Keira Knightley Wails Dirty Blues Ch. 01

Chapter 1

There I was, crossing the street on my way to meet an old college friend of mine at this coffee shop in Paris. Ahh, the fresh Parisian air that embraced so many artists like me!

I happened to be on tour with my New Orleans band, Bourgogne. We'd just gotten our song out and our lead singer Inti had recently got back to us after a long period of absence. Not at all sure if I would survive in the beginning, having been a replacement for the guitarist who had died, I had.

But today my sights was set on another issue. I was going to meet up with my friend, Carlo. Carlo, a degenerate paparazzi photographer leading an unsavory life, was one of few men capable of providing a real lead on someone I had been trying to get in touch with for a while.

I was out at sea alone on this one and this was his area of expertise! Carlo and I both studied journalism together once upon a time but went off into different areas. Paparazzo life paid his bills despite not being the most honorable way of living. He claimed that the job fed his deep-seeded, destructive and depraved serial-stalker instincts. That the creature that he was demanded it.

I guess if you're going to be a predator in society, you might as well get compensated. Carlo told me over the phone that he had some information for me in real-time about where I could locate my old...acquaintance. And she was quite famous.

He quickly sat across from me in the Cafe Les Deux Magots. Carlo had set his high-powered camera with telephoto lens down on the table and began smiling broadly at this woman sitting near us on one of the yellow and green chairs of the terrace. Her long legs crossed, offering us tiny glimpses at her pearl colored gams in her yellow mini dress under the sun.

The sunlight was obliquely hitting both our faces as "Rubber Band" by David Bowie began to play throughout the cafe. Enjoying the song, we both took our time settling on what to have from their pretty menus.

We appraised each other from across the table after all these years before the waiter brought us our espressos and our pastries. There was a bit of everything: ham, cheese and chocolate croissants, macrons, éclairs, chouquettes, religieuses. Without waiting very long, Carlo and I began to feast.

"...Dirty-blues, here you are in Paris! So, she's here, nearby..." he mumbled, eating his religieuses. How befitting.

I nodded with a tiny smile at this, looking him over carefully. Carlo looked trashy, a far cry from the Italian sports stallion he had been in college. He was once a hockey star who arrived at college parties with a woman on each arm.

Carlo's trademark sporty jet-black locks fallen halfway over his face, gone now, in lieu of a more classical brushed-back style. He was also now entirely blonde. I began hearing the peals reverberating against my ears beyond us, distracting me from my thoughts. The bells of Notre Dame cathedral.

"Do you know when and where I can find my old acquaintance, Carlo?"

"You know my rates, Frankie...we discussed them over the phone. In this case...my... rate for friends. I really needed my network to find out where she likes to go everyday, and it wasn't easy, Frankie. A driver tipped us off. She's on the payroll if she sees anything. So you got lucky again," Carlo remarked, removing his Ray-Bans and winking.

"Of course, Carlo. I want to honor you. It's no different than the old days when I would ask you for your help with these ...matters"

"I always like helping with your...with your spiritual...stuff. So, do you have them with you? May...may...I see them?" He inquired.

With that, I took them from my coat pocket. I removed them from the bag I kept them in to preserve them and slipped them over to him. They was still...soft... electric...almost warm.

Carlo took them in his fingers, ruffling and feeling them before lifting them up to his nose. He took several short drags, taking in her lovely scent. Then he almost tipped back in his chair; eyes brimming with passion; a blissful smile on his face.

"I have to tell you, Frankie, that...that I have a hard-on now that could knock down a brick wall. Care to sell?...or ask me for a favor, anything you like. Hell, I know people who could get you a job at the Vatican if that's the kind of thing you're still into," Carlo crudely remarked.

"Tell that to the condemned soul I have locked away in limbo because I happen to have these, or to the incubus that needs me to return them to her so that the same evil spirit can be dragged down to hell."

"I could actually buy these off you, Frankie. Who are you protecting? That person the spirit wanted might be dead by now."

"Nah, am tempted but I have to return them to their rightful owner or that same spirit demon just might, can..."

"What? Come back and wreak havoc?"

"...Yes"

"...How...'bout...hmmmm. You can have a...memento...a reeeal collector's item, Frankie," Carlo replied, rubbing his sensual lips.

"Can have what, you say?"

"...I got break-out pictures of Salma Hayek in her micro running shorts. She was out in her little exotic garden two mornings ago, topless. I damn near fell off a twenty foot fence for this one! You can have any one of these...if I can have those...and nobody else has these photos...They'll probably be priced in the thousands with royalties when I sell them to an agency. And from there they will hit the tabloids as well as the web. Here," Carlo boasted, slipping me a stack of his photographs to look at.

As I held and flipped through them, I couldn't believe my eyes and sniggered so noisily that people around me was looking over wondering what I had in my hands. Not that Salma wasn't stunning. That Carlo managed to capture such intimate photographs of the award winning actress at home and come out with his ass intact was a goddamned miracle.

"Go and see your wife, Carlo. You're addicted," I muttered, handing them back. Carlo began positioning them on the table next to his camera to examine them as he sniffed on the undergarments again.

"I feel like a goddamned gunslinger in the Old West. Did you know men would spend a fortune just to get their hands on women's intimates back then? Anyway, if an evil spirit was damned with these, imagine what they could do for my retirement if I sell them to the right people!"

"I tell you that you have become just that. You're like a mercenary out here with movie stars and singers threatening you everyday. Spitting at you, wishing your death and punching you for exploiting their lives by supplying your photos to the ravenous masses!!"

"They're in on that too!"

"How does that business work again?"

"They know what we publish and will serve us up something juicer if we withhold. They sell each other out like pawns! I work for money, not principle like you!"

"What about your conscience? If you have one! What you do is nasty, Carlo. You're just a parasite in the eyes of the general public, you know!" I asserted.

"Tell that to Rupert Murdoch who makes us rich with this shit. Need I inform you that I am almost done paying for the Honolulu beach house that I am going to retire to!? If I happen to get beat up, I can make even more...in court."

"Aloha to that, you wicked fellow! You shameless fiend!"

"I feel the L-O-V-E, Frankie boy! Keep it a-comin', baby!" Carlo goaded, puckering his lips and making kissing sounds.

"Still a wise-ass, I can see!"

"You could do better than that," he said, holding up his camera and taking a photo of me.

"Okay, Carlo! You are the same perverted, low-life progeny of a female dog you've always been!!!!" I replied loudly, teasing him, eyes beaming. We both chuckled aloud from our table. Some of the other patrons around us were looking on, some disgusted, others smiling.

I counted off seventy Euros from of my wallet as I slurped back the rest of my espresso to wash down my ham and cheese croissant.

"For your trouble," I said, sliding him my bank notes over the table-top. Wages of sin, I kept telling myself, staring at Carlo's face as he took one final whiff and finally handed them back to me.

"Mmmmm. Sugar, spice, everything nice! She smells wonderful! Intoxicating! My knees are still knocking under this table, Frankie," he said, his fingers trembling.

"Sooo, what did the driver say..." I added, putting them back into the bag where they was, and then away. They was obviously still jam-packed with her pheromones, and something else. The blends of her body was still intact in them.

"Is that like a special pyx you weirdos use?"

"For me to smell those would just make me sad as hell. Jeez, snap out of it, dude!" Little did he know that there was another piece of the puzzle missing. Or d-i-d he know more? I studied him intently as he spoke again.

"You're no better! Consorting with demons in the shadows!"

"Somebody has to do this...shit. How's this, Carlo? If you give me a good price, I'll sell these to you. And then you can talk to the demon dressed in your culottes and your Hawaiian shirts just as soon as it finds you and rings the doorbell to your beach house! You can negotiate with it, how's that?"

"Culottes?!" He retorted before fully grasping what I was saying.

"Doubt you'll catch it in a very good mood, traveling aimlessly in circles throughout the valley of Gehenna-Barzakh for twenty years. It'll rape you repeatedly, then it'll probably murder you. Or it and its little friends will rape you together after it has murdered you," I said, raising both eyebrows for theatrical effect. Carlo turned pale.

"Jesus! ...she got off the Interrail two nights ago, Dirty-blues. She'll be in Paris for another week. She loves to go to The Raphaël for her coffee every morning at 10:00 A.M. sharp. Don't worry, I told Gushivi you're in town and she'll help you get a reservation. Sooo, you're just going to show up there, are you?"

The part-owner of the Raphaël was known all over Paris. It was a spot for business executives to have their expensive cocktails. Chartreuse Gushivi was a famous professor at The Sorbonne when Carlo and I first met her.

We had both taken some post graduate courses back in the day. Gushivi was also a spiritist and longstanding member of The Little Indians. She co-owned two additional newer luxury bar/restaurants in the east and south of Paris named after angels from the Bible to compliment The Raphaël. La Maison de Michël and Le Majestueux Saint Gabriël had their flair, but The Raphaël was the crown jewel. Ironic that destiny determined I would find my person there.

"The incubus told me I have to hand them over personally..."

"At least tell me the story, Frankie. She smells far too amazing not to know. Smelling those was better than snorting lines of coke! That ...mmm of her's. It's so ....mmmm. It's...Elizabeth Swann, after all!"

"Damn, you buy into that crap, don't you!? She's just another female trying to make a living! Poor woman! It's hype!..Celebrity! ...Drivel!" I challenged, brushing away this silly infatuation of his.

"You know...Blues...remember Untitled 1982? The painting by Basquiat you were going crazy for? I happen to know that Untitled actually soared by 2, 209, 900%. It was originally sold for $4,000 and eventually auctioned off for $110, 500, 000 in 2017 to a foreign billionaire, Frankie!"

"A pair of panties and some sleazy photographs are not the same as blue-chip art!" I said, pointing to the photo prints Carlo had been busy poring over. He had spread them out on the table like Tarot cards. Carlo was probably deciding on which one looked best as the centerpiece for a cover story on Salma Hayek.

"Look, don't mess with me, Frankie. Humor me, at least! I know that Basquiat has something to do with all of this!! Are you in on the deal?? I will go back home to Cadence for a break if you at least tell me the story. I do need rest. You can drive me to Charles de Gaulle airport yourself! I'm not shaking you down! This break-out could finally land me an editing position at Voici. No more games, Dirty-blues," Carlo uttered, looking flustered.

"I believe that painting by Basquiat is actually a likeness of the same spirit I am negotiating for with the incubus."

"That so? Tricky little fucker, that spirit! It was the one haunting him ...Basquiat!"

Aside from his titled works, the late Basquiat painted a total of 61 untitled works. Most of which can be found in private collections, all of which are rumored to be cursed. A private art collector or art gallery runs the risk of serious tragedy in exchange for turning a profit on his art, worse for owning it.

"It was the one haunting him! Look, if you promise to go home to Cadence, I will tell you the story. She probably worries sick about you knowing the kind of risks you take. Trying to provoke celebrities into having psychotic fits right in front of you as you snap their photographs!" I quipped.

"I am not disagreeing with you. It's a cult of celebrity, my friend, and I am a just a soldier in this new kind of holy war! Sort of like a gladiator. Did you know that, at the time, a gladiator's sweat or blood was worth lots of money? It was considered an aphrodisiac," Carlo argued.

"You don't really mean that soldier shit, do you?"

Carlo always said things like that but his words belied him every time. We both knew it was about the money, the cheap thrills, for him.

He looked gaunt, tired, and I felt pity for him. There were a pair of healing black eyes under the sunglasses he was sporting. Probably done to him from provoking the likes of Kanye West or Sean Penn all day long.

As a former hockey star, Carlo was used to getting hit. Probably also used to getting targeted, sadly.

He would walk around campus with a t-shirt that had the words "Give Blood. Play Hockey," printed all over it. Carlo was once a dashing point per game jock with a crooked smile and a chipped tooth. He was viciously targeted during every game for being an arrogant star forward. Until the day arrived when he left the arena on a stretcher with a grade two concussion. A career cut short just a few months before he could turn pro and play for the New York Rangers.

I suddenly decided there that I would share the story of my encounter with him. What the hell. He had promised that he would look after himself better in return. My encounter. With. The actress. That amazing creature known to the world as... Keira Knightley. Elizabeth Swann in person.

It was.... Quite a few years ago.

Chapter 1.2

It happened over the summer in the early aughts. Just to provide a brief introduction of myself for the record...

My name is Frankie Slayde, although some people call me by my nickname "Dirty-blues" or just "Blues." I was and still am a traveling musician and a voodoo shaman.

I was still a young man in my late twenties when the story began. Really, I hadn't even married my ex-wife Paulette or even started my first band yet. I had met Paulette, but she was an untouchable company ballet dancer studying dance at Joffrey and practically on her way to Concordia on a double major.

At the time, she rejected my advances and I had all but given up on her. She was that unattainable woman whom I distracted myself with out of habit. Back in those days I was still discovering my own gifts, both for magick and for music. Music to a lesser degree. I had decided to leave Chicago for a time just to explore new horizons and to help people.

Don't be turned off by my voodoo, now. I just like to call it a side-hustle. Mother taught me about magick and it is just something we did. We do have shamanic ancestry in our royal African blood, the Slaydes. Ancestry that I must fully possess myself with, with the help of heavenly beings in order to heal people in the world. This world endows a few of us with the ability to see and to liberate certain... spiritual maladies.

Both the living and the dead have voodoo shamans on either side, and I am still with the living. I can release pent up dark matter in someone when called upon for help. Usually a shaman like myself has the duty to take care of a certain number of these cases in his or her lifetime on Earth. This aside from other medicinal duties he or she commits to. Sometimes a shaman can help by playing music, as is my case. Others cook, pray, perform, dance, whatever.

Vile spirits in this world tend to congregate around a charming shaman like myself before they reach the underworld. This is how the easy ones are rounded up. Then there are the cases when a human being is so filled with dark matter that an ancient process is the only way help them. This is because a dodgy spirit does not want to leave and takes control of someone living. Not by possession, but by sabotaging their life like a plague.

Vanity is the ultimate downfall for a toxic spirit because they like to be entertained while being close to a shamanic mother bear or, in this case, father bear.

It's then my job to negotiate with divine entities so that toxic lone spirits can be rounded up like stray animals and dragged down to hell, or sometimes raised up to heaven, if they are willing and worthy. And just to be clear, my job does not involve chasing zombies around the block! Although from time to time it feels like I am chasing zombies because spirits can be so elusive!

Back then it was much harder for a shaman. I couldn't exactly use the internet to find and meet with the people that required my service. America Online was just about all that there was, if that! I had trouble just finding any clients being that it was also harder to advertise back then. The Little Indians was the most valuable resource we had. I'll get into that later.

Now, continuing with my story.

In the Spring of 2004 I was running around through the Bible Belt and somehow ended up in the state of Montana.

I was still fighting for my music to be heard back then. I always played a blend of folk, dirty blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll. I yearned for some fame and recognition even though it was counter-productive.

For a shaman, fame is out of the question. Wealth and fame is strictly a forbidden thing to a wandering mystic.

When I was appointed a shaman, my life's purpose had to be to heal and bring peace between people and the spiritual realm, not become a rock star. This hurt many areas of my life. Shamanism must be taken seriously or the spirits can turn on a brother. I guess this is the reason why I was practically a beggar for so many years. Later, it even affected my marriage.

I was playing gigs in little bars, dives and small club circuits. I was fighting for the right to play in more suitable spaces. I remember that once I arrived, I was staying at a small hotel in Helena. Being an attractive black man has its drawbacks, but also its pluses. Oftentimes, I make friends easily in places like Montana.

Although folks were being kind to me, for the most part, the hotel room I was staying in was robbed.

They must have been experts because I didn't even feel, hear or see anything even though I was there. That mischievous spirit I was chasing was behind all of that. It was already onto me as soon as I reached Helena and was designating some road-blocks along the way in order to get me to give up. This is how bad energy carries over. We call it a black tidal in mysticism.

The hotel manager at the place couldn't really do a thing! I was passed out like a log with my door open wide. The woman I was with that night...that's another story! She was long gone. She could have been in on it, but who knows. Possession is not out of the question for a spirit that is contaminated as well as desperate. Demons are always willing to help if they have something to gain.

Some others on my floor got it worse and the last room down the hall reported a stolen vehicle. I actually believed the small safe in my room was secure and stowed away all my valuables in there. They was gone too!