“And now I owe you a life,” he says, holding a fingertip up in the air, his eyes directed toward the crystal fixture over the bed and losing their focus. “That’s how they do it over there in Japan or whatever, you know. A life.”
I tell him I know, and then say good night. His eyes are already closed when I let myself out into the hall.
Bert is standing at the bar in my suite with a beer in his hand.
“Everything go well?” he asks.
“Clockwork,” I say.
When I ask him what he’s doing, he looks across the broad living room at my bedroom door. It’s closed and I left it open. Bert shrugs, but he’s smiling.
“What?” I say.
“Not telling,” he says. “Can’t.”
I cross through the overstuffed furniture and grab the brass lion head handle, turning it. Inside it’s dark, but as my eyes adjust, I see the shape of a woman in front of the open tall glass doors that lead out onto the balcony. I feel my heart tighten. Moonlight spills through and a breeze moves the ghostly curtains, making me think for an instant that it’s my imagination. Helena has been in L.A. finishing up another video and wasn’t supposed to have arrived until tomorrow. Her first single went to number one in its second week and never came down, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when she was asked to sing at halftime of the big game.
I step softly and feel the breeze on my face as I reach out for her bare shoulders. She’s straight-backed in a white silk slip. Her hair is different now, wavy and glowing with highlights, even more beautiful than before. Since I’ve only seen her occasionally over the past few months I’ve been able to marvel at her rapid evolution since our talk on the beach.
Frilly lace borders the swell of her breasts and the soft upper regions of her legs. I moisten my lips and put them to the groove between her collarbone and neck. The tangy scent of a perfume I told her I liked sends a charge from my nose down through the center of my chest.
Without looking, she finds my fingers and laces her own tight between them. When she sighs, I feel her shudder.
“What’s wrong?” I say in a whisper, dragging my lips up her long neck to the bottom of her ear. “Nervous about tomorrow?”
She shakes her head no and says, “You kiss me and you hold me and then it always stops. Don’t you want me?”
She even speaks differently now. Her words are soft but clearly enunciated with the timbre of a flute. My hands feel a sudden chill. My muscles tighten. That ache in my chest.
“Is it because of what they did to me?” she asks quietly. “Or is there someone else?”
“What they did is done,” I say. “That’s another life. A bad dream.”
“Someone else?”
“It’s not like that.”
“But there is someone,” she says, turning to me now and clasping her hands around my neck. “Something. It’s in New York. I can feel it, but I don’t care.”
She sniffs. Tears are spilling down her cheeks.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” I say, holding her close.
“I want this.”
She takes my hand and leads me away from the window and the moonlight and under the canopy of the high bronze bed. We kiss and on her tongue I can taste the salt from her tears. Her fingers work quickly to unbutton my shirt and plunge inside, sweeping softly up under my arms, stripping my upper body. Bumps rise on my skin in the small breeze from the open doors, but wherever her hands are I’m warm.
I pluck the straps free from her shoulders and roll the silk slowly down her torso, brushing the curves with my nose and lips, breasts, stomach, hip. The slip falls to her feet in a wavy pile. I kneel, dabbing my tongue so that a small tremor runs through her frame. She clenches my hair close to the scalp and shudders.
When I rise her hands find my belt. Undone, my pants and shorts fall to the floor-partners to her slip-and our naked bodies mesh together, feeding off each other’s warmth in the night air. Helena grasps my shoulders and climbs my torso, shimmying up with her long muscular legs. Velvet around my lower back. When I lower her onto the bed, we’re already one.
She lets out a small groan and it casts my mind loose to swim in an electric sea.
39
HELENA AND I DON’T TALK about last night, but the sun seems to shine brighter, the chicory coffee seems to taste less bitter, and the voices of the busy city around us seem to ring. After making love again, we have a late breakfast on the terrace, then spend some time doing tourist things. The streetcar out to Tulane. Antique shopping on Royal. A visit to Faulkner’s old apartment. Café Du Monde. All with Helena under a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses to avoid attention.
At three we’re back in the room, making love and taking a short nap before she has to leave to get ready for the show. After she’s gone, I sit on the terrace with my feet up on the iron railing and a cup of café au lait on my lap. I’m not really thinking. I’m just feeling the warm air and the close comfort of belonging to someone after all the emptiness. I close my eyes.
How could I describe this to Lester? I think maybe a Renoir. The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette.
I draw a deep breath and let it go.
Bert clears his throat behind me and I turn my head slow enough so that I can feel the warmth of the sunshine moving across my face.
“They want to know when we go,” he says.
I look at my watch and say, “I lost track. I’ll get a shower and change and we’ll go in, say, forty minutes.”
I see his face and say, “What now?”
Bert shrugs and folds his arms across the barrel of his chest.
“There was this farmer south of the reservation-down by Malone-who raised a bunch of pheasants,” he says. “The whites would come up from Utica and Albany and go on hunts. They’d put the birds out and spin them around so when they came back later with the dogs they’d still be there.”
I narrow my eyes at him and crimp my lips.
He shrugs and says, “I just never thought it was that much fun. That’s all.”
“You still have to shoot straight,” I say, taking my feet from the railing, the afternoon now gone.
The lobby swarms with beaming chatty people. A real holiday. Allen and Martin are no exception. They slide into the limo after me, grinning stupidly and scrambling to pull bottles of Abita beer from the ice chest. Bert rides backward facing me. The boys sit sideways on the long seat across from the bar. Their talk is fast and pitched. Who will win and by how much. How much they bet. Overs. Unders. Point spreads. Even Bert takes a fifty out of his wallet and answers Debray’s bet on who will be the first team to score.
The only person in the whole city who sees tonight the same as me is Helena. A business opportunity. Her CD is already platinum with two number one music videos. The halftime show will throw gas on the flames. And if I shoot straight, I’ll infiltrate the lives of my enemies in a very personal way.
The limo moves slowly along the teeming streets behind a motorcycle cop, and people crane their necks to see inside. Allen offers me a beer and I take it. He’s talking to me.
“-much did you bet?”
“I’m not big on it,” I say, taking the beer and clinking the mouth of the bottle against his. “When I win, I don’t really enjoy it and when I lose it makes me sick.”
“Well,” he says, “I’m not all that big on it, but it pays the bills in my house.”
“How’s that?”
“My dad is in the casino business.”
“Really?” I say, letting the word hang.
“Yeah,” Allen says, then turns to Debray. “I don’t know how you think Atlanta won’t score first with Michael Vick.”
They launch into a debate where words are fired back and forth between big mouthfuls of beer.
Bert is doing a bad job of holding back his smile.
“Missed,” he says quietly, cracking open fresh bottles of beer.