Invisible fingers slid across the frets of the guitar to moan sweetly in a twelve bar blues progression, a sound that was earthy and melancholy at the same time. Orfeo’s voice, emanating unseen from behind the battered red door ahead of her, was deep and rich, sad but also resigned to the music he was creating.
“Hair burning red, as red as a flame,
and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,
your skin so pale I cannot tame—
I burn and I drown when you come to me.”
Both she and Baptiste had paused on the stairs, looking ahead to the door and the scored textures of its wooden frame. Glancing back toward her companion, she saw him suppressing a smile as he stared up at her. “Red hair and green eyes,” he remarked quietly. “I wonder who occupies our friend’s thoughts.”
After giving him a warning frown, she turned her attention back to the door. The music had stopped, and they heard occasional, slightly dissonant noises as though the instrument was being tuned. Although there was part of her that wished to stay here on these steps and listen to that soft baritone and the sliding guitar, Ardyce knew that she had to speak to Orfeo at once. Stepping forward, she rapped sharply on the door.
They both heard a shuffling sound from within and a few seconds later the door was opened. Orfeo’s tall, dark figure filled the doorway and he looked astonished when he saw Ardyce standing before him, Baptiste a few steps below her. He wore only a pair of jeans, his feet long and bare, the toes finely shaped, while his torso rose from a tight V at his waist to his broad shoulders and poised, muscled arms. Because they had surprised him, the elegant features of his face bore an almost childlike quality of innocence, his wide lips parted slightly and his eyes staring at Ardyce with such confusion that she wanted to reach forward and kiss him. Instead she paused and asked quietly: “Can I come in?”
His confusion did not dissipate immediately and he glanced backwards to the room in which he lived with an expression of shame on his face. Ardyce’s heart swelled at this and she placed a hand on his chest very softly. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “I need to talk to you.”
He nodded at this, still without speaking, and stood to one side to allow her to enter. As he gazed back at Baptiste the older man tipped his hat with a chuckle, his thin moustache rising on his lips as he smiled. “That’s okay, sir,” he remarked. “I’ll wait outside so you two can discuss things together in peace.”
Going into the room Ardyce took in its details with a single, sweeping glance. The place was small, a garret tucked away in the eaves of the house and with a single window that looked out on the street below. The walls were almost bare, paint flaking from them like scars, and a single bed was placed beneath the window. Across from this was an old table against which leaned Orfeo’s guitar, as well as a mismatching chair. His clothes were hung from a single cord which ran across one corner of the room above a basin and mirror, yet though the chamber was poor it was also clean and uncluttered.
Yet Ardyce didn’t care about any of this. As she moved forward into the room while Orfeo closed the door behind her, her attention was drawn to an alcove above the table. A pair of candles guttered within it, their light shining on the surrounding flowers and two charms made from bones, nails and pieces of semi-precious stone. Behind this paraphernalia leaned a photograph in a plain, black frame, showing a beautiful black woman, her eyes looking out toward the camera kindly.
“I’m sorry,” Orfeo said. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have found somewhere else to meet.”
She waved this away and instead gestured toward the photograph. Something about the image affected her strangely and she suddenly realized that she was filled with a faint sense of jealousy. “Is this a woman you loved?” she asked, somewhat more bitterly than she had intended.
He looked at her face intently then, as though he could read her thoughts, he smiled and turned his gaze back to the picture. “My mother,” he said, and with this he could not hold in his deep, low laughter any more. Ardyce blushed and dipped her head.
“But why are you here?” he asked at last, lifting his hands to her shoulders and gently removed her coat. “I would have come again tonight.” He looked around him ruefully. “Xanadu’s a much better place than this hovel.”
By way of response, she turned as he held her coat and threw her arms around him, lifting herself up on her feet and seeking out his mouth with hers. Her kiss was long and urgent and desperate, searching out his spirit and drawing it into herself.
When at last she released him, she let herself down onto her feet again, her arms resting more softly now around his waist. Once more his look was so dumbfounded that she could not help but laugh. “If only you could see yourself now,” she remarked, not unkindly.
“I bet I look a real cooyon,” he muttered.
“That you do, that you do. But none of this matters,” she gestured toward the room with one pale hand. “I don’t care where we find ourselves, as long as you’re here.” She paused and her eyes fell, looking toward the floor anxiously. “Xanadu’s no longer safe for you,” she said.
Orfeo did not speak but simply nodded his head. For a while, both of them were silent until, finally, he said: “And is it safe for you?”
Ardyce gave a slightly nervous smile. “Of course. I don’t worry about Earl—he won’t harm me. He wouldn’t dare! But... but...” her lip began to quiver and tears started to well up in her eyes.
Full of concern, Orfeo guided her to the chair. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked as she sat down.
Suddenly the grief she felt could no longer be repressed and her tears began to stream down her face. “You’ve got to leave, you’ve got to get out of here.”
In response to this, his own face became as hard as stone, carved from rock as he looked down on her. Silently, he shook his head.
“Please!” she pleaded, grappling him with her slender fingers, feeling so weak and powerless but knowing what had to be done. “He’s going to try and find you, and when he does... when he does, he’s going to kill you! I know it!”
Stiffly, Orfeo stood up and looked toward the photograph in its alcove. Unconsciously, he raised one hand and made the sign of the cross over forehead, chest and shoulders, an action which appeared to calm him. When he looked back at her, his face was still resolute but she also saw that his eyes gleamed with a determination that sent a thrill through her.
“I won’t go,” he said, very quietly. “I won’t leave, not with you here.”
Ardyce’s heart felt as though it would burst and she stood out of the chair, looking around her frantically as though searching for something that would convince him of the urgency of her plea. “You must!” she told him. “For me, you must.”
Before she could move too far from him, he reached out a long arm and grabbed hold of her wrist, preventing her fleeing from him. His hand was warm and strong and immediately it calmed her. Carefully, he pulled her back to where he sat on on its threadbare cushion, his dark eyes watching her gently.
“Come with me,” he said softly.
Yes! she cried out silently, but immediately a thousand doubts beset her. Her home, Xanadu, the city—she had never known anything else. Instead of affirmation, fear filled her mouth. “I can’t,” she replied weakly.
He nodded at this, without speaking, looking up instead at the photograph of his mother. “Then I can’t either,” he said at last.
Ardyce was torn between fear, anger and frustration—fear for Orfeo’s life, anger at his stubbornness, for she could read immediately on his handsome face his sense of resolution, and frustration that she lacked the eloquence to move him.
“I’ve known men like Earl all my life,” he told her, still looking at the picture in its alcove. “Do you know why he calls his men loa?” he asked suddenly, throwing her with the arbitrariness of his question.
Confused, she nodded her head. “He told me once. They’re his messengers, his spirits or something. They do his bi
dding, like voodoo gods.”
Still gazing at the photograph of his mother, Orfeo replied. “The loa aren’t gods. They’re intermediaries for the Bondye, the bon dieu. There’s nothing good about Earl, and his followers aren’t loa. They’re just men.”
“Men with guns and worse!” Ardyce howled, moving rapidly toward him and grabbing hold of his shoulders to shake him. “And if you don’t leave they’re going to kill you!” He refused to be moved by this so she blurted a lie in the hope it would drive him from her: “They’ll kill me too, don’t you understand?”
He stared up at her as she leaned across him, his face unfazed, his gaze clear and unflinching as though he had seen through her words, understood entirely why she spoke. “Come away with me,” he whispered.
Still the fear wouldn’t leave her. “I can’t,” she wept. “I want to, but I can’t!”
She had to make him leave here but she had no idea how. And in that instant it occurred to her that if she succeeded she would never see him again, and between her fear and her grief at the impending loss that must follow she felt that her heart would indeed break in two completely. Crying, she bent her head down to his, lifting his with a gentle finger beneath his jaw. Kissing him so that her tears ran down his cheeks, her lips became faster and harder on his, bruises mixed with the salt that fell from her eyes.
He began to kiss her as well, his resolution melting into heat as his hands grabbed her legs, moving up above her knees, lifting her skirt above her thighs. Both of them knew that things would never be the same again, that everything was different now—that this could be the last time that they would meet—and a frenzy began to manipulate their bodies.
The room was hot and humid and a sheen of perspiration was covering Orfeo’s naked torso as Ardyce slid one leg across his lap. She did not sit down but instead reached between her own parted thighs, fumbling with the belt and buttons of his jeans as he pulled down the top of her dress, exposing the softness of her breasts to his mouth. Her hair, red and gleaming in the candlelight, caught and stuck to his brow as she glared down at her fingers, struggling to reach inside to the length that was extending upwards in his trousers.
When he was free, she groaned in lust, taking the long, black shaft in her palm and squeezing it, feeling how hot and hard it was against her skin. Orfeo’s mouth now was on her breasts, his head moving from one to the other as she pulled him into her with her other hand, making him suckle her. He teased and bit her nipples gently, sucking them deeply between his lips and she felt herself flooding between her legs, her sex so wet and desperate.
There was no finesse to their lovemaking, no elegance or grace, just a wild, animal desperation. His fingers reached between her thighs as she masturbated him, pulling her underwear to one side and sliding along the wet slit before entering her, feeling her pliant warmth as she squeezed him and gasped with desire.
She needed him so urgently that she then pushed aside his hands. She knew she was ready, and there was no time for foreplay. She needed simply to be fucked, to be taken and penetrated by him once more—perhaps for the last time ever. Despite this urgency, her sex resisted him for a second and there was a moment’s pain as the smooth head of his large cock pushed against her labia, but then she opened and forced herself down on him, a fluid, almost violent motion.
Holding her in his lap, his head raised to her mouth, one hand squeezing her bare breasts, the other gripping her buttock as she ground down against him, Orfeo bucked his own hips against her. Her vagina rippled all along him and her breath came in thick, heavy pants. She banged down on him, her feet flexing against his calves as they grappled blindly to find purchase, to allow her to force herself down even harder.
Although his face was twisted up in intense concentration as his seed rose up inside him, his mouth pursed in silent ecstasy, her own orgasm burst through her like a storm and she cried out passionately, her fingers gripping his shoulder and his head as her neck arched backwards, her red lips open and screaming with lust and love and grief.
Neither knew how long they remained there, holding each other in their arms, consoling each other. Time didn’t matter, just as this room did not matter.
Ardyce was the first to move. Lifting her head, savoring the sensation of his erection beginning to retreat inside her, she placed a hand on his face, raising it up so that she could look on him fully. Her eyes were full, like a cup almost overflowing, but this time she did not cry. Instead, she lifted herself from him and, going to the basin in the corner of the room, quickly cleaned herself.
Buttoning himself up, his body covered in the sweat of his lusts, Orfeo watched her. “Come away with me,” he said again at last.
She looked over her shoulder at him and, for a second, her face twisted in absolute bitterness. “I can’t,” she said. “I wish I could, but I can’t. If I go with you, Earl will track us both down. And you can’t stay here. If you do...” Her voice broke before she could complete the sentence and she began to shake, holding onto the basin as she sobbed.
Very softly, Orfeo stood up and lifted one of the charms from the alcove. Stepping behind her so quietly that she did not hear him approach, he gently took her in his arms and, turning her, placed the amulet around her neck. It was a strange thing, all feathers and bones and glittering semi-precious stones, with black bits of iron mixed in.
“My mother gave me this,” he told her. “Wear it, for me. It’ll keep you safe.”
She smiled sadly at this affectation but did not remove it from her neck. Instead, she let her fingers rise up to it as she watched him take the other from the alcove and place it over his own head.
She did not want to move, but staying here would bring disaster to them both. “I must go,” she told him at last.
He turned his back to her. “Come away with me,” he whispered once more, so quietly that she almost did not hear it. Eyes brimming, she turned from him, took her coat and opened the door.
Baptiste stood as she left the room, his eyes searching her face. She shook her head angrily, refusing to cry now. If she broke down at this point she would be unable to leave and her lover would be doomed.
As she moved quickly down the stairs, followed by Baptiste, both of them heard the guitar start once more.
“Hair burning red, as red as a flame,
and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,
your skin so pale I cannot tame—
I burn and I drown when you come to me.
“We lived alone a long, long time -
our hearts were broken a long, long time.
When you kiss me and I feel your heat
then at last our hearts will meet.
“Hair burning red, as red as flame,
and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,
your skin so pale I cannot tame -
I burn and I drown when you leave me.”
Ardyce’s own eyes were both burning and drowning, red with her tears, as she came to the end of the stairs. The prostitute they had met when they entered the building was in the narrow hallway, looking up to the fading sounds of the song that could still be dimly heard.
“It fair breaks your heart when he sings like that, don’t it,” she remarked, her own face sorrowful as she glanced toward Baptiste and Ardyce. “We’re all stuck in the sewer here, but when he sings... sometimes you just forget it all.” She shook her head sadly and watched as Ardyce, unable to answer, ran toward the door and out into the darkness of the city.
Chapter Eight
Baptiste called out to Ardyce as she ran into the street but she did not respond. For a few moments it felt as though the world was whirling around her and, unable to catch her breath, she staggered toward the sidewalk on the opposite side from the house where Orfeo lived and placed a hand on the wall to support herself. Only the solidity of that stone and plaster beneath her fingers, cold and damp in the night air, seemed real to her. Everything else threatened to fall into chaos.
That, perhaps, was the last
time that she would ever see him, ever feel his touch. The murderous look she had glimpsed in Earl’s eyes when he spoke of her lover filled her with the most terrible dread she had ever experienced in her life. Orfeo had to leave and she would never be with him again! His hope that she would come with him was folly: Earl would leave no corner of the earth unexplored if she fled New Orleans with the man she loved: to save his life, she had to let him go.
I burn and I drown when you leave me. She heard his words, his voice, echoing around her skull and she knew exactly what he meant. Her skin was burning as though consumed by fever, and her tears which fell freely now threatened to drown her.
“Ardyce, are you okay?”
She had not heard Baptiste come up behind her, all other sounds blotted out by Orfeo’s song silent to everyone else but her. She jumped as he placed his hand on her shoulder and, when she turned round to face him, her eyes red and streaming, her face flushed with anguish, he drew back a step. His own expression mingled concern and fear and she wondered how she appeared to him at that moment: she felt like a wild animal, trapped by her own past and desperate now to fight or flee.
The street lights here were intermittent and deep shadows reached between the tall buildings. Far away was the sound of traffic, but there were no cars near them aside from one that she had barely noticed, parked a few dozen feet in front of them. At last she was becoming aware of her surroundings and stared a little less blindly at Baptiste, finally able to see his face as human at last. The night air was becoming ever cooler and, beneath her coat she could feel her skin starting to grow cold.
“I’m okay,” she said at last, though her breath was still coming too quickly and she could not bear to look on the house where Orfeo remained. For a moment he flashed before her mind’s eye vividly, sitting on that rickety chair, his broad chest naked and covered in sweat as she rode up and down on him. She felt as though she had been stabbed and, closing her eyes, let out a groan.
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