“What kind of stuff do you write?” said Dee Dee.
“I’ve tried a little of everything: Fiction, children’s books, chick lit, plays, musicals. I’ve even posted a play on my website. The play’s called Shakespeare in the Trailer Park. Some high school near Orlando actually wrote me asking if they could perform it. I said ‘go for it’. That’s the last I heard from them so I guess there were no New York producers in the audience scouting for off Broadway.”
“And the restaurant?” Dee Dee tried to steer the conversation back to his business and an opportunity for her potential employment.
“The restaurant’s only part of the operation,” Roland said, “There’s also a motel, two floors of rooms facing the beach, and a bar. The view from the dining room is beautiful though, overlooks a pretty strip of beach and the Gulf. The bar is the key. I can generally count on filling up the rooms between October and March, when the snowbirds flock in; they drink at the bar and eat bar food in the restaurant, but summers are tough. The snowbirds take wing in March and when they head back up north, my business goes south. I need to find a way to attract the locals, folks from St. Pete, Clearwater, even Tampa, to keep the place above water during the summer and hurricane season.”
“What kind of food do you serve?”
“Florida fare, fish mostly. We also serve stone crab in season, steaks and chops, stuff like that.”
“Have you ever thought about serving sushi?” Dee Dee envisioned a grand Florida hotel, like the Don Caesar, the Biltmore or the Paradise Hotel with live alligators in fountains in the lobby and rich old men trolling the bar. She could see herself installed in a penthouse, cutting fish in a five-star restaurant, and interviewing potential sugar daddies. She saw Roland as her ticket out of Key West and into the good life.
She decided to be nice to him, very nice to him. She moved her foot further up his calf. “Maybe you need a new image, a theme, something unusual that would attract customers.” She ran her foot higher up his leg, letting her toenails scrape against his skin.
“You mean like a British pub or one of those places that insults the customers?”
“I don’t know. It’s a Florida beach bar, what is Florida known for?” Dee Dee said.
“Alligators, palm trees, oranges, retirees, snowbirds, Ponce de Leon, hurricanes —”
“How about a hurricane theme?” Dee Dee interrupted. “You could like name drinks after different Hurricanes like Francis, Jeanne, Wilma, Hugo, Katrina.”
“And when someone orders a Katrina, I could keep them waiting an hour to get their drink.” Roland grinned.
“We’ll think of something,” said Dee Dee. Her foot was now in Roland’s crotch and she was wiggling her toes titillatingly.
Roland caught the ‘we’ and smiled. “I’m already thinking of something, but it has nothing to do with the restaurant,” he said, giving her a lascivious grin.
Roland noticed a look in her eye, like a kid scrutinizing an ant before he whipped out a magnifying glass from his pocket. It was a look of lethal curiosity. It unnerved him and excited him at the same time.
Under the table Stinky gazed at Dee Dee’s foot in Roland’s crotch. He was pleased with the direction things were taking: Perfect and according to plan. Stinky polished off his bowl of brandy and cream, licked his whiskers and jumped up on the table.
“She likes you man.” Stinky’s voice sounded in Roland’s head. “I think you might get lucky tonight. Why don’t you pick up a bottle of wine, some brandy and cream and we can all take a long walk on the beach?”
Chapter Four
Leaving Cassandra
As Hussey approached Mama’s weather-beaten bungalow she spied Obadiah hammering nails into the graying boards of the ramshackle chicken coop. “Hey Obadiah,” she called out, “I came to say good-bye to you and Mama. Is she in the house?”
“Yeah, she’s in the house,” Obadiah said, halting his hammering long enough to wipe his wrinkled brow with a ratty looking red bandana. “She’s been mixing up potions all morning, putting together a little voodoo travel kit for you. Go on in, she’s expecting you.”
As she had done almost every day for the last ten years, Hussey climbed the creaking steps that led up to the sagging porch. The screen door slammed behind her as she entered Mama’s front parlor. She found Mama seated on her threadbare couch spreading out tarot cards on her marble-topped table and making notes with a fountain pen. Without looking up Mama said, “I made a batch of that sangria you like. I’ll get Bella to bring it.”
Hussey plopped down in the embroidered chair across from Mama as she had done that first day so many years ago. She slipped off her knapsack and let it slide to the floor.
“Bella!” Mama shouted. “Bring some sangria from the ice box and, while you’re at it, bring some of those voodoo doll cookies too.” She swept the cards into a stack and stuffed the pen into the pocket of her house dress.
“How’s Bella Donna working out?” Hussey said.
“I should have thrown her out on her skinny ass after the first week she was here,” Mama swore and shook her head. “She cooks worse than Obadiah and since she lost her eyesight she either breaks or spills everything she touches … but I don’t have the heart to put her out.”
“How long has she been with you now?”
“She showed up on my doorstep about six months ago,” said Mama. “She said she was living on the road and hadn’t eaten in days. I can still see the poor thing standing on my porch, so covered in road dirt and mud I thought she was a Golem. She held her sad little paper sack to her chest like it held everything she owned. She had a pleading look in her eyes when she told me she wanted to study voodoo and she had traveled halfway across the country looking for a voodun who needed an apprentice. I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. Then, when she went blind all of a sudden, I kind of figured it was my obligation to keep her around.”
“It is a shame how she went blind a few weeks after she came to work for you,” said Hussey.
Mama flipped a card on to the table, changing the subject. “The cards say you can take the girl away from the voodoo, but you can’t take the voodoo away from the girl. There’s voodoo in your future girl, even if you are running away to that medical doctor school down in Saint Petersburg. I said it the first day I met you and I’ll say it again.”
“I don’t care what the cards say.” Hussy glared at Mama Wati. “I’m going to be a medical doctor. No more spells, no more charms, no more voodoo.”
“If that’s true child, it would be a damned shame, but I know better. You’re a voodun, the best apprentice I’ve ever had, you’re a natural at it. I never met anybody who could throw a conjure like you.”
“I just came to say goodbye.” Hussey sighed.
Mama flipped the next card in the deck onto the marble-topped table. “See this card?” she said. “The high priestess. That’s you girl, I knew it was you the first time you sat your pretty little behind in that chair ten years ago, and it’s still you today, and it will be you until you die. You can’t fool the buzzards of destiny.”
“I told you I’m going to be a legitimate medical doctor,” Hussey said, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. “I’m through with voodoo.”
“Voodoo is your destiny, child!” shouted the old woman. “You’re a natural born voodun,” Mama said in a much softer tone. “You got the mark, girl, and a strong one too. I saw it in your palm. It’s a good thing you found me; you might never have known you had the gift. A voodun growing up alone without guidance is a sad and dangerous child. Takes someone like me to recognize it and help you develop it. And that’s just what I did the last ten years. But even after all my training; you’re still a sad and dangerous child. Why don’t you stay here, take over from me when I’m gone? Be the official voodun of Cassandra. I ain’t going to be around much longer. I’ve already seen the signs, seen a raven at the window, heard a screech owl at midnight and, sometimes, I see those shadow people out of the cor
ner of my eye. Those shadow people are just waiting for me to die.”
“You’ll outlive everybody in Cassandra,” said Hussey.
Bella, a thin black girl in her mid-twenties, entered the room carrying sangria in an old cut glass pitcher and a platter of cookies shaped like little voodoo dolls. Bella carefully placed the platter of cookies and two glasses on the table. She proceeded to pour the sangria, holding her finger barely inside the rim of each glass so as not to overfill the glasses. While Bella poured, Hussey noticed a small cloth doll sitting on the side table. Mama caught Bella looking at the doll and with one fluid motion swept up the doll and stuffed it into the chair beside her. Before Mama whisked it away, Hussey noticed the face was painted brown and a scrap of fabric was pinned to a hank of nappy black hair that topped its head.
Hussey picked up a cookie and held it in front of her face admiring it. The cookie, with its little chocolate chips for eyes and little chocolate stitch mouth, brought back memories; it was just the same as those Mama had served the first time Hussey had visited.
“How you making out, Bella?” Hussey directed the question to Bella, as she bit off the head off her cookie.
“It’s a struggle but I’m making do.” Bella looked about a foot to the right of Hussey’s face. “Being blind is a pain in the ass, but I’m getting used to it.”
Ignoring Bella, Mama flipped another card from the deck and placed it on the table. With a sad smile she said; “I see trouble waiting for you in Saint Pete girl; that Cutter is about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. He’ll get you in a tight spot sooner or later. I don’t trust him as far as I could toss a ’gator; he’s a natural born fuck-up.”
“Well, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed but he’s cute and he loves me.”
“Granted he’s a pretty boy,” said Mama, “But he ain’t even a tool in that shed, he’s more like a leaky bag of compost. Hussey honey, the man is almost retarded.”
“You don’t have to be a genius to deal cards, and that’s what he wants to do,” Hussey said. “Be a dealer in a casino, while I go to medical school.”
“Why do you want to be a doctor anyway? Wasn’t going to college for four years enough for you? You got a degree in mixing up potions didn’t you?”
“Organic Chemistry,” Hussey said. “My degree is in Organic Chemistry, and now I’ll go on to medical school and become a neurologist, a physiological neurologist. I’ll work with drugs to fix mental problems. I’m tired of the dark side,” Hussey continued. “Medical science is … well … science … not just smoke and mirrors like voodoo.”
“Smoke and mirrors!” Mama Wati went on the attack. “You know voodoo is more than smoke and mirrors. And don’t be so sure there’s all that much difference between the dark side and the light side. What do you think medical science was before there were all these highfaluting doctors? It was voodoo, that’s what. Back before there were doctors, barbers did the surgery, everything from cutting hair to pulling teeth to tonsillectomies and slapping leeches on folks to balance their bodily humors. Pharmacology was done by old women who mixed herbs and roots and bits of this and that to make potions, poultices and elixirs. It wasn’t until the men decided they wanted a piece of the action that the old healer ladies started to be called witches. The doctors decided that when they rolled a pill it was science and when some little old lady living in a thatch cottage did it, it was witchery. So the doctors sicced the Church on the poor old woman and their profession went up in smoke, literally.”
“What do witches have to do with voodoo?”
“The suppression of witchcraft was actually a suppression of biological knowledge,” Mama continued. “Christian destruction of paganism suppressed the human psyche; it was like the clergy rang a church bell and sent the flora and fauna to their corners and told them to come out fighting. Witchcraft, voodoo, holistic medicine, it’s all the same thing,” said Mama. “Somebody simply using what nature provides to heal the sick, mixed in with a little positive thinking. At least with voodoo you get paid in cash,” said Mama. “You ain’t gotta mess with the insurance companies to get paid. Nobody ever sued a voodoorine for malpractice and you get to sleep late in the morning. You already know more about how folk’s bodies work than most of the doctors out there, you been mixing potions and powders for years, you’re a natural chemist. That last batch of zombie potion you mixed up is promising, better than anything I ever mixed, or any other voodoorine I’ll bet. What did you say you call it?”
“Mambo powder,” Hussey said.
“Mambo. Good name for it. How is that stuff working out?”
“It works all right on animals,” said Hussey. “I tried it on a couple of animals and it worked better than Borko, the old zombie powder.”
“That old Borko powder paralyzes the whole brain.” Mama shook her head. “I never used the stuff if I could help it. When you make a zombie with Borko you take away the essence of who the person is, deadens the part of the brain where the personality lives. You say your Mambo powder works without wiping out the personality?”
“Like I said, it works well on animals. I used the Mambo powder on Miz Zoller’s Aussie Shepherd and he came out if it just fine. It cured him of his fear of sheep after that ram butted him. Borko would have cured him of his fear of sheep too, but it would have left him brain-blank, erased his personality. He’d just sit and stare until he was given a command. The Mambo powder took away the dog’s fear and left his personality intact. He still wags his tail and runs to the door when Miz Zoller comes home. He’s as sweet and affectionate as he ever was and now he’s back to pulling his weight herding her sheep.”
“That was a good piece they did on you and the dog in the Cassandra Oracle,” said Mama, “but the picture didn’t do you justice. The reporter talked up that powder of yours real good.”
“I got calls for a month after that article came out from people wanting me to fix everything wrong with their dogs from heart worm to halitosis. It’s a good thing it was only a community newspaper.”
“Have you tried the Mambo on humans yet? Human brains are different. People have a higher level of consciousness than animals, more complex. Well,” Mama paused, “at least some of them do. But it just might work on humans too.”
“I’m scared of what it might do to a human. The only potion I’m going to mix up from now on is going to be FDA approved. From now on I’m studying medicine, not magic.”
“What a waste,” said Mama Wati, “that mambo stuff could be a miracle; you could win the Nobel Prize for voodoo with it. Do you remember what I asked you the first day we met? I asked if you wanted to know if you were going to grow up to be rich and famous and discover some miracle to heal the afflicted or wind up waiting tables in a fish house.”
“I remember. You never did tell me which was to be my destiny.”
“Your choice,” said Mama. “If I were you, I’d think about trying out your Mambo powder on people.”
“Too risky.” Hussey shook her head. “I’d never try it on a human.”
“Never say never.” Mama wagged her finger at Hussey. You could be a great voodoorine.” Mama Wati shifted in her chair and the cap came off the top of the fountain pen in the pocket of her housedress. She shifted again, and the pen perforated her dress and stabbed the cloth doll hidden in the chair cushion.
In the kitchen Bella screamed bloody murder and dropped the pitcher. The pitcher shattered on the tile floor spraying sangria across the wall and shards of cut glass all over the floor.
“Bella! What the hell did you do this time?” Mama called to the kitchen.
“I just got a sudden shooting pain in my ass,” Bella screeched, “and I broke the pitcher to bits.”
Mama looked down at the voodoo doll beside her. She saw the black ink spreading across the rear of the doll and realized what had happened.
“Is that Cutter coming up the drive?” Mama pointed at the window.
When Hussey turned to look, Mama plucked the doll f
rom the chair cushion and examined it quickly. The bit of cloth that matched Bella’s dress was still pinned to its hair and its eyes were still stitched shut. Satisfied, she tossed it under her chair before Hussey turned back to face her.
“I don’t see anybody coming up the drive.”
“Sorry honey, my eyes ain’t what they used to be.” Mama Wati bit the head off a cookie. “Now where were we? Oh, I know … the gift. You could be a ring-tailed wonder of a voodoorine. You couldn’t be any better if you were my own daughter.”
“I told you I’m done with voodoo,” Hussey said.
“So you said.” Mama Wati smiled. “So you gonna get yourself an MD behind your name? Just don’t forget your voodoo training; it’ll come in handy someday.”
The women heard the soft crunch of gravel as a vehicle pulled into Mama’s driveway. Hussey looked through the window and saw Cutters’ big white van.
Mama scowled, closed her eyes and shook her head. She reached under her chair and retrieved the large leather-bound book of conjures and handed it to Hussey. Mama scooped up Hussy’s backpack and crossed to her bedroom. She began pulling bottles and vials off the shelves and stuffing them in.
“I’m going to Saint Petersburg and be a doctor.”
Mama continued to stuff bottles into the knapsack.
“I don’t need that stuff. Besides, I have all the voodoo powders and stuff I need in my grandfather’s old medicine bag.” When Mama returned with the overstuffed backpack Hussey passed the book back to Mama Wati.
“This is just some odds and ends I mixed up for you, girl,” Mama said and handed Hussey the heavy backpack. “Some of them might come in handy, who knows? Humor an old woman and take it anyway.” Mama shoved the book back into Hussey’s hands. “Take the book too, it’s meant to be yours anyway. Besides, I don’t want it in the house anymore.”
Homemade Sin Page 5
