Lovesick (12 page)

“I can see that I am making you nervous,” said Wadena. “I will expect you when you finish. I am on the third floor—Room 307.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, trying to sound nonchalant. “I will be there directly. As soon as I am finished.”

When Virginia was alone, she went to the sink where Butcher had placed the dirty pots and baking sheets. She turned the cold water on full and held a clean towel under the running water, which she used to wipe the sweat from her neck and face. How cool and refreshing the cloth felt. She covered the pâté with a bit of tin foil and collected the items George had left behind, his coat, a knife. She was in a mess she knew, but she also knew that she was not one to let mere circumstance determine the course of her life. Something would come to her. A solution. A way out. It always did. There had been Henry Yeager when she needed him to help her out of a pickle. And then George. Just when things looked their most bleak. She needed some time. She would talk to Wadena. Size up the situation.

She turned out the light in the pastry room and made her way through the darkened kitchen to the service elevator.

Wadena opened the door to the room as soon as she knocked.

The room was larger than Virginia's—a suite. There was a settee and matching wingback chairs. Wadena motioned to them. Virginia sat, Butcher's jacket folded over her hands like a muff, as Wadena poured a drink for each of them. As she positioned herself in one of the wingbacks, Wadena lit a cigarette.

Virginia sipped the cool drink, the alcohol soothing her nerves.

“Makes things easier, doesn't it?” Wadena said.

“Yes,” said Virginia. “It has been a very long day.”

“Well,” said Wadena. “I have a whole pitcher of 'em. Drink as much as you want. Ain't no one here but me and you. We have all night to get this mess sorted out.”

“Where is your girl?”

“My maid? She stays down at the colored hotel. Doesn't yours?”

“No,” said Virginia. “She stays with me.”

“Oh,” replied Wadena. “Maybe that's where you developed the habit. I mean sleeping with the help, my dear. It doesn't get much more common than that.”

“It's not like that,” said Virginia. “It is not what you think.”

“I don't give a crap what it
is,
” said Wadena. “All I care about is what it looks like—what it means. The two are rarely consistent.”

Virginia thought of the deception she and George had engineered. “Yes,” she said. “I think I know what you mean.”

“No, my dear, I don't think you do. For example, why does everyone refer to Clayton Claiborne as colonel? Was he in the war?”

“I don't know.”

“It was a nickname that came from his time at boarding school when he was appointed to some piddly-ass position of authority because of his family's wealth. The way I heard it told is he was such a bossy-pants that everyone just started calling him Colonel Claiborne as a joke. But he liked it. Nurtured it. Encouraged people to call him that. And now, ask anyone about Colonel Clayton Claiborne, they could tell you which battles he fought in. Hell, he will probably be buried with full military honors when the time comes. The fantasy he has wielded for himself has become the truth.”

“What is it you want?”

“Well, that is pretty simple, don't you think?” Wadena blew a puff of smoke up into the room where it was caught by the breeze from the ceiling fan. “I want to win this contest. Become
The Lady.
Won't that be a hoot? I know you want that, too. But this isn't simply about one of us having our picture on a sack of flour,” she said.

“Yes,” Virginia stammered. “I had an idea of that.”

“What is the one thing we all have in common—apart from the fact that we are all white and not destitute.” When Virginia didn't answer, she continued. “We are all single. Widows, church spinsters, each of us a variation on the theme. Clayton Claiborne is courting a wife. Spinning a new yarn. Plans to present her in all the trappings that his money can buy. And it is quite a bit of money. But surely you knew that already.”

“Not really,” said Virginia. “At least not until today.”

Wadena picked up the pitcher and refilled their glasses. “Do you think these things just happen? That they aren't planned? How do you suppose that Clayton got the idea he needed a wife, that he had even a frog's hair of a chance in politics. You may not be aware, Virginia, but my family is very influential in an organization that has connections to Clayton. They—we—have had an eye on Clayton for a long time. This has all been very well planned. Roland will vote for me. He knows his position depends on it. And the same goes for Jocelyn Hind Crowley. But Clayton sometimes gets distracted. Like a horse that has been let loose without his blinders. You may have cocktails with him, but make no mistake. I will marry Clayton Claiborne. And I will help guide his future. You know the men think they make the decisions, but we do hold the power.”

“But he likes me. I can tell,” said Virginia. “You didn't count on me.”

“Oh, there is always one or two like you in every mix. You know you never really stood a chance. Even before what just happened downstairs. Don't think that you are fooling anyone. Virginia Blankenship, my ass.” She paused. “Yes, I may be loud and vulgar and crass as a tin spittoon, but that's because I can afford to be. I'm the real deal, sweetie. I am named for General Wade Hampton. I have Southern aristocracy on both sides of my family. You may prance around down there like the Queen of Sheba, but I know the score with you. That's what I came to the kitchen to tell you. That I would blow the whistle on you unless you dropped out.”

“You have no proof.”

“I have enough. The rest will be easy enough to find out,” she said. “But there is no need now, is there?”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Virginia.

“You and the nigger downstairs. Tell me, is he the girl's father?”

Virginia put her drink on the table and returned her hand underneath the jacket, where it touched the cool metal of Butcher's knife.

“No,” she said resolutely. “You have it figured all wrong.”

9

boudin noir / blood pudding . . .

“I have to leave now,” Butcher said to Mona. “Come with me. But you have to decide this now, because there is no time.”

“She told you that if I came back, she would tell me.”

“But that was before.” Butcher finished buttoning his shirt. The uniform trousers lay discarded in a heap on the bed near his open suitcase. “The man who owns that hotel is Klan—crazy. I'm not waiting around for him to get wind of me. I've seen them cut a man's pecker off for less.”

“Then you're a coward to leave her,” said the girl.

Butcher grabbed her hard by both arms, pulling her to him. “She will do what she needs. She may be packing a bag as hard as she can right now herself. Or maybe she has already run—left us both to fend for ourselves. She knows there isn't anything she can do. And there isn't a goddam thing I can do to help her either.” He relaxed his grip but still held her. “I have some money. Enough that I can make a life for you. A good life. There isn't anything I would like more than that. But I have to go. You said you wanted to be free of her. I am giving you the chance.”

“It wouldn't be of any use,” she said, breaking free from his grip. “It would always be between us.”

Butcher unwrapped some cash he pulled from his pocket. “Then you will need this. I am heading south, to New Orleans. If you want to find me, come there.”

She held the money in her fist. “Just let me hear from her what she has to say. Let her know that I am going to be okay. Where I will be in case . . .”

“It's not possible.”

“Mr. Butcher, she is all I have ever known. I need to say good-bye to her. And then I will go with you. I will be with you.”

Butcher knew then that he could not leave her. That he would take her back to the hotel. No matter what the cost.

He put on his suit coat and carried his satchel with him as they walked from the boarding house to the hotel. Butcher anticipated every passing glance, but no one noticed them or seemed to care as they walked in the back entrance and onto the service elevator. The hallway on the fifth floor where her room was located was empty, but Butcher did not think it a good sign that Virginia's door was ajar. Perhaps she wanted to leave it open in case Mona returned, he told himself. Perhaps that was it and nothing more.

Virginia had changed from her dress and sat in semidarkness in the chair by the window in her dressing gown, a ring of light from the floor lamp lapping at her feet. Butcher was struck once more by the paleness, the luminescence of her skin. She seemed to him almost a sprite, a fairy from an illustration. If she saw them or heard them, she paid them no mind. She sat stone still, his knife in her lap, waiting—if not for them, then for someone.

Finally, Mona broke the silence. “Ma'am. It's Mona. I have come back. Mr. Butcher brought me back to you.”

Virginia did not look at either of them. “He shouldn't have,” she said. “You should not be here.”

Mona fell at Virginia's feet on her knees. “Please, ma'am,” she said. “He told me you would give me my answer. Do that and then I will leave you if you want, but I have to know.”

“Which is the answer that will drive you away from me?” asked Virginia.

“Is that what you want—to drive me away?” asked Mona.

“What I want,” said Virginia. “I have wanted nothing else since you were born. You have been a curse in my life. Every day, every hour—a burden that I could not shed. Until today, and I thought that I had lost you. Then I wanted you here with me forever. Know this, Mona. If you come back, things will be no different than they are now, no different from how they have ever been. You will be my maid. There will never be anything more than that between the two of us. If you leave, then know that I am a mother who would turn her own daughter into her slave. Know that and be done with me.”

Mona reached to put her head in Virginia's lap, but Virginia would not have it. She pushed the girl aside and stood to face Butcher. “Take her from me. I give her to you. Which is more than you would have done for me,” she said. “I should scream, scream as loud as I can, and let them come and find you here. That would serve you right. Serve you right for selling me out.” She pulled the note Butcher had written from the pocket of her dressing gown. “You would have given them this. Betrayed me with this.”

“No, ma'am,” he said. “I only wanted to make sure I got what was owed to me.”

“Then take the girl. That is your payment. You are paid in full.” She looked down at Mona, crumpled on the floor, weeping. Her face softened for a moment. “Things are different now. Go away from here. They cannot find you here. Go to New Orleans or St. Louis or to San Francisco. I will send you money to take care of her. It is only for a year. Just until the contract is up with Mystic White.”

Butcher did not quite know what to say. “You can't win this thing, Miss Virginia,” he said. “Not after that woman saw us together downstairs. She will tell what she saw.”

“Wadena is dead,” said Virginia. “She won't be telling anything to anyone.”

“Miss Virginia,” said Butcher.

“You are right, though. She said she would tell Clayton Claiborne everything if I didn't withdraw. If I didn't leave. But where would I go, George? Back to Fayetteville? There is no way I could ever just walk away from this—this chance.” She spoke as if naming the steps in a recipe back to him. “And so, when she asked for my decision, I walked over to her and stabbed her in the heart.” She opened her hand to reveal his knife and laughed scornfully. “Deep in the heart of Dixie.”

“Miss Virginia,” he said, “please tell me that you are lying to me.” Though he knew she was not. “There's no way you can get away with this.”

“But there is,” she said. “They will not suspect me. No one saw me go to her room. No one saw me leave. And when they look for her killer, George, they will look for you.”

Butcher felt the skin on his arms and neck turn to gooseflesh. “What have you done?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice even, tried to keep his fear from breaking through.

“I left the jacket to your uniform in the room. That is when I found this,” she said, holding the note in front of her. “Wadena Chastain is dead. And you have no power over me now, George Butcher. I am going to be
The Lady in the White Hat
. I have earned that money. They will take my picture. I will work for that smarmy man for the next year peddling his flour. Then I will leave and become whatever I choose to be after that. Take the girl if she wants you. I am free of you both. Go before I scream and they find you here. It's more of a chance than you were willing to give me.”

“You have chiseled my name on a gravestone,” he said. “I never did anything but ask you to help me a bit. I was never anything but kind to you. And now you do this to me. Why do you want to do that to me, Miss Virginia?”

“You have become expendable,” she said. “Now go. Or I will scream. Do not think I won't.”

However, before she could follow through on her threat, Butcher grabbed her and pulled her face close to his, so close that he might have kissed her. But he did not kiss her. Instead, he wrapped his hands around her neck and as he began to squeeze, he could feel her windpipe slowly collapse under the pressure. Her breath came in short, rasping wheezes, and her face bloomed bright red, almost purple. She dropped the knife, dropped the letter, and fought at the air with her hands trying to grab hold of him, kicked him furiously as he lifted her off the ground attempting to stop the inevitable. Nothing she could do now could harm him. He looked square into her eyes. He wanted to watch her die. Wanted to feel her neck snap like a chicken's when you wrung its head from its body.

There was a sudden cold fire in his shoulder—a burning deep down near his spine like he had been stung by a hornet. He tried to hold on to Miss Virginia, but the pain bit him again and he dropped her hard on the floor, trying to take hold of whatever was worrying him. When he reached up behind his head, he was surprised to find the hilt of his knife lodged there. He grabbed at the knife and pulled it out with a single motion, turning to see who had attacked him. The blade swung out in front of him.

This is the scene that would haunt Butcher for many years to come. What if he had not resisted, but just accepted the blade in his back? What if he had not turned to confront her? What if she had not been standing so close? There was a flash of memory—Johnson Everetts and a honky-tonk just outside of Wilmington and a tall woman in a black dress—just as the knife slid across Mona's throat, slicing a small pink crescent from one side to the other.

She did not scream—could not scream—but merely regarded him with the sad, knowing eyes of a dead animal. He had seen this look before, as a boy on the morning after the first hard frost of the year—slaughtering day—when they would tie the hogs up by their hindquarters, string them up into the air so they could slit their throats in order to catch the blood that his mam would then boil down and make into sausage. Boudin noir, Laurent had called it. The animals would shriek in fear, powerless to free themselves until the swift silence brought on by the stroke of the blade. And then came the blood—a curtain of blood cascading down the front of her dress, pooling at her feet, seeping out to swallow him in it as well. Butcher caught her as she collapsed, her head lolling backward like a marionette. He held her, slipped to the floor so they sat in the ever-growing circle of dark red—hot like fire. Absolute as the pitch-black of a grave.

Virginia howled. Low, guttural, primitive. The sound seemed to Butcher to come from someplace far away, a feeble scratched wail, a yowling like a concertina being crushed. Still, it was enough to bring people to the room, and in a matter of minutes, the night clerk, the police, Clayton Claiborne himself were crowded around them to observe the hideous tableau. At first, the policeman did not want to step into the blood, but Claiborne cursed at him, and so he came over and kicked the knife out of Butcher's reach. Then he and another policeman pulled Butcher up by his arms, handcuffed him, and led him out of the room. As he left, Butcher turned to see Claiborne wrap an arm around Virginia's shoulder, a bloodstained piece of notepaper held tight in his other hand.