The deck was almost deserted except for three young men fussing over some handheld gizmo with blinking LEDs. They sported tribal tats, the one holding the gizmo with a backpiece sun so large that the tips of the rays crossed under the straps of his tank top, the topmost poking beneath a mass of blond curls. The tallest wore black and enough silver jewelry to stock a goth shop, displaying his tribal marks in a band around his upper left arm, and the shortest bore no obvious ink but wore a newsboy cap and carried an overlarge video camera.
“Have—” Roger gasped. “Have you seen a raven?”
They stared. “Says ‘Nevermore’?” asked the Person in Black with the inked armband.
Roger realized the camera was on as the one with the newsboy cap angled it toward him and he saw his reflection in the lens. “Yes.” He winced and the reflection did as well. Roger had carefully cultivated a devilish Vandyke, but mustache wax and pillows were not a good combination. He looked like hipster Mephistopheles after a bender.
“Flew that way, Mr. Scratch.” The tall PiB pointed dramatically.
“Thank you.”
“All right, dudes.” Roger heard the PiB’s voice behind him as he turned and ran. “No ghosts this morning, but we just saw Poe’s raven being chased by the Devil.…”
The boiler deck was deserted on the right, no ravens or persons apparent either way, and Roger was faced with a choice between the stairwell down to the main deck or the one up to the texas deck and Captain Montaigne’s cabin. “Lenore!” he cried again, projecting as loudly as he could. “Lenore!!”
Cameo had had connections and had gotten him, Jim, Alec, and Paul into the High School of Performing Arts, where Roger had excelled at opera, a dramatic bass. “LENORE!!!” His voice echoed back to him, reflecting off the banks of the Mississippi, “Lenore … Lenore … Lenore,” and then a different word, like an old woman singing a roundelay response, “Nevermore!” and again “Nevermore!”
The voice came from the deck below. Roger unclasped the chain with the metal sign CREW ONLY with a practiced ease, reclasping it behind himself without even looking, a magician’s fingers instinctively knowing the manipulation of links and chains.
The main deck was the domain of Cottle, the chief engineer, and Ms. Potts, the head clerk. The boiler room lay up ahead, along with Potts’s payroll office and an endless profusion of cupboards and storage closets lining the claustrophobic hallway down the spine of the boat. The air was thick and hot with steam, and Roger’s bare feet stung with the warmth, sensation returning after the chill of the perversely named boiler deck. “Lenore!” he called again, then listened.
Clanks and rattles sounded in the dimness, the only illumination being the eerie green glow of an exit sign pointing the way back out, tinting the tendrils of steam the same hue as an art nouveau absinthe poster.
Other sounds echoed in the dark, strange mutterings and unfamiliar words, but above them and intermixed, a beautiful trill of birdsong, the exact opposite of a raven’s voice. Then came another voice that sounded like Lenore’s croaking, but no intelligible words, or at least nothing in English, followed by other words and voices in the same language. What was it? French? Italian?
When Roger’s card had turned—or at least he made everybody think it had by the Grand Guignol expedient of cutting his fingers on his new horns so that blood sprayed everywhere while he howled in agony, clutching his eyes, and slipped in the blackout contacts—he had been onstage for the school’s winter gala, costumed as Mephistopheles. Roger had performed “Vous qui faites l’endormie”—“You Who Are Supposed to Be Asleep”—from Gounod’s Faust, then segued to “Son lo spirito che nega”—“I Am the Spirit That Denies”—from Boito’s Mefistofele.
He had placed his transformation in the second aria, right where Mephistopheles breaks singing to whistle dramatically. Roger had then staggered about the stage, covered with blood while belting out Italian in a dramatic the show must go on bit of scenery chewing until Mrs. Beltramo had dropped the curtain while screaming for someone to get him to the hospital.
At some point amidst his theatrics, his right contact had fallen out, lost in the blood on the stage and the babble of confusion behind the curtain. The voices Roger heard now sounded a lot like that, muffled and indistinct behind the noise of the machinery and the ship’s engine.
He made his way around a column of pipes dripping with heat and condensation. The voices were louder here, and Lenore’s voice as well, but he still couldn’t make out what she was saying, which was strange since he knew all her phrases, including her new favorite, “Find the Lady!” She’d picked that one up spontaneously since Miss Beaumont, the Natchez’s cruise director, had asked him to stroll the boiler deck as a riverboat gambler, a role that required a lot of three-card monte.
“Find the lady, Lenore?” he called, waiting for a response. “Find the lady?”
The other voices hushed, then Roger heard Lenore’s gleeful raucous cawing from behind one particular door. “Find the Lady! Find the Lady!”
The door was locked, covered with numerous warning signs, hazard stickers, and the words in black permanent marker: STEAM LEAK—UNSAFE, and was secured with several padlocks besides. Roger rattled the doorknob anyway. “Lenore?”
He heard the trill of birdsong again, louder, a beautiful song like a mockingbird’s only even more lovely. Roger tried the door again and again and then, with a sudden flutter, Lenore winged down the hallway and landed on his right shoulder.
“Nevermore!” Lenore called, followed by a raven’s croaking chuckle. “Find the Lady!”
The birdsong called again from behind the locked door.
Lenore nodded her head enthusiastically. “Nevermore!”
“Have you got a boyfriend?” Roger smiled. “Does Cottle keep a canary back there? Do he and Potts have a secret poker den?”
“Find the Lady!” Lenore told him.
Instead, Roger found a package of Lotus biscuits in his pocket and gave her one. “Birdbrain,” he admonished fondly.
“Devil,” Lenore said in response, as she’d been trained, then polished her beak on his right horn, making his skull vibrate and tickle.
Roger stroked her while fastening his smoking jacket’s sash to her leg as an impromptu jess, considering the forbidden door. He recalled hearing some of the boiler room crew being pleased to be upgraded to actual, if tiny, cabins due to a radiator leak in their bunk room. From the sounds, the leak was not that serious, but as he knew better than anyone, everyone was entitled to their little secrets. And with his card tricks, it was not often he was invited to poker games, secret or otherwise.
“Okay, Lenore,” Roger said as he held his dressing gown shut with his other hand and proceeded upstairs, “that’s enough tricks for today. Now for the ones they pay us for.”
“Devil,” Lenore repeated, then, “The Devil made me do it!”
It was an old punch line from an older comedian, something Lenore had learned from Mr. Dutton at the magic shop, a joke before Roger’s time, but it never failed to elicit a chuckle from the older set, so Roger encouraged it.
“Not this time, birdbrain.” Roger kissed his pet. “Not this time.”
Brunch on the Natchez was an elegant and elaborate affair, the best tables set up outside on the boiler deck’s promenade, allowing guests to sip mimosas in the sunshine accompanied by music from the calliope high atop the hurricane deck. Usually this required someone to be physically playing the keyboard, but this was before they’d hired Jim Krakowicz, aka Gimcrack, the other remaining member of the Jokertown Boys and Roger’s best friend since childhood.
Jim stuffed an overlarge bite of eggs Benedict in his mouth with a fork in one hand while with the other he pointed a battered duct-taped and rewired universal remote at the calliope and pressed play. A jolt of electricity flew out of the soldered-on antenna, arcing up two decks to the brass steam pipes like a Jacob’s ladder, and the calliope immediately launched into a spirited performance of “The Enterta
iner.”
Roger, now costumed in his top hat, brocade vest, and cutaway frock coat with Emperor Norton epaulets, knew better than to remark on this and simply took a sip of orange juice. Andrew Yamauchi, aka Wild Fox, did not.
“Nice ace,” Andrew complimented, his fox ears perking up atop his head like an anime character’s. “I wish my remote worked that well.”
“I’m not an ace,” Jim corrected him, “just a latent who knows how to read directions.”
Andrew stared, his fox tail twitching behind him. “Seriously?”
“Of course,” said Jim, offended. “Why would I joke about that?” Despite being in his thirties and having a five-o’-clock shadow you could grate cheese with, Jim gave an expression of childlike innocence without peer.
Lenore broke the conversational awkwardness by proclaiming, “Acem quzghyn!” Then again, more emphatically, “Acem quzghyn!”
Jim laughed, his green eyes wide with delight, then turned to Roger. “When did you teach her Kazakh?”
“That’s Kazakh?” Roger looked at Lenore, then back at Jim. “What did she say?”
“‘Beautiful raven,’” Jim translated.
“When did you learn Kazakh?” Andrew asked.
“When it was in the news,” Jim said, turning his attention back to his eggs. “I ordered one of those ‘learn any language in ten days’ courses.”
Andrew stared, incredulous, then glanced to Roger.
Roger contemplated the fruit plate he was having instead of creole delicacies and explained, as he had many times before, “Like he said, Jim is just good at reading directions.”
Andrew’s tail twitched as he regarded Jim. Despite a plate loaded with eggs Benedict, Cajun sausage, and far more bacon than should ever be healthy, Jim maintained the physique of a male model and athlete. He also maintained a subscription to the National Enquirer, turned, as always, to the page with the Charles Atlas testimonials, miracle pheromone ads, and fad diets.
Roger ate his cantaloupe, wondering where Lenore had heard Kazakh. But he recalled Cottle had taken on new crew in New Orleans. A bunch of soldiers had returned from the horrors of Kazakhstan, and those who weren’t hospitalized with PTSD were looking for work. Compared with what they’d seen, the boiler room would seem a vacation.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Roger saw Andrew’s ears perk up.
Roger looked where Andrew was looking, up to the calliope atop the Natchez. The three guys from last night were there. The curly-haired blonde with the solar tat waved his gizmo at the self-playing calliope while the Person in Black with the tribal armband talked excitedly to newsboy guy’s camera. “Who are they?” he asked Andrew.
“The Dead Report,” Andrew answered, his face becoming a mask of mischievous glee. “Don’t you watch the Explore America channel?” Then he turned to Jim. “Could you make the calliope play something more ghostly?”
Jim shrugged. “Sure.” He glanced at his remote and pressed a button labeled with a child’s Halloween pumpkin sticker. “The Entertainer” abruptly switched to the Casper, the Friendly Ghost theme song.
Andrew cocked an ear. “I was thinking more Haunted Mansion or Phantom of the Opera, but I can work with this.” As he said that, the steam from the calliope began to drift and coalesce, forming into a towering and terrifying ghostly figure behind the calliope’s keyboard.
Roger could work with opera, too, and not just singing. He reached into his frock coat and removed his opera glasses—the real deal, heirloom Aldons, black Bakelite and Art Deco chrome with Rodenstock optics, not the gag glasses that gave you a black eye and were always a hit with children—and brought the trio from The Dead Report up close. Combined with lip-reading and a good memory, they gave him excellent information to fake ace mentalism or advice from nonexistent spirit familiars.
“Keep filming!” cried the Person in Black. “Keep filming! This is going—” He turned so Roger couldn’t see his lips, but a moment later, turned back, “—umentary Emmy!”
Roger sipped his orange juice. He had grown up with Jim and knew the chaos his ace could cause. When you added in Andrew, who’d come to fame on American Hero as Wild Fox, master illusionist and all-around prankster, whose illusions could be seen but not recorded on film, it was a recipe for disaster. Or hilarity. Possibly both.
The ghostly figure forming from the calliope’s steam condensed smaller and smaller, becoming more and more opaque as it did so. The empty hollows of its eyes shrank to doll-like pupils, the horrifying rictus of its gaping mouth contracted to a single black line, and the whole of its being became the size of a small child, a levitating cartoonish undead parody of a little boy. His mouth opened in a wide smile as his ghostly hands attempted to match the fingerwork of the possessed keyboard playing his theme song.
Roger put away his opera glasses and glanced to Jim and Andrew. They were both adults, in body at least. And the Natchez had hired them for entertainment, as was the case with him, so it was time for the Amazing Ravenstone to make his exit before Caitlyn, their cruise director, came by with comments and concerns about the divertissements they were providing.
“Have fun, gentlemen,” Roger said, taking a last pineapple spear for himself and a strawberry for Lenore. “It looks like you already are.”
Roger had his magician’s table set up, the drape in front embroidered with THE AMAZING RAVENSTONE in the same lettering copied from the antique trunk. The velvet mat atop was perfect for close-up magic. “Now find the lady.…” He fanned the three cards.
The girl in front of him was about thirteen, with red hair, freckles, a pink gingham sundress obviously new for the trip, and a face so bershon it could be used as the definition photo on Instagram, her expression equidistant between apathy and disgust with shades of bored resignation. “She’s been chopped up and turned around. They’re trick cards. I saw this on YouTube.”
Roger took his gloved hand away. “Then show me.”
The girl turned over the jack of clubs, then the jack of spades. She frowned, then turned over the last card, revealing the jack of diamonds.
Roger reached out, pulling a card from her ear. “Ah, here’s the lady.” He revealed the queen of hearts.
The girl looked at him squarely. “Okay, that’s kind of cool, but still lame compared to Wild Fox.” She glanced back over her shoulder to the woman behind her, who had the same hair and a matching sundress. “I can’t believe you ever had a crush on this guy, Mom.”
Her mother turned almost as pink as her dress. “How—”
“I read your diary,” the girl said. “You can pick the lock with a hairpin.” She then looked at the man standing with her mother, who Roger assumed to be the girl’s dad. He looked like a taller, fatter, balding version of Roger, without the horns, but still sporting a Vandyke.
Roger exchanged a look of commiseration with him and his wife, then their daughter dropped the other shoe: “She still has all your albums, you know. Even listens to them sometimes.” After a moment, she told Roger, “‘Jokertown Blues’ was their make-out song.”
Her mother went from pink to red. “Marie, that’s enough!”
“Is it?” asked Marie. “You named me after the joker witch from your sex song. How fucked up is that?”
THERE’S A MIGHTY MEAN MOMMA NAME OF JUJU MARIE.… Roger kept from singing the line, but only just. “Jokertown Blues” was an old standard. C. C. Ryder had covered it before them, and Mr. Rainbow before her.
“Marie,” her mother reasoned, “you were named after your great-aunt Marie.”
“Yeah, that’s what you told everyone,” said Marie, “but remember, I read your diary!”
“Juju Marie!” cried Lenore. “Juju Marie!” Then, as Roger had taught her to do—though not under these circumstances—she hopped to the corner of the table, producing a card from the hidden pocket but making it look like she’d pulled it from under her wing. She presented it.
Marie took it. On the front was Sam’s pen-and-ink portrait of Juju M
arie, the legendary hoodoo witch of Jokertown, throwing her cards in the air. On the back was an admit two pass for the Jokertown Boys show that evening in the Bayou Lounge.
Marie gazed at it, her face a study in bershon, then handed it to her father. “I can’t even…” She pronounced her damnation on the three of them, much like her namesake, and walked away, her hand raised in abject dismissal.
Her parents gave Roger mortified looks, then Marie’s mother said, “I should…”
She left the thought unfinished, the sentence unfulfilled, but took off after her daughter regardless.
Marie’s father looked at the card, then Roger, then the card again, then finally tucked it in his breast pocket. “Very kind of you,” he said with a southern drawl. “I think.” He shook his head and pulled out his wallet. “This ain’t the way I planned life, and I reckon it’s the same for you.” He handed Roger a twenty, adding, “I’d be obliged if you could point me to the bar.”
Roger did.
Roger ended up at the bar himself that evening, the smaller lounge that had once been the Natchez’s smoking room, a place for gentlemen to unwind without their ladyfolk.
Marie’s father was not there, which was all to the good. Roger did not think he could deal with that conversation. He’d had an endless number of fangirls back in the day. He’d even gone to bed with some of them, a couple even long term—and Portia, at least, was still on speaking terms. But having a woman marry you because you were the closest nat boy she was going to find to her bad-boy devil joker teen idol crush? And by the way, it was likely a shotgun marriage because you were both southern Christian abstinence teens, and abortion was even more unspeakable than joker boys, even fake ones, not that you knew that.
Marie was right. It was all sorts of fucked up. Roger “couldn’t even” either.
Of course, this was not the only fucked-up thing in his life. The Jokertown Boys—the famous ones—had broken up years ago, or really just splintered off piecemeal.