Tempter (7 page)

“Uh-huh. So I see.”

Arsine watched Rossiter and the blonde stroll out of the Gris-Gris Club, shaking his head in disgust. Although the man could play the living hell out of anything with strings, Rossiter could be a stone bastard when the mood struck him.

Chapter Ten

Jerry shoved his fists deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the thoughts boiling in his head. The inner voice that hectored him every time he screwed up sounded just like Coach Gill, his old Phys-Ed teacher. He could still see the old bastard, stopwatch in one hand, bellowing at him as he ran laps around the football field.

“C’mon Sloan! You’re falling behind! What’s the matter, Sloan? Is your hair gettin’ in your eyes? Jesus Christ on a sea beach! I bet you squat to piss, don’t you, boy?”

The hell of it all was that this wasn’t the first time Alex Rossiter stole his girl.

The first time was in 1993. Crash was opening for Helmet at the Orpheum. It was before the band’s first album and they were still coasting on the success of their single. Jerry was sixteen and had finally landed a girlfriend, Myra Nolan.

Myra wasn’t prom-queen material, but she was good-natured and didn’t laugh when Jerry asked her to go steady with him. Except for the occasional grope in the back seat of his mom’s car, their relationship was still chaste. Taking Myra backstage to “meet the band” seemed a really neat idea at the time, and an easy way to impress his date.

Alex seemed genuinely glad to see him when he showed up backstage. They chatted about old schoolmates and smoked some kick-ass reefer. Jerry was surprised to see Myra toking like a pro. Then he left in search of a soda machine, since all there was to drink in the dressing room was grapefruit juice and Southern Comfort. Of course he promptly got lost. Thanks to an elderly janitor, who have him directions as if he was talking to a retarded child, Jerry finally made it back to the dressing room...only to find Myra sucking Rossiter’s dick. His friend had grinned drunkenly at him over Myra’s bobbing head and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘What could I do?’

Jerry ran out of the dressing room and all the way back to the car. As he searched for his keys, he realized he was still clutching a sweaty bottle of Mountain Dew in one hand. He swore and hurled it across the now-deserted parking lot. He never found out how Myra got home, since he never spoke to her again.

A month later Alex showed up at his doorstep with a groupie and explained she was a “present’ to make up for what happened with Myra. Jerry was too terrified of contracting venereal disease to do anything more than spend the night talking.

Now, years later, the Ghost of Adolescent Loserdom Past was reaching out to give him noogies from beyond the grave. The last thing he wanted was to have his old insecurities and inadequacies return for a high school reunion…

“You leave me be!”

“Gimmee what you got in the bag, bitch!”

The sound of the angry voices broke through Jerry’s self-absorption. He looked around and saw Mad Aggie standing on the neutral ground of Esplanade Avenue, struggling with a young black male dressed in baggy pants and untied sneakers. The old woman’s little red wagon was lying on its side, its contents scattered across the grassy median.

“Let me go or I’ll hex you!” Aggie said, sounding more indignant than frightened, despite the disparity between herself and her attacker.

“You might scare my granny with that hoodoo shit, bitch, but it don’t work on me!” the young thug replied. “Now give it up or I cut you!”

Jerry jerked the mugger backward by his hoodie, smashing his fist into the younger man’s face as hard as he could. The mugger let go of the old woman and staggered backwards, both hands clapped over his nose. Jerry did not realize that the mugger had been armed until he saw the open straight razor lying on the ground at his feet. Mad Aggie snatched up the razor with surprising speed.

“So, you gone
cut
me, huh?” She waved the blade at her erstwhile attacker. “Son, I’m gone slit you like a pig!”

“Muggafugga, you boke my nodes,” the mugger whined through his cupped hands.

“You be glad that’s all that’s done you!” Mad Aggie snapped. “Now get while you still got a tongue to complain with!”

The mugger hurried away, trailing droplets of blood in his wake.

“You alright, Aggie?” Jerry asked.

“I’m jest fine, bless your heart. Help me with my wagon, would you, honey?”

Jerry righted the little red wagon as the hoodoo lady calmly put her wares back into their proper sacks.

“You done me a service, son, and I ain’t so old I forget such things. I owe you.”

“That’s okay, Aggie. Really, you don’t have to do anything...”

“No, I won’t hear of it! There ain’t many white folk that would help an ol’ colored woman in this town. I just want you to know I’ll be keepin’ an eye out for you.” She tapped the socket with the glass eye. “I’ll see to it you don’t get yourself crossed.”

“I don’t think I really have to worry about such things, Aggie.”

“Don’t you want to get back at that fella what took yore lady friend?”

Jerry’s smile turned into a pained rictus. “What?”

“You went into that bar with a woman an’ I saw you leave without her. Ain’t that so?” There was no maliciousness in the old woman’s voice.

“Well, uh...”

“Then I got just the thing for you.” She rooted through the grocery sacks in her wagon and pulled out a yellow candle shaped like an erect penis, gripping it by the shaft. “Now, you’ll be needin’ mimosa oil and my Mystic Power Powder with this. All you gotta do is hollow this thing out a little at the bottom and put a picture of the man your gal’s taken up with inside. If you can get hair from his crotch, that’d do even better, but it ain’t necessary. Then you seal it shut with the wax. You write the fella’s name on the candle and rub the candle down with some of the mimosa oil, sprinkle my very own guaranteed Mystic Power Powder on it and burn the candle one inch every day. All you got to say while it burns is ‘Holy Penis, grant my wish and keep it soft, bring him no enjoyment.’ It’ll mojo his nature good. I got wives who’ll swear on a stack of bibles it’s good for keepin’ men folk faithful.”

“That’s all right, Aggie,” Jerry said, fighting a schoolboy urge to giggle uncontrollably at the sight of the old crone waving about a wax dildo like a bandleader’s baton.

“No, I
insist.
No charge.” The old woman said as she thrust the fourteen-inch long phallus at him. “You got to let me do something for you or you gonna shame me.”

“Could you at least put it in a bag?” he sighed.

Charlie stood on the front porch and searched her purse for the keys to the house, Rossiter’s breath hot on the nape of her nape. His hands slid under her blouse, his palms flat against her belly. She gasped and nearly dropped her keys.

“Stop that!” she giggled. “Someone will see us!”

“Let ‘em look! If they’re peeping out their windows at two in the morning, they deserve what they get!”

“Let’s continue this inside, why don’t we?” she whispered.

Rossiter glanced about the front room. “Nice place you got here. You share it with roommates?”

Charlie smiled to herself. At least he didn’t think owning books was weird. “Nope. I got it all to myself.”

She watched Rossiter from the corner of her eye as he studied the signed and numbered Jazz Fest poster hanging over the antique walnut mantelpiece. She’d never known anyone famous before. Of course, she dealt with rich and powerful men every day at work, but none of them was famous. Not like a rock star, anways. Rossiter wasn’t what she would call handsome, but he had a seen-it-all, done-it-all way about it him that was powerfully magnetic. Just looking at him made her ache to touch him.

He turned to look at her, his gaze hungry and direct. There was something untamed in the bottom of his eyes that excited her. Charlie smiled as she poured a drink from the liquor cabinet. Rossiter moved toward her. He took the glass from her hand and drained it in one fluid motion, then lifted her in his arms.

As he carried her up the stairs to the second floor, a low-pitched growl came from the landing above them. Rossiter froze.

“What the fuck is that?” he demanded.

Charlie’s cat stood at the top of the stairs, ears folded flat against its head, teeth bared.

“Pluto! It’s just me!” she called out. But the feline did not seem to heed, or even recognize, its mistress’s voice, but instead continued to issue its menacing growl.

“What’s wrong with that damn animal?” Rossiter snarled as he took another step up the stairs.

Pluto arched his back and hissed like an espresso machine before disappearing into the guest bedroom.

“I don’t know what got into him,” she apologized. “He’s usually quite friendly. We probably just startled him.”

She had neglected to pull the shades before leaving the house and now her bedroom was full of moonlight. Rossiter placed her on the bed, pinning her under his body. There were no words because they weren’t needed. His fret-calloused fingers worked the catch of her bra with the expertise of a lock-picker. Charlie wrapped her arms around him, holding him against her. Now his hands were fumbling at her zipper, pulling her free of her jeans. There was an intensity to his actions she found both exciting and frightening. She placed a hand on his chest and felt his heart racing beneath his ribs like an engine. He quickly cast aside his own clothes, his face unreadable in the night shadows, and idly stroked himself to full erection as he studied her naked body.

He leaned over her, his voice thick and hot in her ear. “Tell me you want it,” he said, his tongue flickering out, tracing the curve of its lobe. Charlie moaned and wriggled against him. “Give it to me,” she whimpered. She cried out as he plunged into her, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

Their lovemaking was swift and hard, the only sounds being moans, grunts, and the rhythmic slap of flesh against flesh. When she came, Charlie sobbed like a widow, arching her back until her ass cheeks cleared the mattress. Seconds later Rossiter’s face contorted as if someone had plunged a knife into his back. He collapsed atop her, panting like a winded runner. Finished, they lay curled together on the bed, their sweaty limbs intertwined, and slept like hibernating beasts.

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.