Cajun Waltz (14 page)

She noticed her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Encased in floral fabric, her breasts impended downward like unpicked fruit below her plump arms. Her suit was cut low under her armpit, revealing a crevice of flesh where the flank of her breast rose off her ribs, a pillowy peep she hadn't noticed in the dressing room mirror when she'd tried on the suit. Lulled by whiskey and solitude, she bent forward to study herself. Within her suit's central V her breasts were dotted with moles. Sexy, she thought, and shimmied her shoulders to ripple her bosom in a sour version of vamp.

She fixed another drink. Yawning, she looked forward to lounging in her room before dinner. She wanted to lie naked under the ceiling light and pretend a listening bug was hidden there; she wanted to give it something to listen to. She rolled her drink across her forehead, clinking it against her dark glasses. Shutting her eyes, she felt as bodiless as a wish.

“Was a greenhead mallard, I'm tellin' you.” The voice punctured her reverie. “Not my fault your damn dog couldn't find it.” Two hunters had entered the pool enclosure and were approaching the bar, peeling off gear as they came.

Delly froze, a floozy drinking alone in the afternoon—in a swimsuit no less, tits and ass spilling out like cake dough overflowing the pan. She crossed her arms and shrank into herself. Behind her sunglasses she lowered her eyes, as if not seeing the men meant they couldn't see her. She'd noticed a little, however—black hair and brown, large body and lean, a broad clean-shaven face and a narrow bearded one. The big fellow took a stool in front of her. His palms flattened on the bar. Wedding band, gold watch. “Tom Collins,” he said. “Mixer, no booze.”

She turned from the front of the bar to the glittery shelves behind. A tremor of self-consciousness disoriented her as her gaze climbed the rows of bottles.

“Higher, sweetheart. Way up top.”

A bottle of Collins mix was just within reach as she stretched on tiptoes. The pull of her suit riding up her behind told her she was being played. The mirror held a distorted image of the guy ogling her ass. She dropped her hands to her sides and adjusted her suit with the grace of an Olympic diver. She thought of smashing a bottle and twisting it into his face. She thought of daring him that he could have her for ten dollars.

“There's one open right here,” the other man said. Clearly the younger of the two despite his full beard, he joined Delly behind the bar, handing her a bottle of Collins mix and helping himself to a beer from the ice chest on the floor. She felt silly and grateful for what seemed his deliberate rescue attempt. Intent on making a getaway, she tried to slide past him in the tight space, her eyes still averted. He turned abruptly and spilled beer down her front. The icy liquid splashed her thighs and she recoiled with a squeal, tits bouncing like a tavern wench. He stammered an apology.

“It's okay,” she mumbled to his legs. “Happens all the time.” She wished she was dead. Nothing was worth another second of her pathetic skulk through life.

“No harm done,” said the other man. “I'll lick it off.”

“Whoa, cowboy,” said the guy beside Delly. “Mind your manners.”

She regarded the one across the bar—gorilla shoulders and a face childlike in its mildness. “
Dog!
I oughta be horsewhipped for that.”

She wanted out of there, forget the retorts she could have launched on a better day. She sidestepped from behind the bar and started for the exit.

“Make him buy you a drink, at least.”

This, from the younger one, seemed even coarser than the other's “lick it off” comment. Sure, share a drink with the swine after what he'd said, throw
all
self-respect out the window. Summoning a sneer, Delly looked directly at the bearded man for the first time. A quake shuddered through her, scalp to knees.

It was him.

*   *   *

R.J.
HADN'T LEARNED
of his stepmother's death until many days after it happened. Like everyone who wasn't there, he believed it a blameless accident. He knew his father's grief would be bitter; the passions Angel had provoked in Richie would go as dark as they'd burned bright. For himself, he'd come to terms with his absurd infatuation if not with all its consequences. His drunken tangle with Frank Billodeau's daughter was harder to process. Nothing about that night made sense then or now.

Public sympathy for the death of Richie Bainard's wife had benefited R.J. in that few were inclined to mount a serious manhunt. Prosecutors vowed to pursue the fugitive to the ends of the earth but the police dragged their feet from the start. R.J. remained at large with minimal effort. Rumor put him in Canada, Mexico, on an oil rig off Corpus Christi, and behind the counter at a Baton Rouge gun shop. Now here he was sipping beer in his father's hunting lodge two hours' drive from where his accuser claimed he'd raped her like a beast.

Delly gathered her wits. Clearly he didn't recognize her behind her curly red hair, sunglasses, and extra pounds. When he asked her to let him and his friend make amends for their ill manners by buying her a drink, curiosity trumped fear and she said okay. She gave her name as Ethel, after Lucy's sidekick. We're Richard and Alvin, they said.

R.J.'s eyes were electric blue. It was a detail she'd worked hard to forget. The image of his downturned mouth likewise returned despite the beard now concealing it. Sitting at the table across from him, she forced herself to look square at his face. He'd hit her that night to shut her up, a rap on the temple that had seemed to burst her eardrum like a jabbed stick. Letting the memory wash through her and keeping calm in its wake emboldened her to press on. “How was the hunting?” she asked.

“Fair,” R.J. said. “Do you hunt, Ethel?”

“I wouldn't care to kill living things.”

He laughed. “Me neither, come to think of it. I shoulda stayed home and got a normal job.”

His friend shot him a look.

Delly asked, “Where's home?”

“Wherever anybody else is buyin',” Alvin cut in. “Another round?”

Delly knew she should get out of there for the good of her soul. R.J. tapped a cigarette out of his pack and offered it to her. She shook her head more to clear her mind than decline a smoke. He lit up and laid his Ronson on the table, its chrome shiniest where his thumb touched. He wagged his empty bottle and asked her to get him another beer. She did.

Returning, she joked about getting tipped as a waitress, drawing a smile from R.J. that cut lines around his eyes, gratifying her with the promise that even he would get old and die someday. She threw her head back and drained her drink. R.J.'s friend Alvin used the moment to put his hand inside her thigh.

R.J.'s conversation turned to babble at once. His smile turned leering and foul, a jack-o'-lantern let rot on a doorstep. She glanced down sluggishly to check if the table was glass-topped and therefore could let him see this pig feeling her up below the ashtray and coasters. His seeing would make it worse. The violation. The way she didn't react when Alvin's hand moved higher.

The table was cloth-covered. R.J. couldn't see. Seconds passed while the room spun. Alvin's hand caressed her, its try at seduction more repulsive than had he just clamped her flesh like a starfish engulfing a clam. Did R.J. detect what was happening from her frozen expression, a glaze of stunned submission that he'd observed before on this girl whose face he'd forgotten? I'm yours, did it mean? Come ahead? Please stop? He'd been the mature one that night on Heather Lane, the one with strength and experience. She'd depended on him to tell her what she wanted. She'd depended on him to be kind.

Disgust welled up in her. She stood, said incoherent good-byes, and stumbled in a daze out of the pool area and down the hall to her room. She was shaken but not tearful. She'd pushed the game to its limit, by choice. That made all the difference.

*   *   *

S
HE COLLAPSED ON
her bed in her bathing suit. A sort of sleep came. She woke in panic over Marjorie's whereabouts. The room's walls were painted dark brown to help guests fall asleep early. There were twin beds side by side, and for a doorstop a heavy kiln-fired jug that probably once held homemade liquor. She heard her stepdaughter singing in the bathroom and fell back with a groan on the mattress. “Fiona, time please?”

“Almost cocktail hour. Live it up.”

“Not funny. Um, did you see Marjorie anywhere?”

“She's fine.” Fiona poked her head around the door. “I never saw you drunk before. You were goofy.”

“I had two drinks.”

“You wobbled.”

“Possibly.”

“Better get ready if you're comin' to eat. The dining room has a jukebox and it's not all square either. It has Elvis Presley. Joey loves Elvis.”

“The devil's music.”

“Don't be a spaz,” Fiona said. “Everyone knows you love it.”

Delly had wine with dinner but couldn't face her food. It was just her and the youngsters tonight. Corinne and Donald stopped by the table. They'd come in from the marsh at two, slept till sundown, now would skip dinner in favor of a local gin joint. “Behave,” Corinne told her kids. “Delly needs to relax this weekend.”

The menu was hand-printed on little cards. Fiona complained about the selections and Joey razzed her, their banter grating on Delly with its pretend bickering and cutesy gibes. At least Fiona wasn't dressed like a whore tonight. And Joey? Delly studied him through the candlelight. Eyes avid, head cocked intently to the pretty girl beside him—for an instant he resembled R. J. Bainard the night she'd first met him. The vision incensed her. She leaped to her feet but quickly reoriented herself as a spinster nanny, forlornly soused, dining with adorable children.

“You okay, Miz Franklin?”

“A little seasick, Joey.”

“We're on land,” Fiona said.

“Barely.” Delly's chair creaked under her weight as she sat back down, more cause to feel just great.

Someone cued up the jukebox and “The Great Pretender” came on. The dance floor filled. Fiona and Joey got up and soon were whispering mouth to ear as they swayed. His hand rode low on Fiona's back, fingers tapping her rump in rhythm. Delly's husband, the few times she'd straddled him, used to press down on her tailbone like a jockey pressing a horse's withers to drive it to peak performance. She'd told him it felt good after the first time he did it. It became his foremost sex technique, wheeled out like a reliable casserole, making her wish she'd never mentioned it.

She reached for her wineglass. She'd drunk more today than in years. Tipsy in the afternoon, passed out at sundown, tipsy again at night. “Me and you, what say?” She froze at the voice at her ear, knowing at once it was R.J.'s friend. The man turned to Marjorie. “Help me out. Tell your mama don't be shy.”

“She's not my mama.”

“Don't talk to him!”

“Dog,”
he said. “Gimme a chance. My own children think the world of me.”

“And your wife?”

“In heaven, poor thing.”

“Still with the ring.”

“Sentimental. Woman was dear to me.”

“Don't Be Cruel” came on the jukebox. Marjorie urged Delly to dance with the man.

“All three of us,” Alvin proposed. “We'll start a conga line.” Somehow Delly wound up on the dance floor with him while Marjorie bopped in reassuring proximity. “Don't be mad, Ethel,” he said to her over the music. Ethel? The alias threw her briefly. “Only way I know is head-on.” He towered over her, moving to the music like a football lineman, swaybacked and muscle-bound.

“You were disgusting this afternoon,” she said.

“You gave me fever.”

“I'm gonna sit down now.”

“Please. I'm a nice man. Don't know a soul around here, is all.”

“What about your guide?” She gathered her nerve. “He's a friend, looked like.”

“He's nobody's friend.” The song ended. “Good-bye, Ethel.” Alvin bowed to her. “I leave tomorrow.”

“A pity.” The words popped out like a goose bump. Delly saw Marjorie return to their table and Fiona and Joey slip out of the dining room. Little registered beyond the heat in her face. She managed a question. “Whatsa matter, hunting no good?”

“It's all right for mallard and pintail. No canvasback, though.”

“How is killing one bird different from killing another?”

“Canvasbacks are rare. Rare makes it special.” Her focus retracted from distant points to the curious figure before her. He seemed more gnomish than apelike now, a lackey whose cardboard gentility was a clue to the company he kept. “Special,” he said, “means I'll cherish it forever.”

They were alone on the dance floor. The clatter of busboys created an insulation in which the couple lingered unguardedly. She thought to herself that this man was a widower doomed to pick-up lines and lame come-ons. Yet he knew things about R. J. Bainard that Delly wanted also to know.
Nobody's friend?
It was music to her ears. She said to him, “A man oughta take time if he's after special birds.”

“I got time. Till tomorrow mornin', anyway.”

“Lucky me,” she said. “Lucky you.”

*   *   *

T
HE SCARIEST PART
about what followed was that she saw it coming and still couldn't stop it. If anything, the apprehension of danger sharpened the shock when it hit, a faint foreboding preceding the blow like a whisper preceding a scythe.

The kids had gone to their rooms. Delly and Alvin strolled to the pool enclosure to get a drink at the bar. Its moisture-smeared windows framed a night view of the marsh, a soupy blackness under a sky riddled with icy stars. She felt as if she were with an uncle she didn't know well, a fellow black sheep with whom she shared a dislike of the rest of the family. There were some empty chairs outside the sauna. He pulled two close together. “You're pretty.”