The Last Girls (44 page)

Russell doesn't get it. “So what's the point of all this slowing down and back and forth? Why don't you just go straight to New Orleans?”

Pete throws back his head and laughs. “Hell, it would only take us two days, total, from Memphis to New Orleans if we did that. We are enhancing your experience, man. Don't you feel enhanced?” He pokes Russell in the shoulder, a kind of man-to-man solidarity touching which Russell remembers from football. Russell laughs, too.

“Say,” Pete adds, “how about putting in a good word for me with Harriet? I'm trying to get her to stay over, let me show her the town.” Pete winks at him.

“You got it,” Russell promises, though he cannot, for the life of him, see the mystifying attraction of Harriet. There's no accounting for taste, as Catherine's mother was so fond of saying. Catherine. Now where is she?

“See you later, buddy,” he tells Pete. “I'll work on Harriet for you,” he throws back over his shoulder.

Russell strolls around the entire Promenade Deck twice, nodding to various people, waving to Nick at the Calliope Bar, without seeing anybody in his party. Finally, on his third lap, he looks into the Grand Saloon through the window and sees the backs of their heads—Catherine, Courtney, and Harriet seated near the door in back while some other godawful thing starts up on stage. He goes inside and grabs a seat behind them.

“Hey, baby, I've been looking all over the place for you,” Russell has just begun when Catherine starts shushing him. Up on stage stands Captain John Dulaney, resplendent in his gold-braided uniform and million-dollar smile, along with the Syncopators, all decked out in black tuxedos, and a round table holding an enormous wedding cake flanked by candelabra blazing away despite the bright sunshine outside the windows. Captain Dulaney nods to Alabama Huey. Alabama Huey raises his baton, and the Syncopators launch into the Wedding March as ten or twelve old men come hesitantly onstage left, joined by their wives who enter right. Everybody is all dolled up: coats and ties for the men, dresses for the women. The men look embarrassed. The women carry bouquets. Now Russell remembers what this is. “My God,” he says.

“Sssh.”
Catherine, Harriet, and Courtney hiss as one.

Captain Dulaney treats the crowd to his dazzling smile. He raises his arms. “I, John Dulaney, by the power vested in me as the captain of the
Belle of Natchez,
now pronounce you man and wife. Gentlemen, you may kiss your brides!” A giant kissing session ensues which is really pretty damn sweet, all those old geezers and their ladies. Russell reaches for Catherine.

“No!” she pulls away. “Russell, come on. Cut it out. These people are serious. Quit being such a jerk.”

“Hey, you must have the wrong guy. This is me, Russell, I'm not a jerk. I am serious, damn it! Come on, honey. We were signed up to do this, too, as I recall—weren't we, girls?” Russell glances darkly at Harriet who giggles, blushing. “So let's
do
it. Dance with me?” Out on the parquet dance floor, couples glide and whirl. A few of them mostly stumble and sway, but some of them are splendid dancers, better than Russell ever was or ever will be. Some of them are probably better husbands than he is, too.

“Baby?” He puts his arms around Catherine from behind, chair and all, awkwardly. “Can I have this dance for the rest of my life?” he sings off key.

“Russell, stop it. You are really embarrassing me now.” Catherine sounds like she means it. “You're drunk. And these people are
sincere
.”

“I'm sincere, too. Why won't anybody ever believe me when I'm sincere?” But Russell already knows the answer—it's because he's been ironic all his life. He's like the little boy who cried wolf so much that no one believed it when the real wolf came.

Catherine keeps trying to pry his arms loose. “Hush,” she says.

“Okay, then fuck it. Just fuck it, baby.” Suddenly he's fed up with the whole thing. “Pardon my French,” he says to Courtney, that bitch, she looks like she's got a poker up her ass right now. She looks away. Russell stands up. “You'd better stay over in New Orleans, honey,” he tells Harriet, who opens and closes her mouth rapidly, like a baby bird. Like a little baby wren, that's it. These women look like See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. Russell pauses to grab four plastic flutes of champagne, two in each hand, from Maurice as he goes past with a huge silver tray.

“Hey, buddy, they've got your friend all wrapped up in a tarp and laid out on the Main Deck now, dead as a mackerel. Gonna unload his ass in the Easy, first thing.” Maurice disappears into the crowd.

“What friend? What's he talking about? Did somebody die?” Catherine finally stands up and turns to Russell.

“Yeah. It was Mr. Stone, you know, the old guy who's always out at the bar. I introduced you, right?”

Catherine nods. She comes around the chair and takes Russell's arm. He looks terrible. “What happened?”

“Heart attack,” Russell says. “I was right there, sitting at the bar with him. Shit, baby, it was awful. Everything you ever thought about a heart attack, it's true. It's all true. In spades. Except it's even worse than you can possibly imagine.” Russell follows her out of the Grand Saloon. “It's so gross. So undignified. They strip you, they stick stuff on you, they stick other stuff in you, they hit you . . .
Jesus
. It's the end, the absolute end, of privacy.” Russell is fanatic about his privacy, he hates to have strangers in his house. Hell, he even hates to have
friends
in his house. He holds on to Catherine's elbow going down the Grand Staircase, then along the corridor. She stops in front of their stateroom door and fumbles in her purse for the key. Russell encircles her waist from behind and buries his face in her lemony hair. He closes his eyes. “Mr. Stone was fucking
dead,
honey,” he tells her. He breathes in deeply, raggedly. “Russell—,” Catherine starts to say when suddenly Russell's dick rises up out of this long weird confusing scary day, rises of its own accord to push insistently against Catherine's soft butt in the denim skirt. “Ready Freddy,” he says, making a joke. He had a girlfriend one time who called it Mr. Happy. His hands move up to her breasts.

“Russell!”
Catherine pushes his hands down and breaks away from him. She goes to stand at the window, looking out. Right now they're fairly close to a densely wooded island with an old boat wrecked on its muddy half-moon beach. Bleached wooden ribs curve out from the boat's rounded spine, like bones. The mud looks pretty good there, actually, around the wreck. Dense, dark, clay-ey. Suddenly Catherine knows exactly how it would feel to scoop up a handful and
squeeze it through her fingers. This was where she started making things, on the riverbank at the river house, long ago. Figures—little people and animals, some real and some not real, bowls, plates, a tiny perfect pitcher. She wonders whatever happened to that tiny pitcher. It was just her and Wesley then, wasn't it, just her and Wesley in the river house before it all got started, periods cramps boys dates birth babies,
the works.
Oh God, before Wesley left her and then suddenly somehow Catherine got surrounded by all these other people. Husbands, children, grandchildren, friends—where did all these
people
come from is what she'd like to know.

“Honey,” Russell says. He's looking at her. He holds out his arms. He looks drunk, disheveled, pathetic. But he gets it now. Something's wrong. “Baby, come here. Just come over here to your old man, I won't do anything you don't want me to, you know that.” Crossing the room, Catherine feels like she's underwater or like she's a girl in a dream. “Yeah. Just let me hold you like this.” He strokes her wild hair. “Baby, what's the matter? What the fuck is wrong with you anyway?”

Catherine takes a deep breath and lets it go. “Oh Russell, I've got this lump in my breast, see, feel it, it's right here. I just found it yesterday, and I've been feeling so weird ever since—” The dam crumbles, the water rushes through.

“Where? This? Oh Jesus, oh my God, you're right. Oh honey, oh baby, oh my love. But why didn't you tell me?” He pulls back to look at her face. “Catherine? Why didn't you tell me immediately?”

“Oh, I don't know. I guess, I didn't—I didn't want to spoil your trip” though that's not the real reason, Catherine knows.

“Oh, fuck! I give up. Mary Bernice would be proud of you for once, you're finally turning into her.
My
trip?
My
trip? Oh Jesus.” He folds Catherine up in his arms where for the first time in days she feels like herself again, and this is Russell after all, her old buddy, her old flame, her old man. Whatever was she thinking? But it's all about holding back and letting go, isn't it? Pulling apart and getting back
together, keeping and giving, on and on, that's the way it works, that's the real story, and there's no beginning and no end to it either.

“We'll get the best doctors,” Russell says. “We can go to the Mayo Clinic, Houston, anyplace you want. We'll go straight to the top.” The irony of this is not lost on Russell, of course: the hypochondriac's wife gets cancer, the fire chief's house burns down. He imagines the Big Guy up there getting a real chuckle out of this one.
Shit head
.

“Hush, I'm sure Birmingham will be just fine, and we can't do anything about it until Monday morning anyway.” Catherine seems like her old practical self again. “Also, it might be a cyst, or it might be benign, or—who knows? Let's wait and see. Anyway, whatever it is, they'll get it, I'm sure. They can almost always take care of breast cancer these days.” It's the first time she has named it.

“Well, they'd better. Because I can't fucking live without you, you know that, don't you? Baby?”

“Yes,” Catherine says, “yes,” again, as he pulls her T-shirt over her head and throws it down on the bed. The stateroom fills up with sunset. Now she wants him. She wants him terribly, and for a drunk guy, he does fine. Then he wraps one leg around her legs and hugs her tight all over. This is his sweet Catherine, the one he loves. “Buddies?” he asks. “Buddies,” she says, the last thing Russell hears before he falls instantly, deeply asleep, mouth still open, snoring slightly.

Catherine sits up on one elbow. She pushes his heavy leg off her. She looks up from the sleeping man beside her to watch the sun make its fiery trail across the water straight to their window, a shining path so wide and straight that she imagines stepping out onto it and walking across the water and into the trees on the other side. She imagines the mud and the vines and flowers, and the smell of honeysuckle and rotting fish. She knows exactly how it would be there. She looks down to stroke his cheek.

Mile 128.0
Bonnet Carre, Louisiana
Friday 5/14/99
1640 hours

W
HAT A NUISANCE
—everything except hand luggage has to be packed and set out in the hall before bedtime, so Courtney might as well do it now, before dinner. And speaking of dinner, she'll have to get a picture of the whole group tonight. Maybe she can get Bridget to snap it, so she can be in the picture, too. Actually, it's just as well that this trip is finally almost over, in Courtney's opinion—for her, the whole point of it was to have a stolen weekend in New Orleans with Gene. She takes the new baby-doll pajamas out of the drawer, hesitates, then buries her face in the emerald green silk. Never worn, never will be. She thinks she ought to feel good about her decision, but she does not. On impulse, she reaches for the phone and sits down on the bed to call Gene one last time.

“Ay-up,” he says in some sort of cowboy voice, you never know what he's up to.

“Gene, it's me. Courtney.”

“Why, yes it is!” He sounds much cheerier than she would have thought. He's supposed to be brokenhearted.

“What are you doing?” she asks, with a sudden stabbing desire to picture him there in his crazy house.

“Oh, nothing much, you know me. Just been out in the yard racing these two wisteria vines. I started one on each side of the trellis by the pond. So far the left one is ahead, but I've got my money on the right.”

It's just like Gene Minor to be totally involved in something nobody else would give a damn about.

“Actually,” he goes on in that oddly cheery, manly tone, “I'm so glad it's you. I was just going to try to call that WATERCOM number and leave you a message to call me.”

“Yes?” Courtney's heart leaps up to her throat. So he's changed his mind, after all! Everything else falls away. But what if she can't change her airline reservation back again?
A lady doesn't care what it costs.
At least she's still got the room, she'll tell Harriet she can't use it after all. She won't even try to offer an explanation, she'll just let Harriet think that the reservation got inadvertently screwed up somehow.
Never apologize, never explain. Just talk real sweet and you can have whatever you want.
She says, “Gene, honey, I'm so glad you've changed your mind.”

“Whoa, baby,” he says immediately. “Who says I changed my mind? I was just thinking, though, that since I've already got my nonrefundable ticket and you've got a room you're not using, I might just fly down to New Orleans anyway and meet Rosalie.”

“What?”

“Rosalie.” He sounds pleased as punch with himself. “You know, I told you, Rosalie Hungerheart. Incidentally you were right, it's not really Hungerheart, it's Patterson. Anyway, she lives in Atlanta and she's got all these frequent flyer miles saved up and she's never been to New Orleans either.”

“No! You can't do this to me, I'll cancel the room—”

“Then meet me, babe. Last chance—my way or the highway. I
don't care where we stay. Just meet me and go back home with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove. You know I've always loved you, ever since I was a lad.”