A choreography in shadows, pulsing in the indigo twilight, less oxygen, more whiskey, in a circle of silhouettes, naked in uninhibited rage, “Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms.” The fiddler’s bow was missing three horsehairs, and the fourth was frayed halfway down its length. The fiddler’s name was Harlan Dupré, and he’d been playing the same battered instrument since he was twelve, not because he loved it, but because it was the only thing he’d ever stolen that hadn’t been taken back. He called it “The Devil’s Harp.” His fingers moved across the strings with the practiced indifference of a man who’d long since stopped hearing the music, only the absence of it. The bayou hummed around him, thick with the scent of wet earth and something sharper, like blood in the rain.
It was intoxicating, the rythmn of it all. The sway of hips, the flicker of firelight licking at bare skin, until Harlan felt it: a shift in the air flow. A sudden hush that slithered through the congregation like eels through reeds. The fiddle screeched to silence mid-note, his bow hand freezing. Across the circle, a woman stepped forward, her silhouette cutting through the haze of smoke. She wore nothing but a cigarette and a scent of debauchery, something between old roses and kerosene. Harlan knew her instantly: Lisette, from the brothel in New Orleans, where she arched her back, humpin’ at The Savoy, and left men hollowed out like gourds.
Harlan’s fingers twitched against the fiddle’s neck, the sudden silence heavier than the humidity clinging to his skin. Lisette’s laugh cut through the stillness, a sound like whiskey poured over broken glass. “Didn’t figure you for the pious type, Dupré,” she drawled, stepping into the firelight. The glow licked up her thighs, painting her in gold and shadow, the cigarette dangling from her lips casting a lazy spiral of smoke between them.
Lisette flicked the cigarette into the fire, the ember hissing as it vanished into the flames. “Debts get paid one way or another,” she said, her voice low. Honeyed with something that wasn’t sweetness. Harlan watched her hips sway as she closed the distance between them, the firelight catching the sweat glistening along her collarbone. She reached out, her fingers brushing the fiddle’s neck, just above where his own grip had gone white-knuckled. “You ever think maybe you’re playing the wrong dame?” As she rosin his rising bow. Harlan’s pulse kicked against his ribs like a mule with a burr under its saddle. Lisette’s fingers trailed down the neck of his cock. Her touch lighter than the bow’s weight in his hand.
