Hi!

I promised this new work ages ago and, after a tumultuous few months, I couldn't delay posting these first few chapters anymore. Admittedly, the first one is my least favorite of the three I have written at this moment. I've made some nontraditional choices, especially given a f(ph)andom as dedicated and attentive as POTO, so I hope you'll give the idea a chance. New Orleans! Jazz! Liquor! An OC male narrator!

Please, please, please, please review! Nothing gives me more joy, and constructive criticism is my favorite, especially writing an AU/period piece.

Thanks!


I came to New Orleans against the wishes of my family, boldly and childishly spitting in the face of decorum and all that is proper in this world.

"Jazz and liquor are the downfall of the American family, William," My father would tell me.

"How could you ever have a proper life, who will you marry? Not one of those creole creatures, certainly?" My step-mother squawked. She was the kind of woman whose once graceful hands had aged into talons, indicating enough experience in the world to pardon her lack of civility and decorum.

I was a Yale graduate from old, Massachusetts money. We were patriots, direct descendants of Samuel Adams by way of someone-or-other on my father's side. I had studied finance with the intention of joining the roaring bonds business in New York, but, as with all men, the War changed me. I found myself revolted by the thought of taking part in any trivial path or custom that should require me to wear a mask. I could not bring myself to spend even a fraction of my days resigned to living in anything other than full, exuberant pleasure. I had survived; and now I would deny myself nothing.

To further my reckless abandon, even in spite of the War, I was so young! I had enthusiasm in those days, and in the predictable fashion of all young men and women who have grown up with everything, except the feeling they had something to lose, I sought life with a fanatical carelessness.

With this juvenile sentiment intoxicating my every movement I swayed, heavy with baggage, off the streetcar just north of the French Quarter, towards a small French colonial cottage on the outskirts of the heart of the revolution.

The Renaissance of the Vieux Carré. For the purposes of the tale I tell here, it may also be noted as the driving force behind my attraction to New Orleans. The year was 1922 and in the peak of Prohibition, New Orleans had managed to stay wet and subsequently prosper. A great exodus had led artists to New York and Paris and Spain, but I could not be contented to simply follow my peers. I had to chart my own path and so I blazed a trail as far south as I could wander, to a land of dark bayou, French trade, and American ingenuity.

I struggled through the streets-paved but mangled with the roots of great, stubborn magnolia trees-with my luggage and began to feel the pangs of uncertainty. The streets signs were thick with rust and pointed at obtuse angles from the origins of roads thus making navigation impossible. Though I had often heard rumors of the great hospitality of the South, I nonetheless felt myself abandoned to the choke of stale heat and humidity. I had trudged from one end of the Quarter to the other and while the most south-western roads led to the Garden District, a home of large mansions that held an air of comfortable familiarity, as I moved further east I began to feel more and more like a foreigner.

"You'll wander into Sicilian territory if you're not careful," An icy, melodic voice filled me from a part of my heart- that part that one never recognizes as empty until it has finally been filled. I turned to face the voice, but found only illusions. For surely, it had to be an illusion. No man, no person, no thing stood before me.

"Who's there?" I asked. I had always been skilled at maintaining my composure, a quality innate in the privilege of having grown up a gentleman.

"Too close to the docks, and you'll find yourself in less-than-desireable company. I advise you move four blocks north. There's a small building… La Cinquième Cellier. You'll find it more… appealing to your tastes, I believe."

Now, you must see, I fought in the Great War. I heard the shells exploding, day and night, in wake and sleep, causing men more fierce than me to tremble and weep with madness. Though I found strength in myself to not fall prey to insanity, I am not a particularly brave man; and yet with the voice of this Ghost guiding me, I felt no fear. It must have been a benevolent spirit, for otherwise I may have surely been lost through the night.

"La Cinquième… four blocks north…" I muttered to myself, committing the words to memory.

No voice cut through the swamp air in response and I no longer felt the air of cold mystery surround me.

I had no reason to trust whatever had spoken to me from the shadows. And yet, I also had no reason to doubt it. So I took my yellow luggage, now dirtied by even momentary contact with the streets, and I began my walk north. After only one block, I saw the building the voice had foretold. The letters on the electric light sign flickered as the only beacon on an otherwise silent street. It seemed I was the only person on the road until I saw a girl, an angelic waif in the night, pacing the doors outside.

"Excuse me, miss, are there vacancies?"

Through beautiful, inviting brown curls she looked at me with wide, wild eyes.

"Vac-vacancies… yes, I believe so," She stole her enchanting stare from me and muttered something to herself. As she picked fiercely at the skin around her nails the only word I could strain to hear from her was, "angel".

"An angel?" I asked, setting my suitcase on the pavement and moving closer towards her, only a step. With her mouth agape, and those great brown eyes staring again, she moved two further away from me.

"You've heard him, too?"

"I wouldn't call it an angel, miss, not necessarily. To be entirely candid, I'm not quite sure what-"

Abruptly, the door to the Cinquième opened to reveal an older woman, with eyebrows plucked so thin as to disappear entirely had a line of makeup not stretched them from the bridge of her nose to her hairline.

"Christine!" She hissed. "Where have you been?"

"I was lost… I was dream-walking again…"

"And who are you?" The woman with the face of a shrew scowled at me.

"He's with me!" The girl, Christine, interjected. "I think the Angel led him here… he's… there's vacancy?"

"One room, at the bottom of the stairs. Hurry in, hurry in."

With utter abandon, and logically no options before me, I grabbed my luggage and entered. If I had any sense, I would have thought the girl mad and the woman dangerous. But as I said; I had survived the war. There was nothing that could terrify me, no bloody trauma that could cripple me, and no ailment of the mind that could unhinge me.

If only I had known then what I know now.