The old gypsy woman scurried away into the recesses of the old city, faded into the twilight maze. The brewing electrical storm both motivated her speed and lit her path. Her manner of crossing over and turning down a series of backstreets and alleys gave her the appearance of a large rat. That’s what witnesses would say. “No sir, no old woman gypsy or otherwise passed by here. But when all that popping and banging of that storm started in, I did spot a large rat on the move. Size of a dog it was. Big ol’ river rat.” She reached her destination and passed through the iron gate as though one of them wasn’t real, or else she was a shadow cast through its balusters to the other side. As she reached for the large ring on the polished oak door, it opened. “Good evening. Venez dans, Mademoiselle.” The man stepped aside to allow his visitor to enter. “I must say, your disguise this evening has reached a new level of authenticity.” As the gypsy crossed the threshold, there was another clap of thunder. Neither the man or the woman flinched. They were accustomed to such things and relished them.
“Thank you, sir. I need a bath to wash all of this authenticity off me. I reek to the point of making myself sick to my stomach. May I avail myself of your facilities?”
“Please do. However, before you go upstairs, I want you to tell me about your actual performance. Were you believable?”
“The devil’s come for you, sir. Help an old gypsy get something to eat?” The woman laughed a cold and brittle laugh. “What do you think?”
The man also laughed. “Well done! Well done, indeed! With that voice and these deplorable rags —where on earth did you did them up; don’t tell me I don’t really want to know —Maria Ouspenskaya never played a gypsy better! Shook him up a bit, did you then?”
The woman began to peel off her scarves and layers of rags and dropped them to the floor. “Hard to tell with this one. Not the usual mark. He seemed to put some meaning to my madness. He did put the fetish you gave me in his pocket, though. I saw him do it.”
“Good. That was my main concern. The rest doesn’t really matter. As long as he’s a believer we can manipulate him whichever way we want.”
“You should know I followed him from that voodoo queen Beatrice.”
“Oh, that is good news. If he thinks his Beatrice can lead him through the Inferno, all the easier he can be deceived.”
“So may I have that bath now?”
“Yes, by all means. Go. Take as long as you like, my dear, just not too long. I have a surprise waiting for you”
The man watched as the woman ascended the sweeping stairs. Each step higher changed one layer of her rags into silk taffeta. Her age was also reversing. Facial wrinkles fell away. Coarse dull grey hair became soft wavy blonde. This wasn’t the first time the man had witnessed this, but it remained spectacular to watch. Here was the metamorphosis of a worm emerging from the chrysalis as a butterfly. The worm actually had to die for this to happen, but it’s soul didn’t mind the price to be so beautiful and free. The man smiled to himself as he followed her up the stairs, knowing he too would be reborn.
He penetrated the curtain of atmosphere undetected from the foyer. However, its waves shimmered as they passed through it. And with there passage, there was the popping and crackling sounds of the electrical storm outside and the smell of ozone and something burning.
The man entered a ballroom with lights aglow. Huge vases of gardenias adorned every table and perfumed the room. There was music playing. A feast was artfully presented on silver trays. A silver Monteith bowl stood on a separate oval table chilling flutes for champagne with a magnum of Veuve Cliquot 1921 luxuriated on ice in an adjacent silver bucket.
When the butterfly entered the room, she fluttered around looking at it all in amazement. “Well, Monsieur, you certainly kept your word! This is so beautiful. Such extravagant payment for a little favor. You have asked me to do larger tasks and given me less. This is, well, it is perfect! I don’t know what to say.”
“Tonight is a special night for me. You did a very special favor for me so I felt you deserved a special reward.”
“My dear, I have done sundry favors for you before and never enjoyed anything like this. May I have a glass of that champagne over there or are you saving it for someone else?”
“Forgive me. Of course I’ll pour a glass for you. 1921 has been a remarkable year, ne cest pas?” He poured the champagne and handed her the flute. “I invited you here after a party. You became frightened, though I would have never forced myself on you.” He took her arm and walked her over to a pair of french doors. “You jumped off this balcony and ran to the police.”
“I was just a stupid young girl who got in over her head. I have learned better. I told you I was sorry and I thought you forgave me. What is this all about?”
“You were sorry because I caught you coming out of the police station. Fortunately, you had had enough to drink they didn’t believe your story. Except for one young detective. He came around the next morning as I suspected he would.”
“You said the police didn’t find anything incriminating.”
“That is true, no thanks to you. Everything has a price, my dear. Have you not yet learned that? For instance, that champagne. 1921. One thousand dollars a bottle. That dress you’re wearing is an Jean Patou creation. Any idea? Everything comes with a price, even the betrayal of a young woman in 1921. I have preserved your youth and beauty as you are, rather as you were in 1921 in this house. You have rarely had to venture out into the dimension from which I saved you where it is now 1998. Do you realize how old you really are? Time did more for your gypsy disguise than you are willing to credit.”
“Are you throwing me out?”
“No, of course not. I found another way for you to pay your debt to me. Come with me and I will show you.”
The woman hesitantly followed the man up to the floor above. They walked down a hallway until they came to a door at the opposite end. “Open the door and go in, ma cheri. I assure you there is nothing for you to be afraid of.”
The woman’s hand trembled as she reached for the doorknob and turned it. The door opened into a small room, possibly a child’s room. Candles cast their glow on a body laying on a table. A woman. She was older looking and quite pale. Her hands were folded as through they should be holding a rosary. The man’s friend stood looking at her for a while before the moment of recognition came and she screamed, “No! Not my baby! Not my sweet Suzette!” She turned to the man and tried to pound his chest with both fists as she cried inconsolably. “Why? What did she ever do to you?”
“It wasn’t anything against her, I can assure you. ‘Sins of the father’ applies to mothers, too, Marguerite. Once I realized that you watched over her all during her life and did what you could to make things easier for her, I understood the best way for me to have my revenge. You stayed with me for the sake of your vanity. Now you can be forever proud of what you paid for it.”
“I will destroy you!”
“I had a feeling you might say that. Good-bye, my dear. I will always cherish the time we’ve had together.” With that he raised his left hand and some invisible force lifted the woman and pushed her through the french doors onto the brick street below. The force was so strong she landed on the side opposite. A piece of the rags she wore caught in the grill of this other balcony and tore as her weight plummeted her to the street below.
The next morning, police and residents wondered how the old gypsy gotten up there and why. For the second time in her life, Marguerite Deauville was a front page story of the Times-Picayune. And for the second time, she added to the cache of stories about mysterious goings on in the Quarter.
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