“I’ve got bad news,” the other Freddie said, mock sad. “They’re married.”
“So am I.” De Marigny shrugged. His smile was as wide as it was casual. “Bring your husbands along! Some of my best friends are husbands.”
“I’m afraid,” the brunette said, “both our husbands are away on missions.”
“RAF pilots,” the American Freddie said.
De Marigny shrugged again. “My wife’s in Maine studying dance. Maybe we old married people, separated from our loved ones, should console one another.”
The American Freddie said, “He’s got a Bahamian cook who’ll knock your socks off, ladies.”
I was willing to bet they’d be eating chicken.
The brunette and blonde looked at each other and smiled; damn near giggled. They nodded first to each other, then to de Marigny.
“Splendid,” the Count said.
Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.
The quartet chatted-flirted, I thought, though the American was the most obvious-and soon I decided to fade away. I finished my Coke and went back to the Buick to wait for de Marigny to head back to Victoria Street for his party.
Which, before long, he did.
Nassau at night-at least on this overcast night-seemed otherworldly. Giant silk cotton trees cast weird shadows on limestone houses. Garden walls seemed like fortress battlements, and light slanted eerily through the slatted jalousie shutters, closed in anticipation of the storm that had promised itself all afternoon.
I followed the red eyes of the Lincoln’s taillights and when de Marigny pulled up onto the lawn beside the driveway, I went on by; again I did a U-turn and found a place on the opposite side of the street.
Before long guests began to arrive, notably a puffy-faced, slickly handsome character with a Clark Gable mustache who pulled his two-tone brown Chevy into the driveway and emerged with a sexy little blonde on his arm. She had Veronica Lake peekaboo bangs and a blue dress with white polka dots and a Betty Grable shape and if she was of legal age, I was Henry Aldrich.
I counted eleven guests, a mixed group as to gender but resolutely white and well-off in appearance-not counting the RAF wives (who’d arrived with the pudgy American) and the jailbait cutie, who were plenty white, but not affluent. Their ticket of admission was their own pulchritude.
My window was down and even half a block away I could hear the laughter and chatter coming from the garden patio, so I got out of the car and joined the party. Sort of. The sidewalk was empty and the nearest streetlight was across the way, so nobody noticed me angle around the side of the well-tended bushes to do some professional peeping.
They were having their dinner party outdoors; a long picnictype table was set, and several male Negro servants in white coats were in attendance, though nothing but wine had been served. Three hurricane-shaded candles and two six-candled candelabras were as yet unlit on the attractively set table. Everybody was having a gay old time, but I didn’t figure it would last long. The wind was coming up, and mosquitoes were nipping.
This morning, Marjorie Bristol could smell the rain in the air; right now, any idiot could smell it. I could smell it.
De Marigny had a kitchen match going. Sitting next to him was the blond RAF wife, as he half-stood leaning forward to try to light a candle, lifting a hurricane shade to do so. The wind whipped the flame away from the candle and across the back of the Count’s hand.
“Merde!” he said.
“What does that mean?” the jailbait blonde asked wide-eyed.
“Shit, my dear,” her suave puffy-faced escort rejoined.
Everyone laughed. Except me. I slapped a skeeter.
De Marigny singed himself a couple more times, but managed to get all the hurricane lamps lit, and even had the candelabras going, their flames leaning like deckhands on the Titanic.
“Voila,” he said, admiring his work, and I was thinking that he didn’t seem to know much more French than I did, when the rains came.
The guests laughed, some of the ladies squealing in a manner that I’m sure they thought was delightfully feminine.
“Inside, everyone!” de Marigny called, as his black servants quickly removed the table settings.
The guests, pelted with raindrops, were scattering, fleeing for shelter.
In my spot in the bushes, I was drenched already.
“Merde,” I said to myself, and headed back to the Buick.
And there I sat for a very long time. Machine-gun rain battering the car, drumming on the roof, palm trees swaying, fronds rustling, scratching like sandpaper rubbing together, wind whistling disgustedly through its teeth, carrying sickly sweet floral scents. With my windows up, I was hot in the car, windows fogging up. Heat and rain. Yet I was chilled….
When the rains came, we covered the shell hole with camouflage tenting; when the tenting had collected water, we drank from its edge, guzzling it greedily, draining some of it into our empty canteens. The rain seemed to rouse even the wounded among us, and we huddled together, wondering when the Japs would come again, with their machine guns, bayonets, mortar shells….
A crack of thunder snapped me awake, though I at first thought a mortar shell had hit. I was in a cold sweat, only there was nothing cold about it. I craved a cigarette.
Not a good sign: the only time in my life I ever smoked was those months I was in the Corps, on the Island-Guadalcanal. The nicotine craving came only rarely, since I got back-like the malaria flare-ups, one of which seemed to have hold of me now.
I cracked the window to unfog the windshield. The rain hammered down. I checked my wristwatch: almost midnight. How long had I slept? Had I missed anything? Maybe I ought to take my camera and go wading across the streaming street and crawl through the soaked shrubbery and see if some sort of Caribbean white-folks-only orgy was in progress.
But about that time the party began to break up; couples found their way to their cars-with the exception of the puffy Clark Gable and his underage Betty Grable. Oh, the happy couple exited, all right, snuggled under an umbrella; but they quickly took the side staircase up to what was apparently an apartment over the garage.
Lightning flared as the American Freddie left in the company of one of the male guests, an older, distinguished-looking man. That meant the Count was alone with the two RAF wives.
Maybe de Marigny was going to live up to his reputation.
Maybe I ought to reach for my camera….
But then de Marigny, his jacket collar up, made a run for his Lincoln on the lawn. He got it running, backed it closer to the steps which led from the side of the porch. Then one of the servants-Curtis, I think-escorted the blond RAF wife, under an umbrella, to the waiting car.
I smiled. Looked like I was in business.
Except that then Curtis went back and returned with the brunette under his umbrella, as well. She joined de Marigny and their blond mutual friend in the front seat.
Cozy. I thought of some of the other French words I knew: menage a trois.
I trailed the Lincoln down to Bay Street, the Buick’s windshield wipers working furiously. His car swayed in the wind; so did mine. Neither vehicle was exactly a featherweight, either. The rain was unremitting. The street was half flooded, completely flooded around blocked drains; the shops were shuttered and shining with rain, turned silver-blue now and then by lightning. A pharmacy’s neon stood out in the night like a modern apparition.
We went past my hotel-alive with occasional lights, a bed waiting there for me-and headed west. This was the way Samuel had taken Miss Bristol and me, earlier today, a century ago. A little ways beyond Westbourne, which was barely visible as I went by, lights ablaze on the upper floor, the Lincoln pulled in past a post with a hanging wooden sign that said hubbard’s cottages.