Loomis once again had kinda awoken from a dreamlike state wondering about Lyndsey whom he now incoherently referenced as “my Gal,” but entirely unawares as to her whereabouts. He further recalled flashing on a brick and timber village called “Foggy Bottom,” in far-away Washington, DC. Why there? -Oh yeah, I think I, Loomis Johnathan Akula Reader, was born there or mebbe stayed there as a shavetail…
“But NOW? WOW!!” Here he sits on a moldy ole marble slab– smack dab in the middle of Girod Cemetery, in New Orleans — and it’s raining slightly, brown puddles everywhere.
Leering across the way is this Goth-looking dude with greased back longish black hair, name of Victor. And he’s holdin’ an ol’-fashioned QUILL PEN, all the better to sign this crinkly contract with Loomis’ name over it in about a dozen places, hooked up with the word, “Talent!” Victor and his wingman Ed leaned heavily into the slowly reviving “Mr. Reader,” urging him, “Sign the paper, man, Wouldja please?”
Loomis figured it was his time to ‘ask DeMille for his close-up,’ drawling, “How do I know I ain’t signing away my very SOUL?”
Ed and Vic both chimed in menacingly. “Sign the dam’ document, and save us the trouble of—“
“Aw sheesh–“, Loomis muttered nonchalantly. “What th’HAIL I‘ve got to lose..”
He scribbled all the necessary John Hancock lines and initializings the paper required.
“Now I’m your boy, right??” He looked across the slab. He could swear a marchin’ band was starting off on strains of “Saint James’ Infirmary,” even as we spoke. Ed and Victor merely locked in a knowing glance.
Loomis was flummoxed. “W-Where does I know you two odd gents from, anyhow, And is dat a thoid cat lurkin’ in tha overgrown boxwoods overhead of us?”
Indeed it was, and this figure was not only all in black, but cloaked, with a crimson sash AND a battered top hat. Loomis suspected he glommed a skeletal smile under the hat.
Victor piped up forcibly, “DAT, good chum, is for US to know an’ YOU TO FIND OUT, suh!”
The cloaked shroud-shape tossed its head back into a croaking, sinister, but clownish monolog, along with the jazz horn trio wafting over the cemetery wall. “An’ put mah 1879 Morgan Liberty Dollah, On mah Watch-Chain, So’s Ah can tell the world I DIED, STANDIN’ PAT!!!”
Loomis was inwardly freaking out–this was true WEIRDNESS, even for his vast range of experience.
Mind, the entire Orleans Parish and all of her surroundings were undergoing the ultimately “Ult,” in paradigm shifting, at this time, but still, Loomis’ permutations were profound. So when Victor gurgled deeply, to ask Loomis if he’d met “Baron Legba,”(that is to say, the swell with the topper and cloak) previously, the subject of this interrogatory-LOOMIS- chose to blot out the unthinkable.
Meaning in his mind, his monkey-mind, “Have I al-READY crossed the Styx River into the Land Of The
Dead? Bull-Hockey! NO way, man–(Then, snapping back, fully sentient now), “Did, uh, did you say, Vic? Do I understand you is TRYIN’ to revive my spotted career in ENTERTAINMENT? I say, I say, Let’s GO FOR IT!!”
Loomis staggered to his feet, and with the aid of Ed and Master Victor (his newly minted “Manager,”) propping him up ‘neath either arm pit, they sauntered forth as a shaky band of three out the side gates of Girod cemetery, with “Baron Legba,” or whomever was covering ‘Dat’ role, a short shadowy distance behind. This ensemble picked its way thru the litter and detritus of Katrina-stricken ‘Nola,’ in the directionof Perdido Street. Remember, children,”Perdido” to many, in Spanish, means ‘Lost’.
(To be Continued)
