Rachel Caine - An affinity for Blue

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2024-11-24 0 0 96KB 17 页 5.9玖币

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AN AFFINITY FOR BLUE

anoriginal short story by RachelCaine

The city smelled of music -- the hot spice of jazz, the cool river-scent of reggae, the pulsing foggy swirl

ofzydeco . To some people, that might have translated as spilled sour beer, mildew and the stink of a city

at perpetual low tide, but not to John "Evangelist"Fredricks . As he stepped off the bus, John took in a

deeply colored breath and knew,knew he’d come to the right place. It was a place where things

happened. Not always good things, maybe, but that was all right, too. Music was a wild horse, and

sometimes people got thrown.

The sidewalk was old and stained, veteran of countless MardiGras . The party was over, the city sunk in

exhaustion, but he hadn’t come for the wild times – not the way the tourists saw it. He’d come for the

music.

The baggage compartment on the busscreeked up like the wing of a dusty beetle; he ducked in and

grabbed his single battered suitcase, and his horn case. The suitcase was a Salvation Army find, stained

like theNew Orleanssidewalks with decades of travel; the horn case was fine leather, scuff-free,

maintained like the finish on an antique Rolls Royce. The horn inside, nestled in wine-red velvet, had been

polished to a high gleam, and in John’s imagination it felt warm as flesh to the touch.

"Bewantin ’a room, I ‘spect."

He looked up, the weight of his horn case dragging on his arm like an insistent child, and saw a shadow

blocking out the watery early-spring sun.Big man, twice his size, thick through the chest and arms. A face

that could have been carved from granite by wind and rain, eyes the color of wet river stones. It seemed

to John that the man must have been standing there, arms crossed, ever since the sidewalk had been

poured.

"What?" he asked. He’d been thinking about other things, about hopes and dreams and music. He

focused on the man, who reminded him of nothing so much as a cigar store Indian made out of stone.

"Room," the man repeated. "You want one?"

"Is it cheap?"

The man’s granite face split, revealing a line of white teeth like a seam of limestone. "Sure, cheap and

clean.C’mon wit me."

He started to walk away. John stayed where he was, the horn case dragging at his arm. The man looked

back and came to a halt again, looking as eternal as if he’d never moved.

"French Quarter?"John asked. The man nodded soberly.

"Course de French Quarter. You want de music, don’ you?"

John smiled. He was two or three shades lighter than the Granite Man, but his teeth were just as white,

perfectly straight. His mother had put a lot of money into that smile, paying for a perfect armature for her

trumpet-playing son. Like the instrument, it was his legacy.

"Yes," he said. "I want the music."

And that was that. He set out, cases in hand, following his guide downCanal Streetto Bourbon. As they

approached the corner, which was thick with tourists even this early in the morning, already richly veined

with the whispers of music from down the street, from clubs that opened early or stayed open night and

day. The street drew him the way honey draws ants, a physical hunger like a hard knot of amber in his

belly, and he started to turn that way.

A huge hand fell on his shoulder. Seen close, the skin looked rough and grainy,more like granite than

ever. He looked up at his guide.

"No," the man said."This way."

I want to go that way, John thought, feeling like a child denied candy. But he followed, because he

wasn’t a child anymore, he was a man, trained in the craft of patience. Didn’t mean he didn’t taste that

candy, though. Didn’t mean he didn’t ache for it.

Bourbonstreetwas kept mostly clean – he saw white-shirted, dark-skinned men on both sides of the

streets, unobtrusive small men, picking up discarded bottles and cans and cigarette butts. Even so, the

litter ran ahead of them; broken glass glittered like melting ice in the gutters, and even in the one look he

took he saw a tall white woman in a sky-blue dress drop another cigarette to the pavement.Work that

never ends, he thought. He wondered how they got through the day if they knew that.

"Where are we going?" he asked. It occurred to him for the first time that he was a stranger, and he

could die inNew Orleansas easy asGalveston. One good smash from a granite fist ought to do it. He

thought about getting beat to death, about somebody taking his horn and pawning it for vials of crack,

and his guts knotted up again.

"Dauphine Street," his guide said. He turned and stuck out his hand. "Sam."

He took it, careful, and was surprised how careful Sam was, too. As if he knew he might crush poorli’l

music-boy’s fingers with a twitch.

"John," he said, and then changed it. "People call me EvangelistFredricks ."

"Evangelist," Sam nodded. "Least they don’ call you de Baptist."

He turned and walkedon, nodding to some people, ignoring others John was already seeing would be

tourists. The tourists were like ghosts, existing in some other world than Sam’s; he walked, and they

moved out of the way like mist, but never looking right at him. Their eyes were always fixed somewhere

else – on a brochure, on a map, on the street ahead.Two worlds , he thought.Two I know of . But there

had been worlds inGalveston, too, worlds of music and money and fear.Galvestonhadn’t carried melody

in itsbones, it was a city where the heartbeat was the steady growling pulse of traffic and the boom of

ships being loaded in the harbor. Music threaded through all of the worlds ofNew Orleans, running like a

pale whispering river through the stone and past the people.Older than the city.Older than anything.

He almost bumped into Sam when he came to a stop. There were tourists here, too, but on the other

side of the street, crowded around a bar whose sign John couldn’t see. Piano music floated out,

something in a ragtime rhythm with a dark blue edge of Cajun accordion.

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