You’re mine, she had whispered as the recycled champagne flowed out of her, over Anthony’s chest and stomach in a pale yellow stream. You’re mine, no one else’s, not hers, only mine now.
Her words, as much as her act, had given him a jolt. Rose never referred, even so obliquely, to the uncomfortable fact of Anthony’s marriage.
He placed his hands flat against the glass—two perfect, long-fingered handprints limned in a nearly phosphorescent mist—then pushed himself away from the window and reached for the ice bucket. A half-full bottle of champagne was chilling there. Magie Noir, the strange brand Rose always brought with her. She said it came from a winery near New Orleans, where she spent the rest of the year.
“Cajun champagne?” he’d asked, a little nervously, the first time she had poured it for him.
“You’d really have to call it sparkling wine, I guess,” she’d said. “But that sounds as if it ought to be pink and served in Dixie cups. Magie Noir is a potion.”
Now Anthony poured some of the potion into a tall fluted glass and sipped slowly. Bubbles exploded against the roof of his mouth. There was an underlying spiciness, a slight burn like the essence of Tabasco without the garlic and vinegar, like oil of cinnamon, a subtle heat stitching across the tongue. Still, he could not detect all the flavors Rose said were in the bouquet; she knew the names and tastes of herbs he’d never heard of.
Anthony drained his glass and turned to look at the woman who shared this room and this week and his city with him. The woman who slept the sleep of the sated, sprawled across the white expanse of the enormous bed. Every year the beds seemed to grow huger, softer, more enticing. Every year their bodies seemed to fit together more precisely, their hearts seemed to bleed into each other more willingly.
Rose LeBlanc.
He knew so little about her, knew not even whether that was her real name; the symmetry of its syllables seemed too perfect. But he could imagine no name that would suit her better. And that was what it said on her Louisiana driver’s license, next to a tiny snapshot, all disarrayed hair and fierce, camera-hating eyes: Rose LeBlanc of New Orleans.
They had met in Nashville, two up-and-coming young artists invited to exhibit paintings in a museum show. Anthony’s wife wasn’t with him; his career did not interest her. He’d been at some cocktail party sucking down the free sherry, and suddenly there was Rose wrapped in black lace and silk, hair in a wild purple cloud around her head, a glass of Magie Noir already in her graceful, gloved hand. When he saw her work, Anthony knew he had to sleep with this woman.
Rose’s paintings seemed ready to crawl off the canvas and twine tendrils round your wrists, almost too beautiful and too morbid to bear. Psychedelic washes of color twisted into intricate, mandala-like patterns, seeming to swarm on the wall. Black-green swamp scenes so lush and organic that you swore the leaning tree trunks could be made of bone, the draping foliage and shadow a thin network of viscera, of stretched flesh and trailing, looping vein. Her paintings glistened and seethed. It was if she mixed quicksilver into her tempera, LSD into her watercolors.
They made Anthony think of creation and destruction, sex and voodoo, of broken skulls resting on candlelit altars, eye sockets blazing dead black light. Of the thousand ghost stories that must pervade any block of her native French Quarter, of the thousand deaths and pains inflicted there daily. And of the sodden, decadent pleasures.
Looking at Rose’s work—even the Polaroids of new canvases she occasionally sent him between visits—was like being in a hotel room with her, her tongue working him over or her legs wrapped tight around his hips, burying him deep inside her. Sometimes Anthony felt stupidly, nigglingly jealous of the other people who must see her work, wondering if it made love to them in just the same way.
But they did not hold her tight as she laughed and cried with pleasure. They did not bite her throat and lick her nipples, they did not spread her thighs and drink the nectar of her cunt under a rainbow of Christmas lights, thirty floors above the city. They did not drink Magie Noir with her.
At least, Anthony hoped they didn’t.
He approached the bed. The folds and ripples of the white sheet caught all the colors in the room; they spread like a watercolor wash over the hills and hollows of Rose’s body. A corner of the sheet was draped across her face, with each breath. He took hold of the sheet and gently pulled it away.
Flawless skin paler than his, pale even against the white sheet. Mouth raw from the days they had already spent together—from kissing and the sandpaper rasp of Anthony’s scruff, since he did not often leave the bed long enough to shave—too dark in the pale face, like an overripe plum. Lashes smudgy against cheeks, twin streaks of charcoal. Hair of a curious purple-black, the color of a bruise, teased and tangled around her head; there were a couple of patches at the back where it had begun to knot up into dreadlocks. The soft bush of hair between her thighs was the same strange color; when wet with his saliva or sperm, it glistened nearly violet.
Rose was thin and lithe, the upper part of her body almost boyish in the hollowness of its shoulders and collarbones, its small, vivid nipples, the subtle framework of ribs visible beneath skin white as parchment. But her hips were wide and strong, and her ass was as round and heavy as fruit, delectable. With the tips of his fingers Anthony brushed her cheek, then ran his hand down the side of her neck and cupped the small swell of her breast in his palm. The nipple puckered at his touch, and Rose opened her eyes: all great black pupil and glittering purple iris, hectic even at the moment of awakening. Huge, wild eyes; feral eyes.
“How long did I sleep?” she demanded.
“A couple of hours.”
Next he expected her to ask, How many more days do we have? It was the only thing that disturbed the flow of their time together each year: halfway through the week, Rose would start counting off the days until they had to part, then the hours, and finally the last, excruciating minutes before Anthony boarded a plane for the other side of the continent, back to the wealthy wife he could not bring himself to leave, and she hopped a southbound Greyhound. The diminishing time seemed to twist inside her, to cause her actual physical anguish. At the end she could not even bear to lose time to sleep. If Anthony slept, she would sit awake watching him, studying the tightly drawn, compact lines of his face and body as if memorizing them for another year.
But she didn’t ask the question, not this time; just pulled him down to her.
In lust her voice became thick, clotted, like slow southern sap, like sweet oil. Her sobs and her cries of pleasure were curiously muted, as if her strongest emotions burned pure and hot enough to drain the air of oxygen. “Come into me,” Anthony heard her say faintly. “Come to me now. Come into me now…”
He descended into the moist, fragrant world of the bed and the body of his lover. Nothing mattered but Rose’s tongue in his mouth, his hand between Rose’s legs, sliding up and down the wet length of her cleft, then sinking two fingers deep inside her. If felt like wet silk in there, like the slow rippling muscles of a snake. She groaned way down in her throat and moved hard against his hand, forcing it deeper. For a moment his finger found her rhythm, heightened it.
When he pulled away, Rose caught at his hand. Anthony brought her fingers to his mouth, kissed their small, sharp tips. Then he pulled her legs wide. A passage more ancient than the river, with a stronger pull than the ocean’s tide…
He lowered his face to her, ran his tongue around the swelling bud of her clit, then let it slide into the rubypearl depths of her vagina. Her smell was like flowers crushed in a seawater, her taste like fruit ripened and slightly fermented. Anthony thought he would die before he could drink enough of it.
Soon, though, he burned to be inside her. He tumbled Rose onto her back and found the heart of her womb with one liquid thrust. Her scream was like a crystal knife falling, splintering. Time went away; he might have spent minutes or hours inside her; his orgasm seemed to stretch the fabric of reality to the breaking point,
then beyond.
Afterward they lay tangled together, too spent to speak. Anthony’s penis felt as if it were melting inside her. In fact, his whole body felt ready to melt. He slept.
When he woke again, he could not move.
The slight, pleasant numbness he’d felt earlier had grown to vast proportions. It weighed down his body, his thoughts. His brain buzzled dully. He could not twitch a finger or an eyelid, could scarcely remember his own name. He hadn’t drunk enough to feel this bad, had never drunk enough to feel like this.
Rose was sitting up in bed beside him, her huge eyes shining. She smiled when she saw he was awake.
“Sit up, darling,” she said.
Anthony knew he would not be able to obey. But even as he thought this, he felt himself bending at the waist. He looked on as if from a distance as his body levered itself into a sitting position.
“I’m afraid you won’t be going home to your wife this year. I get so lonely, Anthony. I haven’t painted anything for months and months. I spent all that time perfecting my recipe…my potion.”
She held up a bottle of the champagne.
“Magie Noir, darling.” She whispered. “Black magic. Bufo marinus…itching pea…children bones…and datura, the concombre zombi.”
Zombie, he heard dumbly. The word ought to mean something to him, but he couldn’t think what.
“I don’t have much money, but that’s all right. You can go out and work while I paint. You can do anything. I tell you to do… and not a damned thing more.
“Now come here and fuck me again.”
He would not move. He would simply refuse to move, would exert every ounce of his will to resist her. He strained against his own treacherous musculature. He was losing the battle.
“Fuck me,” Rose said again. Her voice was more urgent this time, and edged with the slightest hint of danger.
Helplessly, Anthony took her in his arms and entered her. He couldn’t feel a thing, and soon the buzzing filled his skull so that he couldn’t think either.
“Perfect,” Rose sighed beneath him.
NAILED
The little man was about two feet tall, as dark and shriveled as a Brazil nut, carved out of hardwood and studded everywhere with long iron nails. He was repulsive, Kat thought; and as he had been created to curse someone, he ought to be. But she could see the strange crucified beauty of him too, and that was one of the reasons she was good at her job.
She’d enjoyed haggling with his owner, a fat Jamaican woman in a purple turban who presided over her tin shed in the muddy market as if it were a palace and she a queen. But Kat wanted the little man, and she was ready to close the deal. “Fifty dollars American,” she said. “Right now, cash.”
The woman’s broad face registered infinite disdain. “Fifty dollah, I maybe get you good stick of ganja fo’ dat, but not my obeah man,”
“What did you call him?”
“Obeah man. Obeah like Jamaican voodoo, you know, missy? You believe, den he got de power. But if you don’ believe, he just a piece of wood.” The woman saw Kat was interested and took advantage of the moment. “Eighty dollah, las’ chance.”
“Okay,” Kat said, and the woman’s smile was worth it.
She nestled the fetish into her big straw tote and headed back into the steaming thick of the Kingdom market, bracing herself for the onslaught of humanity that instantly surrounded and accosted her.
“Hello, lady, you got to look in here—”
“What’s up, blondie? You American? Speaken see Deutsch? Huh?”
“You buy two dese only hunnred dollah ‘merican—”
“Lady! Lady!”
Kat plastered a vacant smile on her face—sorry, no one in to take your calls just now—and shouldered her way gently through the crowd, letting the reggae that played everywhere drown out the melee of voices, dodging the goats that roamed the market, scanning the stalls for anything that stood out from the mounds of tourist junk. She’d already bought some gorgeously dyed cloth and some decent beadwork, but she had a feeling that the little man was going to be her major find of the day, and he was starting to get heavy.
Back at her hotel, Kat stood the fetish inside the tiny closet and shut the door on him. She wasn’t particularly superstitious, but the thing had been made with ill will, with the intent to hurt a man or woman. Wood and iron. Wood could bleed, and iron could remember…
Kat shook her head. She was tired, drained from the constant, vibrant, faintly hostile energy of this unfamiliar city. She needed a shower and sleep. Tomorrow she would find the Federal Express office and ship her purchases to Axel and Rob, the couple for whom she was shopping in Kingston. Kat was a traveling freelance buyer, a sort of exotic bargain hunter. Axel and Rob owned one of several Manhattan stores that bought her finds, priced them up considerably, and sold them to collectors of art, antiques, and curiosities. After nearly a decade of this, Kat couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else. She was just thirty and figured she had a good half-century left to pursue her career, which made for an interesting life and an eclectically decorated apartment.
She’d expected to fall into bed right away, but a long shower renewed her energy and made her hungry. She put on a full-skirted red cotton dress, pulled her damp hair into a knot, and hit the street again. She was staying in New Kingston, which was calmer than the market area, and she was able to have a peaceful dinner of jerk chicken and Red Stripe at a food stall near the hotel. Afterward, with the spices lingering on her tongue and the two beers buzzing pleasantly in her brain, she followed the lilt of reggae to a nearby street party.
It felt good to dance alone in the sweaty, noisy crowd, to sway with the music as the singer’s voice rose and fell, to know that no one was going to grab her arm and claim her. This buying trip had come at just the right time. Finally she’d had a concrete reason to put an end to the all-night fights, the deceptions and reconciliations, to say with a delicious finality, “I’m leaving the country tomorrow, and I never want to see you again,” then hang up on Tedd’s answering whine. She’d felt cowardly telling him over the phone, but that way he couldn’t transfix her with those puppy-dog eyes, couldn’t play her the new song he’d written for her, couldn’t make her listen yet again to the poor-misunderstood-genius rap that every guitarist seemed to know from birth.
“Miss? ‘Scuse me, miss?”
Kat figured the deep male voice was talking to her, but she didn’t want to deal with anyone, didn’t want to flirt or resist flirting. She kept dancing alone, silently daring the man to grab her arm. Instead he tapped her gently on the shoulder.
“Miss, it’s really not safe for a white lady to be out here by herself tonight.”
She turned and looked into the speaker’s face. He was maybe her age, maybe a little younger. His hair was separated into little twists, as if he was trying to start dreadlocks. His eyes were tired and very intelligent. She wondered if he was feeding her a common pickup line, decided he probably was.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, thanks, but I’ve traveled all over the world. I can take care of myself.”
“I bet you can. But this crowd is gonna turn ugly real soon, and there’s some people would love to see a tourist get hurt in the mess.”
“Ugly?” Kat stared at the man, then around at the crowd, which seemed peaceful enough if a bit rowdy. “What do you mean, ugly? And how do you know?”
“Look—” An expression of annoyance crossed the man’s face, and he patted his pants pocket as if someone had just beeped him, which Kat supposed was entirely possible. “Aw hell. I gotta go take care of something. I’ll be back here in ten minutes—but if I was you, I’d just go on back to your room.” He turned and within seconds was swallowed by the crowd.
Just go back to your room. Kat put a hand to the back of her neck, brushed sweaty strands of hair off her skin. She was enjoying herself, dammit, enjoying being by herself for the first time in she couldn’t remember how long. She didn’t want to just g
o on back to her room. She looked around once more, half-nervous, half-hungry, then shrugged and started dancing again.
It wasn’t even ten minutes later that the drunk came out of nowhere and grabbed her breast.
Kat had lived in New York for most of her life; it wasn’t as if she’d never been grabbed on the street. But it hadn’t happened in a long time, and instead of scaring her as it had once done, it made her angry. She snatched the offending hand, which belonged to a wiry bare-chested man in his forties, and flung it away. “Fuck off!” she yelled.
But instead of fucking off, the drunk grabbed her again, and this time there was a knife in his other hand.
“Bitch,” he spat in her face, his breath sour with rum. “Fuckin’ white bitch t’ink you kin shake your titties in de street and nuttin’ come of it—you see now—”
Kat froze, her eyed fixed on the blade, her breath trapped in her chest, unable to move or scream. The crowd had drawn away from the little scene in its midst, and she realized that no one was going to help her, that the drunk was going to cut her right here and all these people were going to watch him do it, and she was so stupid, why hadn’t she listened to the young man—Who was back now, shoving through the crowd, grabbing the drunk’s writs and twisting it so that the knife fell to the ground. He leaned down to whisper something in the older man’s ear. The drunk’s eyes widened in fear and he seemed to sober up several degrees at once. When the young man let go of his wrist, he disappeared into the crowd without retrieving his knife or speaking another word.
“Come on.” The younger man took Kat’s arm, his touch very light. “I told you it was gonna turn ugly, and this isn’t even the start of it. Now let’s get out of here.”