Butterflies in Heat (56 page)

"I've always handled the commodore's affairs," Goldenburg said. "But I've never heard of any Garden of Delights."

"What kind of lawyer are you?" Amelia asked. "You should look after my brother's affairs much better. Familiarize yourself with his holdings. Lola assures me the Garden is the best restaurant in Tortuga."

Lola quickly interrupted. "The Garden of Delights," she said to Goldenburg, "recently had its name changed. Up to now, it's been known as Joan's Place."

"I see!" the attorney said.

"Thank God it's not the Joan who called me from New Orleans," Amelia said.

Lola's expression warned the attorney to keep quiet.

"Lola here tells me that wicked woman operates a bordello," Amelia said. "She sounded so clean and decent over the phone. But then Lola told me she used to be an actress. Actresses can pretend to be respectable people. You just can't tell the difference."

"And this arrangement, this guarantee of thirty thousand a year, this is okay with you?" Goldenburg asked.

"Yes, I was never a greedy person," Amelia said, "but I want my share in life." She reached for another martini.

"We all do," Lola added, smiling at her diamond. "We want you to draw up the papers."

"You have my every guarantee," Goldenburg said. "It'll be a simple thing to arrange. I handle all of Mrs. Le Blanc's affairs."

"I would appreciate it if you'd stop calling her that," Amelia said. Her fingers tightened on the arm of her chair.

"Forgive me," Goldenburg said.

"Sister Amelia, " Lola said, "in exchange for your cooperation, I'll never use the name again, I promise."

"I would appreciate it—not that I'm prejudiced or anything," Amelia said. "And one more thing, my name is Miss Le Blanc, not Sister Amelia."

"Of course," Lola answered, searching desperately for a mirror. There was none. "Milton, if you're going to have me as a client, you've got to get a mirror in this stuffy office. A lady likes to see how she looks every now and then."

"Next time you come here," Goldenburg said, "a bigger mirror you've never seen."

After the meeting, Amelia gracefully turned down another ride in the Cadillac. She preferred going back to the airport in the car of Goldenburg's secretary. She also elected not to receive Lola's goodbye kiss. Most of her departure time was spent checking and doublechecking the tentative agreement she'd been given in Goldenburg's office signed by Haskell Hadley Yett and herself. Hadley as a girl's name, Amelia had understood. But calling a girl Haskell had been too much for her.

"Now you understand why I changed
it
to Lola?" Lola was asking in the parking lot.

"It makes more sense," Amelia said. "No girl wants to go through life known as Haskell. However, I do think you could have selected something more dignified than Lola. Something like Mary." With that parting comment, Amelia was chauffeured away by Goldenburg's secretary.

Ned laughed loudly.

"What you laughing at, nigger?" Lola asked, shielding her eyes from the burning sun.

"We'll never know for sure if Amelia thinks you're a real girl or not," Ned said. "I suspect Joan didn't go into the facts of life with her when she made that call. But the last comment floored me. 'Something like Mary'. Amelia may be hipper than we think."

"I don't care if she takes me for a hermaphrodite," Lola said. "As long as she signed that agreement."

Goldenburg's secretary was circling back, bringing her car to a complete stop only feet away from Lola. Lola jumped back.

With an agility nobody knew she had, Amelia sprang from the car. She was reaching for Lola's hand.

"You forgot a handshake?" Lola asked, baffled.

"Yes, my dear," Amelia said, slipping the Old Mine diamond from Lola's finger. "That was my mother's ring, and I'd like to have it back." Saying no more, she got back in the car. The secretary pulled out again.

Ned laughed once more. "Some chick!"

"I didn't like the old thing anyway," Lola said. "It never did shine." She looked at her bare finger.

Ned opened the car door for her.

She got in, sinking back into the hand-rubbed leather. It'd been too easy, she thought. It took the challenge out of life getting everything you wanted handed to you. A girl needed to struggle for something. Lola had it all.

No, one thing missing.

She didn't have Numie where she wanted him. He'd defied her. But now she'd buy him, too.

Ned was driving her back to her hotel. A chocolate ice cream cone already acquired, and a vanilla waiting in the freezer. The mixed flavors would taste good.

Ned had succumbed quickly enough. Of course, having Dinah off hustling that De la Mer bitch had speeded up his conversion from Dinah to Lola. Little did De la Mer know what a hig favor removing Dinah was for Lola. Dinah was too young and pretty to have around. Lola would have to be more careful who she hung out with from now on. Every woman she'd hire would have to be old, fat, and ugly.

There was growing room for only one gardenia in the garden.

Swathed in white towels and coated with cream, Leonora was lying on a hard board. On a night table beside her bed was an unflattering news photo from a copy of a New York paper. The caption read, Tm Dateless and Alive'. Her reply to the Metropolitan Museum had made the front page. Every now and then, Leonora glanced at the picture out of the comer of her eye. The owner of the paper obviously had it in for her. Probably out of jealousy. Pressing a buzzer, Leonora summoned Anne.

In moments Anne was in the beauty chamber. "Good news," she said. "This wire came in about half an hour ago. I didn't know you were up. A firm offer to publish your memoirs."

"My memoirs?" Leonora sat up abruptly. "You write your memoirs when your life is over. Mine isn't!"

"The publisher isn't suggesting it is," Anne said. "He says through your personality he wants to recapture ... I'll quote directly, 'a glorious, vanished time'."

"Vanished?" Leonora coughed on her own fury. The insults around here were becoming unbearable. She rose from the hard board. First, the news photo flashed in front of her, then her creamed face in the mirror. She'd been badly bruised by the glass doors.

Outside it was still raining. It'd rained all night. Lightning trembled over the treetops of the garden. She crossed the room, throwing open the French doors. Rain pelting her in the face, she stood there for a long moment.

"Has it really come?" she asked herself. "Time to admit defeat? To say that my life is nearly over?" Discovering herself talking out loud, she stopped and glanced back to find Anne listening.

The unwritten pages of her memoirs passed before her eyes, her failure as a woman reflected. If published, the memoirs would be obvious, revealing she'd never found what she'd always wanted: love.

Though she'd never known the love of one man or one woman, she was adored by the public.
Still.
"Tm desired," she whispered to herself, knowing the rain would drown out her voice.

That rain pounded her face harder, and
it
was telling her something. That she didn't belong here any more locked behind the walls of Sacre-Coeur. She belonged to her public. They hadn't forgotten. They wanted her back. The caption told
it
all: 'I'm alive'.

Like a patient waking from a deep coma, her eyes were open, but her mind foggy.
It
was hard to make decisions. But she'd be back on her radiant path soon, back where she belonged, in the main stream again.

Wet from rain, she rushed back into the beauty chamber, grabbing the telegram from Anne's hands. The words flattering her raced through her brain. Only then did she pause in horror. In the comer of the cable was the date: September 13.

The day she was going to die!

September 13, the day a fortune teller long ago had predicted she'd die. Born on September 13, she was also firmly convinced she'd meet her death on that same day. So firmly did she believe this, she'd ordered the date engraved in advance on her tombstone.

How had it happened that this day had come upon her without her knowing it? Each year, she dreaded the approach of September 13.

If
she died now, her entire life would be like a promise unfulfilled.

Carefully, she studied her reflection in the mirror. The bone structure, perfection. Yet could this outward perfection be camouflaging something decaying inside? Could this body that walked and talked be made suddenly silent and inactive? The whole idea of creation—followed by the eventual destruction of life—struck her as the work of a sadistic monster who gave life, forced the victimized human into wanting it, then brutally snuffed it out.

Was what lay beyond the plotting of the most devious of schemers? She knew the transition between lives wouldn't be easy. The thought of what the master schemer had conjured up as her punishment caused her to shudder. Perhaps in her purgatory, she would be locked away in a coffin. There, forced to smell the stench of her own dying body. Perhaps she'd try to breathe when breath was no longer possible. Or perhaps she'd have a fantastic urge to move one muscle, to lift just one finger—and this, too, would be impossible.

What had her life meant this time around other than sheer survival? Had her sorrows been as futile as she now feared? During her lifetime, her cunning had made it possible for her to conquer and subdue her environmeht. But in spite of this amazing show of strength, she remained fragile and afraid of what lay beyond.

She'd been on this earth before. Of that, there was no doubt. In her wanderings through time, she was Nefertiti ('The Beautiful One is Come"), walking on the mauve sands of what is now Alexandria; Huitzilopochtli, the fearsome god of the Aztecs hungry for human blood; Sappho on the island of Lesbos writing verses to her young female pupil-companions; a pretty Pompeian girl who dressed in elaborate clothes and pursued cultural pastimes, and an Indian maiden in North America who with her brave lover set out to explore the vast regions of a continent.

Now what new fate awaited her?

The rest of this rainy day stretched out.
It
burned into her flesh.

In a few hours the night would come.

A time for terror.

The buzzer sounded again, Leonora pressing extra hard, as
if
every decision she made today had to be emphatic.

In moments, Anne was in her bedchamber.

Leonora glared at her. Suddenly she hated Anne's youth, her beauty, the fact she had so many more years to live. "That dear child hasn't been in to see me all day. Send for her."

Without saying a word, Anne turned and left. She was gone for a long time. When she returned, her voice was hesitant. "There's been some trouble."

"What do you mean?" Leonora asked, dropping her face towel.

"Dinah ... she's been badly beaten."

"What?" Tossing her mirror on the table, Leonora lunged
toward the door. "Who did
it?"
Hand at her head she felt a migraine beginning. "Get a doctor."

"I've called already." Anne turned away from Leonora.

Clutching a flimsy robe tighter around her nude body, Leonora was heading down the hall.

"Found her sulking in her room," Anne said, trailing behind. "Said she's used to getting beaten."

"But who could have beaten her here?" Leonora asked. Her purple-glassed eyes and the dim lighting made her see Sacre-Coeur in an eerie glow. "I know the house is filled with monsters, but I thought civilized ones." In her race to Dinah's room, Leonora could hear the rush of her own breath. During the last hour, the rain had let up, becoming a slow mist. The whole house seemed to contain nothing but looming shadows and gaunt silhouettes.

Now she was inside Dinah's room. The girl was on her bed, her face hidden in the pillow. The only illumination came from a silk-shaded bedside lamp. The drawn draperies gave a deathly feeling to the room.

At her side, Leonora reached for Dinah trying to tum her over.

"I don't want you to see me this way," she sobbed. "You think I'm so pretty and everything."