Page 62 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Despite their opposing personalities, Breeze saw how his dad treated his mom like an equal, a person. A treasure. He pulled out her chair. He held her when her monthlies hurt. He sat on the porch with her, chatting into the night. This was rare. His cousin Sonny’s dad would come in from the fields, frayed, speaking with his fists and faithful only to the bottle. Breeze supposed it was hard to be civil when your own humanity was in tatters. Accordingly, Sonny’s mom wasn’t safe in her own home, but she swallowed her discontent. No one liked an ornery woman.

Breeze learned a lot about women at the speakeasies, but his education started back at home. Which was why his girlfriend, Felice Fabienne, was a curiosity. Quietly, he wasn’t sure if he actually liked her. She wasn’t particularly kind or sweet. She had mercurial, unpredictable moods, and she was motivated by money, fame, fashion, and social status. God help whoever got in her way.

But Felice was a game he was addicted to playing. Pleasing her wasn’t easy, and when he earned an approving smile, he felt like a king. Her greedy, spontaneous sexuality was a rush. She was gentle with Sonny’s hand-me-down terrier, Groucho Barx. And Felice depended on Breeze to help her navigate her new adopted city, which satisfied his caretaker spirit in intoxicating ways. For better or worse, he was swept up in her hurricane. She raged into his life at a dark, empty time, right before Sonny permanently disappeared.

With Sonny most likely dead—a thought that tore his heart to ribbons—Breeze was desperate to forget his pain. Felice’s black hole of volatility did for him what drinking and drugging did for everyone else.

Lo Ellis, Eden Lounge’s choreographer and Breeze’s best friend, thought he’d lost his damned mind. She told him so at the engagement party for W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter, Yolande, and her fiancé, the famous poet Countee Cullen.

Lo was scandalized that Breeze was bringing Felice to the April wedding. It was sure to be the event of the decade! Yes, two socialites were marrying, but even more deliciously, the best man was Harold Jackman, an aristocrat known internationally as “Harlem’s most handsome man.” Unfortunately for the bride, he was also the groom’s boyfriend.

“I feel bad for all three of them,” said Breeze, tossing back seltzers with Lo at the engagement party. “Poor Countee.”

“What’s he supposed to do, marry Harold?” Lo was chic in a feathered hair comb and a beaded frock skimming her knees. She felt the lovers’ pain. If she could’ve married her ex-girlfriend, Behold, she would’ve a thousand times over. “He’d be a pretty bride, though.”

“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 meCounteethe 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 levitatesaround 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 readGrimoire 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 helpher, specifically, to remove obstacles blocking her from her dream.

And that dream was Broadway. Felice was obsessed withdancing. 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 ofShuffle AlongandRunnin’ Wildin 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 thebandleader.

Breeze didn’t believe in magic. But he was bewitched by her fantastical stories, and the fact thatshebelieved 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 curdledinto 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.

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