House of Blues (5 page)

She thought she should stop and call the police, but
she knew she wasn't about to. She might not be able to find a phone
booth. If she did, 911 might be busy; might not answer right away.
She'd lose the Tercel.

What if she had stayed at her parents' and called the
police from there? That was the only sane thing to do, but she hadn't
thought of it; hadn't thought anything at the time, had simply been
the burden her feet were carrying. But it now occurred to her that
she wouldn't have known anything about the car if she had, not its
color or model or license number, all of which she knew now.

So I must be doing the right thing.

She neither believed that nor disbelieved it. It was
just something to think while she drove.

They were near Bayou St. John, she noticed.

She thought: This isn't right. What the hell are we
doing here? She realized that she thought she understood why Sally
had been taken, but a place like this didn't begin to enter into it.
Gentilly. The posh, nouveau part, about two blocks from near-slums.

The Tercel stopped in front of an enormous house, an
absurdly huge house, as big as any on St. Charles Avenue, built of
gray stone and surrounded by a fence of iron bars standing dignified
as deacons. A group of men walked out of the gate and turned left on
the sidewalk.

The Tercel driver got out of the car and, clutching
Sally, raced to the gate, now being closed by a man in a suit who
still managed somehow to look like a servant. Sally was screaming:
"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

Reed certainly wasn't going to bother to park. She
simply abandoned her car in the street. As she rounded it, she found
herself staring straight into the eyes of one of the men in the
little group, who had all turned toward the screams.

It was Bruce Smallwood, whom she knew from her
pleadings before the casino board. With him was Lafayette Goodyear,
another member of the board, and she thought a third was Barron
Piggott, a colleague of theirs, but she couldn't be sure.

Thank God.

She closed her eyes for a second, in relief or silent
prayer.

"Bruce! Lafayette! Help!"

None of them moved.

Men she had been to lunch with, sat across a table
from.

Smiled for.

Barron had even tried to grab her thigh, but she'd
seen it coming and crossed her legs.

The kidnapper was screaming above Sally: "Goddammit,
let me in. Get Mo. Tell Mo I'm here, goddammit. Who the fuck do you
think you are?"

The entire group of able-bodied men, civic leaders,
stood as if nailed to the spot, looking as frightened as she was.

If her child were to be rescued, it was up to her.

She reached for Sally, but the kidnappers body was in
the way. She closed her fists and began beating that body as hard as
she could—the shoulders, the back, the kidneys, she hoped. But she
didn't feel the slightest yield.

"Give her back to me, goddammit! Sally, baby,
it's okay. Mommy's here. Everything's going to be—" She
couldn't get the last word out. She had intended to say "fine,"
but she was out of breath. And besides, she hadn't the heart. She
didn't believe it. Woefully, she looked again at the group of men.

One had broken from the group, Lafayette, the only
black one, who was running toward her, finally moving his fucking
ass. But the gate swung open and the kidnapper fell away from Reed. .

Startled, she swiveled and
saw that two men had pulled the kidnapper through the gate, Sally
kicking as hard as she could. They pulled Reed in too.

* * *

Grady drove his mother to Dennis and Reed's, Sugar
sitting quietly instead of running her mouth as usual, eyes facing
front; no drama. That puzzled him, but he was thoroughly undone when
she climbed the stairs without a word and retreated, dazed, to one of
the guest rooms. Following with her hastily packed bag, he watched
her turn on the television and lie down on the bed, all her clothes
on and no expression in her eyes. He had never seen her like that,
and the shock moved him to solicitude.

"
Mother? Mother, can I get you anything?"
His voice sounded oddly meek to his own ears.

Sugar didn't answer.

She wasn't the sort who had to be cajoled. She wanted
what she wanted, and it was always the same thing—lots of
attention, someone to listen to her, to rant to even if they finally
yelled back. She would cry and fall apart, but she would always
provoke the same situation again—they'd listen till they couldn't
take it anymore, they'd yell back at her, anything to get her out of
their face, and then she'd cry and fall apart again. She craved human
contact like a child who'd been raised by wolves, and it was usually
about as smooth for her.

She sometimes liked a nip at bedtime, for soporific
purposes, she said.

"Shall I get you a drink?"

"
I don't really think I care for anything."
She sounded unconvinced.

"How about some Bailey's Irish Cream?"

She loved that stuff, probably because it tasted like
dessert.

"
All right," she said, as if doing him a
huge favor.

He raced down to look for some, relieved to be doing
something; anything.

There wasn't any.

When he came back upstairs, he saw that she'd taken
off her shoes, which he took for a good sign. "Mother, I'll have
to go out and get some. Will you be all right for a minute?"

She looked at him. "I guess so." He thought
perhaps she was afraid.

"Are you sure?"

"
I guess so."

He had to get out of there. "I'm putting the
alarm on. Don't worry, no one can get in."

He had in mind to go instantly to the House of Blues,
but in the end he couldn't bring himself to run out on her. For one
thing, he had to take her back for the damned house check.

He got the liqueur and returned to find the phone
ringing: the cop asking them to come back. He took his mother home,
brought her back, and then utterly amazed himself, the way he spoke
to her—the way a good son was supposed to; the way he never did.

"Now, Mother, I want you to undress and get
under the covers while I pour us a little drink. Will you do that for
me now?" He thought he saw a flash of surprise in her eyes, but
she didn't say anything.

"I'm gonna close this door now, to give you a
little privacy. When I come back, we'll have a nice drink together.
Will you get in bed for me now?"

She nodded.

He took a while opening the bottle and finding
glasses, to give her time to obey. When he knocked on the door, she
said, "Come in," and this time she was tucked in. She still
had her makeup on, but he wasn't going to quibble.

"Good, Mama. You need to get some rest." He
hadn't called her "Mama" since he was twelve.

The television hummed in the background, and he was
suddenly afraid she would see the news and that his father's death
would be on it. "Let's turn this off, shall we?"

He poured her a drink and handed it to her. He poured
himself one and sat on the stool that went with the dresser. He had
no idea what to say to her. She was the one who talked—talked and
talked and talked, much to the discomfort of everyone around her. His
relationship with her consisted of fending her off.

Finally, she said, "Do you think she killed
him?"

"Who?"

"
Reed."

"Reed?" He would have been as shocked if
she'd said Hillary Clinton. "Why Reed?"

"What he did wasn't right. All that child ever
wanted in her life was to run that restaurant—that and please her
daddy. And he took everything away from her."

Grady felt a tingle.
Oh, God,
another lovely evening in the House of Blues.

The House of Blues was a club, one of several in
various cities, but still the biggest thing to hit New Orleans since
the casino was voted in. It was artfully funky and low-down, full of
Louisiana native art. Its sound system had probably cost millions.
Its acts were top of the line. It perfectly captured the city's idea
of itself, every college student's fantasies, every baby boomer's
memories, and managed somehow to be the exact club Grady would have
built—any music lover would have—if he just had unlimited funds.
Grady went there a good three times a week, every time he got to
feeling depressed.

But he had first been attracted by the name. He'd
always been disappointed that there wasn't really a House of the
Rising Sun. When he was about twelve, maybe thirteen, he'd spent a
lot of time thinking about the song's second line: "It's been
the ruin of many a poor boy and, Lord, I know I'm one."

He found the song unspeakably romantic and somehow
true; true in a way he couldn't put his finger on. He never thought
of it as a bordello, just as a house in New Orleans, like the first
line said.

The name House of Blues, the melancholy the phrase
evoked, hit him the same way, made him think of the old song. But
there was something more, something like the twist of a knife, and it
excited him. it inspired him, gave him ideas he'd never had before.

He had written a lot of nonfiction, pieces for
Gambit
and
New Orleans Magazine
,
and now he'd begun to write short stories . about vampires. If Anne
Rice could, why not Grady Hebert? The metaphor—the love that
devours and kills, the sucking of blood, the sucking, sucking,
sucking till there is no juice left—had spoken to him as a
teenager. At least that was the way he grandly put it now, as if it
were a metaphor.

The Undead seemed appropriate to the city, he
thought, and so he had tried his hand.

But he wasn't sure about these vampire stories of
his. He had sold a couple, his first published fiction, to horror
magazines, and that was a thrill—not only for its own sake, but it
had delighted him to tell his parents, to watch their confused
reactions. His father, of course, had belittled them, as he did
everything; Sugar had tried to be nice, but in the end she couldn't
conceal her distaste. Grady thought perhaps he felt a bit of the same
thing.

He wanted to write something more real.

He had found himself thinking of his own childhood
home, Sugar and Arthur's home, as the House of Blues, of the Hebert
dynasty as having its own name, a name like House of Atreus, House of
Tudor, House of Hanover.

And he had known that he
would write about The Thing. Not to be published, perhaps, but it was
something he would do. When he had done it, he would be like Clea in
The Alexandria Quartet, the artist who painted well only after she
lost her hand. He too would have an artistic breakthrough. Why this
was so he didn't know, any more than he understood why Clea had. He
knew that he had to do it, he was excited by the idea, thrilled in a
macabre way, but he also knew he could not. And so he went night
after night to the House of Blues and let the music flow through his
body, cleansing him.

* * *

Sugar told him the story, told him what Arthur had
done to Reed, how he had taken back the restaurant from her. Reed's
world, Reed's life, her worldview, had always made Grady despair.

This nearly made him cry.

It touched him in a way that his father's death had
not; or had not yet—he knew that would hit him in the end. This was
more accessible, this insult to Reed, this slap in the face.

But no, he didn't think she had killed her father.
That was the last thing he thought. He told his mother he suspected
some thug had done it—someone who had conned his way into the
house.

"
But why?" said Sugar. "Nothing was
taken."

Why. He hadn't thought about why; in a way, he was a
numb as Sugar.

So they could kidnap the others and hold them for
ransom.

But he didn't say it.

Wait a minute. Someone drove Reed and Dennis's car
away
.

He said, "They probably meant to strip the
place, but Dad got out of hand. You know how he is. And then they got
scared."

"
I think I can sleep now," Sugar said. "How
he was, you mean."

They had demolished nearly the whole bottle.

He left her and went to the House of Blues. He liked
to stand there nursing a beer in a plastic cup, swaying; letting the
music pulse through him. It was a good way to empty his mind, forget
his life and his failure, forget the way he missed Nina; forget his
father's death, his mother's odd quiet.

Buddy Guy was playing. Grady should have been a
zombie, blitzed on the music and alcohol, but his brain was still
functioning.

Or maybe you could call it that. He was having
something that might be called a thought, but perhaps it was just a
feeling.

He never got what he wanted.

If it was a feeling, it was guilt.