by Cori Vidae
My mom had left me in a basket outside the cathedral, and Father Dom raised me until I joined the Army at seventeen. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few weeks. I missed him. He was both my father and my Father. I walked past the Parrot and into the cathedral, a space of white paint, gilt decoration, holy pictures, statues, and stained glass windows showing the life of St. Louis, the king of France. With the images of the crusader St. Louis, and the statue of Joan d’Arc, this was a church for fighters.
I dipped my fingers in the holy water, which was held by a statue of a cherub bearing a large oyster shell, and walked toward the confessional, which stood in a dark corner of the church. They held confession before the 5:00 p.m. mass. The rumble of Father Dom’s voice rolled out through the dark oak stall, all reverberation, making it impossible to eavesdrop.
An old woman left the confessional and I went in. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Dom sniffed. His shadow shifted behind the screen, and his chair groaned. “Yes, my son?” He had never gotten rid of his Puerto Rican accent, so he voiced a vowel before “son.”
“Father, will I be held accountable for something if I don’t remember doing it?”
The wall of the stall creaked as he leaned against it. “It ees hard to have a contrite heart about something you don’t remember, so reconciliation will be difficult. But it ees not a matter of whether you remember an act, but your state of mind when you performed it, that will determine your accountability.”
I had gone to confession every month when I lived with Father Dom. It never gets easy. “I think I may have done something very bad, Father.”
“Nonsense.”
“But…”
“A billion little sins you may have made, but you don’t have it in you to do something terrible.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“What?”
The arms of his chair complained as he stood. I stood, too, and met him outside the stall. He embraced me, or at least he pressed his big belly against me and patted my back, then motioned to the rear of the church. I walked ahead, but turned back to make sure he was all right. His breaths were shuddering rasps, and he rolled from side to side as he walked, struggling to balance his weight. He was no longer the vibrant man who had taught me to play baseball.
We went into his room in the rectory and sat down. The effort of walking from one end of the church to the other and down a flight of stairs left him panting. I told him what I knew. He tsked at the mention of sex, but only shrugged about the night of drinking.
“I do not know what happened,” he said. “But I know you did not murder that girl.”
“But how—”
“Go to that cabinet.” He pointed to one in the corner. “And open the bottom doors. There is a wooden box. It looks like a large cigar box. Bring it to me.”
I found a flat cedar box and brought it to him.
“I should have told you this long ago.” He opened the box and took out a hand-written letter. “This is the note your mother left in your basket.”
I traced the letters on the page with my fingertips, following the looping script written in skipping blue ballpoint ink on a brittle yellowed page torn from a notebook.
Dear Father,
I am giving my son to you to raise because you are the closest thing to a relative of his father. An angel came to me when my parents were away from home, and he gave me the love of God, the creator. My parents did not believe me and were very angry, so I ran away to New Orleans. I had my baby in the bathtub of a cheap motel. He never cried or fussed or anything. I’m so afraid for him. I can’t provide a good home, and I suspect raising the son of an angel will be very hard, but you’ve probably learned how in priest school. Please raise him and keep him safe. I will always love him.
I stroked the last sentence, visualizing a teenaged girl crying as she left the basket at the church. It was like touching her again after all these years.
I sniffled and rubbed my nose before looking up and quirking a smile at Father. “So you’re telling me that I’ll be able to use an insanity defense because it runs in the family?”
He smiled, opened the box, pulled out a white feather, over a foot and a half long, and handed it to me. I turned it over in my hands. “What does this prove?”
“It was in the basket, too. I’ve taken it to an ornithologist at LSU.” He waited until I shrugged. “It is a wing feather. A wing feather of no bird known to have existed.”
A tingle rose up my spine and settled in my shoulders. “But…”
“Think of it, my son. Why were you the only one who survived the explosion in Afghanistan? Why do you heal so quickly? Do you remember when you fell off the statue of Andrew Jackson and broke your arm? I swear it was a displaced fracture, but when I got you to the hospital, they looked at the X-ray and said it was just a crack. Why do you grow back stronger every time you are injured?”
I touched one of the thick scars on my face, caressed my overhanging brow. “I don’t look very angelic.” I laughed. “I don’t act very angelic.”
“There are different kinds of angels. Some are fighters. Think back to every fight you ever had. You were always fighting for someone, or some cause.”
“Except when I got paid for cage fighting.”
“Even then. You wanted the money to help that girl.”
“If you believe I’m the son of an angel, you must be disappointed in how I turned out.”
“I had hoped you’d grow up to be a pope. You’re smart enough.” He shrugged and gave a little laugh. “But I’ve always thought you were a good young man.” He leaned forward and patted my shoulder.
“I don’t know what to think. What to believe.”
“You were fathered by an angel who gave your mother God’s love. Have a little faith.”
* * *
By the time I left the cathedral, the sun had hit the horizon. At night, the French Quarter becomes a different place. Everything seems more exciting, more dangerous.
I walked to the Parrot. Not a high-rent establishment. Not in the tourist books. We don’t get celebrities. Only locals and lost tourists.
Adam sat at the bar, just inside the door. His long blond hair hung in a pony-tail, and his face was soft and girlish. Some chicks liked that. My face and body were roadmaps of scars. The only women who liked the way I looked were a little twisted.
“Adam, you came back early today.”
“Early? I never left.”
“That must make it about forty-eight hours straight.”
He shrugged. “Nothing else to do when I’m onshore.”
I put my mitt on his shoulder. “Do you remember seeing me last night?”
“Last night? Yeah, I think so.”
“Do you remember anything unusual?”
“No, except for Pussy Galore.” His laugh was a high-pitched twitter.
“Pussy Galore?”
“Some chick that had to dip her head to get in the doorway. Her legs came all the way up to here.” Adam indicated head height.
“What does she have to do with me?”
“Dude, tell me you took her home! She was humping on you like she had a vampire pussy and was sucking you dry.”
I couldn’t believe I took her home, if she was acting like that. “Adam, I’ve told you to stay away from the tall girls.”
“Shit, I don’t care if she had a cock, I woulda fucked her.” His laugh grated on my nerves.
“Did I look happy?”
“You looked like you were in heaven.”
Damn, that laugh! I walked over to Sally, who had been tending bar yesterday. “Hey, Sally. Did I leave an open tab?”
Sally looked up and smiled. She handed a cocktail to a patron. “Yesterday? No.”
“So I didn’t drink here after my shift?”
“I didn’t say that. Your girlfriend picked up the tab.”
“My girlfriend?”
“Yeah, what’s her name… Iris, or something. Som
e kind of flower. What’s the matter? Don’t remember?” Sally smirked.
“Not so well. Did you see anything else going on? Anything other than drinking?”
“You think she slipped you a roofie, sport? You seemed pretty eager to me.”
“Did she pay with a card?”
“Cash. She had a roll of hundreds.”
I nodded. “Have you ever seen her in here before?”
She chuckled. “Did she leave this morning without giving you her number?”
“Something like that.”
Sally paused. Was she playing with me, or just thinking? “I think I’ve seen her in here a couple of times. They got her picture on a marquee on Bourbon.”
“Dancer? Which one?”
“One of the Hustler places.”
“Not the Barely Legal Club, please.”
Sally laughed. “No, the other one. She’s a headliner. She’s a rarity.”
“Oh?”
“She’s a headliner who doesn’t do porn… or other stuff. She might even be fairly normal for someone who likes to show her stuff to strangers. I heard that she was lesbian—a lot of the girls were interested in her—but I guess you put that rumor to rest, eh, stud?”
“Yeah, put to rest.” I shook my head. Resting in peace.
“I heard she had her work done in Bangkok.”
I shook my head. “Nah, she’s all real.”
“A girl who looks like that is never all real.”
What did Sally know? I’ve seen her. Touched her. Iris. She had a name. “Do you know anything else? Did she say anything to you?”
Sally leaned over the bar and pointed at me. “Don’t let her know I told you, but she said that she thought it might work out with you. She said it was fate.”
Funny thing was, I thought it might have worked out, too. If she wasn’t dead.
“Yeah. Thanks, Sally. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I walked back to Bourbon, and then down to the Hustler club. The sun had sunk, and the neon sizzled. Barkers worked out of the doorways of the shops and clubs, trying to get customers to buy something. I look kind of tough, with my overhanging brow, thick features, bent nose, and the abstract art of my scars, so most of them don’t bother me.
I looked at the marquee. There’s a seven-foot high poster with a life-sized picture of the headline act, Iris Delaney. She wore some scraps of black leather over her body, had some black leather wings on, and held a bullwhip.
The barker walked up to me. “Nice, huh? She’s just finishing up her first show, but she’ll be back later. Three shows a night.”
It was a few weeks early for Easter, rolling back the stone… “She’s here?”
He smiled and tried to nudge me toward the door. “Three shows a night, six nights a week.”
I don’t know what made me happier: thinking that I might be off the hook for murder, or that I’d get to see her again, alive. But whatever it was, it gave me that lighter-than-air feeling I get when something has happened that is too good to be true.
I had to see her.
I strode to the backstage entrance. The guy watching the door let me in, and I walked toward the dressing rooms through a narrow brick-walled corridor lit with only a few scattered bare red light bulbs. The walls seemed to pulse to the driving beat of the music. She must have just finished her act, because the audience began to go wild.
Iris entered the corridor, nearly filling the space. Her black membranous wings were about six feet wide even when they were folded back and she had to angle herself in the corridor to fit. She wore her high heels, so she was almost seven-feet tall. She carried a black bullwhip in her right hand, and had a wad of bills and the scraps of leather that had served as clothing in her left hand.
Her smile twisted into a sneer. She reared back with her whip, and I think I felt the leather slice my cheek before I heard the crack.
“You bastard, you told me you loved me.” Her eyes welled with tears, reflecting the dim red light.
In spite of the pain from my cheek, somehow I knew she was right. I remembered a feeling. The tears in her eyes made me hurt more than the gash on my cheek. I didn’t want to make her cry.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were dead.” I took a few steps toward her.
“Dead? You promised to stay with me until dusk, when I wake up. That’s why we cuffed ourselves together.”
Nervous laugh. “Oh. You see… I must have had too much to drink. I haven’t had a blackout in years.”
Her expression changed from evil witch to innocent school girl in an instant. “A blackout? I should have thought of that. I’m sorry, baby. Come here.”
Her pout was like a stab in my chest. I needed to make everything better. How could she look so damned sexy and vulnerable at the same time?
I dashed to her, and we embraced. Her wings wrapped me like a shroud. Fuck, they were real. In her heels, she stood almost a foot taller than me, and my face nestled between her very soft and warm breasts. Warm. She was alive. Alive was good, very good. After a few pleasant moments, she led me to her private dressing room.
“I’m sorry for being angry, but I thought you deserted me, right after I had found love after all these years. I should have known that draining you may have caused a blackout. Sometimes men became mindless idiots after I drain them. You just had so much to give.”
“Drain me?” I didn’t have a mark on my neck. “Are you a vampire or something?”
She giggled. “Vampire? Don’t be silly. There are no such things as vampires.”
I laughed. “I didn’t think so.”
“My mother was a succubus, though there are some folk tales that confuse us with vampires.”
Iris kissed me, and pieces of last night flashed into my mind: the feeling that I finally found someone to—I’m going to say it, don’t you dare laugh at me—complete me.
Okay, she has leathery wings at night, and she is the daughter of a demon, but she touched me deep inside. She was probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but I didn’t even think of that. It was deeper. I felt love flow through me. Like the heavens opened up and all the joy in the cosmos flowed through me to her. Imagine Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” then turn the volume up to infinity. That’s one-millionth of the joy I felt. I was flying with angels and dancing with devils. The angels had the prettier melody, but the devils added a raunchy bass beat.
And the best thing of all was the look of rapture on her face. I knew she was feeling the same thing. Love like this couldn’t be a trick.
“You’re a succubus?” I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the reality.
“That’s what my mother was. I’m free-willed. I don’t lead men to damnation.”
My breath came out in a nervous rush. “Well, that’s good.”
“My kisses, or other…” She giggled. “… intimate contact merely drain men’s souls.”
I looked at Iris, and longing and love filled me to overflowing. “Oh, if that’s all—” Wait. What did she say? “I might need my soul someday, cher. I’m not the best person around, but I don’t want to end up in hell, either.”
She caressed my cheek. “That’s why we’re perfect for each other. You’re not human, either.”
“Yeah, my dad’s an angel.” It wasn’t the least likely revelation of the night, after all: I had found love.
“What I did with you last night would have killed a high school football team.”
I envisioned a locker room with thirty dead teenaged boys lying on the floor. They all had smiles on their faces.
Her lips brushed mine. “Since you are descended from an angel, there is a permanent conduit from heaven that flows through you that I can tap.”
I always think of the worst-case scenario. Idiot. “You wouldn’t end up draining heaven, would you?”
“Heaven has an infinite supply of love. You might be the only man I can actually love. All my other attempts have ended with men dying or becoming idiots or psychopaths. And I h
unger for love as much as anyone.”
“And you’re the only woman who can love me?”
Iris uttered a short, nervous laugh. “I won’t lie, not to you. Other women could love you. How has that worked for you, so far?”
“Um…”
“But I’m the only one who can tap into the love of heaven. How did that feel, sport?”
Damn good. I nodded.
She traced the scars on my face with her fingertips. “With all that heavenly love flowing through us, I will love you, and you will love me. Heaven’s love will sustain our love. As long as we… share ourselves regularly.” Her smile looked a little bit wicked, but I loved it.
She could tell me anything and I’d believe it, but somehow I knew she was telling the truth. The feelings I had made me want to do whatever I could to make her happy, and I knew she was experiencing the same thing. I didn’t love her because she was beautiful or clever; I loved her because of the connection we had, a connection most people could never dream of. Love wasn’t just a feeling; it was a state of being that promised a succession of loving acts. “This seems odd, but I know I love you. Even though I can’t remember everything we did yesterday, I remember the feeling, the love. I could see it. A silvery stream that flowed through us.”
She nodded. “The love of heaven, God’s love. Now that I’ve finally found someone I can love, I can quit dancing. I only did it because I made tons of money, but now that I have you, the things money can buy don’t seem so important.”
She gave me a gentle kiss, pulled back and stared into my eyes. I could have lingered there forever. “Besides, I really want to teach physics in night school. We can settle down and have a family.”
This was moving a little fast, not that I minded. Physics? Family? Whoa. “That’s sweet, but you know I don’t earn very much.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve saved millions from my dancing, not to mention the jewelry, furs, cars, and vacation villas from my admirers. I even have a Renoir. He painted me when I was younger. He loved how I could change my skin tone at will, though he always made me look fat. He said no one would believe I was for real.”
I smiled. I submerged into her bottomless black eyes. I held her warm hands. This is what love feels like. Maybe I could turn a bad girl good. All it takes is the bountiful love of heaven.
