Gods of New Orleans (20 page)

“You should tell your ma, at least,” Brand says to the kid’s back.

“You tell her,” the kid says. “Tell her I went to the church to pray for my pa.”

And then the kid’s gone, out the alley mouth and down the stem, leaving Brand with an envelope in his hand and the taste of bile in his mouth.

Chapter 21

Emma wrapped her coat around her to keep the chill away, but it didn’t matter how much she pulled or tugged. The evening air off the Gulf was still cold and sly enough that it found a way in and set her shivering. Another mixed couple sat a ways down the streetcar on the opposite bench, and a lone man stood at the far end, near the conductor’s box. The other couple chatted while the car sliced and scraped on the rails as they went around corners and took curves.

New Orleans slid past the windows, a blur of brick and stone and ramshackle wood. Eddie’s arm went around Emma. She leaned against him, careful not to put too much pressure on his chest or side. He’d healed up pretty good in the two weeks since they left Chicago City, but he was still sore in places, and it was almost a sure thing one of his ribs didn’t knit right.

Good luck earning enough for a sawbones to fix it right.

Bacchus set them up with his doctor that first night, but he’d made no further offers for another visit to the man’s clinic. He’d given Eddie work playing with a band at shows in the Ninth Ward, leaving Emma on her own at home for a week of lonely nights full of worry. Then last night Bacchus came by and told Eddie to spiffy up for his next gig. He even gave Eddie a new suit and shoes.

“Gotta look the man when you in my gala house, Mr. Eddie Collins.”

They were on the way to the gala house now, for a heel kick like they used to have back home. Emma didn’t know what was so special about the house or the dancing that it had to be called a
gala
. Bacchus was big time in New Orleans, but so far she hadn’t seen him do anything that rivaled the mayor’s events back in Chicago City.

“Gig like this bring real money in,” Eddie said as they sat in the rocking and swaying streetcar. “Not like them little shows I been doin’.”

Emma just nodded. So tonight they’d find out what real money was in New Orleans. The thought gave her only a little comfort.

Until now, Eddie had been playing for whatever change he could get. It was okay money. Eating money. Rent money, for their place and for the mooring deck Bacchus had moved the
Vigilance
to. The tavern where Eddie usually played in the Ninth Ward was just like Hardy’s place, standing beneath a mooring deck. The
Vigilance
still hung there. Emma could see the ship in her mind, bobbing on its tethers like it wanted for all the world just to fly again.

As the streetcar rolled on, Emma thought about the airship and the first time she’d set foot in it.

The first time she’d ever shot a man down.

The ghosts of her life in Chicago City had begun eating at her in the past week. Eddie had work. They had a roof, and they could eat okay. But everything Emma could claim now came from Eddie, and rich man’s daughter or not, she wasn’t used to being so dependent on someone else for survival.

The one thing she’d sworn not to do was to let her and Eddie’s love turn into the kind of thing she’d seen happen to so many girls back in Chicago City:

The guy comes along and it’s nice for a while. And then it’s back in the house while he’s out in the world earning his keep and yours.

“Eddie,” she said, half asking and half demanding his attention.

“Yeah, Lovebird. What’s what?”

He was happy. Dammit, why did these questions come to her mind when he was in a good mood? It’d be easier to challenge what they had if he showed some sign of discomfort, too.

“Eddie, what about me finding some work? I mean tonight. Do you think Bacchus‌—‌”

“You like to asking the krewe boss? You’re crazy, girl.” He grinned as he said it, but Emma couldn’t ignore the sincerity in his voice.

“What’s crazy about it?” she said. “I’m sick of warming the home fires while you’re out every night. If you’re afraid of upsetting the man, why not let me ask him? What’s the worst he can do?”

Eddie’s face went hangdog dark. “Emma, you don’ wanna know what’s the worst he can do. Look, Lovebird, lemme get us on our feet again, hey? Get something under us, like we used to have.”

“When did we have something under us? When I wasn’t on the run for killing Archie Falco? Or for loving you?” She kept her voice down, but the last words came off her tongue with more force than she’d expected. Eddie’s face showed it, too.

“I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know, Lovebird. Don’ mean nothin’. You just tense is all. Come on join the dancin’ tonight. You can hear me play and dance with whoever you like. Just remember whose lips are for kissin’ and whose for sayin’, ‘Thank you for the dance.’”

He laughed and stroked her under the chin with this finger. Emma laughed, too. Inside, she still felt that same bubbling joy of love for him, and his touch never failed to remind her of the way it had once been. In Chicago City, their love was a secret saved for late nights after speakeasy sessions, and it had been fabulous. Fun and forbidden. But fabulous. Sure it wasn’t perfect, but the city streets were only dangerous if they were seen together.

Now, in New Orleans, they could cuddle and kiss on a streetcar in plain view and nobody’d bat an eye. But was it better than what they’d had before?

The streetcar slowed and rolled to a stop in front of a high house with tall windows and a set of steps leading up to an open door that spilled light and laughter into the night. A heavy in a suit waited by the door with his hands clasped in front of his belt.

“Our stop,” Eddie said. “Come on in with me, Lovebird.”

“I can’t, Eddie. Not tonight. Maybe next time.”

Emma looked away from his eyes to take in the nearly empty car. Up front, by the conductor’s box, the lone man stepped off.

The other couple stood and made their way to the exit doors, too.

“Gotta go now, Lovebird,” Eddie said. “You sure you don’t wan‌—‌”

“I’ll walk you in, Eddie,” Emma said, feeling her gut go tight all of a sudden. Her mind flashed to a memory of the last words Mitchell Brand had for her.

“When his pals down here find out you’re around, it’s as much your head as mine.”

Emma let a shiver run through her and take those memories with it.

“You okay, Emma?”

“Fine, Eddie. Just a little cold I guess,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t see the fear she felt behind her eyes.

Together, she and Eddie rose and stepped off the car through the same door the other couple had used. The gala house rose before them like the greatest mansion in the city, but the shotgun shacks to either side of it said different. They’d come to an older portion of the Central City district. Across the way, shopfronts stood in a row, decorated with hand-painted signs and sandwich boards proclaiming all sorts of finery for sale.

Gaslight glowed from within a few of the shops, but most had the steady warmth of electric lighting spilling out of windows and doorways. Emma wondered why the shops were open at first, but soon enough a parade of couples emerged from every nook and cranny. The women wore gowns and seemed to perch on the arms of their male companions. Some couples were dark-skinned but it was mostly mixed couples moving among the throng.

As the crowd approached, Emma had to stifle a gasp. The women weren’t women at all. Just girls, and not one of them could be much past age yet. They were close, sure, but it was clear enough from their wide eyes and tight lips that these girls were on the town for damn near the first time in their young lives. And the men. They were all of them easily twice the age of any girl in the bunch.

Each of the girls wore a corsage on her wrist, and the men all had boutonnières pinned to their lapels. The flowers looked fresh and sparkling clean, like they’d just been bought across the street. As the last couple passed by and went up the stairs, Emma’s breath caught in her throat and she spun to the side.

That man.

She knew him. He was a banker from New York City. He’d been at a party her father hosted for the mayor back home, almost a year before her debutante. The Great Lakes Governor had been there, along with the governors from the Southern Territory and Eastern Seaboard, too.

That man came with the Eastern Seaboard group, and when her father had introduced them, the man shook her hand for a good long time. Long enough for his eyes to take off every piece of clothing she’d had on.

“Eddie,” Emma whispered as the couples lined up with the doorman, waiting to get into the gala house. “What is this? They’re just debs. And the men‌—‌”

“Just how they do things down New Orleans way,” he said. “Mr. Bacchus run the balls down here. Debutantes come out with daddies and uncles. Big brothers, too. Learn a few steps ‘fore they go findin’ a man of they own.”

“Eddie, most of those men are white.”

“I know, I know. And how do you think a white man calls a Negro girl his daughter or his niece? You ever look at me and you in a mirror, Lovebird?”

Eddie smiled and kissed her. She let his lips press against hers and she pushed back to make sure he didn’t mistake her feelings, even though she wasn’t so sure of anything she felt at that moment.

They separated and Emma waited while Eddie straightened his jacket and smoothed his slacks. With a quick jerk, he shot his cuffs and, Emma noticed, only winced for half a second or less.

He is getting better
.

Then Eddie looked Emma in the eye. He kissed her again and went up the steps to speak to the doorman.

Emma let him go even though she wished he’d stay. She couldn’t ignore the stabbing worry building in her gut like tangled barbed wire.

Maybe it was like Eddie said. Just how things were done down here.

But that man from New York . . .

Lights glowed behind sheer drapes in every window and silhouettes moved in rhythm to a soft lilting piano played somewhere deeper in the house. The tinkling strains of the music came to Emma’s ears as if on a breeze that sighed and sang at once, melancholy as can be.

Emma stepped back onto the streetcar. Other passengers boarded at the far end, by the conductor’s box, each one flashing a badge of passage to the little gray-haired man who drove the streetcar. The couples looked like they’d just left the gala house, some of them stumbled and all of them laughed, even the girls. Emma felt her heart relax, but her gut kept up its twisting and turning.

Up on the steps, Eddie was going inside. Emma called out to him.

“Good-bye, Eddie. Good luck tonight.”

Her heart grew heavy in her chest when Eddie stepped through the door and disappeared inside, not even turning to look back and wave.

Chapter 22

Mama Shandy, the house mother, shook her head at Aiden, who stood in the middle of the dance hall, feet sopping wet and his pants soaked up to his knees. He had his eyes on her knees, but she was a lot shorter than him, so he could still see the way she snarled her dark face. She narrowed her eyes at him. Behind her little gold-framed glasses, those eyes looked like knives she’d stick him with if he put one toe out of line.

“Boy, you need learnin’ you wanna keep this job. Who the hell taught you to work a mop that way? Your momma? Your daddy?”

Aiden held his tongue, forcing the anger to stay in his chest where it belonged. Earlier that same night, he’d seen what happened to boys who spoke out of turn or “gave sass” to a house mother. But he couldn’t deny everything he felt, and a few tears of rage leaked out.

“Oh, you gonna cry on me now, boy? Damn if you ain’t worth half the money I paid for you. Now get on with the moppin’, an’ don’ you go addin’ them tears to the bucket. Ain’t no good cleanin’ a floor with tears, boy. And you think twice before raisin’ them eyes to me, Dove. Damn Birdman gonna take one of ‘em. You can count on that.”

Aiden kept his eyes on the floor until the house mother left by the far door.

Back and forth he worked the mop, slow and careful, like his pa showed him the few times he’d gone to the Field Museum to watch the man work. His pa had been gone a week now. His ma worried herself to sleep every night, and Aiden didn’t know how to help. When he’d run out on Mr. Brand he’d gone to the church, hoping Father James would offer up a hand. Instead, the man sent word to the house mother, who came around lickety-split, almost like she was waiting in the vestry.

Or maybe she was one of them. Like Mr. Brand and the man who’d marked Aiden’s pa. Or like Aiden himself? But he knew that was crazy as crazy can get.

What if Mr. Brand wasn’t fooling, though? What if he meant it, about the letter?

Aiden didn’t feel any different, though, and he sure as heck couldn’t slip in and out of a room like a ghost. If he could, he’d have disappeared the minute Mama Shandy came stepping into the church with a hand on her hip and trouble on her tongue.

Father James had offered words of comfort to Aiden and held him while he cried. That must have been when the priest had made a signal at the altar boy who was there. Because that boy came back in with Mama Shandy in tow.

She’d handed Father James a few coins and some folding money, then waltzed out the door wagging a finger for Aiden to follow.

“C’mon now, Dove. You work for Mama Shandy now.”

The priest offered Aiden a quick prayer before he spun on his heel and disappeared out a side door. With thoughts of his father lying drunk on the street like a no-good tramp, and his mother drifting around their little room like a ghost herself, Aiden did the only thing he could do.

He’d followed Mama Shandy out of the church, stepping lively to keep up. Even as short as she was, she moved fast and too strides that made Aiden have to step fast to stay with her. Now, instead of fifteen cents for cleaning the workhouse for that colored couple, Aiden would earn eight cents from Mama Shandy for cleaning the floors in her gala houses.