Orfeo (2 page)

“Oh, do shut up,” Ardyce murmured. “Don’t make me regret bringing you here.”

At this the older man smiled but he held his silence, and when the music died away once more he joined in with the rest to give his most ardent applause.

Within Apollo’s only four figures did not share that general adulation.

The group consisted of three men and one woman, and though they had taken a table far from the stage so as not to attract attention to themselves everyone who saw them immediately recognized their faces and drew away cautiously.

Anyone in New Orleans who haunted certain places and sought certain pleasures knew Earl, and if they were lucky his name was all they knew. Earl. No more, no less. Sitting at the table in his fine, elegantly tailored suit, he looked every inch the man confident that great parts of the city belonged to him, though as the spotlight occasionally flashed toward the table at which he sat his pale skin looked furious, his jaw clenched in anger. Occasionally, one of his gloved hands would ball into a fist and casually tap on the table, its true fury somewhat thwarted.

To one side of him sat a man and a woman. The man, huge and dressed in a suit that barely stretched across his giant shoulders, had the slightly swarthy features that many assumed came from Hispanic descent. The few who had the misfortune to know him with any familiarity understood that he traced his lineage to the Chitimacha, natives who had roamed the southern shores of Louisiana for centuries before any white men came. Like Earl, whatever original name he had been born with had been replaced by a single epithet: Horse.

The woman next to him was more clearly of Hispanic mix, though the strong, fine features of her face were almost hidden beneath an intricate web of tattoos carved in dark blue across her skin, lines and whorls that were said to contain the venom she used to kill her enemies. She could kill with her bite, went the stories, though in truth a blade was her favorite weapon. Her body was lithe and muscular, and if Snake was less formally dressed than her companions nonetheless when she moved her body was a poem of deadly elegance.

Across from Horse and Snake, the fourth and final figure was at first the most unassuming of the group though also the most scrupulous of them all in his attire, moreso even than Earl. He was smaller than Horse, which in itself was of little surprise as there would be few men who could achieve the girth of that giant, but when standing he was barely taller than Snake and certainly shorter than his boss. His skin, while chocolate dark, was also stained with occasional spots of an almost mildewed hue that betrayed his age and belied the fashionable cut of his cream-colored suit and broad-brimmed fedora hat. At first glance, should anyone have seen him on his own they would have likely passed him by without comment.

Yet when Papa raised his head and stared at a person, it was a gaze they were not likely to forget. His eyes were those of a man who had seen too much that should never have been witnessed and forgotten too little of it. While Horse may have been Earl’s muscle, and Snake his assassin, Papa was the man sent out to bear those messages with which no-one else could be trusted.

And so Earl sat in Apollo’s with his three companions. His
loa
, he called them, his invisibles who served his needs throughout New Orleans. Though Earl was hardly the man to have given credence to those old voodoo gods, some feeling of mystery suitably impressed him to dispatch these servants of his with a sense of irony when they were required to show a victim the way from this world to the next. When one of Earl’s
loa
came looking for a man, he had no choice but to hear the message that they brought.

Once more Earl’s hands clenched and came down hard on the table, though not so hard to draw attention to him. There was one he did not wish to see him here tonight, not yet. For the time being he considered his task to observe: the right and proper judgment would follow later.

“What does she see in that nigger?” he hissed to no-one in particular.

If Papa was offended by the term he did not show it but instead leaned in closer to his boss. “She comes here every night, apparently.”

“And is it to listen to him?” A tic shot through his cheek, drawing the lids of one blue eye close together in a spasm of anger.

“Lord alone knows why,” Snake sneered. “He sounds like shit. I could do better than that.”

Earl looked at her with his own snarl. “If you think saying stupid bullshit like that is going to impress me, then keep your fucking mouth shut.” He turned his attention back to the stage where the ebony-black singer had finished his song and now stood with head bowed but eyes slightly raised, burning white as they looked across the room toward Ardyce. She in turn could look nowhere else but toward the sculpted form of Orfeo.

Following the gaze between the two of them, Earl’s lips curled in bitterness. “Anyone can hear he’s got a remarkable voice. Is that all she does? Has she ever spoken to him?”

Papa shook his head slowly. “Not that anyone’s ever seen. They just do this every night. She comes here to listen, and he just glares at her after singing. She don’t go backstage—nothin’ like that.”

Impulsively Earl raised one gloved fist to his mouth and bit on his knuckle as he continued to stare at Ardyce and Orfeo. One strand of dark hair, oiled and black, fell forward across his brow and his eyes seemed to burn with a feverish fire.

“If that’s what she wants, why don’t we hire him, get him to sing for us at Hades?” he asked at last.

“I thought of that. He’s not interested. He doesn’t even get paid for singing here.”

At this response from Papa, Snake snorted in disdain. “You expect me to believe that fucking shit?” she asked. “He’s got a price. Everyone has a price. Ain’t that the truth, Earl?”

Earl nodded, chewing on his glove angrily. Papa, however, remarked ironically: “Perhaps he’s got a big dream instead. Maybe that’s what he has to dance to.”

Now it was Earl’s turn to scoff. “Great. I want her back and I’m surrounded with fucking morons.” His fist came down in a fit of pique upon the table, causing a few of the denizens of Apollo’s who sat closest of them to turn away nervously. “Go over to her,” he said to Papa, calming his voice with a great effort. “Find out what she wants. If it’s this singer she wants to listen to, make him an offer he
can’t
refuse.”

As Papa began to rise, however, some subconscious reaction caused Ardyce to turn toward them just as a light flashed out across the smoke-filled room and captured Earl’s white face in a rictus of fury. As she saw him sitting there in a dark suit, one gloved fist raised to his cheek, her pale features lost their flush of pink color and her green eyes flickered away. Speaking to the man sitting next to her, an old queen that Earl vaguely recognized, the two of them stood quickly and began to move across the room away from the group of four.

Papa hesitated, looking backwards toward his boss who gestured irritably for him to sit down. At the same moment, the singing stopped and, as Earl glanced across toward the stage, he saw the black singer staring at him, large eyes bulging with anger and disdain. So surprised was Earl to be looked at in this way, with contempt the like of which he had never experienced before, for a few vital seconds he was unable to respond or even speak as though the air had been knocked from him. Before he could recover, Orfeo had stormed from the stage and disappeared into the shadows.

“Shall we follow him?” It was Snake who spoke.

Earl shook his head very slowly. He could not say why, but he still felt strangely shaken. “No,” he said at last. “No, not yet. Tomorrow, though... tomorrow we’ll pay
her
a visit.” Once more he struck the table with his fist and, now that Ardyce had left, no longer bothered to temper the violence in his voice. “And if he ever looks at me again—
ever!
—that boy will wish he had never been born with eyes in his head.”             

Lying in her bed, Ardyce let her head rest upon the pillow as her mind filled with a glorious music the sound of which was matched only by the remembered sights of the young, powerful man who had sung to her that evening.

The night was warm and humid, moisture clinging to the air and condensing as droplets upon Ardyce’s naked body. Rather than dispel the cloying embrace of nature, however, she had instead opened the window of her bedroom and lay upon the surface of her bed, gently stroking her moist skin as she recalled the pleasures of Apollo’s. If she turned her head toward the open window, she could see a full moon shining brightly in the blue-black sky.

Xanadu itself lay to the east of New Orleans, past the old village of Michoud, nestled between Lake Marseille and the Blind Lagoon. There had been a sugar plantation here in former times, at that time the main source of Dubois wealth that had contributed to the large stone and iron house that had been constructed on this spot, although then the house had passed under another name. It had been her grandfather, rich from his investments in industry, who had rebuilt and extended the Dubois mansion, renaming it Xanadu.

And here Ardyce had lived virtually alone since her parents had died in a car crash when she was seventeen. Often she wondered how different her life would have been had they survived that crash, almost half a lifetime ago for her. There had been a guardian at first, but he had been venal and perverse, betraying the trust that her parents had foolishly placed in him: lust for Dubois money had not been enough for him but it had only been when he had desired the long, pale limbs and copper hair of the young Ardyce girl that she had stabbed him and banished him. He had not dared go to the authorities: few who crossed one of the Dubois clan could hope to do so and prosper.

From then on, for a time she had become feral and wild. Xanadu rang to the discordant noise of orgiastic parties and frequently the young woman, radiant and almost unearthly in her beauty, would stalk the city in search of new pleasures, new desires. Men had come and gone, the occasional women too, but now it never ceased to amaze her how few of them had left a trace in her memory.

There had been Earl, of course. Her skin shuddered with a moment of revulsion at the thought of him—a revulsion that had not yet entirely mastered the desire for all that he represented. Her body felt cold at the memory of Earl, strong and cruel, and she turned her head away from the moon which was as white as his skin.

She retreated to the security of thoughts of Baptiste, the only friend who had survived those crazy days because, as she had quickly come to realize, he had been her only true friend. In his own way, the queen of New Orleans could be as perverse and decadent as her, but his Epicurean pastimes also extended to pleasures of the mind so that he had expanded her education in many different ways. The fact that he was also the only man who had never tried to fuck her (metaphorically as well as more literally) counted for a great deal.

And yet... and yet she needed to be fucked—at least physically. She wanted it more than she could possibly explain. How long had it been? To her surprise, she could not remember. What she did know that there was only one who intrigued her enough to stir her from this state of self-enforced celibacy, but would he come? That was the most important question. How could he not, she wondered, when he sought to seduce her so passionately through his songs, when her own eyes conveyed messages of desire a thousand times more potent than any words? (Not that this had prevented her from using backup communication in the form of a letter sent via Baptiste.)

She was gently stroking her belly with one hand, her fingers moving past her navel and to her mons pubis while the fingers of the other softly pressed beneath her breast and traced along one nipple, all the time looking toward the bright circle of the moon. When she heard the sound of a sole guitar beneath her window, she smiled to herself, her nostrils flaring with lust and amusement.

As that rich, baritone voice began to float up to her window, she luxuriated in the melody of his song, her hand dipping further down her body as her legs opened like the banks of the Mississippi.

“Moon, my moon, O virgin lover,” she heard drifting among chords that shifted from major to minor, “your stealthy beams descend to prick love’s lock.” She let out a sigh as fingers discovered her own lock and stealthily entered under cover of night.

“Wrapped with night’s thick cover

you through the open windows sneak

to steal the treasures in my bed,

the joys that stain your fingers red.

“Moon, my moon, recline by my side,

entrance me with your silver eye,

allure me with your season’s tide,

forsake this night your darkened sky.

Your smoky myrrh smolders my womb

and promises warmth, moon, my moon.”

The silence of Xanadu and the surrounding countryside was disturbed only by the sound of Orfeo’s guitar and his velvet voice—and inside by the faint gasps and moans of Ardyce as she pleasured herself in the large bed, its antique wooden frame creaking slightly as she moved her lissome limbs across the feather mattress. The white sheets were silver in the moonlight but for the darker stain that appeared between her thighs.