Ariel said, which I took comfort to mean she expected them to at least make it back at some point. “Would you tell them I said ‘Good luck’ and to be safe?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Not recognizing the importance in Ariel’s request, Buddy grinned again. “I’m sure they’d wish the same for you.”

  “Yes,” Ariel breathed. “I imagine they would.”

  The words had no power against weapons, I knew. They couldn’t protect Ronald and Marcus, or Ariel, from the terrible things that might happen in those few places in which they were free to be themselves. The places in which we were free to be ourselves. I wondered if there were any that could, ancient, supernatural blessings stronger than steel.

  Then, I remembered the chaos and screams and the man beaten right beside us. If there were any words with such power, that man, and a lot of other people, must have prayed them. And from what I could see, their prayers were about as effective as an imaginary wall against a cannon’s blast.

  Before Ariel’s mention of Ronald and Marcus, I hadn’t thought about what to fear as I knocked on Desmond’s front door. Standing there, though, waiting for someone to answer, I wondered where he had ended up, if he was in jail or worse off, either way too incapacitated to get back home in the night.

  “Hello,” Ariel cautiously greeted when Patricia answered the door with a severe expression that only deepened the longer she stared at us without saying anything, and I had the sinking feeling we had exploited her kindness to its ultimate limits.

  “Desmond!” she called back into the house at last, walking off without inviting us in, and, though it was certainly less welcoming than the day before, there was relief in knowing Desmond was there.

  Appearing at the far end of the bright hallway, Desmond looked back as he moved toward the door, like he knew our showing up there was going to get him into more hot water, and I was posed to apologize, to tell him I didn’t mean to drag him out into danger by asking my questions about Nan, and to promise I would never bother him again.

  When Desmond turned to step through the door, though, my mouth filled with a gasp instead as the sunlight cast his eye, swollen so thick black it couldn’t open, into glaring display, along with the darkly dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

  “I’m glad to see you ladies are all right,” Desmond breathed, and, seeing the genuine concern he had for us when he was the one who bore the marks of the night before, my hand rose to my mouth to stifle the sob that got away from me. “It looks worse than it feels,” Desmond tried to assure me, but I doubted it very much.

  It was no wonder his wife hated us.

  “Did you see a doctor?” Ariel questioned him.

  “Nah,” Desmond waved off the suggestion. “It's only a few bruises.”

  “Do you mind?” Ariel held her hands up in request.

  “She’s a nurse,” I told him when Desmond looked unsure what kind of hex Ariel was about to put on him.

  “Well, that’s handy,” he joked, glancing toward the street, and our waiting driver, in what could have been casual observation, if I didn’t know Desmond was trying to see how many witnesses there were to such intimate fraternization between him and a white woman.

  Watching Ariel carefully brace the less bruised side of Desmond’s face as she felt for hidden damage on the other, I felt sick to my stomach, wincing along with Desmond when Ariel touched a sensitive spot, and realized, yet again, I simply didn’t have the constitution for suffering life.

  “What did
they hit you with?” Ariel asked.

  “They didn’t,” Desmond answered her. “I went face-first into a table.”

  Nodding as if she expected something of the sort, Ariel didn’t even pause in her examination. Utterly strong and unflustered, the exact opposite of me, she walked her fingers down Desmond’s cheek, and I tried to imagine what it must have looked like, the scene below ground, as people were beaten up and dragged away.

  Chaos had always seemed such a large-scale thing to me, something that unleashed over a place in a storm. Like the Depression. Or the war. Inevitable events. Unstoppable forces. Just the nature of things.

  Trying to picture the man who sent Desmond flying into a table, though, remembering the man who had stood on the other side of the statue to order the church lady back inside, it hit me chaos wasn’t some abstract concept. It was always personal. Those shadows weren’t shapeless monsters. They were other people. Whatever the reason, there was always someone who had to choose to pull the trigger or swing a fist or toss someone into a table.

  I had thought a lot about Edward in the months before he died, imagining how scared he must have been alone at war. I thought the same of Scott. Somehow, though, I had convinced myself that what Edward and Scott feared was the war itself, the chaos around them, when it must have been the other soldiers, the enemy combatants willing to kill them for a cause.

  Watching Desmond try not to show pain under Ariel’s touch, it was the first time I realized that, all those foreigners I worried about putting a bullet through one of my brothers, they must have been afraid too, and it was Edward and Scott they had to fear.

  “Your cheekbone is likely fractured,” Ariel pulled me back to the porch with her assessment. “It will heal on its own if you’re careful, but you do have to be extremely careful. No blowing your nose, no playing instruments that require your mouth. No chewy foods.”

  “No steak?” Desmond acted absolutely put-upon. “I may as well throw it all in. Come on now,” he gave us a painful-looking smile when neither of us laughed. “I'm just kiddin’.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ariel returned instantly.

  “Me too,” I whispered, and, feeling strangely cold on the day that had no business carrying a chill, I reached for Ariel’s arm, not sure if she was giving me the warmth I needed or was seeking her own as her hand covered mine.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Desmond shook his head. “It’s my business. It’s not the first time I’ve taken a few hits by people who don’t agree with it. Look here,” he reached into his back pocket, flipping a small photograph toward me. “I found it for you.”

  Though I knew it was meant as distraction, recognizing Nan, I still couldn’t help myself. Releasing Ariel to reach for the photograph with greedy fingers, any doubt I’d harbored in the back of my mind surrendered instantly at the visual proof of Nan’s love affair.

  A scandalously unwed woman in her early thirties, Nan only had eyes for the man who looked so much like the Desmond before us they might have been brothers instead of grandfather and grandson, and the man grinned back at her, as if there existed no boundaries between them at all.

  “They look so happy,” I said in awe, because they did look happy. The kind of happy people searched the world to find, but rarely did.

  “Yeah,” Desmond nodded at the picture. “You keep that.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, glancing up and flinching when I’d already forgotten how bad his injuries were. Not wanting to take something so special from him, I found my fingers weren’t quite ready to relinquish Young Nan and Desmond either.

  “Yeah, you keep it,” Desmond said again. “I think Paps would want you to have it.”

  “Thank you,” I uttered, pulling the photo against my chest and remembering the box beneath my arm only when I wished I had something to give Desmond in return. “I, um... I have this,” I said, holding it awkwardly out to him. “This is what Nan sent with us.”

  “Hmm,” Desmond breathed, sliding the box from the crook of my arm and turning it proper. “Erzulie.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The symbol here,” Desmond said, his fingers moving over the heart with its crown and arrow. “It’s a voodoo symbol.”

  “Voodoo?” My throat went dry at the word, at all the things I’d heard about the witchcraft religion and those who followed it, and I wondered what a dedicated Christian like Nan would be doing with something like that in her house.

  “Yeah,” Desmond returned. “Paps didn’t practice, but a lot of people down here dabble in the lighter side. You know, it isn’t all love potions and voodoo dolls,” he glanced up at me with a small grin, and, feeling the affection in his teasing, I managed a small laugh along with him. “A lot of it’s just, you know, innocent superstitions people hope will bring luck, like carrying a rabbit’s foot or wearing new clothes on Easter.

  “The Erzulie, they’re spirits of love. Notice how this here is blacked out, though,” Desmond said, and, edging forward with Ariel, I followed Desmond’s fingers to the part of the symbol shaped like a crown and the dark shading that filled it. “That’s unusual for this design. I suspect this box wasn’t intended for luck or love. I suspect this is about Balianne.”

  “Who’s Balianne?” Ariel sounded more curious than me.

  “She’s the healer of hearts,” Desmond responded. “She’s supposed to help people let go of past love, forget pain, if you believe that sort of thing.”

  “Do you believe it?” I questioned, captivated by the idea of such an easy solution to life’s heartaches, and, trailing his fingers once again over the etching on the box, Desmond considered the question.

  “I don’t disbelieve it,” he replied at last. “Whatever helps, right?” When he glanced to me with his one working eye, I realized that was all it ever was, just trying to make sense in a world of senseless rules and senseless divisions and senseless violence.

  “Do you think your grandfather gave it to Nan?” I asked him.

  “I suspect he did,” Desmond responded. “To help her forget about him, I suppose. But it doesn’t help to keep tokens of old lovers around, no matter what they are. Usually, you might bury this or burn it or by some other means destroy it. That’s how you would forget. Guess Mary didn’t want to forget Paps after all.”

  “I guess not,” I uttered.

  Watching the small smile lift Desmond’s wounded face, I wondered if I would want to forget, when Ariel left, if there was a way, if I would choose to forget about her to make the going on with life easier.

  “There’s a letter inside for your grandfather,” I sighed as I realized I didn’t know what I would do about Ariel, though I doubted there was any way to forget her. “Open it,” I shrugged. “Don’t open it. I don’t know. Whatever you think.”

  “I don’t know either,” Desmond admitted, and when he grinned his uncertainty, I wasn’t sure what else there was to say.

  “Do you ladies want to come in for a while?” he offered, nodding back toward the house, and, hearing Ariel’s uneasy laugh beside me, I knew she was thinking of Patricia and how obvious it was she would prefer us to never enter her home again.

  “We'd better not,” she replied diplomatically. “We have a train to catch.”

  “Thank you for everything,” I said, looking down at the photograph in my hand, surprised when Desmond shifted the box to one arm to hug me tightly with the other.

  “You take care of yourself now, you hear?” he whispered.

  “You too,” I responded, feeling something longing and sad within me as I hugged him back, as if I was saying goodbye to someone I knew much better for much longer than I had.

  “Goodbye,” Ariel said, much less surprised than me when Desmond hugged her too.

  “You be good now,” I heard him say, but, Ariel’s mouth on the other side of Desmond’s head, I couldn’t hear her answer, and I knew not knowing her reply would haunt me for the rest of my life as we walked down Desmond’s walkway to the car and our colored dr
iver rushed to get the doors for us.

  “Elizabeth!” We were almost inside when Desmond called out. Whirling back, I watched him wave an envelope next to his head. “This one's for you.”

  “What?” I uttered, but, though it sounded very quiet in my head, Desmond heard.

  “It has your name on it,” he declared, and, pinpricks trailing along the back of my neck, I wondered why that would be, why on Earth Nan would send a letter meant for me all the way to New Orleans when she could have just handed it to me from her bed.

  Glancing toward Ariel, I could tell by her rigid stance she wasn’t coming with me, and I took the path back to Desmond on my own, each step uncertain and unconvinced. Sure enough, though, when I got to him, there it was, my name written in Nan's distinctive handwriting, shaky from old age, a mighty opponent even she couldn't defeat.

  Desmond’s gaze unblinking on me as I took the envelope out of his grasp, my own hands trembled, as Nan’s must have when she wrote it, as they tore the plain white envelope and unfolded the letter inside.

  Dear Elizabeth, it began, and, breeze blowing just enough to make the wooden chimes clack together at the corner of Desmond’s porch, I could almost hear Nan’s voice on the wind.

  By now, you must know Desmond isn't what you surely pictured him to be. I try to imagine how you will react to that, and I find that I can't. Even those times when I feel like I know you inside and out, you always do have a way of surprising me.

  I loved your grandfather, I want you to understand that. My life has been blessed with many wonderful people, and once you were in this world, I was glad I didn't have to get through it without your mother and you and Edward and Scott.

  Even your Daddy has his moments.

  Breaking into a small laugh, in spite of myself, I realized that was what I was going to miss most, Nan’s way of making me smile no matter how bleak things would get.

  Sometimes, though, she went on to admit in her fanciful curves, I do wonder if I could have had it all.