“Max,” she said in barely a whisper, her eyes still glued to his. I looked down at Perry beside me, and she raised her brows and put her hand on my knee. She didn’t know what to make of it either, but suddenly it felt like we were intruding on a very private moment in a very public place.
Still, I had to say, “Oh, he doesn’t like to be called Max anymore. It’s Maximus. Yeah, I think it’s pompous too.”
Suddenly she was looking at me, a weird understanding in her eyes. “You’re Dex.”
It sounded like an accusation. “Uh, I am. How do you know my name?”
“I’d heard a lot about his asshole friend from college,” she said, and before I could say anything to that, she walked out around the bar, stopping just a few feet away from Maximus, hands fidgeting at her waist.
“Was I being an asshole just then?” I whispered to Perry.
She patted my knee. “I didn’t think so, but then again, I’m used to it.”
“You are getting a spanking later,” I warned her, then turned my attention to their awkward reunion. Unfortunately it didn’t last long. Maximus motioned to the outside and Rose followed him out onto the street.
Great. Now we really were in the dark and our bartender was gone. I looked at grizzled Beard Man. “Now what?”
He just shook his head and drank his beer. Luckily, Rose and Max didn’t take forever outside. He came back and sat down next to Perry, and Rose went behind the bar and made three mint juleps for us, extra strong.
“Remember to charge them tourist prices,” Beard Man said.
She nodded at me. “Unfortunately they’re friends of an old friend, so it’s on the house.”
“Woo hoo,” I said. “Everything’s coming up Milhouse.”
“Everything would come up green if you kept drinking those hand grenades,” she said, eyeing the empty one that Perry had finished earlier. “So, Max…sorry, Maximus.”
“It’s Max to you, darlin’,” he said.
She smiled tightly, unsure of herself and quite the change from earlier. “Max. Have you told them about my…uh, ability?”
I looked at Beard Man beside me for his reaction, since talking about “abilities” and stuff in public wasn’t usually kosher. But he just drank his beer, indifferent.
“Don’t worry, he can’t hear me,” she said. I looked at her. She was pouring herself a drink.
“Can’t…” I started.
“Yes, I told them,” he interjected. “Well, I told them you were like them.”
She eyed me and Perry warily. “Is that so? So you guys can see the afterlife too, is that it?”
Again, I looked at Beard Man and gave her the ‘are you crazy talking about this so casually’ look, but again she said, “I’m serious, he can’t hear me right now. I guess you don’t have all the same abilities, do you?”
“Either way,” Maximus said, raising his voice before I could say something, “they understand. And that’s why we’re here. We want to investigate the haunted house in the Desire Area. We need a solid episode, and these two can turn up the goings on that the other teams missed before.”
She sighed and finished the rest of her drink. A couple appeared at the end of the table, waving for her attention but she blatantly ignored them. “I suppose I can help you with that, although I think if you’re wanting to go after something really interesting, you’ll want to talk with Mambo Maryse.”
“My Mambo?” he asked. “Why? I didn’t even think she was still alive.”
“She is, she’s just very sick. But something weird has been happening with the Voodoo crowd lately and I think she’d be the best person to talk to about it.”
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“What is a Mambo?” I asked. My mind was going back to the fruit chew candies I had as a child. Suddenly I really, really wanted one.
Rose addressed me first. “A Mambo is a Voodoo priestess. And I don’t really know what’s happening, there’s just been some rumors of…uh…zombies in the ninth ward and surrounds.”
At that, I choked on a mint leaf. Perry pounded on my back until I finished coughing and then said what I wanted to say. “Zombies? There are no such things as zombies.”
“And technically there are no such things as ghosts either,” Rose argued, “but you and I know better than that.”
I looked at Maximus. “Seriously, zombies?”
He shrugged. “It’s a thing. But not in the way you think. Plus, documented cases are few and far between.”
Rose nodded. “He’s right. This isn’t your Hollywood version. These are still people and they aren’t really dead. They’ve just been buried alive, fished out of the grave, and given damaging amounts of mind control drugs.”
I eyed my drink, careful not to suck up a leaf again. “Oh, well that sounds so simple.”
“And this has been going on here? People are seeing zombies? What are the zombies doing?” Perry asked, leaning forward and obviously intrigued.
Rose leaned toward us, elbows on the bar. The couple at the end of it gave up and went over to the other bartender closest to the jazz band.
“This is just all hearsay, of course. But it’s been reported in Treme, Lower Nine, Florida Area, all the places you don’t want to go. Apparently people are being attacked, at night and in broad daylight.”
“But that happens all the time,” Maximus said.
“Yes, it does. But usually people don’t try and eat each other. And then there’s the fact that the people who are attacked report that they were attacked by someone they know is dead, well that’s a little suspect too, don’t you reckon?”
Maximus shrugged. “Ghetto kids on bath salts then.”
She shook her head. “That’s what everyone is passing it off as. But I’ve heard there’ve been at least twenty attacks.”
“Twenty attacks?” I asked. “Why isn’t this on the news?”
“Because President Bush don’t care about black people,” she deadpanned in a Kanye West impression. Then she raised her hand. “And yes, Obama is in office but that hasn’t really changed anything here. So many of the areas, especially after Katrina, have turned a little Wild West, more than they used to be. And we all know how corrupt the PD is here. So what if twenty black thugs are attacked? Like anyone is going to do anything. Even if this became an epidemic, so long as it doesn’t start involving white folk, then no one really gives a shit. It’s sad.”
“So why are you giving a shit?” I asked.
She pursed her lips, running a strand of frizzy hair behind her ear. “Because it ain’t right. This ain’t a matter of bath salts. Someone is out there controlling these people and making them do this. It’s horrifying, it’s sick, and if we don’t stop it, it’s only going to get worse.”
“If we don’t stop it?” Maximus repeated, his red brow raised. “Look, darlin’, we just came here to film the good shit. We didn’t come here to start killing zombies.”
“I second that,” I spoke up. “I don’t even have a crossbow, and my redneck impression needs some work.”
She rolled her eyes before her fine features became serious. “We…I…wouldn’t be killing them. They’re still people. I just want to stop whoever is doing this.”
“But New Orleans has got to be full of these Voodoo people, right? Where would you even start?” Perry asked.
She shook her head. “Many people here practice Voodoo, but Voodoo is about spirituality. The worship comes from a good place. The ones who use Voodoo for bad, for evil, those are few and far between. In order to be one of those, you have to be a Bokor, be in both worlds.” She looked at all of us in the eye and then sighed. “Tomorrow, come back here at noon and I’ll take you to see the Mambo. She’ll help us.”
Help you, I thought.
Maximus seemed to have the same thought because he said, “And the haunted house. That’s why we’re here, Rose.”
He said it as if she’d already gotten the wrong idea and she flinched slightly at his words. But she patted the table. “I’ll help you with that too. I have to go.”
Then she was gone, disappearing into the back room.
I looked over at Beard Man who was staring blankly ahead of him. I nudged his arm. “You catch all of that?”
I expected him to tell us we were all nuts, but instead he said, “Sorry what? I drifted off there.”
He looked genuinely lost. I smiled at him. “No worries. Just wondering if there was another bar around here that you could recommend.”
He smiled, glad to either help or to be rid of us, and told us there was a place called Speakeasy down the street. Maximus said he knew where it was and took us there. This spot was much smaller than Rose’s Nameless. We slipped into a dark booth in the corner, and after ordering a round of shots and hurricanes, some fried oysters and gumbo (the best in town! they said) from the waitress, we got to drinking and talking.
I slammed back a shot and banged the table with my hand as it burned down. “Hooooo eeeeee! That takes the edge off.” I wiped my mouth and looked Maximus square in the eye, his features hazy in the darkness of the bar. “So, I think you have some ‘splaining to do, friendo.”
“Yeah,” Perry piped up from beside me. “What happened between you and Rose?”
“Nothing.”
I snorted. “Right, like you two didn’t hump like bunnies.”
He cocked his head. “You mean, like you two are so obviously humping like bunnies?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Perry asked snidely.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “How long has this been going on?”
“None of your business,” Perry said.
“Since Canada,” I answered. Proudly.
Perry kicked me under the table and I shot her a surprised look. “What? It has. There’s no point hiding it, I mean we’re sharing a bed and everything. It’s kind of obvious.”
“Does Jimmy know?” he asked.
I didn’t like where this was going. “No. He doesn’t. Now that is none of his business.”
“Don’t you have a habit of sleeping with the women you’re filming?”
“Don’t you have a habit of being an asshole?”
“Asshole? I expected something more original from you, Dex.”
“I’m running out of names. There aren’t that many vile things on this earth that can describe what a cum dumpster you are.”
He ignored that. “I’m just saying, since you slept with Jenn and then had to bail from Wine Babes, don’t you think Jimmy might disapprove of this little tryst you two are having?”
I ticked off one finger, inches from his face. “One, Jimmy doesn’t have to know shit, and two,” I ticked off the other, “this isn’t some little tryst. She lives with me. She’s my girlfriend.”