Butterflies in Heat (63 page)

"Dammit!" she finally said. Her hair was streaky wet, her features hard. Through eyes half closed to protect them from the lashing rain, she yelled, "Do I have to print an engraved invitation?" Night was moving in. "I couldn't make it any clearer. "

When he didn't speak, she said, "It's obvious you're not interested." Turning her back, she walked rapidly across the rain-splattered, dilapidated docks.

He steadied himself on a piling. Bewildered, he wasn't really understanding what was happening. Temples throbbing, he stared at the rain hitting the sea. Soon Anne would be gone. Suddenly, he was overcome with the feeling she was his last chance. Just as Tortuga seemed to be his last chance when he first got here, now she was the embodiment of whatever it was that drove him here in the first place. No more time to think. He'd figure out everything later.

"Hey, wait up," he called. After the first running steps, he nearly slipped on the rubbery, rotten wood.

She stopped at the sound of his voice. When she saw he was falling, one hand reached out to grab him, even though she was yards away.

That was all he needed to see.

At the Sunset Trailer Court, all was quiet. The storm was over.

Inside Leonora's trailer, Anne, nude, was lying on an orchid chenille bedspread, her head resting in a nest of throw pillows.

At the other end of the trailer, Numie was in the kitchen galley, heating a pot of water on an electric hotplate. Waiting for the water to boil, he studied the fireboard walls and ceiling. Decals made of cutout seed packages and catalogues formed a frieze around the ceiling and windows. A long and narrow wooden shelf held an accumulation of years of living for Leonora's parents: an empty perfume bottle with a pretentious stopper, a miniature birch bark canoe, a drinking glass filled with partially burned birthday candles, and a dime store ashtray afloat with cigarette butts.

A sharp pain shot through Numie's groin. He'd made passionate love to Anne about half an hour ago. The first night with her had been different. Both of them had been clutching, hungry. The love-making between them this afternoon was tender, more complete. He'd greatly enjoyed the first experience, but had found the second time infinitely more fulfilling.

He hadn't concentrated on his feelings for Anne, allowing them to drift into that vague and uncommitted part of his brain. He didn't want her to know just how lonely he was. For that matter, he didn't want anybody to know just how much he needed someone else. A t the same time, he kept secretly hoping she would see through his mask to the man beyond. He knew it was unfair. She couldn't be expected to read his mind-yet he hoped she would.

Back on the bed, he caressed her. Instinctively, her body moved closer to his, though she appeared to be asleep. How long could he lie with her in silence? What could a man who'd always been paid for sex say to her? "This was strictly for free," or something stupid like that. What could he offer her?

When she woke up fully, she smiled gently at him; there was no need to talk. There was perfect and silent communication. Her body was soaked with perspiration, as was his.

Running a bath for them, she insisted he get in first. With a big sponge, she soaked his chest, then, using her long deft fingers she lathered his whole body. Alternatively, she massaged the tired muscles in his neck and back. The warm water soothed every cell, and he lay back against the porcelain, giving himself up completely to her tender ministrations.

Then his own hands reached out and cupped her upturned breasts, squeezing them, but ever so gently. She got into the tub with him; and his hands were sponging and lathering the hidden parts of her body. Slippery smooth, her skin was not only a delight to him, but was arousing him once again.

Lifting her by the waist, he sat her on his lap, impaling her. Bobbing up and down, he let the water swirl around them like waves. He was not only plunging into her empty void, but fulfilling the empty void in himself.

Gripping him around the neck, she kissed him tenderly then almost violently as she neared her climax. For the first time in his life, he realized what a form of communication lips were between lovers.

She was biting his neck, and he was clutching her to him. Then it was over. But he lingered, holding her close, until the water turned cold. Kissing the bridge of her nose and then her eyebrows, he got up and lifted her out of the tub.

He felt closer to her than he'd ever felt to another person. It was a new and exciting experience. He didn't want to overwhelm her, frighten her away. He wanted her to take time, make up her mind without pressure about how much she wanted him and trusted him.

The night was passing quickly, and he was savoring every moment.

Tape recorder on, Leonora was puncturing the early evening air with her beaded cigarette holder. Then, turning off the tape, she got up. Puffing furiously, she was creating a gray smokescreen around herself. She opened the green shutter doors and walked out onto her balcony, overlooking the garden below.

Lips contorted, she let the night air bathe her body.
It
soothed her. Swaggering a bit, she held on to the railing.

It
was then she noticed Numie and Anne crossing the garden. What were those two up to? She'd have to watch them more closely.

Earlier in the evening, one disturbing thought kept crossing her mind, as she played back the tapes. At first, she was mesmerized by the sound of her own voice. Later, she began to worry that her memoirs sounded as if she were playacting at life~reating an illusion, missing out on the actual experience.

Much of her life had been spent trying to carefully preserve an image of herself as she was forty years ago. To do this, she had to by-pass reality. Now, coming out of her fantasy-world, she welcomed the resurgence of life.

She couldn't go on acting young forever. Who could? She'd have to let the vintage Leonora de la Mer out of her cage.

The truth was, she had never been innocently new or absurdly antique. She had always been herself-goading herself into new horizons, falling back when she allowed hurt and weakness to dim her brilliance, but rising again with the strength of angels to some glittering triumph, growing and expanding, forever reaching out to the stars. At times she'd been a disappointment to herself, but she never failed to dazzle her audience. That was because she'd allowed her romantic vision to become a reality in life. At times, the race got out of control, as if she were challenging the wind to catch up, but she always returned to her solid Virgo core, stabilizing herself for a while before flying again.

She was no longer the child who'd married Norton Huttnar. To dwell on the past would only bring about that which she most feared. Would longtime admirers abandon their admiration if they saw what she looked like today? Could she truly face the glare of lights at a talk show? Did interest in her border on necrophilia? Was something missing in her? Something long gone-never to return?

Even more than an unknown audience, she was afraid of herself. Wasn't it better to leave the past alone? Wasn't it reckless to dredge it up again? What awful ghosts waited there to be rediscovered? Did she need the self-inflicted pain?

Her fingers brushed the night air. The answer was clear: she'd be accepted again when she returned to New York. After all, America doted on self-destructive heroines. Such ladies mirrored their own mortality and spoke of the very impermanence of life itself. To see Leonora de la Mer still clinging to life, still surviving, would evoke at the very least a sympathetic response. She was, in the final analysis, a monument to endurance.

Convinced of this, and feeling she had little choice, she was determined to creatively live out the time remaining to her. Let the spotlight shine on her. She was pursuing life to its fiery and incredible ending.

The years had taken their toll. But she was going to be back there on center stage.

The memoirs, a new spring line, publicity, television, public appearances, interviews, her head was spinning.

She was truly alive! For the first time in almost half a century!

In a corner of Leonora's dressing room, Numie was enjoying the second of her blue-wrapped marijuana cigarettes. "I've been listening to your tapes," he said. "They're terrific." He sucked in more smoke. "I didn't know all those things happened to you."

She responded as if challenged. "Of course, they happened to me." She looked at him calculatingly, then was filled with pity. He, who had had nothing. She, who had had it all. "The luminaries of the 20th century have passed through my life. I charmed each and every one with my extraordinary personality." Beneath her self-glorifying description, she felt another Leonora was trying to get out. A desperate woman who
hadn't
had it all. But she kept burying and repressing her. Waving her hand through the air, she said, "My memoirs are my glamorous carnival of memory."

He looked at the tape as if it were an obscene record. "I didn't know you could publish things about people like that.· Fearful of angering her or intruding upon her guarded isolation, he added quickly, "I mean, really personal things."

"It
doesn't matter," she said impatiently. "Many of the people I write about are dead now anyway." She slipped gracefully off her table and moved demurely through the chamber. "Like a supreme Michelangelo, death has chiseled away at my heart with each and every passing."

He was disturbed by her this morning. Her painted mouth, usually so carefully tended to, seemed slashed across her face.

"But I have captured and retained the presence of those I knew," she said. She stopped at her draperies, pulling them back herself, letting in the morning sun. She stood before. them, looking like a holdover from the night who hadn't yet gone to bed. "Everybody written about in my memoirs-my garden of loved ones-will become timeless." Her eyes traveled across the plant life behind the walls of Sacre-Coeur.
It
was like a savage city erected behind black ramparts. "In my memoirs, the light will always be shining."

Head reeling, Numie moved across the room to a stack of papers recently typed by Anne. "You write here-I just heard it a little while ago-that you missed out on the most creative role in your life."

"My worst mistake," she confirmed, holding onto the drapery for support. "I turned down an opportunity to become the First Lady of the land."

He raised his eyebrow, not really sure but what these were the ravings of a lunatic, the wildest fantasy dreams of a disappointing life, a last-ditch attempt to rewrite her history the way she wanted it to be. "I didn't even know you knew .. ."