House of Blues

him."
    No way she was going off with a strange man without
backup.
    "But you gotta be blindfolded," the man
said. She was struggling not to laugh when she felt her elbows
grabbed, her purse ripped off her shoulder. She was cursing herself
for an idiot, getting her purse snatched like some tourist, when
someone slipped a blindfold over her eyes. She was being held tightly
now, unable to kick or struggle, and she realized that it had taken
at least four strong men to immobilize her.
    The three she never saw had been soundless. There
wasn't a thing she could have done.
    Somehow, the knowledge that she hadn't done anything
wrong, that her predicament wasn't her fault, calmed her. Curiously,
they hadn't gagged her. And why should they? If the spectacle of a
blindfolded woman being dragged down the street didn't elicit
anyone's sympathy, cries for help weren't going to either.
    "Where are we going?" she said.
    " You be quiet now," someone answered. She
thought she might as well.
    They put her in a car, in the backseat, one on either
side of her, each holding an arm. The air was thick with the smell of
sweat. And fear. Hers.
    Her legs were free, but she couldn't see the point of
struggling now; at the other end was soon enough.
    They drove for a long time, and she talked to
herself, told herself silent stories about curious ways to get to
interviews—anything to avoid thinking like a victim.
    When they stopped, someone said, "We at
Delavon's. You be quiet now."
    The psyching-up had worked—she had an odd feeling,
almost of trust. This thing was so preposterous she felt it had to be
merely a show of force, a posturing and flexing of muscles; that they
wouldn't harm her.
    She heard a metal door clang, and they walked her up
two flights of metal steps. When they opened another door and took
her blindfold off, it was as if she'd come by magic carpet, so exotic
was the scene.
    She had thought she was in one of the projects or
maybe one of the scruffy apartment complexes that dotted certain
areas, New Orleans East in particular. They were nasty slums on
streets with names like Parc Brittany or Poplar Lane; brick
fourplexes, some of them, some made out of wood, with porch roofs
falling off, everything falling off.
    But she was in a room too big for a place like that,
unless someone had knocked a few walls down. And the furnishings were
wrong. There were Oriental rugs everywhere, good ones, she thought,
though she couldn't be sure, overlapping so that every inch of floor
was covered. The walls were hung with fabric—a heavy, dark brocade
with plenty of gold in it. A different fabric covered the ceiling in
poufs, the way kids like to hang parachutes—something shiny, a
taffeta perhaps, in deep burgundy woven with gold.
    There were no windows that Skip could see—presumably
they had been covered as well.
    Near the back of the room was a sort of raised
platform, on which a large chair had been mounted. The wall fabric,
the dark brocade, had been draped over platform and chair. A man sat
on the chair, a smallish, wiry black man who exuded energy as
exuberantly as a stage actor. He had on a skullcap, loose-fitting
shirt, and harem pants of gold-woven taffeta, a lot like the ceiling
fabric, except that it was purple, yellow, and bronze.
    Continuing the harem motif, no fewer than three
sinuous young women lounged on the floor, all black, all sporting
long, Egyptian-style ponytails, and all wearing halters and harem
pants, clearly run up by the same mad designer who'd contrived the
man's outfit.
    Skip would have laughed if she hadn't been so busy
trying to keep her jaw from dropping. And if there hadn't been
something sad about it all.
    She couldn't shake the feeling that if she pulled up
the gorgeous carpets, she'd find a plywood floor, maybe covered with
linoleum. That if she looked in the women's eyes, she'd see despair.
    That if she ripped down the window coverings, she'd
look out on buildings so poorly constructed the gutters, the roofs,
anything that wasn't part of a wall would be hanging by a thread; or
perhaps she'd see gorgeous old Greek revival buildings, now shells,
like the ones in Central City along Baronne and Carondelet, deserted,
their windows boarded up.
    "You be the tall one," said the man. "I
been hearin' 'bout you."
    " I guess you be Delavon."
    "Don't you mess with me." He brought a hand
down flat against the arm of his chair. Because of the padding, it
didn't make much noise, but perhaps it wasn't meant to