“More or less lame than the cock?”
“Would y’all hurry up?” Rose yelled. They had stopped outside a bar, the slow thumping of bass pounding through the brick walls. The light inside was bathing everyone in red.
“Deep N’ Easy,” I remarked, reading the faded sign. “Just the way I like it.”
Rose shook her head, unimpressed, and we followed her inside where we lined up in front of the bouncer. I leaned into her. “You never smile, do you, Rose?”
She rolled her eyes and told the bouncer our names. He checked us off the list and told us to go inside.
Ambrosia spotted us first, waving casually from a table near the stage where the band slowly rumbled on. Like last night, it was a three piece set-up, but with a somber, coal-colored singer on acoustic guitar. His soul was bleeding out through the strings and I was excruciatingly jealous.
We sat down and Perry immediately got up and told us all she was getting the first round of drinks.
“Tell them you’re with locals!” Rose yelled after her. “Don’t let them give you the tourist price.”
Ambrosia smiled at Maximus and I and I felt strangely giddy inside. It didn’t make any sense and I had to shake my head to get rid of it. Fortunately, no one else had noticed. They were all staring at the band while Ambrosia explained who they were.
“Dead Frog’s Blood,” she explained.
“Poetic,” I said. “I guess they aren’t known for being upbeat.”
She leaned toward me, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, Mr. Foray, something tells me you know a lot about the blues. Even the blues can have a happy tale to tell.”
“Mr. Foray?” I repeated. “You make me sound so old.”
“Well, you can’t be more than twenty-five,” she said sincerely.
“Is it because I’m immature?”
“That.” She winked at me and then tossed her hair over her shoulder. “And your girlfriend can’t be much more than twenty-one.”
“She’s twenty-three,” I explained.
“And how old are you?”
I swallowed. “Thirty-two.”
“That’s quite the age difference. I’m impressed.”
I shrugged. “You gotta get them while they’re young before they know what they’re getting into.” I played it off like the age difference between us didn’t plague me from time to time. That little niggling fear that I wanted what I wanted from her because I was older and ready for more in life, while she was still young and almost virginal (well, a little more experienced after last night), and probably had fields of wild oats in her left to sow. I didn’t want to think about that.
Perry came back with the drinks: a pitcher of local brew for everyone else, a mint julep for herself, and a Jack Daniels and lemonade mix for me. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but it would do the job.
We all clinked glasses across the table and got down to business. Maximus explained to Ambrosia about the haunted house we wanted to film, while Rose told her that perhaps we were better off looking into the whole zombie epidemic. Ambrosia wasn’t as thrilled with that idea.
“Rose,” she said with a smirk, “sending tourists off into the inner city isn’t the smartest thing you could do.”
“We’d be with them,” Rose said, pointing at Maximus. “We’re not tourists.”
“Right, as if that makes a difference,” she said. “I’m half black and I’d still get held up in seconds, if I was lucky. Trust me, I want to figure out what’s going on as much as you do, but I don’t think they came here to dig up Voodoo. Just ghosts.”
“Well,” Perry spoke up, a strange fire burning in her eyes as she looked at Ambrosia, “personally, I think investigating this whole zombie thing is a lot more interesting than the whole haunted house deal. I mean, I hate to sound condescending about the afterlife, but this is something new to us.”
If Ambrosia was put off by Perry’s argument, she didn’t show it. She smiled gently at her and said, “You’d be right about that. For as long as I’ve been studying Voodoo, I’ve never seen a single case of this happening.”
I laughed. “Sure, but you can’t be much older than…what, twenty-eight?”
“I’ll pretend that was a compliment. I’m twenty-six. But I’m a descendent of the great Marie Laveau. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”
I sipped my drink. “I don’t know, I hear a lot of things. Who is that?”
Rose spoke up. “Ambrosia’s mother claimed to be the daughter of Marie’s son.”
“Not claimed,” Ambrosia said, glaring at her. “Proven. I have the DNA.”
“Even though Marie’s children by Paris both died at a young age of yellow fever,” she countered.
Ambrosia ignored her and turned her million dollar smile on us. “To get back to the story, it is fascinating, Perry, you’re right. I just don’t think it’s safe. Zombies are one thing, but those neighborhoods, the real people, they’re a much bigger threat to your safety. Maybe after you get some haunted house footage, we can look into it more.”
“That’s just what I was going to suggest,” Maximus said, directing his goofy smitten gaze at her.
Right. Suggest. Like Maximus wasn’t all about telling us what we could and couldn’t do.
“So where is the haunted house?” I asked.
“Yes, and is it anything like the haunted mansion in Disneyland?” Perry added.
With a defeated sigh, Rose told us about the house, pretty much repeating what Maximus had told us: paranormal activity had doubled, as it had in many parts of the city post-Katrina, and a lot of researchers had been in there without picking up on anything too wild. Aside from the spike in the supernatural, there wasn’t anything too unusual about the house. It was built at the turn of the century and was used as a boarding house for many years before becoming a squatter’s paradise. Then the storm surge caused the breeches in the Industrial Canal and flooded the place. It was hard to tell if anyone had died inside.
“Tomorrow night we’ll go and shoot it,” Maximus said.
“Don’t we need special permission from the city?” Perry asked.
“You don’t need permission to do anything here,” Rose said dryly. “The Wild West, remember? The City that Forgot to Care.”