The Meq

“Z! Is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “You’re breaking up, but I can hear you.”

“Good. Listen to me. I have amazing news.” He was excited. His voice was a full octave higher. “The girl’s name is Lily Marchand. Do you hear me? Lily Marchand,” he repeated.

“What? Who? What girl?”

“The girl on the disc, the girl singing the operas. Carolina even knows her, for God’s sake.”

“What? You’d better start at the beginning, Owen. I don’t understand.”

The static on the telephone line was getting worse. I glanced out of the front of the hotel where anything loose in the street was blowing away.

“I was playing the discs,” he said. “I was alone in Carolina’s office, Georgia’s room she calls it, and Scott Joplin burst in shouting, ‘I know that voice! I know that girl!’ He was visiting Carolina, you see, and just happened to be there, he just happened to hear it, Z. Well, of course, I said, ‘Who is it?’ and he said, ‘That’s Lily, Lily Marchand. She used to work for Carolina and disappeared right before the World’s Fair. I been lookin’ for her for two years!’ I asked him if he knew where she lived and he said he had only heard it was somewhere around New Orleans, but, and this is why I called, Z, this could be a break, he said a woman named Willie Piazza had known the family for years and might know how to find her. Do you know of this woman, Z, do you know Willie Piazza?”

“Yes,” I shouted. The line was almost all static.

“Find her,” he yelled back. “Find her and you might find—” The line went dead and Ray burst through the front door of the hotel, out of breath, which I’d never seen him, and soaking wet. Outside, sheets of rain were blowing sideways.

“Damn, Z, I missed this one,” he said and shook the water off his bowler. “I didn’t see it, feel it, nothin’!”

“Missed what?”

“The hurricane,” he said. “And she’s comin’ right now.”

The manager of the St. Louis Hotel was standing nearby and overheard. He turned to Ray.

“Did you say hurricane, son?”

“That’s right, sir,” Ray answered. And she’s a big one — still ain’t hit landfall, but she will soon and if I was you, I’d get all them shutters shut around this place.”

The manager glanced out of the window, then back at Ray. Ray held his gaze, stone-faced, and even though he wasn’t sure why, the man did as the “Weatherman” requested, clapping his hands and scrambling the staff to close the shutters and prepare for a hurricane.

I grabbed Ray by the arm and told him, hurricane or not, we had to find Willie Piazza now. Without asking me why, he slapped on his bowler and said, “Come on.”

We made our way to Storyville as best we could, corner to corner, street to street. The wind was fierce, blowing in gusts of seventy to eighty miles an hour, but it was the rain that caused the most havoc and danger. I had never seen so much rain fall so hard. Whole streets turned into rivers within minutes. Abandoned carts and automobiles were picked up and washed into buildings, causing balconies to tumble, lampposts to splinter, and windows to crash and break into shards, which were swept away in the water like flashing knives.

Somehow, we found Willie. She was hanging on to what was left of her double front doors, standing in two feet of swirling water and debris, and yelling at three men in two different languages. The men were bound together by a long rope that was anchored to the main building. All three were trying to save Willie’s big sign, which had toppled from the roof to the street and was being sucked into the rushing waters. They were fighting a losing battle.

When we got close enough, I tried to get her attention. “Willie!” I shouted. “Willie, I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Not now, honey,” she shouted back. “We got a world of trouble here.”

I kept on. I was only a few feet from her, but I still had to yell. “Do you know Lily Marchand?” I asked. “Please, tell me if you do, I’ve got to find her.”

“Not now, honey,” she said again. “I’ve got to save that sign, coute que coute.”

“Just tell me if you know her, that’s all.”

At that moment, the sign broke loose from the men and disappeared under the water, finally bobbing up in broken pieces half a block “downstream.” Willie watched it go.

“Tant pis,” she said. “God must have wanted poor Willie to buy another one.”

“Do you know her?” I repeated. “Do you know Lily Marchand?”

“Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, I know Lily, or I should say knew her. Haven’t seen her or her pitiful brother, Narciso, for three, maybe four years. Old Creole family, honey. Lost all their money a long time ago.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“I know where she used to.”

“Where?”

“Across Pontchartrain, somewhere near Covington on the Bogue Chirito. A run-down plantation called ‘The Vines,’ if I remember right. I told the Chinese man I couldn’t be sure, but ‘The Vines’ sounded right.”

“Chinese man? What Chinese man?”

“The one that came lookin’ for Lily last week, same as you. I told him ‘The Vines’ was most likely it. It just sounded right.”

“Were his eyes like two slits, two razors?”

She laughed. “Honey, they all look alike to me.”

It was my turn to say “Come on,” and I waved to Ray, who was standing in the doorway with several of Willie’s “nieces.” I thanked Willie, then Ray and I ran through the rising water on Iberville and across town.

Luckily, we caught the last ferry crossing Lake Pontchartrain. The storm slowed as it made landfall and the north side of the city had not yet felt its full force. Still, we were pelted with driving rain and Pontchartrain was rough with whitecaps all the way across.

Just before we docked, Ray said, “Who is Lily Marchand?”

“She’s the one singing the operas,” I told him. “And the same voice I heard at Emma Johnson’s.”

He arched an eyebrow and tugged on his bowler.

“I got a feeling, Ray. I got a feeling this is it. This is where he is. This is where Star is.”

The rain filled the brim of his bowler and spilled over the sides. He ignored it. “Then, let’s go get her,” he said. “Let’s take her home.”

Our luck ran out once we were in Mandeville. We were out of transportation. The few people we saw were all seeking shelter. Except for about twenty or thirty lost chickens, we were the only ones still on the street. I had no idea exactly where to go or how to get there, but I knew who would.

We set out for Captain Woodget’s on foot and arrived at nightfall. Both of us were shivering and as wet as I’d ever been at sea. The captain and Isabelle, who was in one of her lucid periods, met us at the door and rushed us to the fireplace, where Isabelle reminded me more of a worried grandmother than a madwoman, drying our hair with towels and telling the captain to make us tea while she found us clothes. I was sure she had no idea who we were.

I introduced Ray to Captain Woodget and then explained as much as I could about who and what we had to find. I told him it could be dangerous. The captain said he knew of the old place, but there would be no way to reach it at night and in “this breeze.”

“This breeze?” I asked.

“Well, you know what I mean, lad. You and I have seen much worse than this.”

“That we have, Captain, and that’s why you don’t have to do this. You owe me nothing.”

He paused for only a moment. “Oh, but I do, Z. I owe you for changing the way I thought about this world, the way I was overlooking the mystery of it, what was beyond what I took for granted, and what was inside as well. I owe you for that, but I am most indebted to you for the life I have now. If I had not met you, I would not have met the biggest damn mystery of all — Isabelle.”

I tried to assure him I had nothing to do with his love for Isabelle, but he wouldn’t hear it. We were fed, clothed, and given hot tea to drink, which the captain spiked with anejo rum, and thereby ruined both the tea and