S is for SAMUEL MCCORD_The Last of the First

Captain Samuel McCord.

The last of the first Texas Rangers. They do not acknowledge his existence. They will not even mention his name.

But should they run across a foul, horrific crime, they will send a Ranger to his jazz club in New Orleans to request his assistance.

No Ranger ever to have made that trip will agree to make a second.

- Spurgeon's Macabre History of the West.

***

Renfield and I both walked through the wide doorway of Marie Laveau's home. The dark quiet within quivered like the grasp of dying fingers. It took a moment for even my eyes to adjust to the near total darkness. I figured Renfield was having no such problems. My stomach tightened.

It was said the Angel of Death had a list of names, places, and dates. My name could be matched with this place and date. But I doubted it.

I knew deep within myself that when I died the last death, I would die it alone. All alone. Still, I figured I'd see her soon for that last time. And if your name is next to mine, I guess I’ll see you too.

Marie still liked thick Persian rugs. The one we walked on had a different pattern than the first one I had seen. This one seemed like an ornate design of a snake's hungry open maw. Subtle Marie wasn't.

I heard throaty chuckling from the first doorway to our right. We turned as if walking to our deaths. Maybe we were.

It was a darkened drawing room, filled with impressive looking books that crowded the bookshelves lining the two opposing walls. I knew she had read each and every one.

Her crude dialect was all an act. She was sharp as Renfield’s canines. An elegant mahogany desk was at the far end. And behind it sat Marie Laveau. She glowed like a crucifix in the presence of evil, her face gleaming like an instrument of dark grace.

A long boa oozed slowly across her wide shoulders and along her arms. Despite being over two hundred years old, Marie was still a striking woman -- even without the snake. Despite her years, Marie looked no more than forty.

She smiled no warmer than her snake. "Dere was a time when your hair was darker."

"And my heart was lighter."

Renfield frowned. "All that shortwave screaming? Just a trick?"

She cackled. "More like a slap of water thrown in dat fool's blue funk face. The only way he crawls out of dat night club of his is to find some way to get hisself killed, disguised as helping innocents. Hah! Fool Ranger, dat don't fool nobody."

"Fools me."

"Dat ain't so hard no more."

"Reckon not. What did you want?"

"To spit in your face, white man. 'Cause of you I can't die."

I shook my head. "You chose the path that led you here long before I met you."

"It was 'cause I pointed out da Gray Man to you dat he cursed me!"

"Maybe. But the path you were already on would have cursed you somehow."

"Easy for a white man to say. I was a woman of color. Not many choices for me back then. Fear. I had to make the whites fear me."

Renfield looked sick. "There was another path, Marie. You could have chosen --"

"Don't you dare say it, vampire! Lessen you want my curse."

"I already am cursed, Marie."

Her smile was colder than even her snake's. "I could improve on it, leech."

"No, you won't," I sighed.

"You gonna stop me?"

"You'll stop yourself. You've always been a good woman, Marie."

"Fools before you have died thinking that way."

I shook my head. "DayStar only tortures the good ones."

The glow around her shifted to a sick, bright green. Her snake and she exchanged eyes. It made my flesh crawl. It took everything I had to keep my face from showing it. I don't think I succeeded.

It was unnerving to see slit snake eyes staring at me from her face. And somehow it was worse seeing her human eyes blinking at me from the skull of her snake.

"I knows now why your Meilori left you."

"DayStar told me."

"He told you a lie."

"And the truth?"

Her smile grew wider. "I'm keeping to myself."

Her snake eyes glowed. "Dere! Dat's the look I's been waiting to see. I ain't gonna tell you, Ranger. But knows this: dere's a new order coming, and you won't live out its first day. Now, get out of my home! Both of you! Go!"

We left, her cackling following us out into the night. I tried to tell myself Marie had been lying. But I knew deep down she'd hadn't. Damn.

Renfield glanced at me, his eyes uneasy. "So she's one of the good ones, huh?"

"Good's always been a matter of comparison."

"To who?"

I made a face. "DayStar?"

"Oh, then I guess that makes me a bloody saint."
***

R is for RENFIELD_What We Choose to Believe

Renfield.

He never gives anyone his first name.

Sister Magda, his former wife, now head sister at his church, calls him Renny. He has been the close friend of the cursed Samuel McCord since 1853.

Now, in the year 2005, Hurricane Katrina has gutted New Orleans. Worse, something older than the Earth has been released:

http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334377434&sr=1-1

Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”

It certainly was a contrast to Meilori’s garden of ethereal beauty. No wonder Renfield was shaken.

I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.

It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.

Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost. I moved through the moments but was far them.

And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home. I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door.

I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40. The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”

Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all.

The world had always been dangerous and full of fear. It had only been the lights and the illusion of civilization that had kept it at bay.

But the world was patient.

It knew its time would come sooner or later. And in the gamble called life, the House always wins. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me and smiled as if his lips were an open wound.

“Perhaps that doll will find the spirit of the child who lost it.”

“You and I have seen stranger things, Padre.”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, we have. I will choose to think the child’s ghost reunited with her doll.”

The thought seemed to give Renfield some small measure of peace. I think Lincoln had it right: we have the peace we choose to have.
***

DANCING WITH THE STARS ... at MEILORI'S

DANCING WITH THE STARS …

At MEILORI’S! {New Weekly Feature}

(From UNDER A VOODOO MOON) :


In his room at Meilori’s, Victor Standish has been told that three dooms are descending upon New Orleans. His friends are shaken. Victor decides if he is to die, he’ll do it with style …


Sfumato with this! I had to change the mood to this party. The tune had changed down below. I recognized the artist. Jim Stubblefield. He was playing the gypsy tune, “La Selva Negra.”

It was just starting up with all the sound effects and everything.

I twirled Alice around with a flourish. “If it’s the end of the world, then let’s go out doing a danse macabre!”

Alice sputtered, “A what?”

“Well, a salsa actually.”

She slapped her sides with her arms. “I cannot do any of these modern dances, you dunce!”

“Sure you can.”

“I cannot!”

“Since you merged with me in your mist form, some of me rubbed off on you.”

She pressed her lips together like a fired-up librarian. “I suddenly feel like taking a bath in Listerine.”

I laughed, “After the dance. I lived for awhile in the back of a dance studio. I learned enough to make a few dollars teaching dance steps. So your body knows those steps, too.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “What a scamp of a life you would have us believe you led. Is there anything you didn’t do? ”

I smiled wide. “I never made my bed. ‘Course I didn’t have one! But that’s just silly details.”

I grabbed a startled Sam. “C’mon! You, too.”

“Whoa, son! Who do you think I’ll dance with?”

I winked at Ada Byron. “You get the honor of dancing with Lady Lovelace.”

Margaret Fuller glowered at me. “And just who would you suggest I dance with, Marshal Hickok?”

“Great idea!, I laughed. “Glad you came up with it!”

She snarled through clenched teeth, “You street rat, I didn’t come up with it!”

“Sure you did,” giggled Alice. “Oh, do dance with the poor lovesick Marshal. He took that wound for you. The very least ….”

Ada chuckled at the outrage and cornered look in her lover’s eyes. “Oh, do that little for the poor man.”

Margaret gave me a look that I actually felt. “I will remember this, Standish.”

Magda had a faraway look to her violet eyes. “It has been too long since Renny and I danced. Yes! I shall tell him now!”

And POOF! She was gone. I shook my head. Last month all this would have struck me strange. Ah … it still did actually.

I hurried Sam and Alice down the hallway before Jim Stubblefield finished his tune. Ada bubbled in laughter beside a glowering Margaret. We reached the head of the stairs in no time at all. A beaming Magda and a ruffled Renfield stood waiting for us. I guess the Padre didn’t care for teleporting at the drop of a collection plate.

He glared at me. “I take it this is your hair-brained idea?”

I nodded. “Yup. There are folks down there who want me dead. I plan to dance on my grave right in front of their eyes.”

I winked at Alice. “And make them jealous over my dance partner.”

Renfield shook his head and laughed, “You and your stunts, Victor. Sure, but you’re going to be making another tale to add to the collection told of you.”

“So as long as they get my dance partner’s name right I don’t care.”


CHAPTER THIRTY
STRANGE, I’VE SEEN YOUR FACE BEFORE.


I stood at the top of the velvet staircase, looked down, and smiled. Jim Stubblefield was still playing “La Salva Negra.” He and his band were really putting their heart and soul into it … plus an avalanche of sound effects. I smiled wide. Whoever those other Two Fates were, me and Alice were going to show them some steps.

Sam looked over to me and winked, “Race you to the bottom!”

Ada gave a surprised but delighted squeal as Sam swept her up into his arms and blurred down the stairs. I’m not being poetic. He and Ada actually blurred Sam was moving so fast.

“Oh, Captain,” gasped Ada. “You are quite taking my breath away. And I thought never to say that to a man again!”

Alice smiled mean. “Oh, so it is to be that way, is it?”

I yelped (in a manly fashion, of course) as she picked me up like I was balsa wood. I kept forgetting how much stronger than me she was. The lower half of her did some blurring of its own as she became mist and flowed so quickly down the stairs the world became all foggy.

It was a tie as she and Sam made it to the dance floor at the same time. Sam was grinning from ear to ear. That soft-hearted wolf. He let her catch up to him on purpose. I smiled wide myself. I had never seen him so happy.

Magda was suddenly beside me with a re-ruffled Renfield. “It is you, you scamp. You and your gh….”

I saw Alice begin to stiffen in preparation for the insult. Renfield raised an eyebrow. Magda sucked in a deep breath and finished ….

“… your Gothic love.”

She spun Renfield in an intricate Salsa twirl. “And for the record, scamp, I can teleport. I let you and Sam win.”

Alice looked at Magda’s dancing body and paled. Her voice became like that of a little girl’s. "I cannot move like that!"

I laughed, slowly swaying up to her, lightly pressing my lower body against hers. "Of course, you can."

“I can eat the lips from your face if you do that move again.”

She suddenly giggled, “Oh, do look at poor Margaret’s face.”

I turned to the beat of the music. Margaret looked like she was swallowing a whole can of sardines. She approached the table of the glum Hickok, wrenching the surprised Marshal to his feet.

“This is never to be spoken of again, Hickok. Understand me?”

“N-No. But I surely am not gonna argue with you, pretty lady.”

Margaret looked at him with a Medusa glare. “You do know how to Salsa do you not?”

“No, ma’am. But I am the best faker you will ever meet.”

Margaret snorted, “Of that I have no doubt. And watch those hands!”

Alice giggled at the sight of them and the exchange of words like crossed sabers. She was so caught up in her amusement she wasn’t realizing how expertly she was doing the Salsa.

Son of a ....

Sam glanced hard my way. Son of a gun. My guess had been right. I felt just like Elu. At the thought of him, I looked at the closest mirror. He was glaring at the front door to Meilori’s. Uh, oh. Trouble was coming.

Alice caught my look so I caught her up in fancy stagger step of my own before the smile left those pretty lips. Her eyes widened, but she giggled as her feet moved with a life of their own to match me step for step.

Stubblefield started to strum a wild gypsy riff as I smiled, "The Salsa is several dances melted into one. The guaracha --"

I gyrated my hips in a way that made Alice’s neon blue eyes get even wider. "The Cuban Bolero ---"

I swirled around her, tapping my, ah, bottom against hers. "And the rural Rumba, which is really a dance of exhibition, not of participation."

Alice stopped dancing to glower, "I do not know, Mr. Standish, your gludius maximus seems to be participating with mine just fine. Too fine!”

I quickly swept her up beside a similarly dancing Renfield and a glowing Magda. I swirled Alice out, then swept her back into my arms. For the first ever, her face was flushed. I smiled wider.

"The steps are quite simple, Alice. Here, see? The rhythm is set in counts of four of equal time. Look, the basic footwork is even more simple. Three steps taken on the first three beats of a measure, with a hold ---"

"A what?," she frowned.

I moved in, kissing her lightly.

She nipped at my lips half-heartedly as I pulled away. "A hold, silly rabbit. No step on the fourth beat."

"Oh, certainly. I knew that."

I raised a skeptical eyebrow, sweeping her closer. She laughed throaty, moving her hips in a way that made me want Captain Sam to turn away.

"Of course, you did," I said out of a throat grown suddenly thick.

Her eyes grew heavy somehow, as her hips began to sway hypnotically. Alice moved closer and closer to me. She reached out to my hips, grabbed them, starting to move them in time to her own.

There was something else about Alice I kept forgetting. She was a woman in a teen’s body. And I had just awakened that woman. I might just have outsmarted myself this time. Mother kept saying there was one thing I didn’t know : enough.

"Let me help," she breathed. "That is right. Move, flow with the music."

"Wh-What music?"

"Can you not feel the pounding of the blood in your ears? Listen. Listen as I rub my hips against yours. Now? Can you not hear the music I am hearing?"

That was the trouble. I could. I could also see Magda’s and Captain Sam’s outraged eyes. And worse, the music was gone. I couldn’t hear the guitars anymore.

Stubblefield was gone. Grace Jones was in his place. Meilori’s was like that. The stages would become misty, exchanging one artist for another. I never got used to it.

Grace was singing, “Strange, I’ve Seen Your Face Before” to the tune of Libertango. Alice and I flowed to the new melody, the new steps, as if we were one. Two new dancers were beside us. I went cold. Ghosts. They were ghosts. And not just any ghosts.

Captain Jean Lafitte and the little step daughter of New Orleans’ Jill the Ripper, Madame Delphine LaLaurie.

They said as one, “She is coming.”

{SEND IN YOUR VOTES NOW FOR YOUR PICK OF DANCERS!}
***

WHY FRIENDSHIP? {a return visit}

Friendship.

My most popular post, visited many times each day is this one.

So I thought I would bring it to the attention of my new friends, adding some new items to make it interesting to those who read my earlier post :

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Yet the friendship of the two undead men is a kind of love in itself like David's and Jonathan's :

{At this point in the novel, Renfield, the vampire priest, and his best friend, Sam McCord, are stepping out from behind MEILORI'S, looking at the flooded street before them.} :


Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.

“I could take the Blitz. It came from Man. This .... This is from God.”

I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips.

It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.

Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.

But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.

Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters.

“Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”

I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.

But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.

“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”

I smiled bitter. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”

“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”

He studied me. “You’re not ---”

He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”

Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.

“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”

Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”

His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”

I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”

His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”

“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”

“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”

I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.

“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”

He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”

“Gotta read the small print, Padre.”
*****************************************************
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************

FRIENDSHIP BEATS SEX!

FRIENDSHIP BEATS SEX!

Yes. It surprised me, too.

I keep track of what countries visit me and what key words on Google led them to me.

SEX. DOMINATRIX. SEDUCTION.

They were all popular. But every day my post “WHY FRIENDSHIP?” is a magnet for visitors.

FRIENDSHIP.

We yearn for it,

For we are the Hollow People.

Science will tell you that. Inside an atom is a nucleus, composed of flying neutrons and protons.

The nucleus is orbited by electrons, travelling so fast, they seem to form a solid shell. In between them? Empty space.

Squeeze all the empty space out of each of our atoms, and we would be but a handful of dust.

Like an atom’s nucleus, many of us fly through life so fast, we project the illusion of solidity.

But like the atom’s nucleus, we are hollow.

Walk the streets of any large city and look into the eyes of those you pass. Slip through the veneer we put up to keep the predators at bay,

and you will see the hollowness of their spirits,

yearning for friendship, for connection with a kindred spirit.

To no longer be hollow.

That is why friendship plays such a large role in all of my novels, as in this scene from CREOLE KNIGHTS when Meilori’s is re-opened after Hurricane Katrina :

I was standing by the oak door and appreciating the colorful exit of the sun, off to see what the other half of the world had been up to. There was a rustle of satin cloth to my right.

I looked away from the sky and saw Sister Magda already by my side. She was one of the few people who could sneak up on me. Personally, I thought she teleported.

Looking more like Diana the Huntress than a nun, she smirked, “Teleport? Me? How far males will go to protect their prides.”

“Hello, Magda. You know there are goddesses who are envious of your beauty.”

She smiled, and it was a sight De Vinci would have been hard put to do justice to on canvas.

“I insult you, and you compliment me. Is there no end to the depths of your depravity?”

“Apparently not, since I’ve irritated the hell out of the mayor, the governor, and the President, his teeny tiny self. And I’ve not even let out a third of the secrets I know about them.”

We both laughed. Grief was an undercurrent to it. But so was a deep friendship.

I tried to ignore the grief and to lay fast to the friendship. It was a way to live. A good way I think.

Her smile faded. Mine did, too. Shit, here it came.

“I have come to talk to you of Renny.”

I sighed. “I’ve stayed away these past days. I’ll keep on being scarce.”

Her fingers lightly touched my cheek. “You are a fool.”

“I hope you’re not expecting an argument from me.”

“Do you know what keeps my Renny going?”

“Reckon I do. Your love for him and his for you.”

She sighed as if it were a wound. “That and one thing more.”

“What more could there be?”

“You believing in him. Your friendship.”

“I - I don’t know what to say.”

“Say that you are glad to see him when he comes in later tonight, that you have missed him.”

“I have missed him.”

“Then, tell him so.”

“Do you think it is such a good thing for him to come here?”

“No, it is a terrible idea. But it would be a worse one for him to stay away from his best friend.”

Her long forefinger prodded into my chest. “Can you ‘reckon’ that?”
Seeing the fire in her eyes, I forced out, “If I can’t, I’ll lie and say I can.”

***
NINE DAYS LEFT!
***

WHY FRIENDSHIP?

Friendship.

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Of course, there is a unique back story there. But I'll let Sam tell it :

{At this point in the novel, Sam is helping Renfield clean up his church after Katrina, musing on his past relations with the Vatican} :


I'd had a pretty good relationship with the last Pope. I'd fought Nazi's with him back when he was studying in that underground seminary in Poland. I smiled thinking of how he posed as a priest while only a seminarian. And how he gave false baptismal records to fleeing Jews in the underground. He called it his elective course in the humanities. I sighed as my chest grew heavy. He was gone. Another friend was gone. It seemed just when I started liking somebody, they left me.

A shout of dismay brought me out of my musings. One of the statues in the main sanctuary was toppling over. And a nun was directly underneath it. Cursing under my breath despite the surroundings, I raced as fast as my bad right knee would let me. But I made it in time. Barely.

I grunted as I caught the marble statue of Jesus struggling under the cross with a bit of a struggle myself. But I managed. Being careful not to crack it, I shoved it back into its ornate niche. Now, I was kind of unsure if he was who he said he was.

And on top of that, it was only a representation of him, mind you. Still I knew my strange luck. If I handled the statue carelessly, it would turn out he was the real deal. And I was kind of uncertain how He would feel about some of the trails I had blundered down in my life. Best to err on the side of respectful caution. I looked down at the nun.

"Magda, you've got to be more careful."

Sister Romani looked up at me with deep eyes of summer seas from out of the kind of face that had men embezzeling from orphanages and starting wars. Her thick, silky black hair cascaded through the modern habit that had been brushed back on her head by my shoving her out of harm's way. There was a single one inch wide streak of moon-silver along the right side close by her temple -- a gift of sorts from Estanatlehi, whom the ancient Greeks had named Gaia and whom I now called 'Mother.'

Magda tapped the worn leather pouch of nails hanging from her rope belt. "He would never have harm coming to me from His statue."

I arched an eyebrow. "You stole those nails from that centurion over two thousand years ago. You think He has that long a memory?"

"Of course."

"That's what I was afraid of," I muttered.

I studied her intently. She'd been there. I felt a weight ease off my chest. I could ask her.

"Magda, did you see --"

Her face grew sad. "Him emerge from the tomb? No, Samuel, I was on the run from the Romans at the time and for some time afterwards. I just take it that He truly did rise since I am still alive some two thousands years later."

I bit back the words from my tongue and kept from telling her that her still living came from Estanatlehi. In love with language as much as she was, she had been fascinated with the parables of Jesus. And she took Magda's theft kindly and had rewarded her. I sighed. Still no answers. It was getting to be a frustrating tradition with me.

"Magda!," panted Renfield as he rushed up to her, out of breath more from fear than running, especially since he didn't breathe anymore.

He took both of her hands in his. "You must be more careful."

"You men, oh, foo on the two of you," she laughed, squeezing his hands lightly and not letting go.

"'Fu' is Mandarin for 'Good Luck' you know," I smiled at the two of them.

She made a face at me. "And you with that musty Jesuit education of yours."

"Well, they weren't exactly Jesuits."

She snorted, "Nor would I guess that you were exactly the best of students either."

"Reckon you got me there."

But she wasn't looking at me anymore. She and Renfield only had eyes for one another. Their fingers were still entwined as were their hearts. Long before they had become priest and nun, they had been man and wife. Each had entered the Vatican's service in response to my worst enemy's first demand to end their son's misery and curse. His second demand was for Renfield to assume that curse -- to become the vampire he still was.

DayStar, my worst enemy, being what he was, had still found a way to take their son from them anyway. But both Magda and Renfield were as good as their word. They remained true to both of their vows that they had taken -- though it took some doing to reconcile the two into a working system. But the pair had found a way, filled with hunger and hope, mind you. But isn't that much like life for the rest of us? The street people in the church were still and silent. They knew the story. And me? I felt hot tears blur my vision. I had failed my best friend.

I should have been smarter, should have figured out some way to defeat DayStar, found some method to save my friend's son, and to end the curse which tormented him hourly. He deserved a better friend than me. And me? I didn't deserve for him to call me 'friend.' I deserved to be called the monster I was. And you know what they did to monsters.



*****************************************************

I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************

At the moment, I am listening to "Into the Dark" by Jesse Cook. He is a Toronto-based Nuevo Flamenco guitarist, born in Paris to Canadian parents. It spins the mind. He was raised in the region in southern France known as the Camargue, growing up with the sounds and influences of Gypsy music {probably why my cat loves his music.} Check out his site on myspace : www.myspace.com/jessecook. I especially like the second youtube video on Jesse's page. Hey, c'mon, check it out. You don't want a gypsy curse, do you?

ELIZABETH MUELLER interviewed at MEILORI'S by OSCAR WILDE!

http://elizabethmueller.blogspot.com/

It was the witching hour at Meilori’s. The shadows flirted with the dim shapes of the customers at their tables as if the Night were somehow trying to seduce them.

Elizabeth Mueller sat erect and watchful, her author’s eyes studying every facial expression and social interaction for future use. “This is quite a place.”

To my right, Samuel McCord smiled. “No harm will come to you at my table, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Just Elizabeth,” she smiled, then jerked in shock as a tall man in Victorian evening clothes sat down beside her to elegantly kiss her hand.

“Oscar Wilde at your service,” he beamed.

“Hey, Oscar, this is my interview,” I began.

He carelessly waved at me, then turned to Elizabeth. “Do not mind Roland. He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.”

Sam sighed, “This is an interview with Miss Mueller about HER book.”

Oscar nodded, “Of course that is why I came … to do it correctly.”

He smiled at Elizabeth. “Be not alarmed. We are but the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.”

Oscar sighed, “When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”

His blue eyes fixed on Elizabeth. “Growing up, my dear, what were your hobbies? And why on Earth did you include writing?”

“Ah, as a young child, I spent a lot of my time roller-skating around my neighborhood with my friends. We did tons of dramatic pretending that carried over a timeframe of weeks!”

“Really? I am somewhat of a playwright myself. What else?”

“I also enjoyed telling stories with paper puppets I made, with Barbie or My Little Pony, or through daydreaming. Most of all, I loved drawing—still do. I drew stories on 24X18 inch sheets of paper until the pile grew into an inch thick.”

Oscar looked into the shadows. “Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.”

Elizabeth patted his hand gently, and he smiled down on her. “Do you remember your own writing process? Did you ever get discouraged like I so often do?”

Elizabeth said, “My process consisted of letting loose my muse. She led me into every which direction that gave me the freedom to do anything I wanted on paper. The only time I became discouraged was when I wrote my first short story and showed it to my sister. I was devastated because, rather than share her enthusiasm for such a fantastic story, she put on her editor’s cap and scribbled away—I was only 11!”

Oscar nodded. “The most destructive critics are those closest to you. Still, how have you changed over the years from the first time you wrote a book? How have you stayed the same?”

“My plot development has deepened as well as my characters, and of course, my grammatical skills have matured, too. My first full-length novel is poetic prose because that was what I got into in high school. I’ve stayed the same as in that the magic for writing has never died for me!”

Oscar studied her closely. “Art is a symbol because Man is a symbol. In a strange twilight, man is seeking for himself, and when he has found his own image, he cannot understand it. In what genre are you seeking yours?”

Elizabeth paused a moment then said, “In what they call Young Adult. I didn’t start paying attention to YA until 6 years ago when a good friend of mine explained her reasons:

YA was a whole lot cleaner in a comparative view to adult books. This piqued my interest because it was then that I was tiring of all the explicitness. I kept running into it in adult romance—and I love romance. I want to keep my books clean and worthy for everyone, especially young people.”

Oscar sighed, “Ah, yes, I fear my most scandalous work would prove quite tame these days.”

He laughed. “Speaking of which, I am often compared to my Dorian Gray. Who would you be in your DARKSPELL?”

“Winter Sky would be the character I’d love to live her story through. She faces so many obstacles and incidences that shake her conviction, but she holds tight to her true self and comes out the heroine. I truly admire people who face many awful hardships and still remain strong and faithful.”

Oscar’s sad eyes lit up as he spotted the pages in Elizabeth’s hands. “Oh, your book! May I read a passage aloud?”

“I- I would be honored.”

In his rich Irish baritone, Oscar read :

“Alex reached out and took my hands. A spark of magic passed between us. I didn’t resist, and his gaze deepened. Another wave tore through me, and I felt his powerful drive to protect me and the desire to share the rest of his life with me. I could see forever. Eternity was wide and deep.

I would never be alone again.

Having tasted Alex so strongly, so close, so dear, left me empty; a starving sensation that could only be filled by him. I had no idea he felt so intensely for me. His love washed away all doubt from me.

I leaned into Alex as my world spun fast on a crooked axis. I breathed him in. I was intoxicated with his burning hold. I was so alive. Every sound was louder; the wind richer as it flowed through me. I was so free, so alive, so untainted by any wicked thing. I closed my eyes, shivering with desire, and imagined the breeze encircling us; bringing us to our feet and drawing us closer like a child’s ribbon.”

Oscar suddenly sprang up, the typed pages clutched against his chest.

“What are you doing?,” cried Elizabeth.

“Why, I’m stealing your delightful words. Shaw did it to me all the time.”

“You can’t do this!,” she shouted at his retreating figure.

She turned to me. “C-Can he?”

A flurry of stardust settled on the table, forming into a book entitled, DARKSPELL by Oscar Wilde.

As Elizabeth let out a sharp “Yeep,” Samuel chuckled, “Oscar’s just funning with you, ma’am.”

Elizabeth poked a forefinger into the book. “This is not funning. This is criminal!”

She shot to her feet. “This has been the most infuriating interview I have ever had!”

Father Renfield appeared at her side. “I will personally see that not one of those purloined volumes leaves Meilori’s.”

Elizabeth relaxed. “I feel better hearing that, Father.”

Renfield smiled wide, exposing his long, sharp canines. “Call me Padre.”

Elizabeth hushed, “A vampire priest? I am so out of here!”

Victor Standish, settling into her empty chair as Elizabeth fled Meilori’s, flashed his gypsy smile. “Another satisfied customer.”

Samuel cocked an eyebrow. “You think?”

Victor laughed, “No.”

I groaned. Life with my creations was going to be the death of me. I rose to catch up to Elizabeth and apologize.

ROMANTIC FRIDAY A DAY EARLY_WHAT IS THE COLOR OF LOVE?

Francine and Denise are starting a novel blog-challenge :
http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

Be at the ground floor of romance. That sounds like a winner, doesn't it?

Your prose should only be 400 words. Alas mine is 437. Leave it to a man to bend the rules!

My post is from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

Samuel McCord, the man with death in his veins, is walking the Tulane campus ruined by Hurricane Katrina. His best friend, Renfield, is talking about the magical dance held on these grounds in the early 1930's.

Renfield should have known better than to talk of McCord's lost love on a night of a mystic full moon :

Renfield said. "Remember the last dance of the night, Sam?"

"Yes, I remember. Don't understand it. But I remember it."

"Why did Meilori shush you off like that to dance by herself -- as if someone invisible was dancing with her?"

"Haven't a clue. But it was a sight. She was so graceful, so full of sad love."

Renfield nodded. "Sad love? I could never pin down the expression on her face until now. But sad love says it all."

"All. And nothing. I still don't understand the why of it. Just that she was so hauntingly beautiful as she danced."

Renfield made a face. "She could have been washing clothes on a rock, and you would have found her beautiful."

Misty shapes began to form all around us. Young Louis Armstrong, cornet under his arm, slapped my shoulder.

“Glad to be here, Sam.”

Dizzy Gillespie shimmered beside him, his trumpet sparkling in the starlight.

Louis mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief.

“You owe someone a last dance.”

He turned to Dizzy. “we’ve got us an Empress to play for.”

There was a movement of shadows to my left, and Renfield breathed, “Dear Lord.”

Meilori’s shade danced open-armed in front of me.

What does love look like? What is its color?

A white flash of fright. A billowing wave of warmth, its reach beyond the microscope and further than the length of hope.

Is it a jewel sparkling in the night? Or a whisper murmuring within the corridors of the heart?

Once more Meilori danced across the velvet grass, her empty arms beckoning to me. Her soft voice carried like a specter in the dark.

Her words brushed by me and into my soul.

“Beloved, one last dance.”

And I finally understood her dancing empty-armed that magic evening so long ago.

She had seen me, as now I saw her. Perhaps she thought me the ghost of a future me, dead and searching for her.

And not understanding completely, still she took me in her arms.

As I, not understanding completely, now took her in mine. She smiled, brushing soft lips against mine. The ghostly music was a heart-clasp of sound.

Love is not a shy beast to be caught but a rare moment to be treasured. It burns within each cell, a living seed of hope. Its rays invisible to most, seen only by the searching heart.

Meilori was in my arms, and her love made me whole once more. She lightly kissed me. I almost felt it.

We danced through the embrace of shadows. And for a very short moment, I was home. Home.
******

WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?_ my entry for Madeleine's CINDERELLA SHOE BLOGFEST

http://scribbleandedit.blogspot.com/2010/10/blogfest-open-cinderellas-shoe.html

My entry for Madeleine's blogfest is from my urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

The man with death in his veins, Samuel McCord, and his best friend, the vampire priest, Renfield, have just walked from behind McCord's jazz club onto the flooded street the night after Katrina :


Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”

I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.

It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.

I looked about at the shattered world around and within me. Withered leaves of my soul seemed to fall away from me in the dark breeze of this night.

Shadows flowed through my veins. The night and eternity mocked me. They seemed to whisper : “This is all your struggling achieves -- Life runs, falls, and spindles slowly into the abyss.”

Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost.

I moved through the moments but was far them. And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home.

I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door. In my mind, I heard Bette Midler singing “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”

“Broken windows and empty hallways,

A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.

Human kindness is overflowing,

And I think it’s going to rain today.”

I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40.

The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”

He bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me and smiled as if it were a wound.

"Perhaps that doll will find the spirit of the child who lost it."

"You and I have seen stranger things, Padre."

He nodded. "Yes. Yes, we have. I will choose to think the child's ghost reunited with her doll."

The thought seemed to give Renfield some small measure of peace. I think Lincoln had it right : we have the peace we choose to have.

***

RAINY DAY BLOGFEST_YOU CAN ONLY SPEND IT ONCE_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"Life is like a coin.

You can spend it any way you wish,

but you can only spend it once."


- Mark Twain.}

Ghost of Samuel Clemens here. Roland was a blogfest loving fool. He entered Christine's RAINY DAY blogfest.

http://thewritershole.blogspot.com/2010/08/announcing-rainy-day-blogfest.html

I dug around in the innards of his computer contraption and found this :

{After Katrina, Samuel McCord, the man who cannot die, and his best friend, Renfield, the vampire priest

are sloshing their way to be helped or be killed by the undead Marie Laveau} :

As we stepped out into the night's light mist of rain, the black fog curled and creamed in the muggy air like a demon from the Other Side trying to take shape.

Crucified high in the sable sky, the moon of blood admired its reflection on the dark waters of the still flooded street.

Ripples of its long bloody image flowed from the floating dead body of a dog, like tiny red streams bleeding from its lonely soul.

The night suddenly became colder than it should have been. Much colder. And in an odd sense distant. Cold and distant like the promises of lost love.

I turned to Renfield. "Still want to come with me to Marie Laveau's?"


He went paler than I thought possible, but said, "I can take care of myself, Sam."


I nodded but still felt as isolated as a lost ship at sea. The night had become as intimate as a knife fight -- and about as friendly.


New Orleans was a city of the dead and the dying and not much else. The stink of death was thick in the air. Dead creatures still floated down the streets and over the sidewalks. Bloated-bellied dogs, cats, rats, and even one dead drug addict, finally at peace.


I spotted one death-swollen deer as I waded beside a strangely silent Renfield. Flattened birds were feathered pancakes on some club fronts we passed.


What had Thoreau written? “Our lives revolve unceasingly, but the center is ever the same. And the wise will only regard the seasons of the soul.”


The seasons of the soul.


I looked up into the endless sable depths between the stars. I felt like the wolf staring up into the dark universe, who never learns why he must live like he does. But still he sings to the moon. One lonely spirit to another.


We were almost there, near Rue Burgandy and Rampart Street. The night was still not my friend. Too much recent death had set the night trembling with vengeful, wandering souls.


Spirits, lost and angry, were trudging beside us. Because of Death's blood in my veins, I could see them slowly circling us as they had that night as I walked to the Convention Center.


Their shuffling feet were heavy behind us then grew silent. They flowed inches above the flooded sidewalk until they paced us. I could feel the touch of their sunken, hungry eyes on my throat.


If these dead wanted to drink from the living, they had come to a dry well with me and Renfield.


My face grew tight as I spotted the strangely untouched building in front of us. The fine mist dripping from the brim of my Stetson, I stopped at the elegant house I had been looking for.


We were at the home of the undead Marie Laveau.
***

MARK TWAIN_WEATHERFEST_THE WORST STORMS ARE IN THE HUMAN SOUL

Ghostly Samuel Clemens here, on behalf of Roland.

He gave his word to have an entry on whatever they call it …

oh, yes a weather blogfest of all things :

http://littlesliceofnothing.blogspot.com/2010/06/hey-look-its-one-of-them-things.html

The poetry of the earth is never dead, yet Nature is red in tooth and claw. Those two facts clash over and over again inside the human soul.

And to spotlight that fact I have chosen this snippet from Roland’s FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. (It's worth the ride if you choose to take it.)

It the first evening following Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans.

Samuel McCord and his best friend, the vampire priest, Renfield, are stepping out from McCord’s supernatural jazz club, Meilori’s, to view the carnage Nature has left in their beloved city :


Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”

I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.

It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.

I looked about at the shattered world around and within me. Withered leaves of my soul seemed to fall away from me in the dark breeze of this night.

Shadows flowed through my veins. The night and eternity mocked me. They seemed to whisper : “This is all your struggling achieves -- Life runs, falls, and spindles slowly into the abyss.”

Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost.

I moved through the moments but was far them. And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home. I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door.

In my mind, I heard Bette Midler singing “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”

“Broken windows and empty hallways,
A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
And I think it’s going to rain today.”

I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40. The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”

He bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all.

The world had always been dangerous and full of fear. It had only been the lights and the illusion of civilization that had kept it at bay. But the world was patient. It knew its time would come sooner or later.

And in the gamble called life, the House always wins. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.

“But the Blitz came from Man. This .... This is from God.”

I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips. It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.

Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.

But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.

Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters. “Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”

I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.

But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.

“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”

I smiled bitterly. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”

“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”

He studied me. “You’re not ---”

He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”

Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.

“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”

Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”

His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”

I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”

His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”

“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”

“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”

I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.

“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”

He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”

“Gotta read the small print, Padre. Gotta read the small print.”
***