The Meq (35 page)

“What? Who? What girl?”

“The girl on the disc, the girl singing the operas. Carolina even knows her, for God’s sake.”

“What? You’d better start at the beginning, Owen. I don’t understand.”

The static on the telephone line was getting worse. I glanced out of the front of the hotel where anything loose in the street was blowing away.

“I was playing the discs,” he said. “I was alone in Carolina’s office, Georgia’s room she calls it, and Scott Joplin burst in shouting, ‘I know that voice! I know that girl!’ He was visiting Carolina, you see, and just happened to be there, he just happened to hear it, Z. Well, of course, I said, ‘Who is it?’ and he said, ‘That’s Lily, Lily Marchand. She used to work for Carolina and disappeared right before the World’s Fair. I been lookin’ for her for two years!’ I asked him if he knew where she lived and he said he had only heard it was somewhere around New Orleans, but, and this is why I called, Z, this could be a break, he said a woman named Willie Piazza had known the family for years and might know how to find her. Do you know of this woman, Z, do you know Willie Piazza?”

“Yes,” I shouted. The line was almost all static.

“Find her,” he yelled back. “Find her and you might find—” The line went dead and Ray burst through the front door of the hotel, out of breath, which I’d never seen him, and soaking wet. Outside, sheets of rain were blowing sideways.

“Damn, Z, I missed this one,” he said and shook the water off his bowler. “I didn’t see it, feel it, nothin’!”

“Missed what?”

“The hurricane,” he said. “And she’s comin’ right now.”

The manager of the St. Louis Hotel was standing nearby and overheard. He turned to Ray.

“Did you say hurricane, son?”

“That’s right, sir,” Ray answered. And she’s a big one—still ain’t hit landfall, but she will soon and if I was you, I’d get all them shutters shut around this place.”

The manager glanced out of the window, then back at Ray. Ray held his gaze, stone-faced, and even though he wasn’t sure why, the man did as the “Weatherman” requested, clapping his hands and scrambling the staff to close the shutters and prepare for a hurricane.

I grabbed Ray by the arm and told him, hurricane or not, we had to find Willie Piazza now. Without asking me why, he slapped on his bowler and said, “Come on.”

We made our way to Storyville as best we could, corner to corner, street to street. The wind was fierce, blowing in gusts of seventy to eighty miles an hour, but it was the rain that caused the most havoc and danger. I had never seen so much rain fall so hard. Whole streets turned into rivers within minutes. Abandoned carts and automobiles were picked up and washed into buildings, causing balconies to tumble, lampposts to splinter, and windows to crash and break into shards, which were swept away in the water like flashing knives.

Somehow, we found Willie. She was hanging on to what was left of her double front doors, standing in two feet of swirling water and debris, and yelling at three men in two different languages. The men were bound together by a long rope that was anchored to the main building. All three were trying to save Willie’s big sign, which had toppled from the roof to the street and was being sucked into the rushing waters. They were fighting a losing battle.

When we got close enough, I tried to get her attention. “Willie!” I shouted. “Willie, I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Not now, honey,” she shouted back. “We got a world of trouble here.”

I kept on. I was only a few feet from her, but I still had to yell. “Do you know Lily Marchand?” I asked. “Please, tell me if you do, I’ve got to find her.”

“Not now, honey,” she said again. “I’ve got to save that sign,
coûte que coûte.
”

“Just tell me if you know her, that’s all.”

At that moment, the sign broke loose from the men and disappeared under the water, finally bobbing up in broken pieces half a block “downstream.” Willie watched it go.

“Tant pis,”
she said. “God must have wanted poor Willie to buy another one.”

“Do you know her?” I repeated. “Do you know Lily Marchand?”

“Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, I know Lily, or I should say knew her. Haven’t seen her or her pitiful brother, Narciso, for three, maybe four years. Old Creole family, honey. Lost all their money a long time ago.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“I know where she used to.”

“Where?”

“Across Pontchartrain, somewhere near Covington on the Bogue Chirito. A run-down plantation called ‘The Vines,’ if I remember right. I told the Chinese man I couldn’t be sure, but ‘The Vines’ sounded right.”

“Chinese man? What Chinese man?”

“The one that came lookin’ for Lily last week, same as you. I told him ‘The Vines’ was most likely it. It just sounded right.”

“Were his eyes like two slits, two razors?”

She laughed. “Honey, they all look alike to me.”

It was my turn to say “Come on,” and I waved to Ray, who was standing in the doorway with several of Willie’s “nieces.” I thanked Willie, then Ray and I ran through the rising water on Iberville and across town.

Luckily, we caught the last ferry crossing Lake Pontchartrain. The storm slowed as it made landfall and the north side of the city had not yet felt its full force. Still, we were pelted with driving rain and Pontchartrain was rough with whitecaps all the way across.

Just before we docked, Ray said, “Who is Lily Marchand?”

“She’s the one singing the operas,” I told him. “And the same voice I heard at Emma Johnson’s.”

He arched an eyebrow and tugged on his bowler.

“I got a feeling, Ray. I got a feeling this is it. This is where he is. This is where Star is.”

The rain filled the brim of his bowler and spilled over the sides. He ignored it. “Then, let’s go get her,” he said. “Let’s take her home.”

Our luck ran out once we were in Mandeville. We were out of transportation. The few people we saw were all seeking shelter. Except for about twenty or thirty lost chickens, we were the only ones still on the street. I had no idea exactly where to go or how to get there, but I knew who would.

We set out for Captain Woodget’s on foot and arrived at nightfall. Both of us were shivering and as wet as I’d ever been at sea. The captain and Isabelle, who was in one of her lucid periods, met us at the door and rushed us to the fireplace, where Isabelle reminded me more of a worried grandmother than a madwoman, drying our hair with towels and telling the captain to make us tea while she found us clothes. I was sure she had no idea who we were.

I introduced Ray to Captain Woodget and then explained as much as I could about who and what we had to find. I told him it could be dangerous. The captain said he knew of the old place, but there would be no way to reach it at night and in “this breeze.”

“This
breeze
?” I asked.

“Well, you know what I mean, lad. You and I have seen much worse than this.”

“That we have, Captain, and that’s why you don’t have to do this. You owe me nothing.”

He paused for only a moment. “Oh, but I do, Z. I owe you for changing the way I thought about this world, the way I was overlooking the mystery of it, what was beyond what I took for granted, and what was inside as well. I owe you for that, but I am most indebted to you for the life I have now. If I had not met you, I would not have met the biggest damn mystery of all—Isabelle.”

I tried to assure him I had nothing to do with his love for Isabelle, but he wouldn’t hear it. We were fed, clothed, and given hot tea to drink, which the captain spiked with añejo rum, and thereby ruined both the tea and the rum.

He offered us each a bedroom for the night and Ray accepted. I asked if I could stay where I was and bed down by the fire. I didn’t know whether it was the hurricane or the anxiety of finding Star, or both, but I was dog-tired with fatigue. I knew we were close. I knew we’d found a flaw in the Fleur-du-Mal’s plan. What I didn’t know or understand was the possible presence of “Razor Eyes.” He was a cold-blooded murderer and his arrival, for whatever reason, put Star in twice as much jeopardy.

Isabelle brought me a pillow and a pink goose-down blanket. I welcomed both. We all said our good nights and I stretched out by the fire.

Outside, the hurricane never slept. The wind rose and fell in swells and the rain pounded through the night, constant and hard. I stared at the fire. I waited for sleep . . . I waited.

I heard a voice. I was being called . . . summoned.

I was with some others. We were walking toward the opening in a cliff, the mouth of a cave. We were invited. We were the painters, they expected us. They were taller than we were. They led us deep into the cave with tiny lamps held in their palms. They stopped and said we would know where to go from there. We went on, we knew where to go. We set up our scaffolding and brought out our rubbing cloths and ochre. We painted the beasts as they ran through our minds. I went ahead. I saw a light and heard a thundering roar. They told me to stop, but I went ahead and the light became another opening and the roar was a waterfall in front of it, blocking what lay beyond from view. I put my hands in it. I spread the curtain of water and instead of a river below, there was another opening to another cave. I walked through the space in the water and there was a fire inside the cave. It was a small fire that had been burning for days. The ashes were spilling out of the pit. I saw something in among the ashes. I reached in and flicked it out, watching it tumble and roll on the floor of the cave. It was a skull, a child’s skull. It was not Meq.

“Z!” the voice shouted. “Wake up, lad.”

It was Captain Woodget standing over me with Ray leaning in at his side.

Ray said, “You look pretty good in pink, Z.”

They were both fully dressed. It was still raining and there was little light, but I could tell it was morning. Where I’d been I didn’t know and there was no time to think about it. It was September 20, 1906, and the hurricane raged on. Even the captain said he’d never seen anything like it. “Most of them move on in a few hours,” he said. “But this one’s in love with Louisiana.”

We discussed our options for getting to “The Vines” and there were none. The roads were completely washed out. Our only chance was by water—up a low backwater river that was already out of its banks, in a hurricane, on a half-sized sailing ship that had never been used. The captain said he could do it.

At the dock, Ray and I fashioned rain slickers out of scraps of canvas and the captain wrestled with the scaffolding. Eventually, we had to tear it down entirely in order to get the
Little Clover
righted in the channel and ready to sail. If the scale of the ship had been any larger, we couldn’t have done it. The captain shouted his orders through the rain and Ray learned to sail on the job.

Amazingly, there was traffic. Mostly fishermen in small craft, making a dash for home or helping the stranded. We saw one barge that had no choice but to go on and try to make it to port and one steam-driven trawler with no lights burning, traveling in the opposite direction at a reckless speed. As it passed, I had a strange sensation, a buzzing in my head, like static on a telephone line. I looked over at the trawler, but the distance and the rain between made it impossible to see any faces.

We pushed on, tacking often at severe angles. We couldn’t hold a good line for longer than a few minutes, but the captain remained steadfast and the rain never bothered him.

After three tight, difficult bends in the river, he waved to me, pointing at a dock on the opposite shore and shouting, “The Vines.”

It took all our efforts and another half hour to turn the ship against the current and secure it to the dock. We walked up to the main house on a wooden walkway with missing boards and broken railings. The cypress trees on both sides had taken a beating and still were. The wind tore at them from every direction and the rain never let up.

The house was dark as we approached, except for a light in one of the back rooms. It was a big house, an old plantation mansion with columns in front and a veranda all around. It looked as if it wouldn’t make it through the storm.

We watched and listened.

Suddenly, faintly, somewhere between the rain and wind, I heard music. I turned to Ray and the captain.

“Do you hear that?”

They both looked at me and then at each other.

“Hear what?” Ray asked.

“Lily Marchand. It’s her, it’s her voice. She’s singing.”

Neither Ray nor Captain Woodget could hear what I heard. My “ability” had awakened. I concentrated and pinpointed her voice to one of the front rooms, one of the rooms in the dark.

We walked up a short rise and stepped onto the veranda. I could hear something else behind the singing, a hum or a churning, maybe a small engine. The door was wide open and the rain was blowing in, soaking the floorboards of the entryway.

We passed into a hallway that was dark except for a light at the end, the one we’d seen from outside. There was no furniture. Ray found some candles against the wall and gave us each one. Captain Woodget had matches and lit the candles. Two rooms appeared off the hall. The one on the left was completely empty, but the one on the right was filled with sofas, chairs, rugs, lamps, and, most of all, phonograph players. There must have been fifty of them, stacked and squeezed into every niche and corner of the room. And one of them was playing Georges Bizet’s
The Pearl Fishers,
with the role of Leila, the priestess, being sung by Lily Marchand.

They were gone. We’d missed them, I knew it. I looked around and found the phonograph player, the one I wanted, easily. I followed the hum, which was a generator supplying the phonograph player with power until it ran out of gas. I took the needle off the disc and there was silence in the room.

Captain Woodget said he was going to check out the room in the back, the one with the light. Ray and I stayed and looked around.

We saw plates and dishes with food still on them, saucers and coffee cups, all recently used. Phonograph discs and pornographic studio portraits were strewn everywhere. Sadomasochistic contraptions and devices, things I’d only seen in places like Emma Johnson’s, were lying about. In the corner of the room, there was a giant cage or playpen. Inside the playpen, on top of two Persian rugs, was a mattress and a small blanket. This was where he kept her. This was where she slept.