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A Taste of Blood and AltarsA Taste of Blood and Altars


by Poppy Z. Brite
1988 by Poppy Z. Brite
"A Taste of Blood and Altars"
In the spring, families in the suburbs of New Orleans-Metarie, Jefferson,
Lafayette-hang wreaths on their front doors. Gay purple straw wreaths of yellow
and purple and green, wreaths with bells and froths of ribbons trailing down,
blowing, tangling in the warm wind. The children have king cake parties. Each
slice of cake is covered with a different sweet, sticky topping-candied cherries
and colored sugar are favorites-and the child who finds a pink plastic baby in
his slice will enjoy a year of good luck. The baby represents the infant Christ,
and children seldom choke on it. Jesus loves little children. The adults buy
spangled cat's-eye masks for masquerades, and other women's husbands pull other
men's wives to them under cover of Spanish moss and anonymity, hot silk and
desperate searching tongues and the wet ground and the ghostly white scent of
magnolias opening in the night, and the colored paper lanterns on the verandah
in the distance. In the French Quarter the liquor flows like milk and strings of
bright cheap beads hang from wrought iron balconies, adorn sweaty necks, scatter
in the street, the royalty of gutter trash, gaudy among the cigarette butts and
cans and plastic Hurricane glasses. The sky is purple, the flare of a match
behind a cupped hand is yellow, the liquor is green, bright green, made from a
thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know well enough to drink Chartreuse
at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in
their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your
eyes will turn bright green. Christian's bar was way down Chartres away from the
middle of the Quarter, toward Canal Street. It was only nine-thirty. None one
ever came in until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights, no one except the thin
little girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft
brown hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to
brush it away from her face, feel it trickle through his fingers like rain.
Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the
friends who were never there, and the wind blew the French Quarter in behind
her, Rue de Chartres warm as the night air slipped away toward the river,
smelling of spice and fried oysters and rum and the dust of ancient bones stolen
and violated. When she saw Christian standing alone behind the bar, narrow and
white with his black hair glittering on his shoulders, she came and hopped onto
a bar stool – she had to boost herself – and said, as she did most nights, «Can
I have a screwdriver?» «Just how old are you, love?» Christian asked, as he did
most nights. «Twenty.» She was lying by at least four years, but her voice was
so soft that he had to listen with his whole cupped ear to hear it, and her arms
on the bar were thin and downed with fine blonde hairs, and the big smudges of
dark makeup like bruises around her eyes, the ratty bangs and the bare feet with
their toenails painted orange only made her look more childlike. He made the
drink weak and put two cherries in it. She fished the cherries out with her
fingers and ate them one by one, sucking them like candy, before she started
sipping her drink. Christian knew the girl came to his bar because the drinks
were cheap and he would serve them to her with no questions to piss her off, no
questions about I.D. or why a pretty girl wanted to drink alone on the last