The Indian didn’t blink or say a word.
“But that’s where we are, Franklin, in the business of making silent war.” Wally Scales glanced toward the corner again, hearing faint Dixieland now from somewhere on Bourbon Street. Looking at Franklin again, he said in his quieter tone, “I’m gonna tell you something else. For your ears only, okay?… I’m getting out of this fucking job. The man who hired me and worked his way up to deputy director, the highest-ranking pro in the company, handed in his resignation. He quit, fed up to his eyeballs with this kind of shit, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. You know why?”
He waited for Franklin de Dios, staring at him with his dark and solemn Indian eyes, to shake his head.
“ ’Cause no matter what we do or who we use, we’re always so fucking right. You know what I’m saying?”
“You’re tired of it,” the Indian said.
“Oh, man, am I.”
LUCY TOLD HIM SHE LIVED all her life in this house until she went away and that it was wallpapered and redecorated every few years but always looked the same, except for the sun parlor. She said if you didn’t go in the sun parlor it would be possible to live in this house through several generations and never change your attitude. She said you had to be careful living in New Orleans, in this climate, not to let moss grow on you; though it wasn’t just the humidity that might do you in. She said she had no idea what her mother thought about; maybe she’d ask her sometime, approach her as a corporal work of mercy. She said for some reason she was beginning to understand her father more and see him for the first time as a man and not simply as her dad.
They stood in the main hall, in the doorway of the dark formal living room.
“I began to realize I don’t know much at all about men. I’ve never imagined being one.”
“I’ve never imagined being a girl,” Jack said. He paused a moment and said, “No, I don’t think it’s possible.”
“You don’t seem aware of yourself.”
“Well, I catch myself posing every once in a while.”
“You’re aware of it when you’re not being yourself.”
“I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”
“The only men I knew, until I went away, were the boys I knew and some of their fathers. All the boys drank a lot and had a sense of tragedy about them that was theatrical, overdone, when I think about it now. I suppose they wanted attention. They didn’t have anything to be tragic about, so they got drunk and took having a good time very seriously. I didn’t learn anything from them. I knew boys or fathers, but I didn’t know men. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t think of men, other than to lump them all together, until I met you and then began to watch you with Roy and Cullen. I’ve never been this close to men before, to see them distinctly being men.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“Yeah… I have. You know a lot of women, don’t you? I’ll bet you always have. The one you went to talk to in the restaurant… That was Helene, wasn’t it?”
“How did you know?”
“You told me she had red hair.”
“It’s different though, than when I used to see her. I mean her hair. It’s curly now. She had a perm.”
“I noticed her when she came in, the way she looked at you… You told her about what we’re doing, didn’t you?”
“I had to tell her something, after she helped us out.”
“Did you spend the night with her?”
He said, “As a matter of fact…” He said, “Yeah, I did. But we didn’t do anything.” Jesus Christ. He heard himself and couldn’t believe it. Making himself sound guilty-with all the things he could have said.
“Do you trust her?”
“Yeah, I trust her, sure. I wouldn’t have told her.”
“Did you want her opinion? Was that it?”
“Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Do you want to get out of this? You can. All you have to do is leave. You certainly don’t owe me anything.”
“I’m here,” Jack said.
She waited, looking up at him. “Are you?”
He put his hands on the curve of her shoulders and kissed her, her lips soft and slightly parted.
She said, “Are you here?”
She waited and he kissed her again because he wanted to, looking at her delicate face, the dark room behind her, and because he didn’t know what to say.
She said, “What does it mean?”
“You analyze everything.”
“Do you want to go to bed with me? Do you want to make love to me?”
He said, “Wait. Do you mean, have I been thinking about it? Or do you mean, let’s go?”
Lucy smiled. “I always thought you had to be very serious about it. Swept away by desire.”
“Yeah, you can do that. The whole idea… See, you have to like yourself first. If you do, then you’re all set. You don’t have to be serious, it can be a lot of fun.”
“I’ve never made love to anyone.”
He said, “Is that right?” And wanted to take it back; he shouldn’t sound amazed. He said, “Well, no, I wouldn’t think you would’ve. With your vow of chastity, of course not.”
“I’d never really thought of it much.”
“No, you were staying pure…” He said, “But you’ve been thinking about it lately?”
“The first time,” Lucy said, “do you know when it was?”
“Tell me.”
“In the bedroom the other night, when I sat on the side of your bed. I thought about it after and wondered if that was why I came to you, because I wanted it to happen.”
“I thought you just wanted to talk.”
“I did. But while I was sitting there I was so aware that we were alone in a dark bedroom. I realized, this is what it’s like to become intimate. This is the beginning of it and I loved the feeling. I wanted you to touch me, but I was scared to death.”
“Well, listen…”
“I learned something about myself I never knew before.”
“Boy, you come out of the nuns you come flying.”
She was smiling at him again. She said, “I’ll never forget you, Jack. You remind me so much of him…”
He knew who she meant. Not the other day when she said it, but he did now-just looking at her face, her smile, and feeling the goosebumps up the back of his neck.
She said, “Before he took all his clothes off and they called him pazzo and threw rocks at him. That Francis of Assisi. I’ll bet he was just like you.”
Roy called at five to ten. Lucy spoke to him for a minute and then handed the phone to Jack, her eyes wary as she said, “He’s at the hotel,” and continued to watch him as he took the receiver.
“Roy?”
“Listen, I’m almost directly across the courtyard from the guy’s room. I sit in the dark with the door open a speck I’m looking at the elevator and can almost see 501. They put their new car in the garage across the street, carried five bank sacks into the room, and they been in there ever since. Little One’s been going in and out-he says they’ve drunk three bottles of champagne and now they’re working on cognac and talking about girls. If you could get what’s her name, Helene, to bring ’em out for two minutes we could have this done.”
“No, there’s no way-”
“Knock on their door bare-ass and when they open it she runs over here and we take ’em.”
“She’s not in this.”
He glanced at Lucy watching him as he heard Roy say, “Well, shit, everybody else is but her and she’s done a lot more than most.” They were in the sun parlor; Cullen across the room in his favorite chair, looking this way over the top of a magazine.
“Jack, is that Roy?”
Jack nodded and said into the phone, “What about the Indian?” As Cullen was saying, “I want to talk to him.”
“He was downstairs a while,” Roy said, “but he must’ve put the Chrysler away. Last time I checked, it was gone.”
“He followed us to Gulfport.”
“Yeah, what happened?”
“Nothing, I lost him.”
“Well, what’d you find out?”