Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [52]
“How major a religion is voo—Vodou?” I asked curiously.
“There are an estimated sixty million practitioners worldwide.”
“Wow! I had no idea.” Jeff looked at me. “They’ve sure overtaken your tribe.”
“Yes, but we’re the Chosen People,” I said, “which is an exclusive club.”
“I was raised slightly Methodist,” Jeff told Puma. “So this is unfamiliar territory to me. And Mambo Celeste, the voodoo priestess who works at the foundation—”
“Yes, I know her well,” said Puma. “She and I studied Vodou under the guidance of the same houngan.”
“You and that—that—that—er, Mambo Celeste studied with the same teacher?” I asked in surprise. “I mean, with the same priest thingy?”
“Houngan, Esther,” Jeff said with exaggerated patience. “Houngan.”
Like he knew the lingo.
“Well, not at the same time, of course.” Puma was probably thirty years younger than Celeste. “But we did have the same teacher.”
“So you’re a mambo, too?” I asked.
“No, I’m not.” She shook her head. “I considered that path very seriously when I was younger, and I’ve been involved in the local Vodou community since my teens. My mother was worried at first. Like a lot of people who only know what they’ve seen in bad movies, she was afraid that Vodou was some sort of devil worship or crazy cult. Once she understood it better, though, she supported my faith, even though she didn’t share it. But she wouldn’t agree to me becoming an initiate—training to be a priestess, that is—until after I went to college and got a degree. She was strict about that. And she was right, too. By the time I finished school, I realized that I didn’t have a true calling to become a mambo, and my real path unfolded before me.” Puma’s gesture encompassed the shop around us. “I combined my passion for Vodou with my talent for business.”
“Was your houngan disappointed?” Max asked curiously.
“Oh, no! He encouraged me to follow my bliss.”
“And is he still among us?” Max asked.
“He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “But he’s not still here in New York. He went back to his birthplace in Haiti to help people after the earthquake. He had recently turned seventy, and we were all so worried about him going, given what conditions were like down there after the quake. But he felt a calling to restore the spiritual center of people’s lives there after all that they had lost.” Her expression glowed with affection and respect. “We don’t hear from him very often, but once in a while he lets us know that he’s all right. And I think he intends to stay there.”
“He was Celeste’s teacher?” Jeff said with a frown. “It, uh, doesn’t really seem like she took after him.”
“Not many people do,” Puma said tactfully. “He’s a remarkable man.”
“It sounds like it. But, to be honest, the impression that Celeste has given me of her religion,” said Jeff, “is that it’s mostly about having a pet snake.”
“Well, snakes are venerated in Vodou,” Puma said. “But I guess it’s fair to say that carrying one around the way she does . . .”
“And such a big one,” I said.
“Is a silly and dangerous affectation?” Jeff suggested.
Puma said to me, “You’ve met Napoleon?”
“Yes. Earlier today.”
“Between the baka and the mambo’s boa constrictor, you’ve have a rough twenty-four hours, haven’t you?” she said sympathetically.
That seemed like an understatement to me, but I grunted in agreement. “Surely she doesn’t walk around the city with Napoleon draped over her shoulders? Or get on the subway? I mean, if she can get on a train with a seven-foot long boa constrictor, while the MTA balks at letting Nelli on public transportation—well! That’s just not fair!”
“Who’s Nelli?” Jeff asked with a frown.
“Max’s dog.”
“The mambo doesn’t carry the snake around town,” said Puma. “Napoleon lives in the hounfour.”
Max said, “Actually, Nelli is—”
“What’s the