Ciji Ware (33 page)

She raised her eyes and absorbed the sight of the deserted warehouse’s gloomy interior. Then she glanced down at her hand. In it she held a half-eaten praline. The candy’s sweetish aroma was the last thing she remembered before the onslaught of the panorama at Reverie Plantation and the intimate scene that had transpired in Martine’s little cottage on Rampart Street.

How could she have witnessed all that? How would she know about the most personal thoughts and emotions belonging to people who lived more than a century ago? Even her ancestress Corlis Bell McCullough herself wouldn’t have been privy to the secrets she had seen.

Corlis was shaken, and not a little aroused, by the memory of the passionate lovemaking. Except for King’s brief kiss in the courtyard of his house, it had been a long time since she had been touched intimately by a man. Furthermore, she hadn’t merely
seen
these visions in the French Quarter and upriver, she’d
inhaled
them
.
The
smell of burning sugarcane fields came back to her in a rush.

Scent!

Bubbling molasses. Lilies. Incense. Mold and decay.

What if a particular fragrance or aroma had the power to trigger deeply ingrained
memories
in people linked by family ties and through associations originating in the distant past?

Corlis suddenly recalled a book that her mother had given her once for Christmas. It had been titled
Aromatherapy and the Mind
.
To be polite, Corlis had glanced at it and later stored the volume on her shelf as yet one more example of a gift that her mother would have preferred someone give
her
.
In the preface, however, Corlis vaguely recalled the author postulating that “scent offered a direct route to the unconscious.” The question was:
whose
unconscious?

A dozen images collided in her mind’s eye of a house that recalled
Gone with the Wind
,
a heavy-set woman in frothy crinolines sobbing on a quilted mattress, and a beautiful quadroon with come-hither eyes, languidly stretched out on a blood-red chaise longue.

Corlis shook her head. A dust-laden shaft of light illuminated the wooden door that opened on to Common Street. Normal life was taking place just outside the building, so how had all this happened to her? And for what purpose? To what end? What if the explanation for all this was nothing more complicated than that she was going out of her mind?

She suddenly made a beeline for the warehouse exit. Flinging open the door, she stood on the sidewalk in the descending March dusk, enormously grateful for the sight of ordinary motor traffic. She leaned weakly against the exterior of the brick building, reassured somewhat by its feeling of solidity, and gave concentrated thought to the possible causes of such out-of-body experiences.

She knew Aunt Marge would ask rhetorically:
What do various pieces of evidence have in common?

Cautiously, Corlis raised the praline to her nostrils and inhaled, as she had earlier. The smell of exhaust from the cars going by overwhelmed the candy’s distinctive sweetish aroma. She was grateful when the world around her remained in place. Yet
something
had happened to her inside that warehouse! The book that her mother had given her said that one’s sense of smell, of all the five senses, had the greatest power to stir the memory, stimulate one’s feelings, or create a mood. What had happened to her
this
time went far beyond
that
!

She set off down Common Street toward her car, mulling over each bizarre experience she’d encountered since December. She dug into her shoulder bag for her car keys and recalled with growing amazement that these connections to the past had not always been linked to her having skipped a meal, as she’d first surmised.

It all got back to
scent
!

To be sure, the powerful whiffs of incense during Daphne Duvallon’s wedding at Saint Louis Cathedral had seemingly produced a pair of unhappy newlyweds whom Corlis now deduced had been Julien LaCroix and Adelaide Marchand. Then, on the morning she’d put a vase of stargazer lilies on the coffee table next to her couch, she’d suddenly found herself in Henri Girard’s flower-decked parlor, where the poor man was laid out in a mahogany coffin in the presence of Ian Jeffries and her very own McCullough ancestors!

She began to tick off the other instances where individual aromas had triggered these bizarre “trips.”

The faint odor of natural gas had assaulted her inside the Canal Street buildings on the day that King had given her a private tour. The next thing she knew, in the glow of a gaslit chandelier, Julien was storming down the staircase of Martine Fouché’s elegant new town house.

And, of course, it had been the musty smell of the old map showing New Orleans in l838 that had whisked her to the dusty wharves on the banks of the Mississippi where a three-masted ship returned the LaCroixs from their honeymoon in France.

Corlis punched her car’s clicker and was overwhelmed by an increasingly familiar stab of anxiety. Her heart was thumping erratically in her chest, and her palms felt clammy. Although she prided herself on her self-sufficiency, she was forced to admit that these visions had simply gotten too much for her to cope with alone.

She slipped behind the steering wheel, rested her forehead on its curving surface, and took a deep, unsteady breath. King had been remarkably empathetic, but she felt foolish revealing any more of this crazy stuff to him. Especially since he was her
key
source in the ongoing story at WJAZ.

If she told her boss, Andy Zamora, about seeing visions, he’d probably put her on psychiatric disability. And if Aunt Marge learned about this, the veteran reporter would be prompted to fly to New Orleans to check things out for herself—a risky proposition for an octogenarian. As for Corlis’s parents, they were both utterly useless in a situation like this.

Suddenly the name Dylan Fouché popped into her thoughts, the dropped-out Jesuit priest King had told her about. The man who dabbled in ghostbusting and clearing buildings of unwanted “entities.” Although Dylan Fouché didn’t know it yet, he was already
part
of this strange saga. And besides, Corlis considered with a surge of hope, the former Father Fouché was the only person she could imagine who might possibly possess the tools that could get her out of this jam.

Just then her cell phone vibrated.

“Oh, pul-eeze!” she groaned out loud, recognizing the telephone number displayed on the tiny screen. She was ten minutes late for her taped interview with King and his preservation guerrillas.

***

Fortunately, and despite her tardy arrival, the recording session at the Preservation Resource Center went smoothly. Once concluded, Virgil and Manny efficiently packed up their television equipment in the deserted office while Corlis and King returned various pieces of office furniture to their proper positions around the reception room.

“Well… do you think you can use any of that?” King asked expectantly, pointing to Virgil’s camcorder.

“Andy Zamora’s gonna love your statement about being willing to lie down in front of Grover Jeffries’s bulldozers to save those buildings,” she teased. Corlis was fairly confident her boss at WJAZ would eventually put this segment on the air. She’d proposed a three-part package that would lay out for the viewers various sides in the controversy brewing over plans to downgrade the zoning of part of the historic district in the Canal Street area. It would also fairly report the tug-of-war between jobs created by tourism and the pull of historic landmarks, versus jobs created by construction projects.

King gave her a knowing look. “A
lot
of people in this town would appreciate it if a big ol’ bulldozer flattened me into the swamp,” he said dryly. He glanced at his watch. “Well, Ace, it’s just after eight. Feel like grabbing a bite?” With a wink in Corlis’s direction, he turned to the television crew. “You guys wanna join us?”

“We’re not off the clock till ten,” replied Manny with regret.

“Besides, we just got pinged,” Virgil added, clicking off his cell. “Some woman has accused the head of the police Anti-Corruption Committee of accepting a bribe. Zamora wants us just to grab a sound bite of her making the charge from her front stoop.”

“Now, isn’t that nice?” deadpanned Corlis.

“This is N’awlings, sugar,” observed King with a droll smile.

Virgil hoisted his tripod onto his broad shoulder and said to Corlis, “When we go back to the station later tonight, I’ll have it all digitized with the other stuff we’ve shot on this story. It’ll be ready in the editing bay whenever you need it, okay, boss?”

Corlis nodded and turned to look at King as Virgil and Manny headed out the door. She was hungry. And she was worried.

“Let’s eat,” she proposed.

“Are you actually saying you’ll have dinner with me?”

“Under certain conditions, the rules say it’s okay. It’ll be a business dinner in a public setting. I’ve a few more things I’d like to ask you about.”

King’s lips spread into an engaging grin that contained the barest hint of the conquering hero.

“Ever been to Galatoire’s?” he inquired.

“Always wanted to, but never quite got there.” It was embarrassing to admit that she’d never indulged herself at one of New Orleans’s most iconic landmark restaurants.

“Well, you will tonight,” he said, glancing at his watch again.

“Do you think we can get in? It’s always packed when I go by there.”

“Oh, we’ll get in.”

“Okay…” she replied, not sounding convinced. Then she blurted, “Can we ask Dylan Fouché to join us?”

“Dylan Fouché?” King replied, surprised. Then he gazed at her narrowly. “Okay, Miz Reporter. Out with it! What’s going on? Is this piece you’re doing going to make us preservationists look like a bunch of wackos?”

“No, no!” Corlis protested. “My wanting to meet Dylan isn’t about the Selwyn buildings… Well, I mean, it’s not about the controversy. I just thought tonight might be a good opportunity for you to… ah… introduce me to your friend.” She shrugged, hoping to appear nonchalant. “I might even do a profile on him sometime.”

King gave her a long, hard stare then seemed to be satisfied by her answer. “What
does
it have to do with?” he pressed quietly.

“Maybe I’ll tell you after I meet Mr. Fouché and ask him a few questions,” she said obliquely.

“Is the purpose of your meeting him to make sure
you’re
not wacko, Ace?” Corlis gave him an irritated look and nodded in the affirmative. “Well… my, my… this is getting mighty interesting,” King said. “Let me give him a call.”

***

The boisterous crowds of tourists along Bourbon Street in the French Quarter were moving in undulating swarms, choking the sidewalks and the blocked-off street.

King seized Corlis’s hand and headed for the unassuming entrance to Galatoire’s, one of New Orleans’s restaurants spoken of in the same reverent tones by food lovers as God is by the parishioners who worship in Saint Louis Cathedral a few blocks away.

To her surprise, a dapper waiter attired in a black suit, crisp white shirt, and jaunty bow tie immediately welcomed them inside the high-ceiling dining room. He indicated by his enthusiastic wave that they should advance across the black-and-white–checkered floor into the crowded, noisy restaurant. Overhead, fans whirred as they threaded their way through the plethora of café tables covered in snowy white linen.

“Ah… Monsieur Duvallon,” the waiter said in accented English, his arms extended toward King as if he were a long-lost friend. “How good to see you again!” He unabashedly gave Corlis the once-over. Then he seized her right hand and gallantly bowed. “And a good evening to your lovely companion.”

“Cezanne,” King replied, inclining his head. “I’d like you to meet Corlis McCullough. Can you get us a table?”

“But of course!” Cezanne exclaimed as if his feelings had been injured. He cast another curious look in Corlis’s direction. “You are on television,
non
?”
Corlis nodded affirmatively, and Cezanne beamed at King. “Ah… now I am
also
zee personal waiter of a TV star!”

And with that he marched with an air of importance across the thronged dining room to a small table for two. It was one among several positioned against mirrored walls framed at intervals with carved white-painted moldings. The waiter pulled out a bentwood straight-backed chair that looked right out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. He indicated with a courtly nod that she should sit down. With equal gravity, he provided the same service for King.

Just then two men rose from a table a few feet away and headed straight for them.

“Oh, great,” Corlis muttered to King. “Our two favorite people—Jack Ebert and Lafayette Marchand.” The pair paused beside their table.