Number Nine: Chapter 18

DREAMLAND


FADE IN:

EXT. – LIQUID DREAMSCAPE – NIGHT

Ruby sinks in liquid darkness, naked and unafraid, as the voice of John Lennon sings (HOW from Imagine).

How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into something I’m not sure of?
Oh no, oh no…

INT. – MEMPHIS HOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

Jake sleeps motionless and fully clothed in his gambling attire. An unopened briefcase sits on a desk. CLOSE UP of Jake’s face as his eyes flash open in horror yet he remains motionless.

You know life can be long and you got to be so strong.
And the world, she is tough, sometimes I feel I’ve had enough.

How can we go forward when we don’t know which way we’re facing?
How can we go forward when we don’t know which way to turn?
How can we go forward into something we’re not sure of?
Oh no, oh no…



When everything around you is sinking and you are sinking with everything around you, it appears that everything is motionless, still life, a photograph, no life, death.

When all around you has turned to liquid and you can no longer feel your arms, your legs, the beating of your heart, you realize you are no longer distinct from the surrounding darkness. You are the darkness, the liquid darkness, and you are still yet you are falling, sinking, losing hold of the solid earth that once held you together and kept you apart from the darkness that enfolds everything it touches.

Ruby was sinking and she could no longer care. Ruby was dying and she could no longer remember why it was she needed to fight back. Her mother was a liquid memory, less real than unreal, her father was a whisper in the night, and Jake – Jake was a man she never knew but only imagined in a summer daydream.

The only thing she could hold onto that tied her to the world she once knew and the dreams she once dreamed was the music she carried in her soul. Lost in this dreamland of endless void, Ruby had a song to sing and she sang as if everything she knew and felt, loved and hated depended on it. Ruby sang the blues and a river of infinite sorrow flowed from the depths of creation.

Ruby sang songs she never knew she knew with a depth and clarity few ever attain. Ruby sang the blues from the canons of Etta James, T-Bone Walker, Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, Bessie Smith and the immortal Billie Holliday: My Man, Strange Fruit, Don’t Explain, Ball and Chain, God Bless the Child, Stormy Monday, Cry Me a River… Ruby sang the blues and everyman and everywoman prayed for her salvation, as if they understood as they never understood before that their salvation was chained to Ruby’s salvation. They understood as they never understood before that once the pure of heart fell, it would all come crashing down, like a dam breaking or a river run wild, leaving no one unscathed.

No one gets out alive.

They understood that Ruby was the collective soul of the innocent and pure yet they could only bear witness and cry and pray. They could only share some piece of her suffering and hope by the act of contrition and suffering they could somehow ease her pain.

Jake heard her in the depths of his madness. He awakened long enough to take account and surmise what had happened. There was a briefcase full of cash, large denominations, and a note:

“Let no man say the Marquis does not pay his debts.

“Would you dance with the devil, Mr. Jones? What would you offer a man who has no needs? Let the full weight settle before you venture forth.”

Jake was drugged and he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. Now he felt the sleeping disease creeping through his veins: paralysis. He managed to call the desk and delivered five hundred in cash with the explanation that he did not know how many days he would stay.

He lie down on the bed and let go of the world. He would have to rely on second sight. He would have to use the gift of spirit flight that White Wolf revealed to him so many moons ago when he was struggling to cope with his disorder.

He closed his eyes and let it all go. He felt his spirit rise and saw himself prone, motionless on the hotel bed. He let it go and saw the sprawling city of Memphis and the great river. He let it go and soared like the hawk that lived within him. He followed the river coursing through the great forest until he came to the giant paddleboat, the floating casino, the Riverboat Queen that held his heart captive and held his love in bondage.

Preparing for a world in which he had only eyes and could not act, he let go and boarded the Queen just miles outside the Port of New Orleans.

From the moment she arrived, even through the surreal vision of a drug-induced haze, Ruby knew she had come home. She was once a Vegas girl but it was only a façade, a sequined costume, a veil of glamour. New Orleans was Ruby’s soul and Ruby was New Orleans.

New Orleans was a city of destiny. Without adding it up, Ruby knew it was number nine. Doomed by its geography and the willful neglect of government to defend her, New Orleans was the sacred womb of the nation and the sweetest, most enchanting of lovers: The birthplace of jazz, a culture of tolerance that predates the nation, Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cemetery and the tomb of Marie Laveaux, a city of a million contradictions and mysteries, city of light and darkness, city of hope and despair, city of faith and godlessness, city of passion and unholy calm, city of blues, Creole, Zydeco, ragtime and jazz. More than anything else, city of jazz.

It was a city that pulled at the heartstrings and permeated the souls of all it claimed. It haunted them like a mother’s love, like a lover’s cry, like a full moon on an endless night. Wherever the people that belonged to her went, whatever they did, New Orleans followed them, crept inside of them, calling to them: Come home.

Ruby was home.

Here, despite the ominous presence of the nation’s dark intelligence community, there was no war and politics was only an afterthought. The city belonged to the music that defined her and set her apart from every other city on earth. She was the queen, she was the heart, she was the womb and the soul of the nation.

Everyone in New Orleans seemed to be waiting: waiting for sunset, waiting for Bourbon Street to come alive with music, dance and revelry, waiting for a summer storm that hung in the thick, palpable air like an omen of doom.

You could see it in the eyes of those who walked her streets: an indefinable feeling of desperation, a yearning, and a sense of loss. Something was terribly wrong. That sense of destiny that so often gave them comfort through hard times now offered only a warning: Get out while you can. Their live were balanced on a thread and they knew it in their bones.

It left them paralyzed for there was no place to go. They belonged to New Orleans. Like jazz, itself, they could never be at home anywhere else. They could never be at peace anywhere but in the Big Easy.

New Orleans was Ruby Daulton and Ruby was New Orleans. Jazz, dancing women, black magic, gambling, an air of mystery and a taste of death, Ruby was the liquid sky and the distant stars. She was the dream they dreamed and the lover they longed to meet.

She was escorted from the Queen to the palatial estate of Louie Marchant in the heart of the French Quarters on Burgandy Street. Bought and sold like the mulatto descendants of slaves in a former era, Ruby would become the plaything of a man who fancied himself a duke, lord and protectorate of the House of Burgandy.

He was known as “Pale Louie” for the absence of color in his skin and his habit of never emerging in daylight. His estate ran deep into the bosom of the infamous New Orleans underground and it was there, in a dark expansive and luxuriously decorated space, that he kept his collection of pale-skinned beauties. It was there in that foreboding space that he entertained the royalty and courtesans of the underground through the long, cold nights of winter and the hot, sweltering nights of summer.

From the moment he heard Ruby sing, he knew she was special. She would be a kept woman, a slave to his desires, but no one would be allowed to violate her body or her spirit. She alone would be off limits to his clientele. She alone would be protected as long as he breathed. He would grant her every wish. He would provide her with the finest jewelry, the richest gowns, the best cuisine and rarest wine. He would give her everything she desired but freedom. She would become a legend in the underground but she could never leave. She could never walk outside its gates.

It was the one condition Guido Lazerri insisted on besides cold cash and one the duke had no reason to refuse: Ruby would never leave New Orleans. From the moment he saw her pale image in a photograph, a hint of danger beneath a veil of innocence, an unattainable beauty and a knowing that reached back through the ages, the duke knew he could never risk losing her. She would remain in his underground kingdom and even on those rare occasions when she would be allowed to walk the streets, to breathe the air of a timeless city, she would always be accompanied by armed guards.

Ruby would never leave.

So Ruby sang the blues and her tears flowed like a river of sorrow, like the waters that would soon break through the levees of Lake Pontchartrain and the 17th Street Canal, burying the ninth ward and much of the city, implanting in its timeless soul a sorrow that would never lose its hold.


FADE IN:

EXT. – SCENES OF NEW ORLEANS – NIGHT AND DAY

A funeral procession marches through the streets of New Orleans, as stills of Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward, the levees, jazz joints and the Quarters reveal the soul of the Easy before the storm. The procession transitions from mourning to revelry and the city marches on.

We hear and see Ruby on a dark stage, her tear stained face in spotlight. Ruby sings CRY ME A RIVER by Arthur Hamilton.


Now you say you’re lonely
You cried the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you

Now you say you’re sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a rive, cry me a river
I cried, cried, cried a river over you…

Fade scene.