Eighty Days Blue by Vina Jackson Page B

came.
    He let out a deep sigh.
    â€˜Come,’ he said, nodding to Summer.
    She unfroze.
    â€˜Lick me clean,’ he said.
    He tasted of oysters and horseradish and every sin under the sun. She was desperately hungry again. Rang the toll for her waistline.
    They left the House of Blues on Decatur just before midnight. The band had been good and Summer had imagined herself on stage with them, improvising around their riffs on her violin. It had been months since she’d played anything of a non-classical nature, something improvised, variations, natural. She missed that freedom now that she was part of an orchestra.
    The crowds had spilled out across the pavement outside the venue. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Dominik in conversation with a bystander, a tall guy with a seersucker jacket and jeans full of strategically placed holes and black leather winkle-pickers. Surely he’s not buying drugs, Summer thought. That wasn’t Dominik’s style.
    The two men parted, but she couldn’t help seeing them shake hands and a few green notes passing between them.
    â€˜Who was that?’ she asked as Dominik walked over to join her.
    â€˜A local. I needed some information.’
    She recognised that glint in his eyes. She’d witnessed it before.
    They found a cab on Canal Street, and Dominik whispered the destination to the driver. Summer was feeling drowsy after the deceptively strong cocktails she’d sampled at the club while listening to the music. After a few blocks, she briefly closed her eyes, only to open them again and see they had crossed Bourbon Street well beyond the point they had often reached on previous evening strolls and were now entering a zone of relative darkness in comparison to the well-lit thoroughfares she had so far been accustomed to tramping through.
    The cab finally came to a halt in front of an anonymous building with a steel gate. Dominik paid the driver, and as the car began to disappear in the distance, Summer felt the weight of the silence landing on her shoulders. This was all so unlike New Orleans. There was a dimly lit buzzer to the right of the door, which Dominik pressed. The electronic mechanism of the gate clicked and he pushed the door open.
    They were now in a large courtyard, with a perimeter of smaller buildings surrounding it.
    â€˜Those were the slave quarters,’ Dominik said, pointing at the outlying units. ‘Many years ago, of course.’ He took hold of Summer’s hand and led her towards the central building, which loomed out of the darkness and was visibly much larger than the others, a three-storey structure with a wooden veranda, a set of white stairs leading to the porch. Slivers of light peered through the sides of some of the downstairs and first-floor windows.
    They walked up the steps and the front door opened. A large, shaven-headed black man wearing an impeccable tuxedo simultaneously greeted them and checked them out. Having passed his scrutiny, they were ushered into the building. On a low-slung table by the stairs that led to the upper levels of the house was a tray with high-stemmed glasses. The imposing greeter poured them champagne and asked them to wait before disappearing through a side door.
    â€˜What is this place?’ Summer asked, sipping her glass. It was good champagne. Dominik didn’t partake.
    â€˜A strip club, actually, but a rather private one.’
    â€˜A strip club?’
    â€˜A very exclusive one,’ Dominik added. ‘There was a time when anything went in New Orleans, but over the years, things have become both commercialised and tamer. Strip joints on Bourbon Street used to be bottomless, but these days that’s no longer the case. They only disrobe as far as G-strings and knickers. It’s also become tawdry, exploitative. This place, I’m told, is the right thing.’
    â€˜Where anything goes?’ Summer suggested, her flesh tingling with familiar