is that he isn’t married, or so he says.”
Nancy was not going to get into the amazing-in-bed portion, which would lead to a discussion of just what is good in bed, and the next thing Bob would be circling around on how he stacked up and you didn’t go there.
“Let’s keep an eye out. I’m going to want to check this guy out if he’s a keeper,” Bob said.
“You know, it wasn’t like she was in a bad relationship with Michael. He was terrific for her, until the day he wasn’t.”
“Men are bad news.”
“Not all men, honey,” she says, on cue.
After the panel discussion, Ronnie met Richard in the lobby.
“That went very well for you.”
“Lively, wasn’t it?”
He did not suggest they go directly to the hotel for sex, which she would not have objected to; he offered a little walking tour of the pre-Katrina French Quarter, and they paused along the way to observe street performers on display for the tourist trade. He knew his way around the area and led them to a raffish bar for oysters and beer.
“Wonderful.”
“Just an appetizer. This is a great city. Never been here?”
“I’m not the world traveler you are. What is this cult you’ve been tracking down and how do you do that exactly?”
“A foundation grant. It’s a group that adapts Black Mass rituals out of the old satanic playbook combined with Mayan symbols.”
“And you do what?”
“Document it. Videos. Interviews.”
“You are a true believer, aren’t you? ‘Outside force.’ Really now.”
“Just throwing out ideas.”
“Throwing out ideas? Are you backing off?”
“Only a little. There’s no way to prove anything without that leap of faith.”
“Ideologically you’re turning out to be a good-looking Randall Cummings. Not that Randall Cummings isn’t good-looking. A better-looking Randall Cummings.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “Relax a little before dinner.”
She was ready.
The sex was an intermingling of what she remembered from the first time with him and fantasized since, leaving her searching for the word to describe the state of lovemaking with this man, deciding it was something out of a perfume ad, and the word she settled on was “ecstasy.”
They ate dinner at a small Creole restaurant he knew on a side street just off the French Quarter, a brilliant meal, seasoned with his observations about New Orleans, of the early days when the music of churches, spirituals, funeral marches, black brass bands came together in a new musical form that didn’t even have a name at first, and then it moved north to Chicago along with the migration of blacks northward, King Oliver looking out for the young Louis Armstrong, at first in New Orleans, then summoning him to play in the Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.
“Who are you? You do God and Satan and Louis Armstrong?”
“I tend to lecture. I apologize.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“I was born here. In New Orleans. I was an institutional child.”
“Your birth parents?”
“Haven’t a clue. The people who adopted me were working people. I wasn’t brought up to be religious. They weren’t into religion. My father was a carpenter, my mother a seamstress. They died in a fire, visiting her sister. I wasn’t there. I was sleeping over at a friend’s house.”
“That’s so sad. How old were you?”
“Ten. I went back into the system, was in four different foster homes through to the end of high school, then after high school I basically self-educated myself, worked at odd jobs, one was with a newspaper in Yankton and there was the cult nearby I wrote about. One thing led to another and I became this expert on satanism.”
“So when you said that thing about Cummings, about losing his wife affecting his ideology, it’s not a totally benign view of the world you’re carrying around.”
“Can you draw a line from my personal experience to what I believe? More likely, it’s that leap of faith.”
He was pensive;
Nancy was not going to get into the amazing-in-bed portion, which would lead to a discussion of just what is good in bed, and the next thing Bob would be circling around on how he stacked up and you didn’t go there.
“Let’s keep an eye out. I’m going to want to check this guy out if he’s a keeper,” Bob said.
“You know, it wasn’t like she was in a bad relationship with Michael. He was terrific for her, until the day he wasn’t.”
“Men are bad news.”
“Not all men, honey,” she says, on cue.
After the panel discussion, Ronnie met Richard in the lobby.
“That went very well for you.”
“Lively, wasn’t it?”
He did not suggest they go directly to the hotel for sex, which she would not have objected to; he offered a little walking tour of the pre-Katrina French Quarter, and they paused along the way to observe street performers on display for the tourist trade. He knew his way around the area and led them to a raffish bar for oysters and beer.
“Wonderful.”
“Just an appetizer. This is a great city. Never been here?”
“I’m not the world traveler you are. What is this cult you’ve been tracking down and how do you do that exactly?”
“A foundation grant. It’s a group that adapts Black Mass rituals out of the old satanic playbook combined with Mayan symbols.”
“And you do what?”
“Document it. Videos. Interviews.”
“You are a true believer, aren’t you? ‘Outside force.’ Really now.”
“Just throwing out ideas.”
“Throwing out ideas? Are you backing off?”
“Only a little. There’s no way to prove anything without that leap of faith.”
“Ideologically you’re turning out to be a good-looking Randall Cummings. Not that Randall Cummings isn’t good-looking. A better-looking Randall Cummings.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “Relax a little before dinner.”
She was ready.
The sex was an intermingling of what she remembered from the first time with him and fantasized since, leaving her searching for the word to describe the state of lovemaking with this man, deciding it was something out of a perfume ad, and the word she settled on was “ecstasy.”
They ate dinner at a small Creole restaurant he knew on a side street just off the French Quarter, a brilliant meal, seasoned with his observations about New Orleans, of the early days when the music of churches, spirituals, funeral marches, black brass bands came together in a new musical form that didn’t even have a name at first, and then it moved north to Chicago along with the migration of blacks northward, King Oliver looking out for the young Louis Armstrong, at first in New Orleans, then summoning him to play in the Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.
“Who are you? You do God and Satan and Louis Armstrong?”
“I tend to lecture. I apologize.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“I was born here. In New Orleans. I was an institutional child.”
“Your birth parents?”
“Haven’t a clue. The people who adopted me were working people. I wasn’t brought up to be religious. They weren’t into religion. My father was a carpenter, my mother a seamstress. They died in a fire, visiting her sister. I wasn’t there. I was sleeping over at a friend’s house.”
“That’s so sad. How old were you?”
“Ten. I went back into the system, was in four different foster homes through to the end of high school, then after high school I basically self-educated myself, worked at odd jobs, one was with a newspaper in Yankton and there was the cult nearby I wrote about. One thing led to another and I became this expert on satanism.”
“So when you said that thing about Cummings, about losing his wife affecting his ideology, it’s not a totally benign view of the world you’re carrying around.”
“Can you draw a line from my personal experience to what I believe? More likely, it’s that leap of faith.”
He was pensive;
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