“Yes, of course,” turning to him with a look of surprise. “He want me to be with him.” Her gaze softened then as she said, “When you like a girl very much, don’t you want her to be with you? You have girl friends, I bet all kinds of them.” She smiled, moving closer. “Good-looking guy with expensive clothes,” taking his seven-dollar striped tie between her fingers, feeling it. “I saw your nice rooms you have, with a big refrigerator has beer and a bottle of vodka in it. Sure, I bet you bring girls here for the evening. Maybe stay all night… Oh, you look surprise. I know American guys in Managua when I was there would do that, open their eyes. Who, me? Like a little boy. I think only American guys do that, but I’m not certain. Want you to believe they always so good. But you bring girls here, don’t you? Tell me the truth.”
“Once or twice I have.”
“Tell me something else, okay? You ever get in one of these with the girl?”
Jack said, “Are you serious?”
“I jus’ wonder. It so nice and soft,” touching the Tawny Beige crepe again.
He said, “Amelita, that’s a casket.”
“Yes, I know what it is. But I never look inside one or feel it. Like a little bed, uh?”
He said, “Why don’t we go sit down, take it easy.”
She gave him a sly look over her shoulder. “In your room? Yes, I think that would be nice.”
He thought a moment and said, “If I was the one pulled you out of the situation you were in…”
“Yes?”
“I’d seriously consider throwing you back.”
She frowned. “You mad at me? Why?”
No, he wasn’t, really; but all he said was, “Come on,” and turned out the lights in the casket selection room. They walked down the hall past his apartment and the prep room to Leo’s office.
“Sister Lucy’ll get in touch as soon as she’s free. If she doesn’t, you’ll have to sleep on that.” He nodded toward a cracked and creased leather sofa that was old as Mullen & Sons.
Amelita sat down in it, saying, “Why do you call her that?”
Jack said, “What?” looking at the mess on Leo’s desk, letters and invoices, blank First Call Records lying by the phone. No new business.
“I say why do you call her Sister Lucy? She’s not a sister no more. She jus’ Lucy. Or Lucy Nichols, if you want to say all her name.”
Jack looked up, stared at the girl sitting in the middle of Leo’s worn-out sofa. He took a moment.
“What’re you talking about, she’s not a sister? That’s what I called her…” He took another moment to think about it. “I’m sure I did, and she didn’t say she wasn’t.”
“Maybe she so use to it.”
“All the guys at the mission when I picked her up, they called her sister. I can hear ’em. And Leo, the guy I work for…” Jack paused, not sure if he could count Leo. Leo might’ve assumed she was a nun, because she’d been at a mission in Nicaragua.
Amelita said, “I don’t know who you talking about, but I know she isn’t a sister. She quit being one. You think if she was a sister you see her dress like that, with those Calvin Kleins? I’m going to buy a pair when I go to L.A.”
“I wondered about that.”
“Sure, soon as I go there.”
“How do you know? Did she tell you?”
“When we lef’ Nicaragua in the car. She say to me, I’m not going to be a sister no more. I can’t do it.”
“She said that?”
“I jus’ tole you she say it.”
“I mean, are you sure?”
Amelita shrugged. “Ask her, you don’t believe me.” Her gaze roamed over the office, to Leo’s mortuary science license framed on the wall, before returning to Jack, standing by the desk. “She was nice when she was a sister. She was the nicest one at Sagrada Familia.”
“Don’t you think she’s nice now?”
“Yes, but she’s different. I think something is happening to her.”
When she called she said, “Jack? It’s Lucy.” He waited and she said, “Jack?”
“How was dinner?”
“I’d like to tell you about it.”
“Boiled shrimp and beer?”
“I may never see my dad again. How’s Amelita?”
“She’s okay. What happened?”
“I really would like to talk to you.” It was her voice, but it was different, strained; she was keeping it in control. “If you could bring Amelita here… I’m at home, my mother’s house, 101 Audubon, on the uptown side of the park.”
“I know where it is. Are you alone?”
“The housekeeper’s here, Dolores… If you could come as soon as you can… But not in the hearse. Just in case…”
He said, “No, I have a car.” He waited a moment and said, for the first time, “Lucy?”
“What?”
“We’ll be right over.”
SHE BROUGHT HIM THROUGH a hall of dim portraits and framed pictures of Carnival balls, past sitting and dining rooms that were dark, formal, to a sun parlor that was startling, the atmosphere suddenly tropical as he looked at walls papered in a blaze of green-and-gold banana trees. Lamplight reflected on giant green fronds, on green-cushioned wicker, a ceiling fan, baskets of fern, a bar with bottles displayed against tinted glass. On the wicker coffee table was a glass of sherry. She was quiet, polite, wearing a white shirt now with tan slacks and sandals. She asked him if he’d help himself to a drink, then asked if he was sure he wasn’t hungry-as he poured vodka over ice-Dolores was fixing something for Amelita and it would be no trouble. He shook his head. She said Dolores had been to church. She said Dolores had been attending the African Baptist Church on Esplanade as long as she could remember. She said Dolores used to teach her hymns and it disturbed her mother to hear Protestant songs in the house. Jack took a sip of the drink and looked at her and said, “You’re not a sister anymore.”
She said, “No, I’m not.”
“I called you Sister.”
“Once or twice.”
“You sound different.”
She seemed to smile.
“I mean since this afternoon.”
She was looking at his drink and said, “Let me try that.” He handed her the glass. She took a sip of the vodka and looked at him with that round lower lip pouting as she swallowed, then shook her head. “I still don’t like it.”
“You’re trying different things again?”
She said, “The day I got back to New Orleans I called my mother for the name of a hairdresser. I’d made up my mind, after thinking about it for at least a year, I was going to get a perm. Curl my hair and change my image. I felt I needed to pick myself up. So I made the appointment… It wasn’t until I was in the chair, looking at myself in the mirror, I realized that a perm wasn’t going to do it.”
“Do what?”
“I mean it wasn’t necessary. I’d already changed. You said I sound different. I am, I’m not the same person I was a year ago or this afternoon, or the same person right now that I’m going to be.”
She was close enough to touch; not as tall as earlier today, in the heels. He said, “I think you made the right decision. That’s the way your hair should be, natural.” He thought a moment and said, “The day I got home from Angola, the first thing I was gonna do was get dressed up and head for the bar at the Roosevelt, like I’d never been away. But I didn’t. My parole came up the same time as a friend of mine, guy named Roy Hicks.” Jack felt himself start to smile. “Roy had a way of looking at you, with this cold stare, not putting much into it at all, but it was like he was asking if you wanted to die. He wasn’t that big, either.”
Lucy had started to smile because he did, but now the smile left her eyes. “I thought you said you were friends.”
“We were. Roy taught me how to jail. No, he didn’t give me the look, it was for guys who came onto him or got out of line… You know what I’m talking about?”
“I think so.”
He started to smile again, knowing what he was going to tell, and saw Lucy ready to smile, he was pretty sure. It encouraged him, made it all right to show off a little, slip into a role with her that was comfortable, natural; the feeling he could tell her anything he wanted.