Eddie had a lot of jobs in his thirty-four years. The best one was as a last-minute replacement backup dancer for Madonna during her Confessions tour. The worst was fruit fly sexer, which was not kinky at all, as he’d hoped, but instead was both boring and revolting.
A college biology department advertised for someone to breed fruit flies and sort them by sex, in order for students to learn about genetics. It was part of Eddie’s job to immobilize the tiny black flies, using something that smelled both medicinally astringent and cloyingly sweet. It may have been ether, for it made him drowsy to the point that he swayed on his sneakered feet in the grim white-tile-walled laboratory where he worked under harsh fluorescent lighting, fumbling woozily with the camel’s hair brush and metal tweezers that he used to separate the flies by sex or other traits.
He quit after three months, finding the buzzing flies and the anesthesia fumes too much like being in an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare.
Eddie had so many jobs that he could barely remember some of them, others he remembered all too well. He delivered pizza and Chinese food, usually getting crappy tips unless the customer was drunk or stoned and then the tips tended to be dazzlingly generous.
“Bro, you’re awesome. Seriously, bro, I owe you my life! You brought me this…” the disheveled young man gazed with unfocused, hugely dilated eyes at the cardboard pizza box Eddie was holding, as if viewing something gorgeously rich and strange, perhaps an artifact from the lost city of Atlantis. “…this beautiful food. Here, have some money.” He dug into the front pocket of his jeans and handed Eddie a crumpled fifty-dollar bill, then reached in and gave him another.
“Is that enough?” He sounded tentative, as if afraid it might not be.
Eddie decided not to push his luck by asking for more. Instead he grinned and handed over the pizza. “Sure, thanks. Have a good night.” Smiling beatifically, the young man turned and closed the door.
One of the reasons why Eddie never stayed in any job too long was that he was easily bored. His father was an actuary and he wanted Eddie to become one, too, but talk of balance sheets and asset management and liability bored Eddie to tears. Just the word ‘actuary,’ sounded unpleasant to his ears. Ack, like a cat coughing up a hairball. Chew, like a cow stupidly chewing its cud. Then airy, which was all right, just not after ack and chew. Eddie wanted no part of it, or of becoming a physical therapist, like his mother was. He didn’t want to spend his days around sick and injured people, especially ones who hated him because he forced them to do things that hurt.
So, Eddie bounced from job to job. He gave out samples of cheese, and salami, and cologne. He was a “ghost passenger,” rating the performance of flight attendants while pretending to be just another guy with a duffle bag to be stowed in the overhead compartment, shuffling down the jetway wearing the glazed, slightly dull expression common to airline travelers. He was a telemarketer and was cursed at by people who sounded as if they wished they could strangle him, so furiously did they object to getting calls from strangers who first assured them they weren’t selling anything and then went right ahead and tried to sell them something. He was a census-taker. He walked dogs. He tutored foreigners who wanted to learn English.
Eddie drove a cab, getting held up twice, once at gunpoint and once at knifepoint. Once he found a live tortoise the size of a soup tureen crawling on the floor in the back of his cab. Another time he found a voodoo doll. It was about fourteen inches long and made of cloth. It wore a little necktie fashioned out of a scrap of emerald-green and gold-striped silk, and a clumsily stitched simulacrum of a navy blue three-piece suit, on the breast of which was pinned a handwritten note. The note read, ‘Richard Roycroft Bainbridge III, may my curse be upon you!’
Eddie was intrigued. The name sounded like it belonged to a rich white dude, somebody who was a member of a yacht club and played golf. Who would want to put a voodoo curse on somebody named Richard Roycroft Bainbridge III? Weren’t voodoo curses usually reserved for people with names like Hoodoo Jones or Daddy Yellow Pants – jazz musicians and street preachers and back-alley craps-shooters – not rich WASPS?
He took the doll home with him when his shift ended, concealing it under his jacket and deliberately neglecting to turn it in to the dispatcher, as he’d turned in the tortoise, umbrellas, cell phones and almost everything else he found in his cab, including a prosthetic arm. At the time, he’d wondered how someone could leave their arm in a cab and not notice. If he found cash he kept it. Eddie was no fool. He knew if he turned it over to the dispatcher, a moody, bitter woman named Rosalie, she’d keep it herself.
He had a few hours to kill before he reported for his second job as a tour guide in an art museum.
Eddie often had two or three different jobs at the same time. It paid the rent and kept things interesting. Eddie liked to become a different person at each of his jobs. When he was driving a cab he took on the persona of someone he thought of as Tony. Tony was brash and rough around the edges. He gesticulated when he spoke, taking both hands off the wheel and waving them in the air to make a point. Tony kept up with all the latest sports scores. He peppered conversations with his fares with remarks like, “This goddamn city! It’s gettin’ worse every day, but what you gonna do, am I right?”
At the museum, he slid seamlessly into a personality he thought of as Alastair. Alastair was finicky and precise and sounded as if he was raised on watercress sandwiches on buttered bread with the crusts cut off. Tony and Alastair not only talked differently, they walked differently and dressed differently. Anyone who’d ridden in Tony’s cab and heard his cheerfully profane opinion about how the Mets’ starting lineup wasn’t worth a fart in a pickle jar would never in a thousand years have recognized him as the effete young man at the art museum who went into raptures over the brushstrokes of Claude Monet.
Eddie was like a chameleon, adapting to whatever environment he found himself in. It was a trait he had in common with gifted actors. Eddie could perhaps have been an actor if he hadn’t lacked the ability to memorize even the simplest song lyrics. Reciting lines from memory would have been utterly impossible for him.
At his apartment, a tiny slice carved out of what was once a sprawling, four-bedroom flat in a beautiful old Art Deco building, Eddie got out his laptop and did a search for Richard Roycroft Bainbridge III. There was plenty to be found. The object of the voodoo curse cut a wide swathe. He attended black-tie charity galas, owned a horse farm in New Jersey called Lucky Shamrock Stables that produced champion Standardbreds, owned a forty-foot yacht called the Buona Fortuna, had three – no, four ex-wives – and was CEO of Bainbridge Associates, an investment banking firm headquartered at 777 Seventh Avenue, in the Bainbridge building.
Eddie frequently drove his cab past there. He hadn’t realized that the Bainbridge of the voodoo curse was the same person who had his name written in big gold letters on a downtown office building that had, a quick Google search showed, seventy-seven floors.
“Lucky sevens,” Eddie mused to Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown, his orange and white neutered tomcat who was curled up in a patch of sunlight on the kitchen floor below the counter island where Eddie sat eating fistfuls of breakfast cereal straight out of the box.
“What do you think that means, Leroy? Is he superstitious? Should I get in touch and tell him somebody put a voodoo curse on him?”
Leroy drowsily blinked his orange eyes and stretched.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Eddie said, and went to change out of the jeans and plaid flannel shirt and work boots he wore when driving a cab and into a suit and tie, with the highly polished wingtips he wore for his job at the museum.
Knotting his tie in front of the mirror next to the front door, Eddie confided to Leroy in his Alastair voice, “The museum has acquired a Caravaggio, and I must say I am thrilled beyond words.”
Leroy licked a front paw and began washing his face, apparently unimpressed by the news.
The next day Eddie phoned Bainbridge’s office. He told the receptionist that he’d found something belonging to her boss. When would be a good time to catch him in?
No, he replied to her suggestion that he leave it at the front desk; this item was personal – highly personal – and should be given to Mister Bainbridge directly.
“Hold on, please,” she said, and put him on hold. Swelling strings broke into a syrupy orchestral version of Moon River. Eddie hummed along as he waited. After less than a minute the receptionist was back. The ‘highly personal’ nature of the item must have caught Bainbridge’s attention because if it wasn’t too inconvenient, would he mind coming by in one hour? Would that be all right?
It was. Eddie prepared for his appointment by donning a grey Harris Tweed jacket with heathery blue flecks that he found in a resale store run by the Junior League, carefully pressed chinos, a pinpoint-weave light blue Oxford button-down shirt, and tasseled loafers. He deliberately didn’t wear a tie, choosing instead to leave the top button of his shirt undone. Prosperous informality was the look he was aiming for; he wanted to seem like someone who would be at home chopping wood at his place up in the Adirondacks, or sailing a catamaran in the ocean off Nantucket. In other words, he wanted to seem like someone Bainbridge could relate to in order to get him to open up and explain what the hell was going on with the voodoo doll. Maybe it was a joke, Eddie thought as he made his way downtown on the subway, the voodoo doll tucked away in the leather knapsack that rocked back and forth at his feet with the motion of the train, but if it was a joke, why leave it in a cab?
The lobby of the Bainbridge Building was like hundreds of other Manhattan lobbies. It was accessed from the street through a glass revolving door with shiny brass handles. A brace of uniformed security guards was inside, keeping an eye out for trouble. One stood immediately inside the door and he nodded to Eddie as he walked in, another rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet by the directory that listed the names of the businesses that occupied the building.
In some places the guards would have asked to have a look inside Eddie’s knapsack, but not here. It was probably because Eddie appeared so non-threatening, like a country squire down to the city for a day to consult with his broker before returning to his trout stream and his golden retrievers.
“Help you?” asked the guard standing next to the directory.
He was stocky and moon-faced and Eddie thought he recognized him from one of his former jobs, when he was a bike messenger. What was the guy’s name? Jorge? José? As Eddie recalled, the guy had taken a nasty spill when somebody threw open a car door directly in front of him as he was pedaling pell-mell down Broad Street. Getting doored, that’s what bike messengers called it. Now he was a rent-a-cop, if it was the same person. Eddie didn’t ask.
Instead he said, “I have an appointment at Bainbridge Associates.”
“Top floor. Elevators are over there, behind the water thing.” The guard pointed his chin at the continually flowing wall of water that ran over a clear glass panel on a chrome base set off to one side of the lobby. It was a fountain, something called a water wall. They were all over the city – at restaurants, in doctors’ offices, in lobbies of office buildings like this one. This particular water wall was the biggest Eddie had seen; it had to be fifteen feet high and smelled faintly of chlorine, reminding him pleasantly of swimming at the Y. He walked around it and pressed the button for the elevator.
The elevator doors slid soundlessly open on the seventy-seventh floor and Eddie stepped off, his loafers sinking into thick wall-to-wall carpeting. It was bright red and had a colorful border design. He studied it closer and saw it was a parade of animals: rats and pigs and dragons and goldfish and cranes.
“Aren’t they the best? I could look at them all day.” That was the young woman behind a reception desk. Positioned front and center on the desk was a gold-colored statue of a frog squatting on a pile of flat round objects that looked like coins.
The receptionist wore her hair in a chic updo and had on tasteful pearl button earrings, but Eddie could have sworn she was the same spiky-haired, black-leather-mini-skirted goth who used to work at the old Virgin Records Megastore in Union Square.
“Excuse me, but isn’t your name Lucite?”
She looked startled then broke into a broad smile. “Eddie? Eddie Callahan! I can’t believe it! I go by Sandra now; that’s my real name. My God, how are you? It’s been a long time.”
Eddie agreed that it had.
“Remember Club Bruise, in Red Hook?”
It had been a spectacularly squalid Brooklyn dance club back in the early 2000s. Eddie had his wallet stolen there once. “Yeah, it was quite a place.”
“Well, it’s an artisanal food market now, full of hipsters selling bars of vegan soap wrapped in burlap and fifty-dollar bottles of olive oil, can you imagine?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust, to show what she thought of that. “Call me sometime. We can go out.”
Eddie said he would. He’d liked her when she was Lucite and he thought he’d like her in her new incarnation as Sandra.
She pressed a button and spoke into an intercom. “Mister Callahan is here.” She shook her head, bemused. “I didn’t realize you were the Ed Callahan who had an appointment with Mister Bainbridge. Go on in.”
Eddie entered Bainbridge’s inner sanctum. There was another water wall in there, smaller than the one in the lobby but still impressive – around eight feet high. The water made a soothing, trickling sound as it streamed down the glass. The spacious room had floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides with crown molding that had more animals carved on it, red bats this time, and turtles stacked one on top of another. It smelled faintly of chlorine and something else. Eddie sniffed. Incense? Yes, but a special kind of incense, one he’d smelled in botanicas in the Bronx. It was made from High John the Conqueror root, a woody tuber that was a member of the morning glory family. High John was popular with gamblers and people who sought power over their adversaries or success in romantic or legal matters. In other words, it was an all-purpose lucky charm. Eddie smiled. He was right; Bainbridge was superstitious.
The man seated behind the big desk looked to be on the far side of sixty. He had close-cropped, iron-grey hair, and was as broad-shouldered and keen-eyed as an old sea captain. He indicated a padded black leather chair in front of the desk.
“Have a seat. I’m Dick Bainbridge, and you’re Callahan?” He half-rose and extended a manicured hand over the desk. Eddie took it and they shook. It was the standard squeeze and brisk pump, not any of the secret handshakes Eddie knew, taught to him by members of various fraternities with whom he’d struck up acquaintances. There was something about knowing a secret handshake that made the initiate eager to share it with others, especially when they’d had a few drinks; at least that was Eddie’s experience. Skull and Bones, thirty-third-degree Freemasons, Crips, Loyal Order of Moose, Navy SEALs, Eddie could perform the digital manipulations that went with all of their secret handshakes, and others too.
“Yes sir, I’m Ed Callahan. I like your water wall,” Eddie told him, seating himself in one of the chairs in front of the desk and placing the knapsack with the voodoo doll inside it at his feet.
“I had one put in on every floor of this building. Keeps the positive energy flowing,” Bainbridge told him proudly. He gave Eddie a keen-eyed look. “You say you found something that belongs to me?”
Bainbridge’s reaction when Eddie opened the knapsack and withdrew the voodoo doll, holding it out for his inspection, was one of horror.
“No!” he gasped, shrinking back in his big leather chair. “Where did you find it?”
Eddie explained that he found it in a cab, leaving out the part that he’d been driving the cab. “I showed it to the driver, so he could turn it in to their lost and found, but I don’t think he spoke much English. He just kept shaking his head and going, ‘No, no. I no want.’” Eddie shrugged, the gesture implying foreigners. What can you do?
“Is it a voodoo doll?” he asked brightly.
“Of course it’s a voodoo doll. Just look at it! It’s supposed to be me. It’s even wearing a tie in the colors of my racing stable!” Bainbridge’s chin trembled and he appeared to be near tears. “Damn it, one of my step-kids must be behind this. They’ve got it in for me.” He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes grimly. “Or maybe even one of my real kids, or one of my wives.”
Eddie felt sorry for him; he seemed really shaken up.
“Why was it in a cab, though? Why not, I don’t know, leave it at your house or something?”
Bainbridge pounded a fist on his desk, causing the pens in a pewter cup to rattle and jump. “Because they’re screw-ups, all of them. They were probably on their way over here, intending to plant it somewhere in the building, and they forgot and left it in the cab because they’re screw-ups who can’t do anything right. But now it’s here, working its curse against me, goddammit.”
Bainbridge stared unhappily at the doll in Eddie’s lap then buried his face in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie told him. “I didn’t realize.”
He felt bad for showing it to him. He’d looked at it as an adventure, something that would turn out to be an amusing story to tell his friends, but the old man was clearly shaken. Clumsily, he asked, “Do you want me to take it away and get rid of it? I could throw it in the trash someplace or, listen, my building has an incinerator. I could throw it in there.”
“No! That’s the last thing I want!” Bainbridge shot bolt upright, eyes wide with fear. “Don’t you know anything about voodoo? What happens to the doll happens to me. Throw it in an incinerator!” He let out a groan worthy of Don Giovanni being dragged down to Hell. “Oh, what am I going to do?”
Eddie considered the options. It was no good telling him to just ignore it; he clearly believed in the power of voodoo. “You could get a voodoo priest to take the curse off.”
“And how would I go about finding one of those? By googling ‘voodoo priests New York-New Jersey’? Those online ones are all charlatans. I need a real one and I don’t know any. I never needed one before. This is the first time someone put a voodoo curse on me.”
“Actually, I know somebody,” Eddie told him. “But she’s a priestess, not a priest.”
Bainbridge leaned forward eagerly, hope dawning in his eyes. “And she’s the real thing? Not a charlatan?”
“She’s a bona fide voodoo priestess,” Eddie assured him. “If you want, I can get in touch with her and arrange for her to meet with you and take the curse off. She might need a day or two to make preparations.”
“Bless you,” Bainbridge said fervently. “Tell her I’ll pay whatever her standard fee is for this kind of thing, and I’ll pay you a finder’s fee. Is a thousand enough?”
Eddie hadn’t expected to be offered payment and was surprised to be confronted with a sudden windfall. “Dollars? Uh, sure; that’ll be fine.”
Bainbridge gave him his cell phone number, then rose and shook hands with him again, this time clasping both of Eddie’s hands in his and gazing hopefully into his eyes. With a tremulous smile he said, “Thank you. Call me the moment you find out anything.”
Eddie drove a cab that night, thinking about his encounter with the superstitious investment banker. When his shift ended, he went to a scruffy diner in midtown, sat down at the linoleum-topped counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a Western omelette from a voodoo priestess who worked the overnight shift as a waitress.
To be strictly honest, Raymona Quickly was an actress, not a voodoo priestess. She’d once played Marie Laveau, the New Orleans voodoo queen, in an off-off Broadway production called Women of Power. Eddie figured it was close enough.
Eddie and Raymona met when they were working at the auto show at the Jacob Javitz Center. They were costumed characters, hired to mingle with the crowd and pose for selfies. Eddie was Uncle Sam, in striped pants and a white wig and billy-goat beard. Raymona was Lady Liberty, complete with torch and spiked headdress. After the auto show was over, they kept in touch. When Raymona found herself “resting” between acting jobs, which is an actor’s way of saying they didn’t currently have work treading the boards, she waitressed. She liked to leave her afternoons free to go to casting calls; that’s why Eddie found her pouring coffee for night owls and insomniacs as dawn broke over the island of Manhattan on a cold April morning.
“I don’t know, Eddie, are you sure we should get involved in this? Isn’t it illegal? Fraud or extortion or something like that?” Raymona rolled her shoulders and flexed her neck, eyeing him anxiously.
Eddie took a sip of the coffee that she’d poured into a thick, white china mug and emphatically shook his head. “No, the poor guy’s really upset about this. He believes somebody put a voodoo curse on him and he offered to pay to have it taken off. I didn’t ask him for money, he volunteered. There’s nothing illegal about it. You’d be helping him. Think of it as an acting job.”
“Well, if you’re sure. I could use the money. I owe two thousand four hundred and sixty-eight dollars on my credit card. I checked earlier today.” She flexed her neck again and sighed.
“Ask him for three thousand then, or whatever amount you think is right. He volunteered to give me a thousand, just like that. He’s rich; he won’t miss it. Three thousand would be pocket change to him.”
Raymona looked thoughtful. “Okay. I wouldn’t mind playing a voodoo priestess again. Marie Laveau was a good role. I got a good review in that little newspaper they hand out for free at subway stations.”
She drew herself erect. “I am a woman of power!” she proclaimed loudly, causing an old lady in a ratty mink coat who was mumbling over a bowl of soup at the end of the counter and a cluster of club kids seated in one of the turquoise vinyl-upholstered booths to swivel their heads in her direction. “I am a proud woman of color who speaks to the gods of her ancestors, calling upon them to do my bidding! The people of New Orleans come to me. They ask me for…”
“Chicken salad on whole wheat, mayo on the side.” The short-order cook stuck his sweating face through the kitchen pass-through and spoke impatiently to Raymona. “Order up, babe. Chop-chop. Quit foolin’ around.”
Raymona made a face and went to collect the plate from the pass-through counter. She carried it to a weary-looking man in a bus-driver’s uniform, topped off his coffee, and returned to her post behind the counter.
Eddie drained his coffee. “Can you get me another?”
“Sure,” she said. Pouring the coffee, she told him, “I don’t know why he didn’t suspect you of some kind of scam. I would have suspected you.”
“He didn’t. He thinks his family’s behind it. He’s got all these ex-wives and step-kids that he thinks are plotting against him and he didn’t seem to be too fond of some of his own kids.”
Raymona wiped the counter with a damp cloth and looked thoughtful. “Okay, I’ll do it if you think it’ll make him feel better. I’ve got Thursday off. It’s not supposed to rain so we can meet in Central Park. How about under the arches at the Bethesda Terrace? Then we can find a nice, secluded spot and I’ll do my priestess routine. You could tell him I consulted with Papa Legba – that’s the loa who’s the gateway to the spirit world – and he told me two o’clock this Thursday would be a good time to remove the curse.”
“Perfect. I knew I could count on you.” Eddie paid for his coffee and omelette, left Raymona a generous tip, and exited the diner, feeling a pleased sense of anticipation. This was going to be interesting.
***
At 2 p.m. on Thursday, Eddie and Bainbridge arrived at the arched walkway in the middle of Central Park. Raymona stood framed in one of the arches, a solitary figure leaning on a cane and wearing a colorful ankle-length cotton skirt beneath a black wool jacket. A length of gold silk was wrapped around her head in the classic tignon style. Eddie was impressed: she looked exactly the way he thought a voodoo priestess should look. Her facial expression was equal parts haughty and brooding. At her feet, spoiling the effect somewhat, was a red duffle bag from New York Sports Club.
Eddie did the introductions. “Madame Raymona, may I present Richard Bainbridge? Mister Bainbridge, this is Madame Raymona.”
Bainbridge shifted the black nylon duffle bag he carried from his right hand to his left.
“It’s an honor to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand.
Ramona held onto his hand and widened her eyes. “Ooh! I can feel the curse working on you! But fear not! The loas have expressed their willingness to remove it. Come! Let us find a proper place, secluded from prying eyes, to do this thing.”
Eddie suppressed a smile. The accent she used was undefinable, vaguely Haitian, vaguely Cajun, and totally convincing.
They walked into the Ramble, following a maze of winding pathways through the woodland. They passed the occasional jogger or dog-walker but it was still too cold for many people to be out.
Raymona walked easily, swinging the cane. Eddie thought it must be a prop for the show that was about to unfold. She halted beneath an oak tree and unzipped her duffle bag, removing a black top hat. Then she dramatically whipped off her headwrap, letting her microbraids fall to her shoulders.
Bainbridge and Eddie watched, wide-eyed, as she put on the top hat then reached into the duffle bag and removed a cigar and a bottle of rum.
She took a swig of rum from the bottle, lit the cigar and puffed out a cloud of smoke. Leaning on the cane, she smoked and took pulls from the bottle while looking off into the distance with half-lidded eyes. There was a long pause, as a minute went by, then two. Eddie felt antsy. Dramatic tension was one thing, but this was overdoing it. Just as he was about to say something, prompt her to invoke the voodoo spirits or whatever, she spoke up in a startlingly deep voice.
“Ahhh! That rum tastes good! Good cigar, too. Very good!” She blew out a cloud of smoke and grinned, showing all her teeth. “Yes, I will open the gate and summon one to remove the curse that was placed upon this white man!”
***
“That was amazing,” Eddie told Raymona later. They were seated in a steakhouse in the West Thirties, Bainbridge having departed, happily believing himself to be curse-free. The voodoo doll was in Raymona’s red duffle bag, along with most of the bottle of rum and a thick envelope that was pressed on her by a grateful Bainbridge.
Eddie had gotten an envelope of his own, not as thick as Ramona’s, but still comfortably stuffed with a wad of cash: his thousand-dollar finder’s fee, plus what Bainbridge called “a little extra.” Eddie suspected it was more than a little. Feeling flush, he offered to pick up the check at the plush steakhouse that routinely got top Zagat ratings.
“Thanks,” Raymona replied, listlessly cutting into her filet mignon. She’d been strangely quiet, seeming disturbed about something. Eddie wondered if she felt bad about misleading the superstitious banker.
She looked at him from across the linen-draped table where a candle flickered and a discrete maroon-colored leather folder listed à la carte entrees, each one costing more than Eddie usually made in four hours of driving a cab. Raymona’s sherry-colored eyes, usually bright and confident, were troubled. “I’m kind of freaked out.”
“Why? What’s the matter? If it’s about the money, don’t let it bother you. He can afford it, and you saw how happy he was.”
Raymona shook her head, her braids swaying. “It’s not that. I’m worried. I think I had a blackout. I remember walking in the Ramble and getting myself all pumped up to pretend to summon Papa Legba. I remember putting on the hat, and lighting the cigar and drinking from the bottle of rum, but that’s it. Then there was a gap. The next thing I knew, Bainbridge was giving me the envelope and thanking me.”
She took the white linen napkin from her lap and started fiddling with it, nervously folding it into a fan shape, then into a square. “I’ve never had a blackout before. Do you think it was a stroke? Or, like, a blood clot in my brain or something?”
“I don’t think so. If it was a stroke you’d be unconscious, or paralyzed, and your speech would be slurred. You seem okay.” Eddie had spent a year working as an orderly in the emergency room at Beth Israel Hospital. He knew a little about strokes. It didn’t seem like she’d had one, but what if she had? This was weird. Maybe she was pranking him? Pulling his leg, pretending she forgot what happened and then pointing a finger at him and crowing ‘gotcha!’ when he fell for it?
“Eddie, what if it worked?” Her eyes were huge.
“What if what worked?”
“The voodoo ritual! What if it worked? What if I really did summon Papa Legba? Tell me what happened, everything you remember.” She forked a piece of filet mignon into her mouth and chewed, watching him expectantly.
Eddie leaned back into the cushions of the banquette. He couldn’t tell whether she was putting him on or not. Raymona was an actress; she was good at pretending. But what if she wasn’t pretending? What if she really had performed a voodoo ritual and summoned what’s-his-name? Papa Legba. He thought about the spooky way she’d smiled – all gleaming white teeth and hungry eyes. It wasn’t like Raymona at all, who was no shrinking violet but was definitely feminine. It was as if she’d become someone else, a powerful man, scary and unpredictable, one who might slap you on the back and buy you a drink or who might just as easily punch you to the ground and stomp your face into an unrecognizable, pulpy mess.
“Well,” he said, slowly. “First you drew a design in the dirt with your cane, sort of a lot of curlicues and like, I don’t know, crisscross lines? Then you started talking in a different voice than the one you used for Papa Legba. I think it was a woman. It sounded like an older woman, not your regular voice. You said a lot of stuff that sounded like another language, you know, kind of like in those YouTube videos where people are supposed to be speaking in tongues because they’re overcome by the Holy Spirit or whatever, but not fake-sounding like those are; it sounded like a real language.”
Raymona leaned forward, twisting her napkin and hanging on his every word. Eddie thought, If she’s faking it’s a bravura performance.
“Anyway, you said stuff in the weird language, waved your hands around and danced. Then you took some little bottles out of your gym bag, unscrewed the tops and poured what looked like dirt and different colored powdery stuff out, making a circle around Bainbridge, who was holding the voodoo doll. And that was it, basically.” Eddie wished he could remember more, but at the time he’d thought she was just putting on a show. Now he wasn’t so sure. Didn’t thousands of people – maybe millions – believe in voodoo? What if there was something to it? What if she’d really managed to contact the spirits or loas or whatever they were called?
He looked at Raymona, and said sternly, “If you’re joking, tell me now, otherwise I’m getting seriously freaked out.”
She shook her head. “I swear I’m not joking. I really don’t remember anything.”
Eddie tried to make sense of it. She seemed sincere. “What was the stuff in the little bottles?”
As if she were listing perfectly normal items that she’d picked up at the corner market, Raymona said, “Graveyard dirt, ground-up vertebrae of a black cat, pulverized rattlesnake skin, magic herbs, and some other stuff I can’t remember off the top of my head. I wanted the ritual to look convincing so I ordered things at random online from a store in New Orleans that sells voodoo supplies. It cost about two hundred and twenty dollars. Amazon shipped it overnight at no extra charge because I’ve got Amazon Prime.”
“Christ! Are you serious?” Eddie dug into his skirt steak. He was frantically hungry. The disclosure that Raymona had somehow managed to dispel a voodoo curse with things she bought online (and the top hat and cigar, and bottle of rum, don’t forget those) shook him up. If he didn’t eat something he was afraid he might pass out.
“Yeah. I’m totally serious, and I don’t ever want to do it again,” she told him. “You know what they call it when a loa takes somebody over? Being ridden.” She shuddered.
“Loas? Those are the different voodoo spirits, right? That is so creepy,” Eddie said. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have gotten you mixed up in this.”
Raymona spooned some creamed spinach onto her plate. “That’s all right. I don’t blame you. You didn’t realize what was going to happen. You want some of this?”
“Yes, please,” Eddie said.
She served him some spinach and they ate in silence. Then he told her, “On the bright side, you got five thousand dollars, tax free! And Bainbridge offered me a job.”
It was true; Bainbridge had insisted on giving Raymona five thousand. It was quite a windfall for what looked like it was going to be her final performance as a voodoo priestess. Eddie took another bite of steak, followed by some spinach, washing it down with ice water. He was starting to feel better. A waiter appeared and refilled his glass.
Eddie continued, “Bainbridge runs an investment banking firm that targets early-stage and middle-market companies. He also does something called arranged debt and equity financing, whatever that is. It sounded boring. I could feel my brain getting numb just thinking about it. I told him thanks, but no thanks.”
Eddie had other plans. He was considering becoming a pedicab driver, giving tours of Central Park, now that the weather would be getting warm, or possibly he could give ghost tours in Greenwich Village. There were supposedly lots of haunted places in the Village. Maybe Raymona would like to join him, although maybe now was not the time to ask. She’d clearly had enough of the supernatural for one day.