Orfeo by M. J. Lawless

that cocksucker to stay away—next time I see you, old man, I’ll stick you like a pig.”
    Beneath her was the cool, implacable leather of a seat and a door slammed shut behind her as someone pressed his hot, heavy body beside her. Then all fell into merciful darkness as Ardyce collapsed completely.             
     

Part II: Orfeo in the Underworld

 
     
    Facilis descensus Averni: noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
    sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est.
     
    Easy is the descent to hell, for the door to the underworld lies open day and night.
    But to retrace your steps and return to the breezes above—this is work, this is toil.
    (Virgil, The Aeneid )
                 
     

             
Chapter Nine
     
    Orfeo lay on his bed, the guitar dangling listlessly in his hands. He had been picking the strings, his head full of melodies and harmonies silent to everyone but himself, but where they had previously brought him pleasure now their noise simply made him feel lonelier than before.
    His body ached with the receding bliss that Ardyce had given him. His fingers, his skin, his mouth, his cock remembered her, the scent of her flesh in his nostrils, the taste of her breasts so sweet in his mouth, her warmth, wet and open for him, sucking him deep into her womb. But as those joys receded, so the pain became even worse.
    He knew why she’d come—and why she’d left. She wanted to save him. Orfeo was no fool and well aware of the threat posed by Earl and his false loa , but she was a prize worth having above all others. She didn’t want him to die, but if she left him she had sentenced him to death as surely as if Earl came for him with a gun. Even if he lived out his allotted threescore years and ten, every day would be a living death and he knew he could not face wandering the earth without Ardyce.
    Gazing across the room toward the alcove where the candles were guttering low, he stared at the photograph of his mother, Ayida. Not for the first time he wondered what she was doing, whether she was still alive, even. His chest heaved with sickness at the thought of how hard her life had become after the murder of his father, how he had betrayed her. He had squandered everything, leaving home and running with gangs. Certainly he had first been motivated by what he had thought were the noblest motives, to find those men who had killed his father and take their lives, but instead he had sunk lower and lower until, at last, he became what he beheld.
    And when he fled Haiti, unable in shame to return to his family, how long had he traveled? Ten years. He counted them, each one, like a lead weight in his mind. He had fought, he had survived, he had lain with women—but had he loved? He knew the answer immediately. He had never loved, not truly, not until he had seen her that night in Apollo’s.
    The memory of her filled his memory again: a woman, pale and slight, with red hair burnished and flashing in the lights of the club, her eyes so piercing, shining as she watched him sing on the stage. He smiled at the thought of how he had faltered—he, Orfeo! It was the first time his voice had ever failed him, a messenger of a dark and beautiful silence in his song. It was the first time and he realised, with complete certainty, that it would be the last.
    His fists clenched and he snarled in anger. She had to come with him! Both of them would leave New Orleans together. Just as he would give up everything for her, so he was sure she would give up all that she owned for him.
    But as he looked around the pitiful room, his transitory home, a wry smile replaced his anger. This was no Xanadu. He had so little to give up and what was most important to him—aside from Ardyce—could never be taken away from him while he was still living. For Ardyce, the sacrifice would be much deeper, and yet as he thought of her empty life in that rambling mansion to the east