Club Storyville (22 page)

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 had 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.

“H
ello 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.

“Paps, he just wanted to keep Mary safe. Mary wanted to keep Paps safe. So, she left, and he knew it was safest to stick to his own kind. When they passed the law a few years later that made it illegal for blacks and whites to live under the same roof, he knew he’d made the right decision. As things were going, he said they probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to be told they couldn’t be together.”

“He told you all of this?” I questioned, tears filling my eyes at both the thought of Nan having to make such a choice and how hurt I felt that she kept it from me as Desmond nodded. “Nan didn’t tell me.”

“Isn’t that what she’s doing now?” he asked, and I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Desi!” a voice called out, and a woman who looked as if she was from some exotic place, wearing a tightly-fitted costume much like Sunny's from upstairs that made her all the more a showpiece, poured over the back of the booth to wrap around Desmond’s neck like a scarf come to life. “You are a sight for sore eyes,” she groaned. “And other aching places.”

Glancing up at Ariel’s quiet laughter, the showpiece winked as if she might come for her next, and I thought I might end up having words with the woman, until she looked my way and her smile warped at once to concern.

“You all right, Honey?” she asked me, and, dropping my gaze to the table, I tried to blink away the tears a stronger person could have kept back in the first place.

“I'm fine.”

“You sure?” the showpiece sounded unconvinced.

“Her grandmother's ill,” Ariel provided a good excuse for my weakness, and, at the woman’s small sound of sincere pity, I glanced back up at her.

“I'm sorry,” she said, before pulling back enough to slap Desmond on the shoulder. “Desmond, why aren't you showing her a better time? You should dance with her.”

“I don't think she feels like dancing,” Desmond responded.

“Well then, dance with me,” the showpiece turned Desmond in his seat and had hold of both his hands before he could react. “You ladies don't mind, do you?”

“You know I’m a married man now,” Desmond did his best to resist.

“Being married forbids you from dancing?”

“It forbids me from dancing with you,” Desmond responded, looking to us for help. “Ladies, this is Lisa. She’s never met a zipper she hasn’t tried to get in.”

“That is not true,” Lisa smacked Desmond again. “Well, it’s kind of true,” she admitted. “But I’m not partial to zippers. Buttons, hooks, I’ll undo anything to get at what I want.”

As Lisa looked our way, I had a feeling the statement wasn't gender-specific, and I wondered if Ariel was attracted to her. Then, Lisa's eyes met mine, and I stopped wondering about Ariel and started wondering about myself.

It wasn't at all the same. It didn't have near the strength, or depth, or nuance of what I felt with Ariel, but there was that one thing. And, in that instant, I couldn’t keep denying it. I couldn't pretend anymore I had never looked at another woman before Ariel came into my life. It wasn't just something about Ariel, it was something about me, and, when Ariel left, it wasn't going to stop the feelings. It was just going to destroy my heart and send them back into hiding.

“Come on,” Lisa pleaded with Desmond when he still refused to move. “I promise I’ll be good. I’ve only got a little time left on my shift, and you know I like your wife. Dance with me.”

“All right,” Desmond finally gave in. “One dance, but you keep your hands at ten and two,” he pointed to his shoulders as he got up.

“I’ll bring him back, Girls,” Lisa promised, dragging Desmond away, and watching their hands come together as they started to dance a subdued Charleston, I felt strangely tuned into Ariel’s presence at my side.