Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) book 2

ICU

“You don’t have to be rich to be my girl

You don’t have to be cool to rule my world

Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with

I just want your extra time and your kiss.”

-Prince

Polly was looking forward to seeing Haley’s comet tonight. It was all the W X O K 1460 A M DJs could talk about this week between records, as they played the top 20 super soul count down, and now he was at the number one song in the nation, “Kiss,” by Prince.  

Polly watched as Ceecee swayed her hips from side-to-side dancing in place as she sang along with the music on the radio while she washed the breakfast dishes. Nikki, Svetlana, Lin, and Angelica all joined in singing along with the music coming from the tiny speaker in the transistor radio sitting in the corner of the kitchen counter.

Every morning after closing, they all tuned into Baton Rouge ’s number one soul station W C O K AM radio while singing and dancing to blow off a little steam after a long night’s work at the Rising Sun. Polly did not want to go to bed yet, but it was his bedtime, so he took his time finishing his breakfast before heading upstairs to get some sleep. The morning sun light was starting to shine through the kitchen window, and he moved his chair to the shadowed end of the kitchen table before finishing his food.

Polly had grown up hiding from the sun as if he were a child vampire. The sun not only burned his skin but ruined his vision, nearly blinding him on direct exposure. He learned to sleep during the day and stay inside until sunset. When he was forced to venture out into the daylight, he wore a white wide brimmed hat, long white gloves, a long sleeve shirt with a white jacket, and matching trousers.

The round polarized sunglasses he wore even had little leather blinders on the sides to shield his lone sensitive azure eye, the other being a milky white sightless mass. At ten years old he was quite used to his life and never questioned it having never known another. Before going to bed for the day he ate breakfast in the kitchen with the same Asian, European, and Latina girls who would between clients tutor him through out the evening in literature, mathematics, fine arts, music, and the sciences.

Svetlana was the oldest: the daughter of a prominent Russian professor of literature who ran afoul of the Soviet government and was thrown out of an eighteen-story window for his political opinions. Defenestration still being one of the current governments favorite ways of dealing with dissidents. Her mother managed to smuggle her only daughter out of the country but was arrested and shipped to Siberia before she could join her teenage daughter in the United States. So, alone in a foreign land with no family no friends and no English she bumped into a local black woman in a diner next to the airport who happened to speak Russian. The rest, as they say, is his story that was 12 years ago, and she has been working at the Rising Sun ever since.

Nikki was a honey-colored little Creole girl from Tremé who ran away from home to escape continuing the incestuous relationship with her father. She took classes at the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University, and she happily shared what she was learning with the young albino negro.

 Angelica was from Argentina: her father was a reporter for a popular socialist newspaper who was thrown out of a helicopter over the ocean by the “U.S. backed junta”.  She and the rest of her family made their way to the states, and she took work at the Rising Sun while her mother worked at the Sheraton hotel as part of the house keeping staff taking care of her younger brothers and sisters. She never told anyone about the true nature of her work and everyone in her family thought she was just a waitress at a local bar. Her very devout Catholic mother did not approve of her young 18-year-old daughter working in a tavern, but she was grateful for the money her Angelica earned in tips.

Lin had the misfortune of being born with a vagina in China so her parents gave her to a white family to get her out of the country so that they could try to have a son. Lin hated her Dutch parents even though they showered her with love. As a child pianist Lin was a musical prodigy in her adopted native land and at 16, she abandoned her classical training to form a radical lesbian feminist punk band called Lunch Box. Lin lived the life of a rock goddess she got hooked on heroin while they toured Europe, then decided to sober-up by moving to the States. While she had been a minor celebrity in the UK and the EU: here she was just another undocumented immigrant who lived in constant fear of being deported. Lin was Pollys music teacher and thus she was his favorite.

 The only other kids he spent time with were the children of some of the other girls who worked there when they couldn’t find a babysitter. He knew from watching movies and television shows that most kids didn’t have private tutors, but he didn’t like most kids, or even being a kid himself. To a 10-year-old Polly childhood was simply something one endured until it was over, like the flu.

The mathematics portion of his education was taught by his aunt Ceecee the youngest sister of his mother, the woman who had been raising him as her own son for the last four years. She had the same large almond shaped brown eyes as his mother and a wide mouth that smiled easily.  Ceecee was tall, slender, and dark-skinned like his mother. She favored wearing light cotton sundresses, wore her long hair in thick braids, and preferred to go barefoot when ever possible, going as far as wearing leather bands around her ankles creating the illusion that she was wearing sandals.  Even though she was only 10 years older than him she was the head priestess of the coven that ran the Rising Sun.

Over the last four years she had proven to be more than capable of taking her older sisters place as the house madam. Ceecee made sure that the cops were paid, the girls were safe, and the customers left with nothing but happy memories.

Ceecee also talked to Polly about the business not just the math but the psychology of the tricks, giving him a detailed break down of each customer as well as instructing him in what to watch out for in a man who forgot that this is a whorehouse and was foolish enough to fall in love with one of the girls. This usually happens to one of the younger girls, but the men who fall into the pussy trap are either very young, idealistic, and just don’t know any better. or the most dangerous of men; the one going through a mid-life crisis.

They usually show up after the wife left with the kids, and they try to drown their misery by crawling into the bottom of a bottle of bourbon then crawling into bed with a pretty young prostitute. They drunkenly unload all of their problems on the poor girl they just paid for by the hour. If they want to spend the time talking the girls let them talk. After all, talking is 90 percent of the job. But every once in a while, one will get homicidal and get the bright idea that she’s his girl then come back armed with a knife or a gun. I don’t have to tell you murder suicide is bad for business.

The best thang to do is to get the Johns attention, keep’em distracted for as long as possible. The longer they have to thank thangs over, the more likely they are to just calm down and just go on back home. They ain’t killers just lonely, confused souls looking for love in a whorehouse.

Ideally, we get them to leave on their own, after all it’s worse for business when the customers leave in a hearse.

Polly was hiding behind the curtains that separated the parlor from the old houses servants’ entrance where he was allowed to stay downstairs so long as he kept out of sight. He often took breaks from studying to peek through the heavy curtains and see who was there and when they were having a slow night, he would come out sit down at the piano and entertain the girls working that evening with a few songs. Usually, arias by Puccini.

The first thing he noticed when he peeped out tonight was the gun peaking out from under Foster Wallace’s jacket, Louisiana like most southern states was a right to carry state but none of that mattered because it was posted on the sign at the entrance that no weapons of any kind were allowed into the Rising Sun.

Foster had been coming around a lot since his wife and kids left last summer, Angelica was his favorite, and she was also the youngest girl working here. Ceecee said he was broke now and had been forced to live in a hotel room since his ex-wife sold the house after the divorce. Even from the other side of the dimly lit room Polly could see he was agitated, a swirling storm of emotion. The nondescript bespectacled white man sat at the table alone chain-smoking Marlboros and knocking back shots of Jack Daniels while waiting for Angelica. Polly knew nothing good was going to happen once she came down those stairs.

There were two other girls in the sitting in the booths in the parlor, drinking, smoking cigarettes, and chatting with their customers before they headed upstairs. Polly didn’t want to cause a panic, but he needed to signal Ceecee that something was wrong, so he violated the most important rule she had ever given him, never let the tricks see you.

Polly silently exited the secret room, stepping from behind the heavy embroidered curtain as he walked silently across the room to the aged, upright Steinway. He sat on the velvet covered piano bench, lifted the keyboard cover, then turned the songbook to a page he had never seen and began to play.  Perfectly sight-reading a tune, the girls had never heard him play before, Moonlight Sonata.

The music immediately got Ceecee’s attention and with a raised palm she halted Angelica, silently signaling to her to go back upstairs. From the foot of the stairs Ceecee gazed into the parlor watching Foster Wallace’s tear-streaked face dissolve into the music as Polly played. The man listened in a solemn silence mesmerized by the music as the alabaster skinned black boy played the piano. When the song was over the man stood up applauding loudly. Still transfixed by the sight of the pale negro boy who bowed deeply before quietly disappearing into the hidden room behind the curtain like a ghost. Foster Wallace continued to clap and shout.

“Bravo. Bravo! Bravo!”

Then after Polly was gone, he walked out the front door of the Rising Sun, climbed into the drivers’ seat of his Oldsmobile Cutlass, put the chromed barrel of the Smith & Wesson .357 magnum pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

-About the author   

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx