“Doctor Chauncey, as I live and breathe,” Marcus said, strolling in Fayreweather’s direction. “What made you leave your storefront and take to the streets?”
“The smell of money,” Fayreweather replied. “There is more of it here than on Chartres Street.”
“Congratulations on passing the Cabildo’s examination and becoming certified to dispense medicines.” Marcus picked up the piece of paper tucked under the skull. It resembled the document Marcus had hanging on his shop wall to show he was a reputable physician and not a quack. He glanced at a knot of Garde de Ville standing nearby. Fayreweather had brass balls to fleece people within arm’s reach of the city police. “I hear the test takes three hours.”
“So it does.” Fayreweather snatched the paper from Marcus’s fingers.
“Listen,” Marcus said, dropping his voice. “I have no wish to deprive you of your liberty, or your livelihood, but please impersonate someone else.” He tipped his hat and walked away.
Marcus had taken only a few steps when Fayreweather’s voice caught up with him.
“What’s your game, friend?” Fayreweather called.
Marcus turned. “Game?”
“I know humbug when I see it,” Fayreweather said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcus said smoothly.
“You don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.” Fayreweather smiled. “But I’ll discover your secret. You can count on it.”
After their encounter in the Place d’Armes, Fayreweather kept cropping up in the crowded city. Marcus spotted Fayreweather playing cards in the back of his favorite coffee shop. He heard Fayreweathers’s honeyed tones on Chartres Street as he tried to seduce a young widow. Fayreweather had a fiddle, and played it on street corners, drawing crowds of rapt listeners. Everywhere Fayreweather went there was life and laughter. Marcus soon envied the man.
Marcus began to look for Fayreweather as he went about his daily business, and to be disappointed when he didn’t catch the man’s sardonic green eyes or have a chance to greet him in the market. One day, Marcus shared a table with Fayreweather at his favorite drinking establishment, the Café des Réfugiés on Rue de St. Philip.
“I think you should call me Ransome,” Fayreweather suggested after they clinked glasses. “And I think you need to have some fun, Doc. Otherwise, you’re going to get old before your time.”
Marcus was swept up into Ransome’s seductive world of gamblers and whores, surrounded by men and women who were all trying to craft a new life for themselves in the bustling port that was welcoming the whole world. Ships put in at the mouth of the Missisippi from every place imaginable, some carrying passengers and others cargo.
Inch by inch, Marcus began to shed the layers of himself that had been bruised by childhood and revolution, and toughened by war and adversity. Surrounded by Ransome’s friends, Marcus often remembered his time among the Brethren—odd though it was to think of Johannes Ettwein and Sister Magdalene in a seedy bar or a whorehouse—and the way that these unlikely allies lived side by side. Marcus began to laugh at Ransome’s jokes, and to share gossip as well as political news when he sat down with his cup of coffee at Lafitte’s tavern.
It was in one of these easy moments that Ransome finally extracted Marcus’s secret from him.
They were smoking cigars and drinking wine at a gambling parlor on St. Charles Avenue. The thick red velvet drapes gave everything a lurid air, and the haze of anxiety rising from the players and the fumes from the tobacco were so thick they practically choked you.
“I’m calling your bluff, Doc.” Ransome threw a handful of tokens into the center of the table.
“You’ve caught me a bit short.” Marcus was out of cash, out of tokens, and out of luck.
“Of course, you could tell me your secret and I’d call us even,” Fayreweather said. It was his standing offer whenever Marcus lost a game of chance.
Marcus laughed. “You never give up, do you, Ransome?”
“Not if death himself was staring me in the face,” Fayreweather said cheerfully. “I’d simply challenge him to a game of monte and sucker him like I do all the others.”
Fayreweather had been teaching Marcus some of the tricks he used on the deep-pocketed visitors to New Orleans. Fanny would adore Ransome, Marcus thought wistfully, remembering his aunt’s bustling household and exuberant spirit. Marcus got lonelier and more nostalgic with every passing year.