Orfeo (17 page)

“Why didn’t you ever get a skin graft?” she asked.

Why? It was a question he had asked himself many times. To do that, however, would be to forget her, to lay the past to rest—and he wasn’t ready to do that, not yet. Not ever, perhaps. He couldn’t reply to her question.

Holding him tenderly in both hands, she surprised him by bringing her mouth to his fingers. Gently, very gently, she pressed her lips to him and kissed the tips of his hands. He could feel her warm breath of him moving over her, and she placed her mouth on his skin—the dead, unfeeling skin of his left hand—again and again. Turning it over, she stared at the palm for a while, seeing the same decay there.

Then, finally, she let his hand drop and lay back down on the bed, turning away from him. Her back, smooth and pearly white, was all she showed him now, her spine curving in a sensuous flow down to the cleft of her buttocks, her thighs pulled up beneath her in a foetal position as she hugged herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He made to move closer to her, to touch her shoulders, but as his dead hand came closer her felt her freeze. Her body was ice to him now—no longer warm. Whatever tenderness there was had passed.

Cursing silently, Earl turned and found the glove where he had dropped it beside the bed. Pulling it back over his damaged fingers, he buttoned up his shirt and strode to the door.

What was fucking wrong with the bitch? What was happening to her? For a guilty moment he pondered whether it was the drugs, but he knew how she reacted to those. That wasn’t it. Searching his memory for a while, he thought that the change in her seemed to come from the night when that asshole singer had tried to sneak back in, the night when Snake had killed the old queer nearly two weeks before. Was that it? Had she found out somehow that her friend had died? Earl found it hard to believe that she cared that much about some sick old pervert, but he had no other explanation for her condition.

When he entered the main space of his apartment, the window looking out over Hades, Papa was already waiting for him. He always seemed to be waiting for Earl recently. Did he suspect something? Did he have some understanding of what was happening not just to Ardyce but to Earl himself? The thought made a flame of anger flare up inside him: he’d never trusted Papa, not completely, not like the others. But for the moment he was too useful and, though Earl never dared to admit it to himself completely, too dangerous.

“How’s little moth?” Papa asked. As always he was dressed in a sharp, cream-colored suit that oddly made his dark skin look almost gray-brown, a fedora on his head.

“Don’t call her that,” Earl snapped. “You know I don’t like it.”

“As you insist,” Papa replied laconically. “How is she?”

“What the fuck do you care?” Despite his best intentions, however, Earl could not maintain his anger toward Papa. As the older black man stared at him calmly, his frustrations melted into a desire to share something—anything—with someone.

“I don’t know,” he confessed at last. “She just... she just fucking lies there. I don’t know what I have to do to get a reaction out of her. The only time she shows any life is when I fucking shoot her up. I mean, I bring in the best French chef—and that bastard charges top dollar for that fancy slurry he’s cooking up for her—and she barely touches her food...” His voice trailed away as he realized that he no longer desired to reveal any further intimacy with Papa. Lamely he concluded: “In the past couple of weeks she just seems to be getting worse.”

Papa seemed to consider this for a few moments then said in a neutral tone: “Perhaps she feels that the singer has given up on her.”

Earl snorted at this, but deep inside he knew instantly that Papa had hit upon a truth. “She doesn’t care about that piece of shit. I know Ardyce. I’ve known her for, what, ten years now. What should she care about some fucking beggar who wanders into her life for a month and then fucks off out of town at the first sign of trouble.”

Papa shrugged. “You know,” he said at last, his voice still level and measured, “I remember an old story, about how people weren’t individuals, you know—with two arms and two legs and all that shit. We were all bound up together with a special person, kind of like a spider, I guess, eight-limbed an’ all. We were pretty powerful too, so the story went, so much so that the gods got jealous and split us up so that we became much like we are today. The problem is, deep down inside we’re still looking for that other person, the one we were bound to before we got split up, and we’d move heaven and earth to find them.”

Earl stared in astonishment at Papa as he spoke, wondering what had entered the
loa
’s head. As he slowly comprehended the story’s meaning that astonishment turned into anger.

“Are you fucking trying to tell me that Ardyce was bound up with some nigger? That she’s got fucking nigger blood in her?” Earl’s face was twisted in a mask of rage, spittle flying from his lips as he started to shout, coming forward to Papa and shaking his gloved fist in the other man’s face. “Don’t you ever tell me that kind of shit again or I’ll...”

Papa stared back at him with lifeless dark eyes, his intentions hooded. “Or you’ll what?” he asked very quietly. Then he gave one of his unnerving smiles, his mouth broad and full of sharp, white teeth, but his eyes as unmoving as ever. “It was just a story, boss.” The smile dropped as suddenly as it had appeared. “But that ain’t why I’m here.”

Disturbed, Earl took a few steps away from his henchman. As he turned and walked toward the bar to fetch himself a whiskey he growled: “Then why the fuck are you here?”

“Things are getting bad, Earl. There’s all sorts of warnings going on. They’ve given this hurricane a name, now. Katrina. They’re even saying it could hit the city.”

“Katrina?” Earl downed a glass of the whiskey and poured himself another. “Who the fuck comes up with these names?”

For a moment Papa’s face flickered with annoyance, surprising Earl. His
loa
almost never expressed any emotion. “Who cares how they name it? You’ve been so wrapped up in yourself that you ain’t been paying attention to anything. It hit Florida a couple of days ago, causing a whole stack of damage, and since then it’s been building up a pack of punches that’ll tear a hole in Louisiana.”

“So?”

Now Papa did seem to lose control of his normally impeccable self-control, displaying a frustration that Earl was beginning to enjoy.

“So, they reckon it’ll hit New Orleans tomorrow. This thing is gonna rip up the town as though it was
tinder wood! You even noticed how few people have been coming here the last few nights? Everything on the radio and TV is telling them to get the hell out of town, and we should too.”

Drinking his whiskey, Earl clutched onto the bottle and swaggered across toward Papa. All his earlier anxieties had disappeared, replaced by a swaggering arrogance.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, touching the bottle to Papa’s chest insolently. “This city is going to fall into chaos, and you think we should get the hell out of here, is that it?”

Papa swallowed and looked away. Sweet Jesus, Earl thought as he caught the flash of expression before the other man’s face turned to one side, he almost looks human when he lets some feelings in. This was too good a chance for Earl to miss when it came to reasserting his authority.

“Are you out of your goddam mind!” he bellowed, his face barely inches away from the brim of Papa’s hat. “Chaos, destruction, hell—Jesus fucking Christ! This was made for us! Bring that motherfucking hurricane on. Let all those other scum fuck off out of here—the city will be ripe for the taking afterwards. What’s the worst that can happen? A few shitty old buildings get blown down, some roads in and out get flooded.”

Papa turned back to him and swallowed. “You may have forgotten that we’re less than five hundred yards away from the Mississippi,” he said in a very low voice.

Earl took a step back, feigning astonishment. This was just too good to pass up on. “What are you talking about, man?” he asked, pretending to comprehend Papa’s anxieties. “Nothing bad’s gonna happen. We are talking about the fucking United States corp of motherfucking engineers here, boy. Good, solid, American engineering. Best in the fucking world.” He took a swig from the bottle and threw it to one side, enjoying the splintering sound of glass as it cracked and shattered. Now was the time to deliver his killer blow.

“Are ya yella?” he asked, slurring his speech into a barely recognisable drawl. “Is that it, Papa? Lost your nerve?” He moved slowly, ominously forward now, his nose almost touching that of the other man. This close, he could stare straight into Papa’s eyes: when you got up to him like this, thought Earl to himself, you could clearly see that those black pits at the center of his eyes were a mortal brown, and the edges of his eyeballs were tinged yellow like his liver.

“Not up to it, old man?” he whispered.

Earl was prepared, his gloved hand curled into a ball beside his hips. If he moved quickly enough he would be able to grab hold of the inevitable garotte, throw the older man off balance—and in a contest of raw, brutish strength he knew he was more powerful.

But then the strangest thing happened. The mask that Papa always wore descended once again. His eyes became steely and distant and the thin film of sweat that had been forming on his face seemed almost miraculously to evaporate.

“They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind,” he said, very quietly. Earl stared at him in confusion and, against his will, took a step back.

“What the...?” he spluttered, incredulously. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Papa’s words had thrown him off balance so that whatever psychological advantage he had achieved was now lost. His left hand began to itch once more and, without thinking, he began to scratch it.

“It’s as you say, boss. We take advantage of this storm, we can reap the chaos that comes afterwards. We’ll be rich men.” Papa gave a smile in which his mouth twisted into a grimace but his eyes remained dead. “Is it hurting?” He nodded his head slightly in the direction of Earl’s hand.

“No,” Earl replied with a scowl. “Forget about it.” He began to turn away to hide his confusion—and also the rising irritation in his damaged limb. Another thought occurred to him, however, and instead he returned his gaze to Papa, his own dark eyes steely now.

“One last thing before you go,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ve changed my mind about the singer. I want him dead.”

Papa raised one eyebrow at this news but did not lose his composure. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “What if she finds out?”

“It’ll make no difference,” Earl growled. “And in any case, don’t you ever question my fucking decisions ever again, you bastard. I want him dead, that’s a direct fucking order. Now get out of my sight.”

He had no idea how long he had been lying in the room. Day was succeeded by night before returning to day and once more to night. Sometimes he slept, but more often than not the agony in his chest and limbs kept him awake, as well as the deeper pain of loss. He made no sound in his misery, but the tears in his eyes had not yet dried up and often he wept when he thought of her, that he would never see her again.

He was ashamed that instead of grief for Baptiste he felt only guilt, a guilt that could not manifest itself in tears. The old man had not wanted to go but Orfeo refused to listen to reason and for this Baptiste had died. And yet, even in that terrible realisation it was the loss of Ardyce that he felt more deeply, an agony much worse than that in his flesh and bones. They would heal, but his soul was torn forever.

The girl who lived downstairs had visited him. She had knocked on his door not long after he had dragged himself into the room and, when he refused to answer, she had timidly pushed her way in, staring in shock at his wounds and bruises. It took him a long time to remember her name: Janine. Even though she stood in front of him there was something insubstantial about her, as though she were a ghost compared to his very real visions of Ardyce.

She had visited him several times. At first she tried to speak to him, asking him what had happened. When he didn’t reply she tended to him, cleaning up his cuts and applying bandages to his chest. He had allowed her to move him in the bed, careless as to what happened. How many times did she come? He didn’t know nor did he care.

She asked him to sing to her. His sullen silence was not so much a refusal as a lack of interest. One night she had come to him, still smelling of booze and other men’s stink. She was drunk and pulled off her clothes, showing her small, delicate breasts, her thighs dark and shining. Climbing into bed next to him, she attempted to touch him, to caress him gently so as not to hurt his broken ribs. When he pushed her away worldlessly, she began to shriek and curse him, hitting him so that his chest hurt as though on fire, but he said nothing. At least she had left after that and not returned. How many days had it been? He did not know.

And so he lay there, motionless. He wanted to die, and without food or water he was content to starve himself to death, to die of thirst. Let the rains never come again, he told himself. Let the earth become a desert and I shall die here. There was no music in his room, no sound, but the noises from the city and the house where he lived filtered through his window and his door, refusing to leave him in peace.