IN WHICH NARCISSE HAS A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE WHEN LOLA WOULD PREFER TO TAKE THE TROLLEY

[little_lady_d]

My man’s got a heart, my man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea, sang Miss Lola Bell, Blues Queen, or else he wouldn’t have gone so far, so far from me.

She had a voice that brought Narcisse back to Saint Louis. When the messenger came, it came cloaked in crow’s wings, not two or four but the flock’s worth, arrayed like an Old Testament angel. Glorious and terrible and impractical, the daemon-messenger flew through will alone, and the will of its master awaiting a return to the Maison Decoudreau.

There, on the banks of the Mississippi, Narcisse spoke to inspire. Times are changing, Narcisse told the troupe, but aren’t we the artists of change? Don’t we reflect all the restless revelry, all the desperate joys of our age? Now’s not the time to turn from music-making. Now’s when we need it most. Music’s what speaks for the aching soul, so let our music be the soul’s encore — let it be what keeps the curtains from falling …

The messenger blotted the sun.

“What did it tell you?” Manny asked him in private, because Manny never could let a mystery alone. They built a musical blueprint together, Manny inking necessary invocations to spirits of water and steam, Narcisse humming out chord progressions for string and brass. Once they got to filling in the conjuration circle, note for note and element for element, the work became repetitive, and the two could talk.

“What the last one told me,” Narcisse answered. “The time’s out of joint, O cursed spite, and nothing I can do to set it right.” When Narcisse paused, it was to watch ships pass by their window, spitting steam into the sky. “Once I lost a cat — pretty thing, odd-eyed, soft and white as a cloud — and I cried like the world was coming to an end. But my sister, she burned a lock of white fur, and she followed the spell-smoke ‘til she found Kitty on a stranger’s sunny windowsill, well-fed and dozing off the afternoon.”

“You don’t find it odd?”

“I find it odd. I wish they’d come to tell me when I should shed my tears, and leave me to laugh in the meanwhile. Isn’t that the right of a prodigal son?”

“The right to be kept in ignorance.”

“Happy ignorance, at least! Not the ignorance of worrying over maybes. The right, let’s say, not to know any better. To never need know.”

Conviction flashed through Manny’s eyes, flint-grey and bright behind pince-nez lenses. “Narcisse,” he said, leaning forward, “if you’ve any right, it’s the right to know. You’ve the right to grasp the truth by your own hands, if need be — the right to demand it. You didn’t give up all of your rights just because you decided to live a life that’s your own.”

“Yet my sister always was the better heiress. Always so sure what to do with power when she had it, when I was busy feeling, weeping, wondering.”

“And what did your sister decide to do with all that power? She decided to send word to you. She believes this is your right as much as I do, or else she wouldn’t have bothered. She wouldn’t have to. Besides,” Manny said, as though this would help matters, “you’re smart. You know there’s no unknowing this.”

Day by day the family messengers multiplied, clustered like notes on a fresh sheet of staff paper, and Narcisse stood witness as they clustered to cacophony. There was a rhyme for that, wasn’t there? One for sorrow, two for mirth, and so on and so on up to seven and silence. The messengers spoke together in sibilant harmony, all fell rumor and omen. Some had snakes for hair, or the faces of lions, or no face at all.

So what if there’s no truth to grasp here, Manny? What if there’s nothing on the other side but tears? He didn’t ask, never could, not when the words weighed down his tongue and grand speeches didn’t trip off like they used to. He knew, then and now, what Manny would say, what Manny would believe with all his poor scholar’s soul. And what would Narcisse believe?

Narcisse roused from his memory, and watched from the bar, as Lola Bell poured out her soul in honeyed melody. It went down smooth, but burned like whiskey on the way, left your head light and your eyes stinging. Her voice broke flat when it could bear no more tragedy, and her fingers dived down the keys of the rickety old corner piano — restless, relentless, seeking solace whatever the cost, the way the world did after a war. Tension hung on the air like bait on a hook. Bar-flies leaned from their stools, breathless.

She had a way about her. Always did, since their nights playing the Storyville saloons, nights Narcisse could sit at a keyboard and sway a room into an easy loose-limbed trance, but Lola alone could command it. She could command colosseums, when she felt like it. Stand down gladiators and sing.

And here I tried to tell Orion music’s not the same as command. A figure of speech, of course. In Narcisse’s deft fingers, figures of speech spun like coins until they landed heads-or-tails.

Meanwhile, Orion paced at Narcisse’s heel, unseen and ready as a pistol in a garter belt.

Once upon a time on the banks of the Mississippi, with the band playing hot behind her, Lola raised her voice and other worlds answered. Strange portals opened with the steam whistle’s cry, and spirits surged up, out of the waves, to dance down the shore in slippers of mist. They mingled with the audience, made them gasp and gaze in wonderment, while conjuration circles shimmered and held. Manny and Narcisse worked the theory, but Lola sang reality.

The bar-flies here, they knew the reality she was singing. They knew what it was to dash yourself to pieces on a rock-face of indifference, to show up in a city penniless and promiseless, and the sun still set and the days still passed, pain the only language you shared with strangers. Each listened as they listened to their own soul’s urging.

One final, mournful note faded on the air, and Narcisse put his hands together, joined the bar’s applause. Applauded louder than the rest — loud enough for to Lola look up and catch his eye, catch the crook of his head, his smile.

“Look what the sphinx dragged in,” she muttered to herself, then announced a fifteen-minute break.

She shrugged on her evening jacket, and she didn’t slink out, she left with the blunt grace and purpose of a train leaving the station. You could watch her go, or you could get on board. Narcisse fell into her step, as Orion fell into his.

“No encores or requests? I was about to ask for a Louisiana rag.”

“And I would’ve played it backwards and forwards for you, but I know you — you want a conversation. Fifteen minutes. Go.”

“My sweet-singing tyrant,” Narcisse called her with fondness. “It’s like I’m late for a rehearsal, making my excuses.”

“Which you were, more than once. And you were our arranger.” Settling her back to the red-brick wall of the bar where she sold her songs, Lola took out a pack of cigarettes and something to burn with. “Fifteen minutes is too long when you’re already late.”

“No excuses for our Miss Bell, then. How about an opportunity?”

Lola laughed brass-loud, reverberating, “Oh, this I have to hear.”

“I cannot tell,” Orion intoned, “whether the human before us is your ally or your enemy. Should I be on my guard?”

Just you watch. Narcisse brought up his best, his brightest smile, a smile rising like a firework. “Listen, Lottie, I’m not half the performer you are —”

“I’d say you are, just not on stage.”

“Just so, just so. I’m the rambling dilettante, wasting words and time, but you, you’re the professional. You’ve got genius and discipline — those warring sisters who so seldom deign to sit at the same table! When they’re together, nothing stands in their way. Tell me, Lottie, why did we ever split?”

“Seems to me,” she said, “you and your man had a spat, and somehow we let you sweep the rest of us into it.”

“Me and Manny, fight? Never.”

“And I suppose you never argued an hour into rehearsal because he called you a sophist, and you said ‘what’s wrong with sophistry?’ But no,” she said, “it wasn’t one of those. Those fights you had with all your cards on the table. In the last, neither of you had the guts to ante in.”

New urgency entering the void of aes voice, Orion asked, “Who is this man who stands so repeatedly and remorselessly against you? How can I best defend you from his degradations?”

Narcisse only held up his hands. “You always did cut straight to the heart, ma chère. No one better to call my bluff. But,” he interrupted himself, “let me tell you something you don’t know.”

Cigarette turned in fingers, red ash glowing. “You haven’t yet,” said Lola, but she shot Narcisse a look that said try me.

“Socrates says it’s the wise man who knows he knows nothing — speaking of sophists and their opponents.” Narcisse turned again to face the night air, the chill of autumn descending. “How can I hope to surprise you? All I can tell you is I’ve been chasing something I don’t know, who-knows-how-long, running from gig to gig ‘til tonight. And tonight, I found it, above Club Alexandria.”

A slow exhale, full of smoke. “Is that a name that should mean something to me?”

“It’s a melancholy name, no mistake. One wonders Cleopatra grieved half so hard for her library lost as the generations of sages and scholars cursing the fire and Caesar's fool mistake. Some say Caesar only got a storehouse or two, and the Great Library lived on to spread psychés iatreíon.”

“Translate. You’re talking thaumaturgy,” said Lola, “and the fire’s Prohibition. Can’t say I ever saw you living to the letter of that law. Where would you be without your tricks?”

“Straight to the heart, ma chère.”

“And what, you got a gig from some whisper sisters with a speakeasy who told you you were living history?”

“The Alexandria Club welcomed me in, set me up with a place to perform. Nothing like our old summoning shows, of course! Just the sort of empty visions child-conjurers call up for practice, when they’re learning to make a body a daemon can live in.”

“And we all knows what that’s like.” Lola’s eyebrows spoke volumes.

“Like making an imaginary friend. You ever have one of those when you were a littler Lottie?”

“I was more of a marbles girl — imaginary friends are harder to hustle for keeps. But sure. Once I made myself a make-believe accomplice, to blame my bad ideas on.” Before Narcisse could say anything more, she added, “I had bad ideas, once, too.”

“Then you know how it is. You get the picture in your head, the cornsilk color of the hair, the eyes alight with laughter, the ears sharp and fey — and while we’re having fun, why not wings, why not horns, why not a lithe, lashing tail? Lavish on details, until you could swear your friend was right beside you, tempting you to games and mischief. Take the picture out of your head, put it somewhere someone else can see, and you’re halfway to a conjurer. But only half. There’s only so much any one of us can imagine on our own, after all. You have to reach farther and farther outside yourself, into worlds you didn’t make.”

“Have a dialogue instead of of a monologue, say.”

“Let’s say!” Narcisse saw in Lola something he hadn’t in years: utter recognition. Lips quirked under serious eyes, dressing him down, but she listened. “Where’d you like to steer our conversation, then?”

“I can see you’re excited. It’s the way you talk yourself in circles. And I can see you’re putting a spin on something. Just promise you’ll wind it down for me, sometime, and get to a point.”

“Say I’m setting the stage for understanding. There’s joy in playing pretend, but spend too much time with imaginary friends, and a child starts to feel lonesome. Your songs give lonesome spirits a story they can see themselves in — it lets them slip inside the music, live another life there. That’s the thing I’m always chasing, the thing-I-don’t-know-yet. Between the singing and the hearing, the performance and the audience, the stage and everywhere else, something wild and new arises. I never seem to catch it, when it’s me and me alone.”

”Then maybe it’s not a thing to be caught. You ever think of that, Socrates?” She gave him a sideways smirk of a glance, under low lashes. “You call it wild, and maybe wild’s what it needs to be to survive. Hold it too close, and it’ll find a way to claw itself free.”

“Maybe, maybe! And maybe it’s a wonder that you or I ever lured it near enough to see. That it saw us, and recognized itself.”

“A wonder that’ll leave you with claw-marks next morning.”

Narcisse smiled, and his teeth shone white. “I miss the wonders we worked together. The wilds we traveled through. Don’t you?”

She saw his angle a mile away. With a long-suffering sigh she crossed her arms, cigarette held up at a slant. “So you’re getting the band back together?”

“Now we’re winding back down to that point you were asking for.”

“And? Did you settle that spat of yours?”

The smile slipped from Narcisse’s eyes, yet he didn’t miss a beat. “What’s the point of an empty apology?” he asked.

“I imagine,” said Lola, “it’d look like this.”

“I never wanted to sweep you up in a spat — never wanted to have one, when it came down to it. And once Prohibition passed, I didn’t have much to offer anyone in way of an apology. ”

“Because an apology has to come with perks. That’s why you’re in Harlem, scouting out performance spaces, bringing the news to me like a puppy with the paper in his mouth …”

“The space is anywhere we are. I told you I found something, but it’s not the Alexandria Club: it’s what we used to be. Our shows were the stuff of worlds colliding, of human ingenuity and daemonic inspiration, and none of us — you know it’s true — could have done it on our own. So here’s my offer, here’s my pitch. Why not start the old rhythm up again? Why not here, now, human and daemon together?”

“Human and human, unless there’s something you need to tell me about yourself. I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Oh, I’m already in it. The pitch is for you and my friend here.” Narcisse tilted to his side, where Orion loomed. “What do you think, O Hum-of-the-Bowstring? Want to make some music with us?”

Orion’s gaze was, as ever, blankness itself, yet it made itself blanker. Lola frowned. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “Who are you talking to?”

“Just a daemon I know. Club Alexandria got a little heat from witch-hunters, but ae saved me and saw me to the other side — don’t fret. You don’t notice aer, because Harlem made a compact.”

“I didn’t make any compact,” she said, and soon as she said it, the light in her eyes grew sharper. Something in them always clouded, when they looked past Narcisse and into the unremarkable dark, nothing there worth seeing. But now she saw.

She saw a monster of shadow and iron, and swore.

“You damn fool.”

“It’s a weak sort of spell,” Narcisse admitted. “Only holds as long as no one finds the flaw in it. But introductions are in order. Miss Charlotte Bell, meet Orion, a Hunter of the Heights, and a few others things besides.”

“I was not apprised of this ‘pitch,’” Orion said, in perfect honesty. Could ae lie? Was it in aes contract? Ae stood, swirling out of the shape of a coursing hound into a hulking upright mass, like a great bear standing on its hindquarters. Ae gazed down at Lola with all the gravity of aer star-spun eyes.

Lola, facing down the cosmos, could only shake her head. “You’re in it, that’s for sure. Never do a thing by half-measures, do you, Narcisse?”

“Not when I can help it. Orion,” Narcisse went on, “meet my old friend and rival, none other than the inimitable Lola Bell. She taught me the best of what I know.”

“Not enough.”

“She’s modest.”

“It is my honor to share in the debt Monsieur Narcisse owes you,” Orion said, smooth and featureless and — ae had this going for aer — polite. “If your teachings have so well-served monsieur, then they have done my duty for me, before I materialized to answer it.”

“Don’t talk debts with Lottie,” Narcisse warned — a cheerful warning. “Lottie’s not just a singer, piano player, and show stopper, she’s a gambler par excellence. That’s why she knows sometimes you have to take the long shot.”

“And sometimes you’ve got to read the table. Orion, is it? You’re a daemon, and you’re throwing your lot in with the likes of him? What’s in it for you?”

“I am duty-bound. I must protect Monsieur Narcisse, by the pacts of our fathers.”

“Narcisse’s father,” she said, delicate as a shot to the head, “is long gone.”

That brought him back. The days wondering, Manny’s prodding. Couldn’t that man let a mystery alone? Folks disappeared all across the country, the day they called Emergence. Léonide Decoudreau was one of them, and he was as powerful as a man could be. What was Narcisse supposed to believe? Blame thaumaturgy, blame theurgy, blame the arts that opened other worlds?

Blame himself, his band, the life he loved? Forswear his tricks? Where would he be without them?

Every messenger sent by his sister was an accusation. Come home, they said in their many voices. He wasn’t home when it happened. If he didn’t cause the catastrophe, didn’t start whatever was wrong with the other worlds and America, then he didn’t stop it, either. Didn’t solve it. Music wouldn’t save his father’s soul.  

Come home. Come. Do something.

“And still the pacts remain,” Orion said.

Narcisse turned up his smile, that smile like a firework that never fell. “And so,” he said, for Orion’s sake, his own, “why not make something new of them?”

Lola drove her cigarette out on the bar’s brick facade. She gave Narcisse the look, the I know-what-you’re-about look, the you’re-betting-more-than-you-can-spend look. She could always call his bluff.

Sometimes, he bluffed so she could call it.

The ashes from her cigarette spread. They lit up secret, stone-carved sigils, branching down bricks like lightning until they hit cement. There they blazed red-hot, and made a path, winding off in moonlight.

Narcise whistled. “What were you saying about whisper sisters and their speakeasies?”

 

A roll of the eyes, and Lola gestured down the sidewalk. Here’s the stop, the gesture said. Get on board. “You think I just work here? I run the goddamn show.”

Comments

[ernest]

"Meanwhile, Orion paced at Narcisse’s heel, unseen and ready as a pistol in a garter belt." this is a good sentence. also good is aes bluntness and lack of nuance in people who could cause harm, while narcisse is all nuance.

then memory lane leads to getting (part of) the band back together, how wonderful! lola is a terrific character and i can't wait to get to know her better. and "Sometimes, he bluffed so she could call it" is another great sentence!

[little_lady_d]

orion: tell me whether i should be prepared for an encounter with a friend or an enemy, monsieur.
narci: have you never had a frenemy before?
orion: ...
narci: no, i suppose not.

:D thank you!