City of Night

Chapter 22

The Other Ella, a restaurant and bar in the neighborhood known as Faubourg Marigny, an area now as funky and soulful as the French Quarter had once been, was owned and operated by a woman named Ella Fitzgerald. She was not the famous singer. She was a former hooker and madam who had wisely saved and invested the wages of the flesh.

As Aubrey Picou had instructed, Carson and Michael asked the bartender to see Godot.

An elderly woman put down the beer she was nursing, swiveled on her barstool, and took their picture with her cell phone.

Annoyed, Carson said, “Hey, Granny, I’m not a tourist site.”

“Screw you,” the woman said. “If I knew for sure a tour carriage was nearby, I’d run you into the street and shove your head up a mule’s ass.”

“You want to see Godot,” the bartender explained, “you go through Francine here.”

“You mean less to me,” the old woman assured Carson, “than the dinner I vomited up last night.”

As she transmitted the picture to someone, Francine grinned at Michael. She had borrowed her teeth from the Swamp Thing.

“Carson, remember when you looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t like what you saw?”

She said, “Suddenly I feel pretty.”

“All my life,” Francine told Carson, “I’ve known perky-tit types like you, and not one of you bitches ever had a brain bigger than a chickpea.”

“Well, there you’re woefully wrong,” Michael told her. “On a bet, my friend had an MRI scan of her brain, and it’s as big as a walnut.”

Francine gave him another broken yellow smile. “You’re a real cutie. I could just eat you up.”

“I’m flattered,” he said.

“Remember what happened to her dinner last night,” Carson reminded him.

Francine put down her cell phone. From the bar, she picked up a BlackBerry, on which she was receiving a text message, evidently in response to the photo.

Michael said, “You’re a total telecom babe, Francine, fully swimming in the info stream.”

“You’ve got a nice tight butt,” Francine said. She put down the BlackBerry, swiveled off her stool, and said, “Come with me, cutie. You too, bitch.”

Michael followed the old woman, glanced back at Carson, and said, “Come on, bitch, this’ll be fun.”