Gods of New Orleans (16 page)

Eddie moved carefully to the bed and kept his weight on Emma’s arm. He turned so as to lie down on his back and Emma leaned to hold his weight and let him down onto the mattress easily. She caught the grin on his face a second later and then they were tumbling to the mattress, his hands around her waist and their lips pressed together.

“You sneak, Eddie Collins,” Emma said, playfully batting a hand on his chest. “Playing possum. You better not’ve been holding back all along. This girl’s been on her knees scrubbing and scraping for three days now.”

“Hey now, Lovebird. Just makin’ sure I rested, so you can put all that strength you been buildin’ up to good use.”

Eddie wrapped his arms around her and they gently rolled together across the bed. Eddie winced as she moved with him, but soon enough they were into that rhythm from before. His hands, her hips. Her lips to his lips. His fingers through her tousled hair, still ratty and short from when she’d cut in to hide with the gypsies in Chicago City. The bandana she’d tied around it slid down around her collar, pushed by Eddie’s anxious fingers.

Their shirts ruffled up as they pressed and slid against each other. They tangled their hands, pushing her skirt aside and his slacks down and out of the way. The bed creaked. Emma’s ears followed the rhythm of the groans and squeaks of the old metal four-poster. And she caught every moan and gasp of pleasure from Eddie. His voice mingled with her own, like his music behind her singing. Only this time the stage was in the bedroom of their little shotgun shack in New Orleans.

She’d flown them over a thousand miles from home, and the whole way it had felt like she was leaving it all behind. As she held Eddie against her, the feeling of loss slipped away and New Orleans became the place she was always meant to be, a haunted place that surrounded her, held her close, and kept her warm and tight.

When they were done, they lay together in a quiet embrace, Emma’s hand on Eddie’s chest. She watched the rise and fall of his breath. Soon enough her eyes drooped and the dark of New Orleans rushed in to claim her fully this time.

~•~

Emma and Eddie snapped awake to a hammering on the front door. Eddie didn’t miss a beat and shoved Emma aside so he could slide off the bed and get his clothes back right. He gasped and put a hand to his side as he stood, and Emma didn’t miss the look of pain on his face.

“Eddie, you‌—‌”

“I’m fine, Emma. Fine. You just get yourself right. I’ll go see who it is.”

Eddie finished tucking his shirt into his pants and struggled into his suspenders again. Emma shimmied to the foot of the bed and straightened her skirt and did up her blouse again. Her hair still wasn’t much to speak of on a good day, so she just slipped the bandana off her neck and retied it while Eddie went to see who was out front. Emma’s hands froze tying the bandana when she heard the door open and let Bacchus’s angry voice into the house.

“I do hope,” the big man said, his heavy tread following his words into the house. “I said, I do hope, Mr. Collins. Do you know what I hope?”

“N-no, sir. No sir, Mister Bacchus, I don’t.”

“What I hope, Mr. Collins, is that you were not exerting yourself overly much. I see the way you hold your hand to your ribs. I’m counting on your horn tonight, and if you know what’s good for your silly black ass, you’ll be blowing as fine as you did the first time I heard you play.”

“Yessir, Mr. Bacchus. I can play just fine.”

Emma waited for it. She could feel the air shift, like every move Mr. Bacchus made was a heavy stone thrown in a lake.

“Let’s hope you don’t need your legs to be tip-top, then. This is for just in case,” the big man said. A second later Emma heard a
thwack
and Eddie cried out. A second strike followed the first and Eddie’s muffled cry echoed down the hall to the back bedroom where Emma stood shaking with terror.

“Now, Mr. Collins. You’d best be able to blow that horn tonight. And if you can’t, those little taps are gonna come a whole lot worse when I deliver them a second time. Or I might like to call on the Birdman to ensure you see
straight
. Do we understand each other?”

Emma heard Eddie stifle a sob and then say, “Yes . . . yessir, Mr. Bacchus.”

“That’s good. Now go on and get ready. Streetcar is coming by in about thirty minutes. And it’s a ten-minute walk to the stop on a good pair of legs.”

Emma clutched her hands over her mouth, waiting for the sound of another strike, but none came. The door closed a second later and she heard shuffling sounds from down the hall. She dared to peek around the doorjamb and saw Eddie on his knees, one hand still held to his ribs. The other was holding him up off the floor.

She ran to him, and helped him up. She supported him all the way down the hall, back to the bedroom where they were both careful to sit on the bed at the same time, mostly so Eddie could lean on Emma.

“Eddie, what are we gonna do? We can’t stay here. Not if he’s going to hit you every time he feels like it. We can’t‌—‌”

“We gonna be fine, Emma,” he said. “Don’t you worry. Boss just upset is all. Gotta keep the man happy. We’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

“But what does he have to be upset about? We were just having a little fun.” Emma felt her chest rising and the outrage she’d once felt for every man in Chicago City climbing up her throat. “Does this mean we can’t love each other like we used to because Mr. High-and-Mighty won’t like it? Is he worried that you’ll come into his room smelling like another woman? Is that it? He doesn’t want his high rollers and fat cats thinking the jazz man is getting it better than they are?”

Emma’s anger flooded out of her in a rush of accusations and demands, until she couldn’t even hear the words she was saying anymore. Her voice became a torrent of fire. Eddie backed away from her, but she kept at him, ignoring the look on his face and the way he held up his hands.

“Emma! Emma, please!” he said at last, his face twisted with confusion and fear. “Girl, I gotta go play tonight. And you heard what Mr. Bacchus said. Streetcar on its way, and I gotta walk with this knee he just gave me. Ain’t doing us any good you tearing into me like that.”

Emma felt her face soften, but her chest still heaved with the same heavy feelings of betrayal and torment. Eddie put a hand on her knee and looked her in the eye.

“Save it for when I get home if you have to. But please. Let me get ready and go, hey?”

She held up her chin and closed her eyes, letting her breath go, long and slow and deep like she’d been holding it in for a year. “Okay, Eddie,” she said, opening her eyes and nodding. “Okay. But‌—‌”

Eddie put a finger to her lips. “No
buts
right now, Lovebird. Just
okay
. Just
I love you
. And you know I do.”

He leaned in and kissed her. Emma took the kiss and gave him a little of her own. But she felt herself keeping back the little part of her heart that she’d always held from him, at least until earlier in the day when they were making smiles with each other on this very bed.

Whatever happened between that time and this, Emma wasn’t sure. The fear she’d felt was real, and the anger, too. But where the anger came from, she couldn’t say. One thing she knew, though. That little piece of herself would go back to hiding out until she knew for certain she and Eddie really had a chance in New Orleans.

Chapter 17

It’s some hour of the morning, Brand doesn’t know which and knows he can’t even try a guess if anyone bothers to ask him. Barnaby and the other fellas are snoring over there under their canvas. Brand pushes his tattered blankets aside and stretches his limbs, trying to ignore the cracking and popping noises.

What the hell did I do last night
, he thinks.

He made his delivery, that’s what. He got the envelope to the god it was meant for. Some guy in a white suit with a patch over one eye. Dark skin, tall and lean like a beanpole, but tough. Brand could tell. Guy carried himself like he’d whip out a hand and take your eye if you dared use it to look at him wrong. Called himself Ghost even though the letter Brand gave him was addressed to
Chance
.

Brand tries to remember something else about the guy, but his head feels ten times the size it should be, and Brand figures that’s why he thinks he’s knocking his skull into everything around him. He shuffles away from the camp and makes his way to the mooring deck, reaching for the pillars supporting the platform like they’ll tether him as soon as he lays his hands on their cold metal skin.

Behind him, in the campsite, Barnaby snores on. Brand imagines Reggie and Phinias are doing the same. The Three Blind Men have practice, Brand thinks. They’ve done this so many times it’d take a whole barrel of hooch to get them drunk enough to wake up sick.

Brand moves to return to the camp, maybe find some sleep in there somewhere after all. Rest his throbbing noggin enough it might stop beating him to death every time he tries to use it.

Then he feels it. A weight dragging on one side of his coat, just enough to let him know he’s got work to do. Another envelope fills the pocket.

“Guy can’t catch a break no matter how hard he tries. C’mon then,” Brand says to nobody in particular. He wants someone to be there, a pal, one of his newsboys, or just anybody who cares enough to look him in the eye. But Brand knows he’s alone, so he lifts a hand and peels back the air by his head, revealing the world of memories and the torment of regret. “Time to deliver the mail,” he says, and steps through.

~•~

It’s dark, like always, and Brand’s feet stick in the mud. He slogs, not bothering to run, because he knows the mud can’t have him when he’s on a job.

“You fellas just hold down the fort while I’m gone, hey?” he says to the mob of muddy coats, grimy skin, and tangled whiskers rolling along behind him.

The mud men moan at him, angry and confused, like they know something isn’t right and are ready to rain hell or high-water on whatever’s getting in their way.

“I said cool it back there,” Brand shouts at them. “You know what happens if I flub this job, don’t you? It’s the mud for ol’ Mitchell here.”

And I’m not going out like that.

They moan at him some more, but eventually they hush up. Brand slogs through the muck and grime for a while more until he finds the cobblestone road leading up to the city streets above.

“Be seeing you, fellas. Maybe next time around the dance floor I’ll let you lead.”

Brand climbs the stones with heavy legs, feeling the weight of the city bearing on him now, his back curling until he thinks he must look like a walking question mark. And what else should he look like?

“Not like I have anything left to give the world. Might as well give them a reason to wonder what happened to me.”

He’s walking on cobblestones still and then he’s on a street in a neighborhood somewhere. The buildings all have a look about them that says they belong to another time and place, but they’ve been put here to remind people of that place.

Old New Orleans, then. Okay.

Brand wipes a sleeve across his mouth and whiskers again. He thinks about how people move through the world, going from one place to another, always taking with them something of memory, something that tells them all is not lost and they may yet find where they belong. Immigrants flooded through New York with bags and belongings. Conroy and the others on board the
Vigilance
brought only themselves to New Orleans.

“And I followed you all because I thought I belonged with you, too.”

Around him people have begun their daily routine. Down the street he sees a cluster of tramps unfolding from where they’d holed up in the ruins of a burned-out building. Their sooty clothing and filthy skin make them look like silhouettes. All around the street, signs of life begin to show. Windows go up and shutters open, rugs flutter over stoops and let dust fly into the air.

“Some people just can’t give up on hope,” Brand mumbles, fingering the envelope in his pocket with one hand while he smooths his whiskers with the other.

A woman on a nearby stoop says something to him as he passes her by, but Brand ignores her. Whatever she’s got to say can’t be anything as important as finishing off this mail run so he can get back to‌—‌

“Yeah? To what?” he asks the morning around him. “What’m I gonna get back to? Whole lotta nothin’ is what.”

Brand can hardly believe his ears, but it’s his voice saying those words, and his head that catches the echo of their portent.

Brand wanders the streets for a while, following his feet that seem to know where they’re going. He stops finally and looks through the dissipating mists of the New Orleans morning. Across the street he sees a long sedan parked in front of a rich hotel building. The facade is all ornament and filigree, stonework with the weight of authority carved into it.

A figure steps out of the sedan, a heavy man who holds a cane. Brand sees a glint of light off the tip of the cane, and more pinpoints reflecting off of rings on the man’s fingers. He’s like a chandelier with legs, Brand thinks and chuckles to himself.

For a while, Brand watches the gold-tipped man across the street. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to move and slowly the street fills with wagons and bicycles, horses, and even a motor car or two.

“So I have to dodge traffic to do my job?” Brand says, shaking his head and tossing a sneeze at the idea.

Brand lifts his hand slowly and puts it in his pocket. He feels the envelope there and he removes it, remembering Barnaby’s warning just as he looks at the name on the envelope.

TO VICE C/O MR. BACCHUS.

Brand lifts his eyes and he’s face-to-face with the walking chandelier. With a start, Brand stumbles a few steps backward and nearly goes over on his ass, but he keeps his feet at the last second.

The man standing in front of him now is easily a head shorter than Brand himself. But his girth is twice Brand’s own, if not more. He’s dark-skinned, with heavy, drooping jowls that frame a mouth set in a grim smile that’s a few steps along the way to being a sneer. The man wears a fur-trimmed coat draped around his heavy bulk, and holds his walking stick across his gut with both hands.