Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler
by
Juniper Bell
“Laaaaiiiiissssezzz les boooonnnnnn …” A cat in heat, that’s
what it sounded like to Arrietta. A wild, rutting, howling cat on a hot tin
roof. Except this caterwauling demon was strutting across a stage, not a roof,
and that stage happened to be in the bar next door on Frenchmen’s Street. Which
wouldn’t be a problem except that she was
trying to sing too. Her rendition of “Blue Collar Boogie” kept getting drowned
out by the ridiculous screeching next door, and her overflow crowd of twenty –
make that eighteen – seemed to be overflowing right out the door.
She sang louder. “Some say work is good for the soul …” Her
voice cracked. Josh, on standup
bass, made a face at her. She flared her nostrils at him. He crinkled his
forehead in a way that gave her a funny little twinge and made her stumble over
the next word. “… but I see … say … I sold my soul forty hours a week.” She
shot Josh a glare, only to be deafened by another blast of sound from next
door.
“…roulllleeeerrr! Yow!!! Come on, pretty mama!”
“You’ve got to be
kidding!” With a squeal of feedback, Arrietta yanked the mike out of its stand.
“Can’t someone do something?”
Josh and Mackie D, her drummer, stumbled to a stop, the
music crashing around them like a building in mid-demolition. With a quizzical
look, Josh tilted his derby hat further back on his head. Mackie D just stared
at her, his big black bulk solid as a mountain behind his drum set. They’d been
playing together as Miss Jess for two years in Brooklyn, and were just starting
to get some notice. Arrietta had slaved for this day. She’d gone into debt,
she’d lived in shithole apartments her entire adult life, done all her shopping
at Goodwill. She’d worked as a waitress, a psychic hotline operator, even a
secretarial temp to pay the bills. She’d sacrificed everything – friendships,
romances, financial security -- for her music.
Sure, sometimes she wished she could just let it rip, like
that loudmouth good ol’ boy next door. Forget technique, forget lessons and
scales. But she’d hadn’t spent all those years mastering her craft to let Miss
Jess’s all-important first gig in New Orleans—on Valentine’s Day, no less--get
ruined by a jackass.
She leaned back into the mike and breathed, “We’ll be back
in five.” With one more annoyed look at her do-nothing bandmates, she stalked
off the stage.
Blank, astonished faces watched her progress through
Hurricane City and out the door. No one seemed too concerned about the racket
next door. Maybe they were used to this in New Orleans -- one group completely
drowning out another. Well, Arrietta hadn’t paid her dues in the Brooklyn music
scene for nothing. Maybe other singers didn’t mind straining their vocal chords
to be heard over a screeching banshee, but she wasn’t going to put up with it
for one more second.
The bar next door was called “Chez le Voodoo”. It had an
annoyingly vintage New Orleans look about it, with ornate gold lettering and a
dim interior that seemed to be lit by gas lamps. An impassive man sat on a
stool outside the front door. He looked her up and down, then back up, then
back down.
She thought she looked pretty good, with her hair in pink,
marcelled waves, like a fifties pin-up. In honor of Valentine’s Day, she’d
added a fascinator with a sparkly heart. Her onstage style was tongue-in-cheek
retro, with a poodle skirt that had been altered to feature a wildcat rather
than a poodle, and a halter top that showed off the tattoo of an
eyelash-batting kitten on her upper back. But the bouncer didn’t seem
impressed. He held out his hand, palm up.
“I’m not
staying,” she told him. “I’m singing next door and I need to talk to someone
about the sound level.”
When he didn’t lower his hand, she rolled her eyes and
reached into her cleavage. With a quick glance to make sure it wasn’t one of her
twenties, she slapped it into his hand. He grunted and waved her in.
Bedlam, that’s what it was. As she stepped into Chez le
Voodoo, an absolutely wild scene unfurled before her. The walls were black, as
if decades of smoke had infused every crack in the wood. Every few feet, flames
danced and leaped inside glass wall sconces. The place was so packed, Arrietta
couldn’t even make out where the bar was. Couples were romping and whooping;
some were executing tight spins and dips and whirls. Fragrant cigarette smoke
curled through the air as if the place were an opium den. Arrietta tossed her
head, ignoring the seductive pull of all that wild abandon. Talk about old
skool. A lot of bars didn’t even allow smoking anymore.
But clearly, Chez le Voodoo followed its own rules.
Indecent exposure, for example.
She peered into the smoky crowd. The flickering gas lamps
acted as a sort of old-fashioned strobe light, so she could see only in
flashes. But she was pretty sure … yes, practically positive … that some of the
women were dancing topless.
Well, it was New Orleans, after all. But she’d thought that
sort of thing was saved for the tourists down on Bourbon Street. This was
Frenchmen’s Street, where all the serious music lovers went. And she was a
Serious Musician -- on a mission.
She swung her gaze to the stage, where she spotted the cause
of her outrage.
There he was, the devil who’d been ruining her set. He stood
with legs apart, hands gripping a saxophone, lips wrapped around the
mouthpiece. At least he wasn’t singing at the moment, but his sax playing was
just as bad. The man had no technique whatsoever. He just threw notes out there
as if they were cheap Mardi Gras beads. Fast and raw, the notes scampered up
and down the scale. The dancing crowd gyrated right along with the madman,
faster and faster, as if they’d all die if they stopped – or even slowed down.
Then he pulled the sax out of his mouth and yanked the mike
to his lips. And Arrietta came close to fainting. The man was … what were the
right words? He was like some kind of god -- the pagan kind. He had black hair,
thick as blackstrap molasses, with a shiver of black stubble on his jaw. His
eyes glittered like midnight swamp water, like alligators sidling alongside
bayou skiffs, like wild Southern belles throwing tossing up their skirts on a
hot summer night. Every naughty thought, every dangerous, spontaneous impulse
gleamed in those eyes. And every woman in the place knew it.
“Laiiiiiissssezzzz les ….”
And those broad shoulders, hunched over the mike as if he
was making sweet, sweet love to it. His lean hips thrust in time to the beat.
Tendons stood out in his neck. Sweat dripped down his face. The man was sex.
Pure sex on a mike stand.
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