The Last Girls (45 page)

Courtney is trying to breathe. “No,” she finally says.

“What a shame then, what a fucking shame.” Gene sounds old and tired. “You're just not up to it, are you?”

“Gene, you know that's not it, you know I have to . . .” But Courtney feels both furious and foolish, with none of the resolve she had felt in the church at St. Francisville.

Click.

“Gene!” she cries into the phone, then click, then buzz, then nothing.

Mile 130.2
Killona Landing
Friday 5/14/99
1700 hours

A
NNA STEALS A GLANCE
at her little jeweled travel clock. Oh no—what has happened to the afternoon? After a week of furious work, she has almost finished
The Louisiana Purchase
.

Though she should start getting ready for dinner now, especially if she really intends to shampoo her hair, she just can't bring herself to stop writing. She takes the last miniature Nestlé Crunch from its blue wrapper and pops it into her mouth. She crumples the cellophane bag and tosses it into the wastebasket. She can't quit now.

Propelled by a sudden sense of urgency too strong to ignore, Jade throws the gold pen down onto Jean St. Pierre's huge mahogany desk. She jumps to her feet, scattering the contracts.

“Darling! What's the matter?” Alarm gathers in Jean's penetrating blue eyes.

“Ooh! I just don't know—I have this feeling—” Jade presses her hands to her heaving breast. “I can't really explain it. It's just the most powerful sense of—of—”

“Here, my love.” Swiftly he has rounded the desk and pressed her back down into the leather chair, while four lawyers and his secretary
look on in surprise. “Some water for the lady, please,” he barks, and the secretary races out to obtain it.

He strokes her hair. “Now, Jade, you do realize that these contracts must be signed today, right now in fact, if we are to have the financial backing of the powerful Japanese firm Unagi in developing our island—”

“Jean, stop it! Just—quit—
patting
me!”

Obviously embarrassed, Jean stands back up and straightens his power tie. “Women are often emotional at times like these,” he remarks to all.

“I am
not emotional!
It's just—I just—” Jade closes her eyes and sways slightly in her chair. Deep in her ears she can hear the faint melody of an old fiddle tune, her grandmother's favorite,
“Jole Blon.”
In her mind's eye she sees an old-fashioned couple waltzing across the wide bare floor of an ancient wooden house . . . Jade rubs her fists in her eyes and stands again, clutching her purse to her chest. “I'm sorry,” she blurts. “I can't sign these contracts right now, there's something else I have to do first. I'll sign them later. Please excuse me.” Then before anyone can stop her, she has bolted for the door and run across the parking lot and down the grassy bank to the dock where Jean St. Pierre's sleek motor launch sits glistening in the sun. Jade leaps aboard despite her stiletto heels. She turns the key and the engine roars to life. The Playboy key chain dangles from the lock as the
Mermaid
heads into the bay. Back on shore, Jean St. Pierre jumps up and down in fury like a puppet in a Punch and Judy show.

Jade points the bow into the waves and races toward the island. She cannot help but notice the gray clouds that have suddenly appeared from nowhere it seems, rolling across the horizon toward her at alarming speed. Now the sun is obscured and the wind picks up. Waves slap against the boat. Jade kicks off her shoes and holds on to the wheel with both hands. Soon she is drenched with spray, her white silk blouse all but transparent in the gathering gloom. Lightning flashes.
Thunder rolls. The boat rides up and down the troughs of enormous waves. And yet—despite the fearsome noise of the storm—she can still hear the fiddle tune in her mind, ever more clearly.

At last! Through the curtain of rain, she spies the island. Fighting the wheel, she maneuvers the launch into Frenchman's Bayou and cruises up to the rotting pier of her grandmother's house. Now the song is ringing in her ears! Quickly she secures the boat as best she can and climbs out, heading for the house, tripping and falling as pesky vines grab at her feet. At last she reaches the wide balcony, crosses it, and pushes at the old cypress door.

“Ma cherie!”
Adrian Batiste drops his fiddle and leaps forward to cover her wet face and her throat with his burning kisses—the kisses she has secretly wanted ever since the first day she laid eyes on him. Even the furor of the raging storm outside is muted by the rising music—music, music everywhere, as Adrian takes Jade in his arms and waltzes her across that old pine floor.

There! Anna throws down her pen. She stands and stretches, as stiff and sore as if she had just run a marathon, which—in a way—she has. The world comes back; she hears voices in the corridor outside her door. It must be dinnertime already. She'll have to forgo that shampoo but it doesn't really matter anyway, does it? She can always put her hair up. Tonight she'll wear the jungle dress, with ivory combs in her hair, very
Heart of Darkness
. She unbuttons her pink dressing gown and throws it across the bed, then crosses to the mirror in her rose satin panties and bustier to pin up her hair for a quick bath.

“Oh, Miss Trethaway! I thought you would have already gone to dinner! Pardon me—” Huckleberry drops his tray to the floor with a resounding crash. “Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry—” He falls to his knees and starts scrambling after the china and silver, which has spilled everywhere.

Anna grabs her robe and slips it around her shoulders, but not before—she hopes—he has seen her enormous breasts. Boys like
breasts. She clutches the robe at her neck in a show of primness. “Here, now, get up—you can just come back later to get those things and straighten the room up.” Finishing a book always makes her feel sexy.

“Later?”
But Huckleberry stands up immediately, an obedient boy, a puppet. The red blush under those tan freckles is adorable. He gulps for air. “Actually, I've been trying to get up the nerve to talk to you for the whole trip,” he says. “I mean, I've been wanting to
really
talk to you, ma'am.”

“My name is Anna.” She takes his sweaty hand. “And I've been wanting to really talk to
you,
too.” She loosens her robe just the slightest bit. “Tell me all about yourself.”

His Adam's apple quivers. “Of course I know who you are. We
all
know who you are. And I know I'm not supposed to bother you. But I wanted to tell you—I'm a writer, too. I just got my M.F.A. from Florida State, and my thesis was a novel which I'm revising right now so I can submit it for publication. I don't want to impose or anything, but I was wondering if you might have a minute to look at my query letter and my synopsis and maybe the first chapter, that's all, just to see what you think before I send them off, a professional opinion, you know, I'd really appreciate it.” Huckleberry pats the pocket of his uniform, why, he's actually got the envelope with him, the little polecat! He smooths it out on his knee.

Anna stands up. “No, I'm sorry, I can't do that,” she says crisply. “My agent doesn't allow me to look at any manuscripts—or synopses or any
letters
—,” she adds. “In fact, he strictly forbids it, on pain of
death
. That way, no one can ever accuse me of stealing an idea, and this is something that comes up frequently in my field, you'd better believe it. So if you'll excuse me, I am—as you see—late for dinner.”

“Oh, sure, oh yes ma'am. I'm sorry!” Huckleberry stands up, too, folding the pages furiously, jamming them back down into his jacket pocket. “I'm sorry I bothered you.”

“You haven't bothered me a bit, you silly boy,” Anna says from the bathroom door with a brilliant smile. How could she ever have been so foolish? So—so
deluded
. Why he's young enough to be her own son, her own little baby . . . “And you can just clean up all that mess later, when I'm not here. Good luck with your work, and now—
adieu
.” She flutters her fingers at him, then closes the mirrored bathroom door and sinks back against it until she has slid all the way down to the floor where she sits propped up like a rag doll with her fist pressed against her mouth.

Mile 109.0
Waggaman Light
Friday 5/14/99
2100 hours

H
ARRIET GOES INTO
her stateroom and kicks off her heels, feeling under the edge of the bed with her toes for her sandals. There. That's better. She crosses over to the mirror and stands in front of it and looks at herself still wearing the Mardi Gras beads—three shiny strands, one purple, one green, one gold—over her white sundress. Actually, they become her. But the last dinner was strange, definitely strange, in spite of the excellent New Orleans food and the determined Mardi Gras gaiety that the staff was trying so hard to create. Anna didn't even show up; nor did Russell. Catherine just smiled when they asked her about him. “Oh, he's all right. He's still napping. He'll join us later, I'm sure.” Catherine had a certain Mona Lisa gravity about her at dinner, striking long gray hair pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. She was less talkative than usual, though, and Courtney, too, seemed out of sorts, edgy and abstracted.

But Leonard and Bridget were in fine form; they'd even imported some friends from another table to take Anna and Russell's empty chairs. Harriet wondered if
they
knew about Leonard's pump. The new guy, Phil, said he was a member of the Toastmasters Club of McMinnville,
Tennessee, and told four awful jokes in a row to prove it. Luckily, conversation was kept to a minimum by the entire Syncopators band which had joined Little Bobby Blue tonight for the grand finale, playing loud zydeco music as costumed kitchen help and waiters danced between the tables. Maurice was particularly stunning, all decked out in whiteface as Pierrot. Now there's somebody who can really dance! But it's racist to think so, isn't it? Oh dear. And Harriet still hasn't told Pete definitely whether she'll stay over in New Orleans or not, even though Courtney has given her that room in the Royal Orleans, and even though she wants to, she really
wants
to. She hasn't told Pete about the room either. Then he'd really put the pressure on her. As it is, his kidding has been bad enough.
“Laissez les bons temps roulez,”
he'd said into her ear that afternoon, coming up behind her while she stood at the rail.

“Oh my gosh!” She'd jumped a mile. His bristly moustache tickled her neck.

“Hey, now, steady there, didn't mean to scare you!” He put a hand on each shoulder to steady her, which had the opposite effect.

“Listen, I'll talk to you about it right after the—ceremony,” she'd said finally, for lack of a better word. “I just can't get my mind around anything else until that's over with.”

“I understand.” His blue eyes behind his glasses looked like still water. His gaze held hers calmly. “Of course I understand.” He touched her hand. “And speaking of that, I wanted to tell you that I'll be there too, tonight, if it's all right with you. I thought I'd just stand guard by the top of the steps to keep any other passengers from wandering up there and interrupting you.”

“Oh, that's so nice.” Harriet had barely breathed then.

“I
am
nice.” He grinned down at her. His gold eyetooth gleamed. “I'll show you the time of your life in New Orleans. You ought to take me up on it. It's hard to find an old bird like me, that's why you see all these women going on tours with each other all the time—there's no men left. I may not be much, but at least I'm
alive,
” Pete said.

Then Harriet started laughing and she laughed so hard, he had to pat her on the back. She smiles now, in her stateroom, just thinking about it. And it's true, he is so nice . . . So what's wrong with her? Harriet sighs. She slips the Mardi Gras beads over her head and drops them in a shiny little heap on her bed. There's a part of her that already knows what her answer will be.

In any case, she has things to do now. It's time. The open FedEx box is the only thing left in its dresser drawer; all her clothes have been packed in the bags which already stand outside in the corridor. She puts the FedEx box on the bed and takes everything out of it: the unopened white envelope, the black lacquered wooden box with its gold fittings and its gold key. It looks like an Oriental jewelry box. Chinoiserie. “To Harriet and the Girls, from Charlie, To Be Opened at Maggie's Memorial” is written in black ink on the white envelope in a firm, flowing hand. She looks at her watch, then gets a glass of water from the carafe and takes it over to the chair by the window, along with the rest of the poems. There's time yet. She settles down to read.