A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (59)
“Tell me again why I agreed to play at this farce of a wedding?”
Lo chuckled. “Cause Yolande invited twelve hundred moneyed New Negroes, they love your songs, and you love the attention.”
What I love, he thought, is that she didn’t ask Duke.
“Hey, if no one’s listening, I’m not eating.” He grinned. “Did you hear they commissioned Langston to write the wedding poem?”
Lo rolled her eyes. “How do I love thee? Let me count the gays.”
“Let me Countee the gays,” quipped Breeze.
“Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about you and Felice. Why her? She’s tacky.”
“She’s a chorus girl!” he retorted. “You were a chorus girl, too.”
“But she got the job through wickedness! She was an understudy. Out the clear blue, Edith, my star dancer, breaks an ankle during practice, and Felice muscles in.” Lo shook her head. “Ain’t no way. Edith’s so careful with her feet, she practically levitates around town. Never even stubbed a toe. Felice put the roots on her. Don’t fool with them Creole girls.”
“All right now, you ain’t gotta besmirch her character.”
“But what do you even know about her?”
Breeze knew a lot, actually. Felice was raised in Thibodaux, Louisiana, a moss-hung swamp that was more poverty stricken than poor. She and her mama lived in a cramped one-room tin-roof shack. The hovel heaved in strong winds and flooded in the rain. It was miserable, and so was Felice’s mama, whose fiancé had run off when she was seven months pregnant, leaving behind his Bible and no explanation. And her mama never recovered. Lost to blues, she couldn’t work, laugh, or even get out of bed on most days. Mama was a dried-up husk of a woman, and all because some lowlife wouldn’t marry her. Felice would never be that helpless.
Breeze also knew she’d been born with a gift. (Well, she was born with a caul over her face, which lent itself to a gift.) As a tot, she spent most of her time wandering the wild, swampy woods alone, teaching herself botanical magic. At first, Felice honed her root medicine skills on injured possums and rats, and by ten, she was a bona fide hoodoo practitioner, earning a living for her and her mama by curing colds and healing scrapes.
Until February of her thirteenth year. Felice told Breeze she’d been gathering comfrey for a black eye salve when she found an oddly shaped book with a muddy cover, nestled under a weeping willow. The title read Grimoire of Bad Work. In other words, a book of dark voodoo spells. Who left it there, she didn’t know, but after sitting in the dirt, reading it cover to cover, Felice had an epiphany. Hoodoo rootwork helped other people. But voodoo (the dark kind, not the good) would help her, specifically, to remove obstacles blocking her from her dream.
And that dream was Broadway. Felice was obsessed with dancing. Every Friday night, she’d practice the latest moves at the jook joints, where boys loved her, but girls accused her of terrible things: theft, drunkenness, and getting pregnant by some photographer passing through town. Well, that last rumor was true. Felice had a baby she’d named after her idol, the showgirl Adelaide Hall, who’d starred in the all-Black Broadway productions of Shuffle Along and Runnin’ Wild in the early ’20s. Adelaide was a petite beauty with a wide smile, just like Felice.
Last year, at nineteen, Felice escaped to Harlem, leaving her baby back home and planning to send for her once she’d hit it big. Until that day, she was on the rise, and woe befell anyone in her way. To hear her tell it, she had voodoo to thank. After eight months of diligently chanting and offering sacrifices to loa spirits, Felice had gone from an Eden Lounge understudy to a showgirl. Who was dating the bandleader.
Breeze didn’t believe in magic. But he was bewitched by her fantastical stories, and the fact that she believed them. Plus, when she was sweet, her Kewpie-doll smile softened every one of Breeze’s rough edges. And generally, he didn’t even mind her dark, stormy moods. Keeping up with her tornado-like disposition was a distraction from his own melancholy.
Lo was right; Louisiana girls did have a reputation: folks said if you cross one, prepare to be bankrupt and impotent. But Breeze thought her spells were a cute hobby. Like astrology.
And he told Lo as much.
“Listen, baby,” said Lo, taking an elegant drag from her cigarette holder. “Sex with deranged women is tops. But Felice’s wicked streak is not to be toyed with…”
Breeze stopped listening. He realized he had only thirty minutes to walk Groucho Barx before meeting Felice for their date. He couldn’t be late. When she was displeased, her sweetness curdled into something dark. He kissed Lo on the cheek and was gone so fast, her head spun.
The next day, after Breeze took Felice to see a matinee of the new Chaplin picture, The Circus, the two went for a lazy stroll down Lenox. The avenue teemed with bustling boutiques and restaurants, but no one really went to Lenox to shop. It was about being seen. Spats and hats, stoles and satin, the thoroughfare was a fashion magazine brought to life. Trends were born and died on Lenox. Breeze was dapper in a tailored pin-striped suit, and Felice wore a lilac drop-waist frock and a full-length silver fox coat, both gifts from her indulgent boyfriend.
The late-February afternoon was cold as hell, though. And if Breeze felt it, Felice must’ve been freezing. She wasn’t wearing stockings (because she was liberated) or a hat (because she wanted to flaunt her waves courtesy of Madam C. J. Walker’s salon).