Madam by Cari Lynn

in tonight’s bath. Half in a bath tomorrow morn,” she instructed. “Till then, the gleet’s fleas’ll infest anything that dare comes near, so you prig yourself up.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Mary moved to take some money from her boot.
    “Keep that money to yourself, child,” Eulalie said. With a quizzical look, Mary shimmied off the table. “But promise Eulalie you’ll return at the waning moon . . . Mary.”
    Mary opened her mouth, but nothing came out. This room was doing strange things to her head—she certainly didn’t remember having ever been to Rampart Street, and she also didn’t recall telling Eulalie, or anyone else here, her name. She pocketed the medicine bottle and with weak knees stumbled across the room, past the jars and the flailing turtle and the Virgin statues. She opened the door and nearly smacked full into the round, violet, bustled bottom of a woman waiting in the narrow hallway.
    “Quel culot!” the woman cried, startled. She pivoted, and Mary’s eyes grew wide at the sight of her. She was the most stunning woman Mary had ever seen, with mocha skin paled by a thick layer of white powder and contrasted by a frame of fiery red hair. She sparkled with diamonds in her ears, at her throat, and on her fingers. From a thin chain around her neck, the woman lifted a monocle and brought it to her right eye to give Mary a quick up and down scan. “Hmm,” she announced.
    Eulalie’s crackly voice interrupted Mary’s trance. “Come, Countess.”
    Countess? The satiny layers of her skirts rustling, the woman swept past. Eulalie’s door clicked shut. Dumbfounded, Mary remained in the hall, the musky-sweet scent of jasmine perfume lingering. A countess, Mary continued to marvel. A real, live countess! Miss Eulalie was right, the gleet ain’t partial.
    The air felt good on Mary’s flushed face as she hurried toward home. She found herself looking close at Rampart Street, trying to see if anything struck her as familiar—the children, the side-by-side buildings painted bright colors, the gingham-clothed cala seller. She grew confused as her mind started tricking her into not knowing if she’d passed these sights coming here or if she’d seen them sometime long ago. Damn black magic! Getting to her already! She quickened her steps, but something was eating at her. She traced the sequence of events that just happened, from start to finish, how she’d left Beulah at the crib and headed straight through town. As she went through each moment, she reached the exact same notion: Eulalie knew her name, yet she was sure as her own shadow she never did tell it to her.

    As Mary approached her house, she made out the scrawny shape of Lobrano waiting out front. “Wretch,” she muttered aloud. Her head was achy and spinning, and just the distant sight of him drained her. What she wouldn’t give for this man to leave her be tonight.
    “Where ya been?” he called out, squinting into the setting sun.
    She didn’t have the energy to call back an answer. He leaned himself against the door, biting his dirty fingernails and spitting them at her doorstep.
    “Where ya been?” he asked again as she neared.
    “To the French Market,” she said flatly.
    He looked to her empty hands. “You gettin’ too high and haughty to turn tricks?”
    Mary gritted her teeth. “Ain’t feelin’ too good is all. Went to get a remedy.”
    He studied her, a look of disgust creeping over his face. “You ain’t gone and got yourself in a bad way, have you?”
    “No,” she said, insulted. “I always use the French preventative.”
    “Good, ’cause you my little cash cow.” He moved toward her, his wandering hands trying to pick up where he’d left off the other night.
    “Can’t, Lobrano,” she said forcibly and stepped into the house, only he wedged his foot so she couldn’t shut the door. He followed her inside, already having scoped the place to know that Charlotte and Peter weren’t home. Coming up from