City of the Dead Page 11

  This time he looked down to that foot, which was now tapping to the sound of the piano across the street.

  “Oh, yeah,” she retorted dryly. “Why didn’t I think of that? You like it so much, why did you leave?”

  “I came back.”

  “I guessed that. I want to know why you left in the first place.”

  He looked out into the crowd, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into his hair and drifting away up into the humid moon.

  “Old habits. Older ties. You’re born here, you get caught in the net. You get tied down with your family and old expectations and older problems and can’t change, because for all the variety here, nothing really changes. Of course, if you’re not from here, you aren’t caught at all. You can change all you want, and nobody knows. Or cares.” He pointed with his cigarette. “See that woman over there? The tall one with the great legs? She’s an ex-wide receiver from the Cleveland Browns. Lives down here with a architect and his kids, and they’re as happy as clams.”

  “But my sister came all this way not to change.”

  Her sister had gone to great lengths to move to a city of metamorphosis and not transform at all. It sent a chill racing down Chastity’s spine, just to think of it.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered Chastity so much if it had been any other city. Indianapolis or Tulsa or Louisville, which weren’t different enough to notice. But New Orleans really did feel like something completely alien.

  Hell, she’d only been here a couple of days and already couldn’t quite feel her feet under her anymore. She didn’t know if she trusted herself. She didn’t know if she trusted the city.

  But oh God, suddenly she thought maybe she wanted to.

  But what if she moved here and ended up doing what Faith had? What if she planted herself in this thriving jungle of art and artifice, just to re-create the past that had so fractured her? Would she put up pictures of her father, too, to remind herself of what she really was?

  She remembered once seeing a monster film with Boris Karloff. He’d found a way to transplant brains, and he’d transplanted the brain of his hunchbacked assistant, Igor. He’d put that tiny, warped brain into a strong, handsome body. But Igor didn’t love his new body. His brain was too used to the old one. In only weeks, he was hunchbacked and shuffling again, because that was what he was used to. It was how he saw himself, and more frightened him too much.

  Chastity was terrified, sitting here on a moonlit night in New Orleans, that she’d be tempted to transplant her brain down to this free and impulsive place, only to start shuffling.

  “Why did you come back?” she asked.

  James smiled this time, and merely cocked his head out the door into the street.

  “Oh, bullshit,” Kareena scoffed, sweeping a judgmental hand at him. “You came back cause you’re in love with all that dead shit.”

  “Dead shit?” Chastity asked, eyebrow raised.

  Kareena huffed in indignation. “They love their dead things down here, girl. Cemeteries, ghosts, vampires—which never even was heard of until Ann Rice, but that’s another matter—dead things. James been obsessed with all that shit since he been back here.”

  “Chicago isn’t as receptive to it as they are here,” James said.

  Chastity cast a sidelong look at James, who was still watching the street life. “Dead things, huh?”

  He just nodded. “You become acquainted with death, you don’t want him to ever be a stranger again, ya know? That way when he finally comes back, he’ll surely treat you more kindly. Here in N’awlins, he’s always part of the dance.”

  Chastity wished she didn’t understand what he was saying. But she’d been acquainted with death for a long time herself. And, like James, death wasn’t really the thing she feared most. The inside of her own head was. The monster under her bed.

  She got her new drink and damn near finished it in one swallow.

  “So what you gonna do next?” Kareena asked.

  Chastity tried to pull her brain into some kind of working order. “The fertility clinic. Did you find anything out?”

  Kareena leaned forward, intent. “Sure. The Arlen Clinic gets a clean bill of health. Private, local, with strict adherence to health guidelines. Not a peep of a problem.”

  “Any others?”

  “There are six in town. A couple get low marks for charging for storing alleged embryos when what they’re storing is biological waste. Those are the high-volume places, advertise on television, shit like that. No real violations, though. And I did hear of a couple that are skating right on the edge. They do shit like auction off good sperm and eggs and that.”

  “Auction them off?”

  “Yeah, like a supermodel’s an’ shit. One of them, New Life, tried to place their stuff on eBay, but they got themselves slapped down. They’re getting them a real hairy eyeball from the state.”

  “But Arlen is okay.”

  “Far as anybody know.”

  Chastity nodded, her eyes on her glass, her thoughts struggling to focus. Better than thinking about what had happened all day. “How far away is Bayou Segnette anyway?”

  “About ten miles upriver,” James said. “It’s where they bus the tourists to see a swamp without having to actually go to one.”

  Chastity thought about that. “It seems to me that with all the water you guys have around here, it’s a stupid murderer who dumps a body right in the middle of a tourist swamp.”

  “Nobody says murderers have to be smart.”

  “Well, let’s hope this one isn’t. Maybe the Jefferson Parish pathologist can give us something.”

  Kareena perked right up. “Which one? I know people there.”

  “I bet you do. His name’s Willis.”

  Kareena did everything but spit in the street. “Ooo-ee, girl, you hadda go pick that waste of protoplasm.”

  Chastity immediately felt worse. “I didn’t pick anybody. You know him, I take it.”

  Kareena dolefully shook her head. “You lucky he recognized she dead, girl. They tryin’ to get him outa there for years. I think he got pictures of somebody with a goat, somethin’ like that.”

  “Great. So I can’t trust his results.”

  “Well, he don’t do the DNA, so that should be good. But he not the freshest taco on the plate. And you come from Mary Case jurisdiction up in St. Louis, yeah? Shit, she finish an autopsy, that body look like a fuckin’ canoe. Wilis couldn’t pick a canoe outa a lineup.”

  Chastity sighed. “Which means they could have Faith on their table after all, and we won’t know for sure till the DNA is done in a month or so. I’m just feeling better and better.”

  Kareena had the gall to grin. “There some things down here you just got to get used to. N’awlins, we jus’ different.”

  “So I hear.”

  Chastity was feeling even worse. She should have listened to those omens. Kareena finished her drink and ordered another. James just tapped his foot and watched the nightlife, which was what Chastity should have been doing. At least for a bit, the driving piano across the street was louder than the blues next door.

  “You keep saying you think your sister, she run away,” Kareena said, her forehead pursed. “And you knew about that emerald. Why?”

  Chastity sighed. She should know better than to try and slide past Kareena. Still, she couldn’t face her. She watched the street and all those people who didn’t know her. And she told Kareena about that day ten years ago when she’d gone home to find it empty.

  Now she had both their attention. In fact, Kareena was looking decidedly owlish. “But the police looked,” she said. “Didn’t they?”

  “Well. Not for long. There was a note.”

  After what you’ve done, I never want to see you again.

  What she’d done.

  Her stomach lurched again. Her back broke out in sweat, and she wanted to move.

  “How’d your daddy react?” Kareena asked.

  “Oh, he was already gone
by then.”

  “Dead?”

  Chastity glared. “Yes. Dead. I was the only one left.”

  “But you couldn’t have been more than—”

  “Sixteen. Yeah. Obviously, though, I’m fine.”

  James cleared his throat, and Chastity realized she was once again running her bare foot up and down his calf. She couldn’t even apologize. She just pulled her chair farther away.

  He smiled. “Hey, a guy with a face like Freddy Kruger can only take that as a compliment.”

  Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t you dare be kind to me.

  “Fishing for compliments?” she asked instead.

  Now the singer next door was having trouble with his girl and his dog. The dancing couple had moved on, and a gaggle of giggling young women wandered by, obviously in search of the Girls Gone Wild cameras so they could pull up their tops. The humidity still hung heavy in the hot air, and there was no wind. Chastity couldn’t breathe, and she wanted to cry.

  “I really do like it here,” she admitted, wondering if they realized that she sounded afraid.

  “Then solve this and move yourself down,” Kareena said. “I’m sure we can find some work for you.”

  She shook her head. “I’d end up bringing my brain with me.”

  They didn’t even bother to answer.

  “Do you know why they left?” Kareena asked.

  “Kareena, stop,” James admonished. “Ain’t your business.”

  “Besides,” Chastity added, her voice awfully calm for the fire that was consuming her chest, “if you’ve been keepin’ track, my mother’s dead, and my sister’s missing. Little chance to talk to them since I’ve been here.”

  Kareena waved her off like an incorrect fourth grader. “What about that note they wrote when they left you? What it say?”

  “What it said was not pertinent.”

  “’Course it was. It took ten years for you to find ’em again, and that was only because her husband call you.”

  “I didn’t look hard, either, Kareena.” A lie, but one she’d perfected over the years. “It was just that kind of family.”

  “Then why’d your sister run away again now?” Kareena persisted, the bone firmly in her little jaw. “I mean, right now?”

  “Because my mother just died, that’s why.”

  “And?”

  “And? And what?”

  “And why did your sister run away now?”

  Chastity slammed her empty glass on the table so hard it cracked. “My sister ran away because my mother let her gray-haired husband fuck her three daughters. Even so, Faith took care of her anyway until the day she died. That’s why.”

  Well, she’d obviously finally had too much gin.

  She also seemed to have accomplished the impossible. She’d left Kareena Boudreaux slack-jawed. Not to mention several people who’d been walking by and stood frozen in place. Even the singer next door seemed to pause, right between bad loves and prison.

  Chastity felt a huge chasm open up right in the middle of her chest. Her hands started to shake, and she couldn’t find her little velvet bag for comfort. She wanted to run away, but she seriously doubted her legs would work, or that she could see to get anywhere.

  “What’d I tell you?” she said, looking out to the street that still seethed with music and laughter, her own voice bleak. “This city just isn’t good for me.”

  James, his eyes suspiciously calm and distant, sipped at his drink. “Think of it this way. You’ll never have to see those people again as long as you live.”

  Chastity gave him a startled look, but his expression didn’t change.

  He didn’t react or cry out or run away. It didn’t matter. Chastity knew she’d see it soon. Or find out that he just hid it better than Kareena.

  That flicker of pity. The instinctive revulsion at finding himself forced to witness someone else’s shame.

  And every time Chastity saw it, or imagined she saw it, she’d remember what she’d actually put into words for the first time in seven years, since that day she’d shattered the silence in her therapist’s office with her screaming.

  A brand, raised on her forehead like fire.

  Shit. She should have known better than to come down here. She turned her attention back to the street and finally located her bag, right there in her pocket where she’d put it.

  “Have I ever told you about the chaos theory?” she asked, throwing back the dregs of her drink and calling for another. “It says that just when an organism believes itself to have found perfect harmony, it’s really just about to spin completely out of control. I was in perfect harmony last week.”

  She didn’t bother to look at her friends for a response. It was much easier to pretend she was enjoying the street.

  “It also says that the organism progresses through the chaos to a new harmony,” James said quietly.

  Chastity laughed. “I think that’s wishful chaos thinking.”

  “Not the same harmony, of course. Something better and stronger.”

  “Ah. Not wishful, then. Delusional.”

  Kareena, her focus still caught on the horns of Chastity’s revelation, was just catching up. “Get down,” she breathed, eyes even wider with suddenly comprehension. “You the one who blew the whistle on your daddy, weren’t you?”

  All those bright pillows and saris and posters in her room, and yet Faith had never been happy. Not once. Chastity had thought that if she called the police, she might finally make Faith happy.

  Silly her.

  She accepted another gin from the increasingly efficient waitress. “You get to go on to Final Jeopardy, Kareena. Want to pick another category?”

  Obviously not. Chastity could see that warp-speed brain starting to smoke.

  “It’s where the sexual addiction came from.” Kareena said it in her professional voice, calm and quiet and empathetic.

  Chastity barely kept herself from just closing her eyes and sinking to the ground. “Pathetically predictable, huh? Like I said. I’m just a Jerry Springer Show.”

  Just another abused little girl acting out and crying for help and getting approval the only way she knew how.

  “And Faith?”

  “As far as I know, consistently denies that anything ever happened.”

  Kareena just nodded, her eyes quiet and strong and deep. James, next to her, looked like a sphinx. Chastity shook and drank.

  “You said three daughters,” Kareena said. “What—”

  “We’re moving on, now, Kareena,” Chastity said, her smile hard. “Throw all those questions into the dysfunctional family bin and be done with it.”

  Kareena actually blushed. “Yeah, girl. You right. Kareena sometimes get too nosy.”

  “If she didn’t,” Chastity retorted gently, “she wouldn’t be so good at her job. Okay?”

  Kareena’s smile wasn’t quite at regular wattage. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Chastity smiled back. She sipped her gin for a minute and willed her heart rate to slow toward normal. At least panic stricken as opposed to terrorized. Thank God for unaltruistic James. He just sat there splayed out on his chair like a disgruntled teen and let his eyes roam the street.

  “Ya know what?” Chastity said suddenly, climbing to her feet. “I want to dance. Can you dance next door, James?”

  Kareena’s hoot of laughter sounded equal parts relieved and anxious. “Honey, James can’t dance anywhere. He’s a white boy.”

  James looked affronted. “I’m part coonass. I can dance.”

  “Only to that nasty zydeco shit. You wanna dance, girl? Come with Kareena.”

  So they all walked next door and danced until about three in the morning. They ended up singing along with “Blue Monday” and catching a cab that wasn’t James’s back to Kareena’s. James, who lived on the fourth floor over the Big Dawg Saloon on Bourbon Street, simply strolled home.

  “You okay, Chaz?” Kareena asked before they parted in the hallway of her house.

&nbs
p; Chastity smiled past numb lips, as if she’d really enjoyed the entirety of her evening. “I’m fine, Kareena.”

  “You’re sure? I mean…”

  “Honey, it’s old news. I just kinda surprised myself blurting it out for the edification of every tourist in the French Quarter.”

  Caught there at the edge of the light, Kareena didn’t move. Chastity smiled and shooed her off. “I mean it. Now, I have to sleep off some of this gin before I get up in four hours.”

  Kareena walked away. She shut off the lights, and Chastity was left to enter her own room, where her bed awaited her.

  At 4 a.m. EST, the third tropical depression to gather in the Atlantic Ocean gained enough force to be called the second tropical storm of the year. Officially named Bob, it already boasted well-defined margins and a wind speed of 60 miles per hour. Meteorologists along the East Coast began to plot out possible courses and worried about the coming storm Bob promised to be. The Weather Channel geared up like it was the World Series. The Weather Channel made its money on hurricanes.

  The first slivers of gray morning light sliced through the blinds in the Elvis Costello room. Rain pattered against the windows, and the ceiling fan clicked. Hunched over the rumpled, stale sheets on her bed, Chastity fingered the spill of stones that glittered from within the folds of the bedclothes. She counted them again: one, two three, four, five peridots. One, two, three aquamarines. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven citrines.

  She counted and she shook and she sweated, there on her small bed in a strange city, and she waited.

  Finally, just as she knew it would, her cell phone rang.

  Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve needed to call me this late,” the calm, quiet voice said into her ear. “Or this early.”

  Tears gathered in Chastity’s eyes and spilled over the gemstones she hoarded between her knees. “I know. But you said…”

  “That’s what therapists are for, Chastity. What happened?”

  Chastity closed her eyes. She gathered her treasures into her hand, and she told her therapist about the trip she’d taken and the day she’d had and the search for her sister. She especially told her about her sister.