Madam: A Novel of New Orleans Read online
A PLUME BOOK
MADAM
©Shawn Barber Photography
CARI LYNN is a journalist and the author of four books of nonfiction, including The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking,
Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice with Kathryn Bolkovac, and Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys’ Club of Commodities Trading. She has written for numerous publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine, Health, the Chicago Tribune, and Deadline Hollywood. She has taught at Loyola University and received a master’s in writing from Johns Hopkins University. She currently lives in Los Angeles. This is her first novel.
©Anthony Masters
KELLIE MARTIN was nominated for an Emmy for her work as Becca Thatcher on Life Goes On, appeared for two seasons as Lucy Knight on ER, and played the title roles in Christy and Mystery Woman. She also has written, produced, and directed for television. She serves as national spokesperson for the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and owns the online children’s boutique ROMPstore.com. She graduated with distinction in art history from Yale University. She lives in Los Angeles and Montana with her family. This is her first novel.
Praise for Madam
“If you are enthralled with New Orleans and the history of its fabled red-light district, this is the book for you. The evocative characters lovingly created by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin made me wish Storyville was resurrected and rollicking with harlots and madams today.”
—Patti LuPone, actress, singer, and author
“Madam is a fascinating re-creation of New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century, when the churchgoing politicians and power brokers of sin created Storyville. An absorbing peek into the hidden history of the city and her most famous madam.”
—Loraine Despres, bestselling author of The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc
“Lynn and Martin tell the story of their protagonist’s rise to fame and fortune without piousness, sentimentality, or apology. Thorough research, convincing detail, and true-to-life characters make this a spellbinder of a novel. The reader can almost smell the sweat of the johns and the fragrance of rose attar and shrimp gumbo. The characters’ words roll off their tongues like molasses in August.”
—Roberta Rich, author of The Midwife of Venice and The Harem Midwife
“Love the history they wouldn’t teach you in school? Then open up Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin’s Madam. It’s a gritty, well-researched story of how Storyville, the largest legal red-light district in the United States, came into being.”
—Lois Battle, bestselling author of Storyville and War Brides
“I encourage you to accept this invitation to escape into the boudoirs and back alleys of nineteenth-century New Orleans and leave behind our modern world for a spell. Kellie and Cari have vividly resurrected a world that most of us have never seen up close, and it’s quite a ride!”
—Danica McKellar, actress and New York Times bestselling author
“Madam delivers a world rich with details and visuals of a time and place long forgotten in our history. If you liked Memoirs of a Geisha, you will love following Mary on her harrowing journey to become an infamous madam in a New Orleans red-light district.”
—Melissa Joan Hart, actress and author of Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life
“With brilliant, immediate language and fascinating detail, Madam jelly-rolls us through a gritty 1897 New Orleans underworld, and allows us to cheer as a sweet young prostitute fights all odds to become one of its great madams.”
—Jennie Fields, author of The Age of Desire
“Madam is an utterly enjoyable and fascinating read! It’s a story of a true underdog, Mary Deubler, who overcomes adversity while making history in New Orleans during the turn of the century. I found myself rooting for our protagonist from the very first page. Kudos to Mary and to Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin!”
—Ricki Lake, actress, host, and producer
“An odyssey through the underworld and the spirit world of New Orleans, Madam is layered in rags and silks and voodoo visitations. This is a story of desperation turned inside out. Power holds court in back rooms and bedrooms but reaches its full potential in the heart and mind of a young prostitute whose prize possession is a pair of striped stockings she plucked from a rich woman’s trash. This book manages to wrap transformation in sensuality and historical detail, and set the whole thing to the sound of ragtime. Bien joué!”
—Rita Leganski, author of The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow
“As rich and evocative as New Orleans jazz, Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin evoke a time and place with tantalizing detail, transporting the reader to a world hidden not only by the past, but also by the very society that created it. Madam is a wonderful portrait of an indelible figure.”
—DeLauné Michel, author of The Safety of Secrets
“Set in the vivid, visceral world of New Orleans in the late 1800s, Madam follows a young prostitute’s desperate struggle to survive, thrive, and ultimately achieve self-empowerment in the face of hugely challenging circumstances. With plenty of sex and liquor to go around, Kellie and Cari’s debut novel does a stellar job of capturing the essence of what it really means to face our fears and overcome extreme adversity. Cheers to the first real madam!”
—Hillary Fogelson, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of Pale Girl Speaks: A Year Uncovered
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
The Image Credits constitute an extension of this copyright page.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lynn, Cari.
Madam : a novel of New Orleans / Cari Lynn, Kellie Martin.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-14-218062-4 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-101-63475-2 (eBook)
1. Deubler, Mary, 1864-1914—Fiction. 2. Procuresses—Louisiana—New Orleans—Fiction. 3. Prostitutes—Louisiana—New Orleans—Fiction. 4. Brothels—Louisiana—New Orleans—Fiction. 5. Red-light districts—Louisiana—New Orleans—Fiction. 6. Storyville (New Orleans, La.)—Fiction. 7. New Orleans (La.)—Fiction. I. Martin, Kellie, 1975- II. Title.
PS3612.Y5445M33 2014
813'.6—dc23 2013022372
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
CONTENTS
About the Authors
Praise for Madam
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
Letter
New Orleans, 1907
Ten Years Earlier/New Orleans, 1897
&n
bsp; CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
One Month Later/New Orleans, 1898
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Epilogue: New Orleans, 1997
Historical Note
Acknowledgments
Image Credits
AUTHORS’ NOTE
The characters and circumstances within these pages are based on real people and real events. We have incorporated actual dialogue where it was available and tried to maintain as accurate a sense of history as possible in crafting this narrative. Given that most records of Storyville were purposefully destroyed, we have utilized dramatic license to fill in the gaps.
I come from a long line of whores.
In my nine decades on this earth I have never uttered these words, let alone seen them written, in my own hand, indelibly staring back at me. But now, as a summer storm rages strong enough to send the Pontchartrain right through my front door, I sit with a curious sense of peace and clarity. My past is more than just my own history. Although this story shames me in so many ways, it is the legacy I leave. I must embrace the very truth I spent my life denying.
I come from a long line of whores.
Call them prostitutes, call them women of ill repute, call them madams. It’s of little consequence now to try to soften how they earned their way. But they did earn their way, and in a time when even women of means and good breeding held little hope of achieving anything professionally.
Oh Saint Teresa, what an ingrate I’ve been. Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to them—to her. She’d started life as a bastard girl, not a silver dime to her name. Her family tree was but a stump. And yet, the riches she bestowed upon me: my education, my inheritance . . . this fierce, old Victorian. How the walls moan in the grip of these winds! This house, in all its faded elegance, is all I have left. How I hated that it once lived as a bordello—hot jazz, Voodoo magic, and unspeakable sin oozing from every crevice.
My aunt built this house, but I saved this house. The ghosts would come to me at night, whispering that I couldn’t let it go. While New Orleans raced to obliterate any evidence of the red-light district’s existence, I guarded this door. Overnight, City Hall purged all records of the women who lived and worked here. Even the names of the streets were changed. It took the highest judge’s signature to spare this house from the torch-wielding mob that pillaged and set aflame other bordellos. But how can I blame my beloved city? For I, too, wanted to erase this blight, this scourge on our history.
But it did exist. Storyville was real. And so were the madams. Larger than life, indeed, but flesh and blood through and through, with feelings and smarts even—they were more savvy in business than most businessmen in this town. And yet, they were still just women, devoid of equal rights and treated as vulnerable, useless creatures. These women may have laughed and drunk and frolicked more than most women, but they still ached and loved, cried and prayed, and in their darkest hours, repented.
Now, this house, my house, is all that remains as a testament to an era. If it is this storm that brings down my house, I will go with it. I only hope that this letter and these photographs will survive.
My dearest Aunt Josie, by the grace of God, please forgive me.
Anna Deubler Brady
225 Basin Street, New Orleans
August 14, 1997
New Orleans, 1907
“Miss Arlington!”
Josie heard the eager call from a man across the parlor. But she didn’t feel inspired to turn her head.
“Miss Arlington,” the man persisted. “It is Miss, isn’t it?”
Ignoring him still, Josie sucked in her breath and leaned farther over the new grand piano—a Bösendorfer shipped all the way from Vienna, not that that meant anything to her, but it was supposedly the best, and she was sure that meant something to somebody here. If she had stopped to consider things, she would have presented it as a gift to the house professor of the piano, Ferdinand, but she’d long ago forgotten how to do selfless, meaningful gestures—even for a person who was meaningful to her. These days, it was only about business. And besides, Ferdinand didn’t like new pianos; he liked the one that had been weathered from his own fingers, which, to his dismay, had been promptly carted off to who knew where.
“Everybody wants you, Miss Arlington,” Ferdinand said, giving her a knowing half smile.
Josie sighed, pursing her painted lips. Her gaze locked with his. “No, Ferdinand, not everybody.”
He rolled his long fingers over the keys—the cakewalk, he called it. “As I recall, you were equally lemon-faced this very same day of last year.”
She couldn’t believe he’d remembered. It was a small act of kindness that made her heart ache, the way only Ferd seemed able. It had been some time since she’d had a twinge like this, but she knew she mustn’t go thinking about that now. This day was always punishing, and there was no need to make it worse by getting overly sentimental or—God forbid!—weepy. She shifted her stance, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, lace ribbons (shipped from Belgium, of course) dangling from her wrists and elbows.
The sudden change of her demeanor was not lost on Ferdinand. He knew how she was—the type his grandmère would have described as a pomegranate, all ruddy and tough on the outside, but on the inside, a sweetness that couldn’t help but bleed.
Another call trailed from across the room, this time a gruff voice slurred with drink. “We request the honor of your presence, Miss Arlington!”
“You best tend to your patrons, ma’am,” Ferdinand said softly, giving a little nod as if coaxing a child. Josie took to it, looking at him with heavy eyes. Yes, the patrons. All those men with wandering, grabby hands and sweaty palms. All those demanding eyes and stale cigar breath. And all those billfolds full of cash.
She straightened herself up, smoothing the front of her pouter pigeon gown.
“Not a thread out of place,” Ferdinand reassured.
“Of course not,” Josie replied, her voice already growing distant. “It’s the finest from Paris.”
By the time she turned from Ferdinand to face the crowded parlor, her full transformation—one she’d spent years perfecting—had occurred. Her impishness was gone. Her posture was Victorian straight, bosom thrust forward, shoulders pinned back, nose lifted, her expression both hard and sultry at the same time. She was no longer the down-on-her-luck girl Ferdinand had met way back when; she was now the legendary Madam Josie Arlington. A legend of her own making.
Josie glided across the Persian rugs, past Rococo furnishings, crystal chandeliers, sconces, and artwork chosen by the finest art dealers in New Orleans. Yet she didn’t notice any of it anymore, not that these objects had ever given her much pleasure. The acquiring of them did, in a sense, for she enjoyed the notion that she could own such fancy, expensive things. But she knew nothing of design or art, and never did she find much beauty or meaning in the pieces she was told were the best anyway. She hardly recognized what was redeeming in these pricey objects people fluttered and gasped over—other than the prestige. Prestige. That was, indeed, something that used to matter very much to
her.
The crowd parted as Josie continued the length of the room. The men respectfully bowed their heads and tipped their hats. Her girls curtsied, or, if they’d been inexcusably talking amongst themselves, they scattered like roaches in daylight, knowing full well they were not allowed to converse—attention was to be showered upon the men. Besides, Josie distrusted girls whispering to each other, Lord knows they might be conspiring against her.
She approached the bar, where rows of Champagne bottles stood like soldiers; one by one, they would be plucked up, and, at midnight, the bubbly would be poured over a pyramid of crystal glasses. No one would worry about the overflow onto the rugs or splashes onto the wallpaper or the drunken spills on the velvet settees. The mess was simply the cost of doing business. Anyhow, the maids would come in the morning and scrub, and by the time the rest of the house would awaken in the midafternoon, the entire mansion would be gleaming, ready to start afresh night after night after night.
“At last, Miss Arlington!” a man in a dark tailcoat shouted as Josie reached the bar. The room swarmed about her, every man eager to be in close proximity to the madam whom some deemed famous, others infamous.
Josie launched into her little routine, batting her eyes, walking her fingers up a row of gemstone shirt studs, pinching a cheek. Placing her manicured hand atop a man’s, she coyly slid a wedding ring from a hairy finger and tucked it inside his waistcoat pocket. “Just for tonight,” she cooed in her soft, sultry drawl. With hoots and whoops, most others followed suit, twisting off their wedding bands.
By design, Josie spoke sparingly to her patrons. Words could only complicate matters, especially from a woman. Words could take away from whatever daydream a man had come in with. And that was the last thing Madam Josie Arlington wanted to do. She was, after all, selling dreams. The few minutes of coitus, that was just the mechanics—it was the dream that a man would take with him, a dream that needed to be strong enough to continue smoldering for days after, weeks even, compelling him to steal away from his family, make a good lie, create some reason to visit Basin Street.