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“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.
“He only sees people one at a time,” she says, hands on her hips. “I’ll take you up front and get you some nut mix. They got good nut mix.”
I hear Gonzo say, “I could be allergic to nuts,” as Miss D drags him away.
The bodyguard lets me in and closes the door behind me. I’m in a little vestibule lit by a red lightbulb. On a side table, a dozen of those white candles you see in old churches burn, leaving bubbling trails of wax down their sides. Above the table is the watercolor painting of Junior and the black hole that was on the cover of the “Cypress Grove Blues” LP Eubie showed me in his shop. There’s a big white ring in the center of the painting just like on the album. Some Mardi Gras beads hang from a thumbtack. And there’s a picture taped to the bottom right corner. I blink when I see it, because I swear it looks like that same picture of Eubie in his harlequin mask on Bourbon Street.
“Somebody there?” a gravelly voice calls out.
I push aside a curtain. The room has nothing in it but two chairs beneath a single lightbulb. Junior Webster sits in one of the chairs, shining his horn. He looks about a hundred years old. His black skin’s dark and lined and ashy in spots, like a pair of beautiful leather shoes stained with snow. He wears the same suit as in the poster, with the same straw hat and black sunglasses.
“Come on over and take a seat,” he rasps. “I won’t bite.”
“You’re really Junior Webster?” I say, sitting next to him.
Junior chuckles. “All my life.”
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Cameron.”
“How do you know—?”
“In time, in time. Everything’s connected, my friend, and we got a lot in common.” Junior tucks his horn under his arm. He takes my hands in his. The insides of his wrists are marked by thick scar tissue. “You’ve seen ’em, haven’t you?”
“Seen what?” I say, thinking he means the scars.
“Not what. Who.” Junior’s lips peel back from his shiny teeth. “Fire giants.”
My mouth’s gone dry. “You know about them, too?”
Junior nods slowly. He drops my hands and goes back to shining his horn. “Oh yes, my friend. I know ’em. Nasty things. You steal a look at ’em and you ’bout feel you could burn up with your fear. A glimpse of another world beyond this one here. Them fire gods are bad news, all right, but they’re not the worst of it. They work for the big guy.” He leans close. “The Wizard of Reckoning.”
The name and the way he says it raise goose bumps on my arms. “Who’s that?”
“You seen him. In your dreams. Maybe on a stretch of road in the middle of the night.”
“The guy in the black space-suit armor with the helmet and sword?”
Junior purses his lips. “That’s what you see, then that’s him. Don’t always look the same to ever’body.”
