Crystal turned from the window and walked over to where Suzannah sat at a glass table chopping up cocaine. The razor blade cut through the powder and tapped on the glass to the music. Finished, the white woman put the blade down and picked up a crisp $100 bill, rolling it into a tube and handing it to the girl.
Crystal plugged one nostril and put the tube to the other. Leaning over the table, she inhaled the drug. Then she switched hands and sniffed cocaine into her other nostril. During the process, she felt a hand cup one of her breasts. The nipple puckered.
"That ought to cool you, honey," Suzannah huskily whispered into her ear. The woman's other hand slipped up between the girl's thighs.
Crystal shuddered, uncertain whether it was Suzannah's touch or the spreading effect of the snow. But she didn't care, for all that mattered was the warm shiver tingling through her body. After a while she closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the woman.
Suzannah laughed and said, "Better watch that. Crystal dear. Pussy is addicting."
Then the woman turned her back on the girl and herself bent over the table. She ran the bill around the glass and sucked up most of the powder. Finished, she wet her index finger and washed it across the surface, completing the ritual by rubbing its tip around her gums.
Suzannah was a woman who dripped sexuality. Twenty-eight years old, she stood five-foot-ten in her bare feet and had a luscious figure. Her head was shaved bald, and she too was naked. As Suzannah bent over the table, from behind her Crystal could see six small gold rings piercing the labia and glittering among the hairs of the woman's crotch.
Suzannah straightened up. Pinching her nostrils several times as she sniffed in deep breaths of air, she glanced up at the. Gustav Becker clock ticking on the wall. The time was 11:33. She turned to Crystal and said: "We haven't much time, dear, until our guest arrives. He'll be here in an hour."
Frowning, Crystal walked over to the window. At the end of the side street, where it intersected with Royal, she could see the parade of floats and, for a moment, even the figure of Comus holding his goblet high. The crowd cheered as he went by, swept away as if caught up in a surging tide. Crystal sighed.
"Must we miss the party?" she asked.
"Sweetheart," the woman said softly, her eyes now glazed and her face flushed by the cocaine's effect, "you must realize that some things are more important than others. Like this man tonight. He is very important for us."
Crystal nodded absently, suddenly feeling the jittery intoxication of the drug. Her face felt frozen and there was no sensation in her teeth. When she looked down at her chest it seemed as though her heart was beating wildly in an effort to break free, each tick of the clock vibrating this room into sharper focus.
The room would have been similar to any other rich, elegant parlor in New Orleans were it not for the walls. To Crystal, it was eerie to have so many empty eyes watch her every move. Suzannah had decorated this half of the upper floor of the ancient Lafon house entirely in antiques. Most of the furniture was by the cabinetmaker Prudent Mallard, immense, ornate, and Victorian. Though Mallard had used carved rosewood, Suzannah had used the masks.
There were more than a hundred different masks covering the walls.
On the wall opposite the window were the masks of Africa: an Oule Mask from Bobo and a Senufo Fire-spitter; a Nalindele Mask and an Ashanti Fertility Head.
On the wall to the right of the window were hung the masks of the Near and Far East: a Mummy Mask from Egypt and a Roman Mask of Pan; a Japanese Gigaku and a Chinese T'ao t'ieh Face.
In the wall to the left of the window there were three closed doors, and around the jambs, framing them, were the masks of America: a Death Mask from the Inca and a Salish Spirit Mask; a Six Nations Iroquois False Face and a Hopi Katchina Doll.
And on the window wall were the modern masks. To the left of the pane was a Beelzebub by Theodore Benda and a German Executioner's Mask. From above it leered a Corbel
from England, a Creon Mask from Stratford, a Death's Head Hussars Busby. While to the right hung a New York Yankees' catcher's guard, a World War I gas mask and a shroud from the Ku Klux Klan.
Out beyond the window were the masks of Mardi Gras.
Catlike, Suzannah padded across the floor and began to stroke Crystal's hair. Together they watched the parade.
"What does all this mean?" Crystal asked. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Mean? It doesn't mean anything. It's just something you feel. You let yourself go."
Crystal closed her eyes, moving her head in time to the stroking of her hair. It felt so good.
"You see," Suzannah added, "Carnival appeals to a basic human urge. Almost everyone has the desire hidden within them to occasionally don a mask. There is no culture in-history in which masks have not played a part." Suzannah whispered, "Come with me."
Together they walked to one of the doors set into the wall to the left. The woman swung it open and they entered the bedroom beyond.
This was a room in conflict, a riot of red and black. The walls were of red satin, the curtains of red velvet, the spread draped across the bed a red patchwork quilt. The carpet, however, was black. The furniture — a dresser, a wardrobe and a mirrored washstand — was of black ebony and onyx. And attached to each of the four posts supporting the canopy bed were chains and handcuffs of forge-blackened steel.
Suzannah crossed to the washstand and sat down on its chair. As she picked up a jar of makeup, she was staring at her own face in the mirror, thinking the reflection was showing signs of age. The small creases at the corners of her full mouth and green feline eyes had been there last week. The lines on her forehead had not. Concerned, she rubbed one hand across her shaved head, noting the blue veins that spread like fingers reaching up from her temples, counting the pulse-rate at which her heart pumped blood.
Suzannah opened the jar of stage makeup and began to blacken her eyelids. Spreading the grease with her index fingers, she worked the shadow in a narrowing slit around the sides of her head. Then she cleaned her hands with cream and began chalking her entire face white. As she did this, her eyes seemed to sink further and further back in her head. Fascinated, Crystal sat down at the foot of the bed and watched.
When she had finished, Suzannah painted her fingernails a bright scarlet red — the same color as the satin walls of the bedroom. Then fanning her hands to dry the lacquer, she turned to the girl and said: "You and I, Crystal, we have a lot in common."
"We do?" the girl said, surprised.
"Well, of course. That's why I asked you here. A few years ago, after I got rid of my husband, I did just what you've done. I too escaped down the Mississippi River. Only I made a mistake. Whereas you were smart enough to get a job in a laundry, I spent half a year removing my clothes in a sleazy Bourbon Street strip joint. It was awful!"
"You were married?" Crystal said, surprised again.
"Yes, dear. We lived at the top of the world. But let's not talk about that. The man turned out a bum. Oh he was tough on the outside, shiny buttons and all, but inside where it counts he was a sniveling little boy — lost and living in the shadow of his father. In fact, love, he was the last man to lay a hand on me. But I took care of him. He doesn't matter now."
"When were you divorced?" Crystal asked with interest.
"Divorced? We were never divorced. The man just died. That was Christmas Eve, 1955."
Suzannah stood up and crossed to the dresser and pulled open one of the drawers. From it she removed a pair of sheer stockings, then carried them back to the washstand. As she walked her breasts swayed, her shoulders softly rolling to keep them moving. Crystal stared transfixed.