Free The Lazarus Heart by Poppy Z. Brite Page B

either of you make heads or tails of what's going on up there?"
    The boy glanced back toward the gator-clad nude and shrugged."Well," he said after a moment, "we're of two minds on the subject. I think it's all an unfortunate misunderstanding. The real artist was held up in traffic or mugged or something, and this guy is just some unmedicated street person who conveniently wandered in. The similarity between his delusion and this crowd's expectation was so profound that no one's noticed yet. My sister, on the other hand, thinks it's a brilliant metaphor for the creeping gentrification of the-"
    His sister interrupted him with a sock in the arm, not hard, but he made wounded sounds and rubbed at his shoulder. "Do you have a name?" she asked, holding out her gloved hand to Jared as if she expected him to bow and kiss it.
    "Oh, yeah. Sorry." He shook the extended hand. Her leather glove was as supple as silk and her grip through it was firm but not mannish. "Jared. Jared Poe. I'm a photographer."
    "Jared Poe? P-O-E Poe?" the boy said, still rubbing his shoulder and glaring sidelong at his sister. "That's a joke, right?"
    "Nope," Jared replied, finishing his drink. "I'm afraid it's not. That's my real name."
    The sister took a dramatic step back, spread her arms wide, and cleared her throat loudly before she began to speak, her voice broad and deeper than the unfortunate voice blaring through the speakers. She held her head high as she spoke, her eyes focused somewhere past the dust and rafters overhead, and delivered each syllable with stage-perfect diction.
    "'But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered: not a feather then he fluttered-
    Till I scarcely more than muttered: "Other friends have flown before-"'"
    Then a hippie standing behind them turned and shushed her. The boy rolled his eyes and muttered, "Oh, please, like you might miss last week's pork futures." The hippie scowled and turned back toward the performer.
    "That was actually very good," Jared said, and the boy regarded his sister with eyes that were somehow jealous and proud at the same time.
    "Lucrece is such a terrible show-off," he said.
    "It's better than listening to that idiot," Jared said, using his empty shot glass to point in the direction of the Wall Street gator boy.
    Lucrece sighed and offered Jared half a smile. "Well, that's a pretty sorry excuse for a compliment, mister, but thanks anyway." And then the hippie hissed, "Shhhhhhhhh," louder than before, and her brother stuck his tongue out in response.
    "If you people aren't interested in the show, maybe you should go elsewhere," the hippie said.
    "He has a point," Jared told the twins. "If I have to listen to any more of this crap I think I'll puke."
    The hippie shook his head as he turned back toward the little stage. "I honestly pity people like you who aren't open to new experiences."
    "Oh, Jesus in a Ford pickup," Lucrece said, and she took her brother's hand and Jared's and towed them both through the haze of cigarette smoke and the whispering press of bodies toward the loading ramp that served as the gallery's only visible entrance and exit, leading them out into the night.

    Outside, the sultry air felt almost cool after the crowded warehouse. They walked northwest along Market Street, away from the river and its fishy miasma.
    When Jared suggested that maybe this part of town wasn't the best spot for a stroll after dark, Lucrece laughed a soft, low laugh and asked him which part of New Orleans was. The brother, whose name he still had not learned, produced a small silver flask of brandy they shared as they turned off Market and wandered between other derelict buildings, crumbling red brick walls and tin roofs separated from one another by streets neglected so long they were more pothole than asphalt.
    The heady combination of the booze and the company of the twins distracted and