________________________________black magic blues - by adire___

He was the kind of boy that could make a grown man cry with wanting, and the bad thing was, he knew it.

There wasn't a true bit of wickedness to be found in him, not really, but he liked to have fun, and he liked it a little too much. Fun left a trail of broken hearts strewn across New Orleans, and still he laughed, still he flashed that diamond smile; they said he didn't have a conscience, and they may have been right. Such was the way of the carefree, the young, the naive, and the blind. He could have been any of those, and no one would have believed you if you said that he wasn't. Then again, no one around knew him none too well, either.

It wasn't so much that he was so beautiful, though there was plenty of that to go around. It was just that he was wild, and willful, and when he kissed you he left your mouth hot in a way that made you want to take another drink. He had that kind of way about him that made a man want to capture him, but never tame him. He'd want to lock himself in a cage with that wildcat and die happy, getting clawed into ribbons.

He was the kind of boy that could remind a man what it meant to be alive, and then make him sorry that he ever was.

He was like a story that you wore on your sleeve the way most men wear their hearts, and that story showed in his bright, bright blue eyes when you looked at him, and made you want to write a few lines on his page. It was a kind of voodoo he knew how to weave well, and it danced in long shimmers down his black, black hair while he walked. It wreathed him in January notes when he walked down the street whistling arias of Johnny Lang, smiling and sauntering with his hands in his pockets, combat boots scuffing on concrete, loose and oversized jeans dragging not far behind. Didn't much matter where he went, as long as the sun was on his golden skin and he could still taste a little bit of swamp magic in the back of his throat.

You couldn't quite tell how old he was just by looking, but you couldn't quite tell how young he was, either. When the light hit just right, he was an angel of a thousand years, pensive and quiet in his earthly prison. But then he'd smile and you'd know he was up to trouble, and suddenly he was fifteen and stealing Pop's pickup truck to run out to the field with a few pilfered cans of beer and a man way too old for him who'd be back on the road tomorrow with a funny taste in the back of his throat and a piece of him missing. He fell in love at least twice a day, that boy, and every time was real and true, and every kiss was just as passionate as the last, and burned like firecrackers on the fourth of July.

Funny thing is, he fell out just as fast as those firecrackers burned, just as fast as fireflies died, and he was flitting on to the next dark twilight, still glowing just as bright. That firefly, he didn't have a name, so everyone just called him Black Magic, 'cause that's what he was.

They called him Black Magic, and when he got that certain look in his eye, every girl around knew to keep an eye on her husband or lover or sweetie, because that's when that black magic boy was of a mind to make every man within a fifty mile radius forget he'd ever loved a woman, act like they'd never once lusted after full hips and lush bosoms and imagine his face in their best girl's bed at night.

Every woman around had a bee in her bonnet about that boy, and didn't know if she wanted him or wanted to be him; at least with the latter she'd know her man was fantasizing about her. And when a heap of woebegone faces trails around the coffee shops and the malls and the clubs, you know he's been through, and that's when they say you've got the Black Magic Blues.

He didn't have parents, and he didn't have family, but he lived in a cozy little shack across the lake, on the banks of the river Tfunctche in a quiet little boat-town called Madisonville. Not many in these French-Quarter parts can say as they've been out there, but there's talk that he grows belladonna and damson weed in a dusky little garden out back, and when those small-town folk want a toothache cured or a touch of black magic to fix their love lives, they pop round to his doorstep for a smile, some tea, and a little voodoo.

He'll tell them how a woman's pubic hair ground into her crush's coffee will make him lust for her, and how to braid your hair just so to ward off the nightmares and cholera, and he'll smile his secret smile and keep the real magic to himself. What he gives them, that's just folk medicine, same as any they might learn for themselves on their grandmother's knee, if they had the ears to listen. They couldn't work the kind of magic they really want from him, 'cause it's not in their blood.

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