“Well, come on, then, churren.” Miss Demeanor sashays down the sidewalk, and we fall into step behind her.
“Man, you sure are tall,” Gonzo says.
“Yeah, baby. I surely am.” She laughs out loud.
“Gonzo,” I whisper a minute later. “I’m pretty sure Miss Demeanor is a guy.”
“Right. I knew that.” But I can see that he didn’t, because now he’s trying to steal a look at her, to make sure.
Any other place in the world, we’d be a real spectacle, but I’m coming to realize that the more you stand out in New Orleans, the more you actually blend in. It’s like a circus of a town. Within a block or so, we’re back in the nonstop party that is Mardi Gras.
A bouncer calls out from a shadowed doorway. “Hey, Miss D, where y’at, dawlin?”
“How I always am, baby—fiiiine!” She laughs when she says it, and he laughs, too.
Miss D leads us off the chaotic, crowded street and down a private, narrow alley that dead-ends at an elaborate double gate that’s exactly like the one we saw on the Morpheus float, with one side completely white and the other etched with the outline of a trumpet symbol. Just beyond the gate is a red door.
“The Gates of Horn and Ivory,” Miss D says. She opens them up and then gives three quick knocks on the red door, followed by a pause, and then a fourth knock. A little window in the door opens. A pair of eyes appears.
“You know me?” she says.
The eyes move up and down, yes.
“So you know I’ve always been a good friend to this club.”
The eyes nod again.
“I need a favor. These here my nephews come all the way from …” She looks down at us. “Backwater. They want to see the Horn and Ivory.”
The eyes dart over in our direction, take in the state of us for a good long time. They move slowly back to stare at Miss Demeanor.
She sighs, throws her hands in the air, heavenward. “I know. Bless ’em. They’re my ugly sister’s kids.”
The eyes don’t even blink.
“The little one’s doing that last wish thang. He’s got cancer of twelve different organs. Some you ain’t never even heard of. We’re all just broken up about it.”
She purses her glossy lips. The window remains quiet.
Miss D points a finger. “Okay. Okay. But you mess with his last wish and he’ll come back to haunt yo’ ass.” The door doesn’t budge. Finally, Miss D holds up the matches. “These boys got business with Junior, cher.”
The little window closes, and the door opens.
“Thank you, baby,” Miss D says, leading the way.
I don’t know who let us in, because there is no one standing at the door when we go in. It’s like it’s opened all by itself.
“Miss D?” I start. “How come you told him we have business with Junior?”
“Well, don’t you, cher?”
“But isn’t Junior Webster … dead?”
She smiles. “Not last time I saw him. Course, it’s hard to say exactly when that was. Come on, now. Let’s catch him while we can.”
I’m thoroughly confused, but there’s nothing to do but follow Miss D wherever she’s leading. We go down a hallway lit with red bulbs. Miss D opens a door that leads to another, smaller door that leads to a little tunnel we have to crawl through on hands and knees. It opens up in a kitchen. Miss D saunters past chefs in stained aprons who take no notice of us. She pushes a button and we step into a small elevator that wriggles up jumpy cables to another floor. This time, the door opens into a big, smoky nightclub. People in fancy clothes and harlequin masks crowd around small tables lit by red Chinese lanterns. The dance floor is crammed with people swaying, spinning, swinging out and back. This place is live. Crazy, wild-man music blares from a jukebox in a corner. Everything about it is fast and unpredictable—the piano runs, the percussion, the guitar riffs, and over all of it is a trumpet swooping up and down and all over like a giant bird in the sky till my heart’s beating right along with it. The song makes me want to run and shout, kiss girls and ride motorcycles through the desert. It makes me feel really alive, the way Eubie says music should.
“That’s Junior you feel,” Miss D says, like she can read my mind. She leads us backstage. A burly bodyguard in a suit and sunglasses, wearing an earpiece, stands guard outside the curtained door.
“Here, baby, you wait with me,” she says to Gonzo.
“How come I can’t go in?” Gonzo sounds pissed.