Selena looked at me with love and a little lust in her amazing blue-green eyes; was it possible she really saw me as an attractive older man? Was this extraordinary young woman really going to take me on?
I lowered my head and she seemed intuitively to know what I was thinking. Shame flitted over my face.
Selena hugged my arm and gave me one of her knowing looks. I knew then that if she didn’t betray me, if she stayed with me, I knew there was no doubt that I would love her until the day I died. She laughed at me in a relaxed, natural way. Was the psychic in her off duty for now?
I am Louis Doxtader. Dealer in Outsider Art. After the wonderful concert we all gathered backstage in the hospitality tent. I didn’t tell Selena what Floss had told Walter before the show, the rape, the drugs, the mystery of who the father might have been. Of course the last thing I wanted to do was encourage any more discussion of what might have happened at that wedding.
But I was aware that Walter was giving Selena very dirty looks.
Maud was standing with her arm around Molly, who really did have many of Floss’s features. Could Molly really be MY daughter? I had always thought at the height of my heroin use that I probably had no sperm. I could hardly get an erection back then.
Around the tent, laughter was breaking out as it does on such occasions after a performance. It always feels too loud, too raucous, the sound of people who want to let go at last and have fun; the sound of musicians and technicians, managers and agents who are relieved the show is over, everyone is safe, and the ship may sail again. Glasses clinked, corks popped. From somewhere in the marquee the smell of very strong marijuana wafted over. It was now my turn to keep a firm grip on Selena. I wanted to kill her as much as I wanted to fuck her. Then suddenly she pulled herself free of me and began jumping up and down in very small leaps, fists clenched.
“I have to tell them,” she said.
“Tell them what?” I was starting to panic all over again.
“What you did,” she said, looking at me with her brow furrowed.
I looked her directly in the eyes in order to plead with her, my hands gripping her forearms so tightly she grimaced.
“Everything that’s wrong with you now,” she spluttered, “is all because of this. Set yourself free.”
I was terrified. I could feel the urgency of the moment in her, see it rising in her eyes. I knew if I didn’t stop her, she would move quickly. She had to win. I had always been a manipulator and had interfered in the lives of others, but I knew by now I had met my match. Selena was the arch-manipulator.
I protested: “I’m Walter’s godfather. It was years ago. For fuck’s sake,” I snapped, “it sounds to me as though you were the only one who was conscious!”
But this threw Selena into a fit of rage. “No, Louis!” she cried and everyone in the tent looked over at us.
I tried to pull her closer to me, so she would speak more quietly. She hissed, “I saw you and Floss together. I saw her pull you down onto her. I saw her kissing you hungrily. She was not innocent.”
As Floss and Walter looked at each other wondering exactly what was going on, Selena grabbed my hair angrily, pulling my head from side to side. She started sobbing.
“Please”—my voice sounded pleading now, pathetic and whining—“if you know, you’ve known for so long. Why must you break the news now, when everyone has been through so much? Let this be our secret.”
Selena seemed to quieten down for a few beats. Then she smiled that slightly crazy, conspiratorial grin of hers; her blue-green Irish eyes shone, her all-seeing third eye blinked at me, and her angelic witchery caught fire.
“But it’s no secret, Louis,” she whispered, laughing. “Soon after the wedding I told Siobhan. And there are other secrets you should know, secrets about your wife and daughter.”
“I’m not ashamed,” I said loudly, “that Rain lived with Siobhan. I don’t mind that they were lovers.”
She laughed. “Siobhan was fucking your wife,” she said in a piercing tone. “Not your daughter. That’s why you could never track her down, never find her.”
Everyone within earshot at the party was looking at us again. Could they hear? I thought probably not. Siobhan was standing with Pamela and Rain by a long table at the far end of the room. Its white tablecloth was covered with bottles, glasses, and buckets of ice. I felt like the clumsy, possibly evil, fool I knew I was in Selena’s eyes. I realized how stupid the notion had been: Pamela, the ginger-headed sex machine, would never have survived for a month as a nun. For some reason, this made me smile: good old Pamela. As I grinned, the guests who had been watching me all turned back to their conversations, assuming that whatever had blown up had blown away.
Perhaps aware of the attention we had been attracting, Selena suddenly broke away and bolted toward the restrooms; as she ran she looked as if she were trying to wave invisible mosquitoes out of her hair.
She left me standing alone in the throng. Walter, I saw, was talking to Molly and she was obviously thrilled to have him in her family, even as a stepfather. There was an older couple with her, and from their uneasiness I guessed they must be her adoptive parents.
It took me a few minutes to work through the questions to which I needed answers. Had Pamela really told Rain that I was a rapist? Was that conceivable? If so, how could she have left me to look after Rain?
Had Rain ever told Floss?
Floss had never given any hint of knowing…
I stood there, still alone in the middle of the tent. Selena reappeared and stood at some distance looking at me sternly, a bright lamp shining up to the roof framing her hair in a halo. Dreams were converging again in my head. Again I thought I might go mad.
Selena must have seen my terror and moved to my side and impulsively wound her arm through my own. She locked me down.
“I saw you carry her to the sofa,” she said. “We were all tucked away in that arbor in the garden.”
An icy hand grasped my heart. She was simply picking up where she left off. I could hardly breathe.
“I heard Floss say you were a very attractive older man, then she pulled you down to kiss her. Not entirely your fault given the circumstances. I didn’t want to watch. I left you both to get on with it.”
I was shaking, overcome with a mixture of nausea and anxiety so powerful that I knew if heroin had been available to me at that instant I would have taken it.
“Attractive older man!” She was scoffing now, teasing me, but held my arm tightly to her bosom even so.
“You got it up all right, Louis,” she whispered closely in my ear. “You made her pregnant.”
It wasn’t possible. That’s all I could think. I couldn’t speak. I felt lost in a deluge of shame and misery. Then the atmosphere was broken. Walter was about to make a speech.
“Friends!” He shouted at first, then one of the crew gave him a microphone. The rabble in the tent all calmed down and focused. He continued.
“Many wonderful things happened to me tonight. I have been back onstage with my old friends from the Stand.”
There was a loud cheer.
“Together we have performed the most difficult piece of music, something none of us ever thought we could ever do. And the images and inspiration came directly from the audience, my soundscapes, that you all—and especially my dad, Harry—brought to life.”
Another huge cheer. Harry and Sally were holding on to each other as though they were on a sinking ship but still smiling. Sally kept looking at me, and I thought I saw her shaking her head slightly.
Walter went on: “And then Floss and I had the most incredible piece of luck when the daughter she gave away for adoption when she was nineteen years old turned out to be our Molly from Dingwalls!”