“There was something strange when I radioed it in. Before the ops center responded, someone else cut in, somebody who knows us well enough to assume the white man down was my partner Bull.”
“You think they were gunning for the two of you?”
“No idea. Dominic said police officers were members of Samedi. He couldn’t have been talking about beat cops. They’d have to be more senior.”
Amaia looked up at the sky. It was just past seven in the evening, and the sunlight was nearly gone. “We’re close to the hotel, and it looks as if the French Quarter’s hardly been touched. You think the city’s oldest bordello is still open?”
The sky was purplish blue when they got to Dauphine Street at twenty past seven. The big green doors to the hotel were shut, and the flag display across the balcony had disappeared.
Amaia went to the main entrance and squinted through the crack in the door. It swung open suddenly, and she found herself face to face with one of the sisters who owned the hotel.
Without a word, the woman rushed out and enfolded her in a mighty embrace. “Oh, thank the Lord! I’m so glad you’re okay—where your other friends at? I got really worried when y’all didn’t come back.”
“They’re fine, all things considered,” Amaia managed to reply.
The proprietress released her and hugged Charbou just as heartily. “But y’all come on in!” she said when she let him go. “I got to lock up. They’s people out there who would cut our throats just to get in.” She hauled them inside and bolted the door.
“You still have customers in the hotel?”
“Bless you, yes. Most don’t have any place to go back to. Others was afraid to go out; they’s awful stories going round about what’s going on out there. And I had friends turning up here ’cause they got nowhere to go. I had to put them in your friends’ rooms, but I still got yours.” She smiled. “I was sure you was gonna come back.”
“Can we stay here?”
“You still my guests. Of course you can.”
“Just one night.”
“Stay long as you want. Practically nothing left to eat, but me and my sisters gonna stay here long as it takes. On the radio today, they say the government worried ’bout Lake Pontchartrain. If it spills over, the center of New Orleans gonna be underwater too. They say it’s gonna take months to pump out the water and fix the levees. They talkin’ ’bout an evacuation, an official one, with soldiers going round to force people out of they houses.”
“We heard that too.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you, I’m gonna wait right here till they come, but I ain’t gonna leave my hotel a minute before that. This is our home and our living; I ain’t gonna walk off and let any bunch of savages set it on fire and burn up all we got.”
Amaia and Charbou glanced at one another.
A big smile broke across the hotel owner’s face. “But I’m such a fool! Here I am going on and on, while y’all must be exhausted. Let me take you upstairs.” She picked up a lit candle from the reception counter. “One little problem is you got to share the room. I don’t have another one.”
She accompanied them upstairs and showed them to the room. She lifted the candle high so they could see the inside. After sleeping at a shrimpers’ camp, in an abandoned house, and in the hallway at Charity Hospital, the room at the Dauphine was a dream of beautifully appointed tidiness. Looking back, Amaia was surprised to realize how quickly she had accepted and adapted to the misery of their circumstances over the past few days.
“Like I said, we ’bout out of food, so I can’t give you breakfast. They’s a candle and a little box of matches to relight it if you have to. But here’s something I think you gonna like.” She ushered them into the bathroom and held the candle overhead.
Amaia peeked over her shoulder and smiled as their hostess continued. “Before the hurricane got to us, Grace, my sister, had the good sense to fill all the bathtubs right to the top. Be careful with it, because it’s got to do for everything. Washing, drinking, you name it. It’s not warm, but you got clean towels.”
Peeling off the clothes she’d worn since Katrina’s arrival was like shedding an extra skin. Amaia placed the folded photograph she’d been carrying on the shelf alongside Jacob’s tiny orange dragon. She smiled and then inspected her nude body in the mirror. Her arms and neck were tanned. She rubbed her belly, grateful that Annabel’s antibiotics had purged her of the infection. A half-full bucket of water was enough to fill the stoppered sink. The cake of lilac soap delighted her with a fragrance she wouldn’t have even noticed in ordinary circumstances. Washing carefully, she discovered bruises and scrapes she hadn’t known she had. Another half bucket of water was enough to wash and rinse her hair. She didn’t dry herself because she wanted to preserve that delicious, cool cleanliness. It seemed an eternity since she’d felt this good. She put on clean panties and a T-shirt.
“Your turn!” she called and made way for Charbou.
He went into the bathroom and left the door slightly ajar, so flickering candlelight filtered into the bedroom.
She lay stretched out on the bed with the window wide open, listening to Charbou slosh water in the tub and sink. She had a vision of him sniffing the soap just as she’d done. A warm breeze came through the window, carrying the echo of a faraway saxophone. She smiled, delighted that someone in all this darkness was still making music. She got up and leaned on the windowsill to listen. Two kinds of folks never leave New Orleans: musicians and ghosts.
She turned her head and saw Charbou reflected in the mirror. His body was bare, shining wet, and redolent of lilac soap. He was as gorgeous as a classical statue. He met her gaze through the reflection. Amaia grasped the bottom of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head with one smooth move; turning to meet his eyes, she got up, stepped out of her panties, and went naked to him.
The specter had stayed away from Amaia’s dreams for some time. That night, Amaia sensed a presence by the bed, watchful in the darkness, intrigued by the defiance of the little one who stubbornly kept her back to the door as if proclaiming, I’m not afraid of you. Yet she was afraid, and they both knew it. The menacing presence bent down close to Amaia, opened her fearsome lips, and exhaled hot breath across the nape of the child’s neck.
You’re wondering why I didn’t gobble you up? I can, you know. Anytime I want. Maybe you think I’m crazy?
Amaia jerked awake in the darkness, thinking she’d sensed a hostile movement. Her eyes opened on absolute blackness. She cursed herself for neglecting to leave her flashlight lit in the bathroom. She fumbled across the bedside table until she found it and then switched it on, holding it low so as not to wake Charbou.
He was sound asleep. She watched him for a few moments but again caught a hint of movement. Outside, beyond the window. That’s what had awakened her. She switched off her light, got out of bed, drew aside the curtain, and peered out. Across the street, the heavy curtains of an upstairs dwelling were parted and tied back. Two tall French doors were open wide, and the golden light within revealed a richly decorated room. An ancient man wrapped in a bathrobe was reading in the light of an eight-armed candelabra. Behind him, the gilded titles on the spines of the books in a ceiling-high bookcase gleamed and reflected the warmth of the flickering candles. Amaia watched him, spellbound by a feeling of otherworldly beauty.