Chapter Eleven

Rossiter sat in front of a fireplace large enough to burn tree trunks. The mantelpiece was made of Italian marble carved with the images of mythological beasts. Lined up along its substantial length were a collection of antique French time pieces preserved under bell jars. Although he had never seen this place before, it seemed oddly familiar to him.

He glanced down and saw he was wearing a silk shirt with ruffled cuffs and clutching a walking cane in his left hand. He lifted the cane and examined its gold handle, shaped like a snarling wolf. Chips of ruby glinted in the firelight, giving the cane-head the illusion of sentience. His palms brushed against velvet upholstery on the arms of the chair.

Where the hell was he? He ran his fingers along the contours of his face. He could tell by the jut of his jaw and the curve of the nose that the features were not his. The question now was not where was he, but who?

Even more baffled than before, he returned his gaze to the fireplace and saw a portrait hanging over the mantelpiece. He left the chair and moved closer, resting his arm atop a sculpted faun as he studied the canvas.

In the foreground was a tall, older man, with shoulder-length silver hair swept back from a broad forehead. The set of his features spoke of a man used to being obeyed, as did the coil of bullwhip he held in one hand, and he wore the bobtail coat, tight-fitting pantaloons, and tricornered hat of the Napoleonic Era.

Well behind the portraitist’s main subject stood two women. The nearer of the two was a beautiful, fragile looking girl in her twenties, with hair blacker than a crow’s breast and skin as pale as magnolias in bloom. She wore long skirts and a frilly bonnet that framed a heart-shaped face. The second woman was blonde and dressed in a hooped skirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with feathers. She stood in the far background and her features seemed unfinished, as if the painter had been forced to paint her from description rather than life. There was a brass plaque set at the bottom of the gilded rococo frame. Rossiter squinted at it, trying to decipher the engraved script:

Narcisse Alexander Legendre (1734-1814)

Adelaide Moreau Legendre (1778-1838),

Imogene Turpin Legendre (1735-1792)

He moved through the large, book-lined study toward the heavy oak doors. His hand closed on the gold-plated doorknob. He could feel its warmth against his palm. How could this be a dream? Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Rossiter quickly stepped back, as if he had received an electrical shock.

The door opened slightly and an elderly black man dressed in pre-Civil War butler’s livery peered inside the room. His dark eyes were sad and apprehensive. “Master Donatien? It’s Master Placide, sir. The doctor says you should come.”

Rossiter opened his mouth to tell the butler his name wasn’t Donatien and he wasn’t anyone’s master, but another voice spoke for him. It was much deeper than his own, with a heavy Creole-French accent.

“Tell Dr. Drummond I will be up shortly, Auguste...After I have finished my cigar.”

“Yes, Master Donatien.” Although the butler’s voice was properly subservient, there was a glint of disapproval in his eyes as he shut the study door.

Rossiter selected a nice hand-rolled Havana from the humidor on his grandfather’s roll top desk. The first thing he would do after his father finished dying was rid himself of Auguste. Perhaps exchange him for a pretty octoroon.

After all, familiarity breeds contempt.

Rossiter started awake, disoriented by his surroundings. He scanned the ceiling, searching for the mandala, but it was nowhere to be found. He glanced down at the naked woman curled beside him and was at a loss to remember her name. He sat up, careful not to disturb her, and eased his way out of the bed. Although the details were growing fuzzier with each waking moment, he couldn’t shake the sensation that it had all been real: that he had not been dreaming. Not even in his most twisted needle dreams had he ever fantasized about being Rhett Butler. He’d never cared for the Old South and its genteel racism, and found the romanticism of Gone With The Wind distasteful. Despite all this, he could almost smell the aroma of Cuban cigars clinging to him.

Thinking of cigars gave him a nicotine fit. He retrieved his pack of unfiltered Pall Malls from his leather jacket. He gave the bedroom a quick appraisal as he fired up the cig, his attention drawn to the tastefully framed commemorative Mardi Gras posters and the lacquered Chinese fans decorating the walls. Not a bad set-up; definitely a step up from Tee’s crib.

He pulled on his jeans and opened the French windows that lead onto the balcony overlooking the side yard. Rossiter quietly smoked his cigarette, watching the rising sun turn the sky from deep purple to robin’s egg blue.

He caught her scent before he felt her presence. Charlie embraced him from behind, her hair brushing against his naked shoulder like a silken weight. She was wearing a short kimono bearing the Japanese symbol for happiness embroidered across its back. The robe was loosely belted at the waist, exposing her upper thigh and pubic thatch whenever she moved. Rossiter felt his dick grow heavy again.

“You’re up early,” she smiled, stifling a yawn. The odor of Southern Comfort still clung to her breath.

Rossiter grunted and took a final drag on his cigarette before flicking the butt over the railing into the neighbor’s yard. Charlie wrinkled her nose in mild distaste but said nothing.

Jerry’s head felt like a balloon full of muddy water. After returning to his apartment, he emptied every bottle of liquor in the house. Somewhere along the line, he had decided to give Mad Aggie’s candle a test run. Why not? What the hell else could go wrong?

He had his answer in the form of a pool of congealed wax the color of urine that was now spread across his dinette table. The odor of cheap tallow and mimosa oil threatened to strangle him. Not only was his dinette rumored, Rossiter was no doubt banging Charlie like a drum. Maybe the pubic hair would have helped, after all…

Jerry massaged his aching forehead with a trembling hand. He sounded as bad as that crazy old hoodoo woman. If he didn’t watch it he’d be sacrificing a goat and sticking pins in voodoo dolls. He needed some coffee. That meant making a trek to Café du Monde.

The French Quarter was the oldest section of an old city, serving as commercial district, tourist trap, and residential area all at the same time. The titty bars on Bourbon Street were shuttered against the dawn, their neon extinguished until dusk. Soon the produce trucks and delivery vans would fill the horse-and-buggy width streets, dropping off new supplies to the restaurants, bars and hotels. By mid-afternoon the Quarter would be a sweltering caldron of pale-legged tourists armed with credit cards, cameras and squalling children. But for now, if only for a few brief hours, the Quarter belonged to those who called it home.

The vast flat slabs of Jackson Square glistened in the last light from the ornate lamp posts, slicked by a combination of morning mist and disinfectant spewed by the city’s street-sweeping machines. Jerry glanced at the benign bulk of the Saint Louis Basilica, its spire rising toward the dawn, flanked by the stone-clad Presbytere and the Cabildo. The three buildings, standing side-by-side, always reminded Jerry of a trio of aged grand dames; timeworn and much abused, but still worthy of respect.

The Cafe du Monde, with its squat concrete pillars and trademark green-and-white striped canopy, sat in the shadow of the levee that protected the city from the Mississippi River. A handful of Vieux Carré habitués were holding early morning court in the open-air patio, drinking cafe au lait as they watched trucks rumble to and from the nearby French Market. Jerry picked a seat near the sidewalk and ordered a coffee, to have it materialize before him in less than a minute. He sipped the brownish concoction and stared across the street at the tidy little French garden at the historic heart of Jackson Square.

In a couple of hours the city’s licensed street artists would emerge from their various studios and set up shop, hanging examples of their craft along the spiked metal pickets like dressed-out ducks. Jerry had tried his hand at the sidewalk art gig shortly after moving to the city, but his style was not widely accessible and his hand too slow to make a buck off the tourist portrait trade, so he gave up.

His eye wandered from the fenced garden to the statue of Andrew Jackson astride his horse that was the centerpiece of the square. Old Hickory now forever saluted the city that, at the time of the Battle of New Orleans, had been more than glad to see the back of him.

A pigeon perched atop Jackson’s hat, cooing to its brethren that covered the sidewalk below like a dirty blanket. A particularly bedraggled specimen, its plumage the color of tobacco juice, strutted towards him. It didn’t have enough toes and was missing an eye, but seemed unafraid of humans. Jerry wasn’t surprised: New Orleans pigeons were notorious for their brazen disregard of man and machine.

“Shoo!” he said, flapping a hand at the bird.

The pigeon cocked its head, fixing him with its solitary eye. The bird stepped closer, its gaze riveted on Jerry. He could not help but feel that there was something familiar in the way it looked at him.

“Shoo!” Jerry repeated, this time with feeling.

The pigeon scratched frantically at the pavement, and then hopped aside. Jerry dropped the heavy white mug he was holding, spilling hot coffee in his lap. The waiter hurried forward.

“You okay, mister?” he asked, wiping Jerry’s crotch with a filthy dishrag.

Jerry’s thighs throbbed unpleasantly, but otherwise he was unhurt. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just more hung-over than I thought I was, I guess.”

He was tired and more than a little drunk, that was all. His eyes were playing tricks on him. There was no way in hell a pigeon scratched Charlie’s name on the sidewalk. Still, as he made his way home, Jerry kept his eye peeled for the mutilated bird with dirty brown feathers, but it was nowhere to be seen.