Magnolia City (28 page)

She held his gaze. “I can take care of myself.”

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked to the door, hips rippling, the layers of silk whispering to each other over her thighs.

Check your calendar, Hetty,
they seemed to say.

It was all so smooth. That’s what she loved about going out with a Rusk. That short little name gave her instant entrée to exclusive spots like the Cupola Club. When she stepped up to the velvet rope this time, there was no embarrassed silence while they fumbled through the membership book.

“Cooper.” She nodded. “How are you? I’m here for the meeting with the Rusk consortium.”

“Of course, Mrs. MacBride. I’ll carry you back myself.”

The whole procedure was as smooth as the marble floors they walked across as the maître d’ personally escorted her through dim hallways to a secluded suite hidden behind one of the Esperson Building’s massive bronze doors. Cooper offered to take her stole, but she shook her head no, shy about unveiling her neckline. At the table, Lamar waited behind a blaze of candles. As the maître d’ withdrew, Lamar instructed him to bring the investors back one by one as they arrived. The door clicked behind him with finality.

The smoothness turned from silken to slimy. Hetty held back at the door, reluctant to walk over. “A private room?”

“You look disappointed,” Lamar noted.

“I was looking forward to dancing.”

“We can dance.” He pointed to a Victrola. “I even have your favorite record, ‘Charmaine.’ ”

“I haven’t heard that in years.” Another step in.

“What’s wrong, Het?”

“Mac came home tonight.”

“So he knows you’re here?”

Hetty nodded, peering at Lamar. “I had to tell him. He warned me to be careful. He doesn’t trust you.”

“’Course not. He’s expecting me to act like him.”

Hetty sighed and let her eyes wander over both rooms.

“Why don’t you take your stole off and stay a while?” When Hetty hesitated, he said, “I’m not Mac, kiddo.” He got up and pulled her chair out for her.

She sat down but didn’t remove her stole. “All right. Just until the investors arrive.” She was hungry, so they ordered right away, substituting shrimp for oysters at her request. Hetty took a deep breath. There was something perilous in such rich privacy. She didn’t want to examine the label, but she knew it must be very expensive champagne because the bubbles didn’t burn her tongue, they just glided over it like the lightest surf leaving a little foam on a beach.

After they’d popped the second cork and she could see the flush coming into Lamar’s cheeks, she relaxed a little.

“Don’t I get to see the dress I bought you?”

“Promise to stay on your side of the table? It’s low cut.”

“All the better to sway the investors, my dear. It’s all part of my devious plan.”

Hetty let the sable stole slowly slide off her shoulders, revealing the breasts that the sparkling dress showcased so well. Lamar tried not to look at them.

The courses flowed with a quiet grace across the table. Hetty relished every bite. She hadn’t eaten like this since their dinner at The Montrose. Lamar slid his chair along the curve of the round table and put his arm around her, looking down at the dress he’d bought her. He toyed with the slab of onyx that dangled suggestively from her ear.

After dinner, one of the waiters put some music on. The song he’d promised her played, and she had to smile in spite of herself, humming along as the brass floated on the air, the endless sweet melody haunting the room. Lamar matched the falsetto voice of the singer as he crooned the words:

“Play it again!” Hetty squealed, getting up to dance. Her slippers glided across the polished floor, and she began to feel as if she were hovering two inches above it. After a few more songs, Lamar wheeled her around and laid her out like an odalisque on the chaise lounge. She was too intoxicated to resist.

“You broke your promise,” Hetty said, wagging a finger at him playfully.

“I’m a naughty boy.”

He dragged a chair over from the table and watched her as he had many times in the past, his eyes flicking back and forth in a nervous mixture of longing and confusion.

“Why are you staring at me?”

“I always found you so gorgeous, Het. Especially tonight.”

She let her eyes swim, letting his image shift out of focus. “Only because you can buy me the clothes that make me look that way.”

“Let me just have one kiss,” he said, sliding onto the chaise again. “I deserve that much.”

Her arms held him back. “What if the other men walk in on us?”

“Don’t keep me waiting any longer, my Charmaine.” His kisses traveled down her neck, toward her breasts.

“What do you want from me, Lamar?”

“Right now, it’s to see you in those French silks I bought.”

Hetty’s dress was so low cut, she felt as if the tops of her nipples had been peeking out all evening, so it was a simple maneuver for Lamar to hitch his thumbs into the neckline and pull it back. He immersed his face in her cleavage. Then, somehow, before she knew what was happening, he had gotten her breasts out of the black silk bra and was kissing her nipples. They went erect in spite of herself, killing the last bit of hope she’d been holding out.

“There are no other investors, are there, Lam?” She said it as much for herself as for him.

“Why do you want other oil men? You’ve got me.”

“So there’s no consortium of interest owners?”

“I’m the consortium. Consort with me.” He started sucking on her nipples.

“Wait a minute—I thought we needed to sell shares to raise money.”

“We don’t need to do that at Splendora. We have the money to do our own drilling.”

She pulled his head away from her breasts for a moment. “Let me get this straight. You’re going to finance a well for Garret and me?”

He looked her in the eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes to have you. You know how it works in business, Het. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

“I have a feeling scratching your back is going to be a little complicated.”

“No, it’s simple. I’ve booked a room at the Rice. Come spend the night with me.”

She sat up. “You booked a room?”

“Well—I—” Lamar stammered. “Dad keeps one there.”

“I can’t be gone all night. What’ll I tell my husband?”

“Just tell him you met a financier. You won’t be lying.”

“Lamar!”

“Com’on, Het. Believe me—Garret won’t care what you do, as long as you come home with the money for his well.” His mouth headed for her breasts again.

“Hold on, buster,” she said, pulling her bra back up. She slid past him off the chaise and adjusted her dress. He came after her. “Just hold on a minute here.” She lifted her hands to stop him. “I need to visit the ladies’ lounge.”

Hetty wandered through the hallways until she found the powder room. Dance music drifted by from the ballroom. She went into one of the marble stalls and sat down, her head reeling as much from Lamar’s proposal as from champagne. She needed to think clearly for a moment, which was hard to do under the circumstances. She couldn’t pretend to be surprised that there were no other investors. Wily Lamar. Somehow he’d snagged her, as he always did. Why had she come in here instead of just walking out of the club?
Maybe part of me wants to be Lamar’s mistress. Maybe it would suit me—donning the robes of a concubine as easily as this dress I’m wearing tonight. The red running through the black. The luxury. The gossip. And wouldn’t Charlotte seethe when she found out?!
Hetty stood up. Then sat back down. Her husband had made his sacrifice, going to work as a weevil on a rig, killing himself five days a week to learn the business. Now it was her turn to make a sacrifice.
But it has to be on my terms, not Lamar’s. There’s a little detail we have to work out first
. Hetty used the toilet and marched back into the room.

Lamar had stretched out on the chaise, watching her with a crooked smirk on his face.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“That’s my Charmaine,” he said, getting up.

“But there’s one condition.”

“Yep?”

“You have to break up with Char first.”

“Let’s leave Char out of this, Hetty.”

“No way, buster. I can’t have sex with you as long as you’re still dating my sister.”

“You can’t?”

“Of course not, Lam. Break it off with her. Then I’ll go with you.”

“That could take some time.”

“Why? You could call her right now.” When he hesitated, Hetty felt the heat of irritation rising in her heart. She wanted to complete their transaction that very night, before she lost her nerve. She wanted him to acknowledge the sacrifice she was making by giving up something that was important to him, too. She needed to know how he really felt about her.

But Lamar just stood there, looking confused. “I don’t want to do it over the phone,” he said. His reluctance angered Hetty and made the champagne go flat when he poured her another flute.

Her impatience reached a head when he finally drove her home. She directed him to Heights Boulevard, a couple of blocks over from where she lived with Garret. She had been inflamed by the evening and had found Lamar endowed by the candlelight of the Cupola Club with a new aura of power and charm. She wanted something from him. Something to verify the risk they had taken. Something more than his trickster games. She wanted him to lay a claim on her—wanted it badly. So badly that she felt the outcome of the rest of her life could depend on it.

But he only sat there stiffly in the Bearcat, not sure how to proceed. She remembered petting with Garret in the Auburn. Garret always knew what to do at moments like this. She wanted Lamar to act like Garret. Instead, all she got was a lingering kiss on the mouth and a promise to call her once he’d talked to Char. After slamming the car door a little too hard, she had to find her way two blocks home in the dark.

She marched up the stairs, nerves sharpened for a confrontation. Instead, she found cleanliness and quiet. The dishes had been washed; the trash emptied. On the dining table sat unexpected gifts of contrition: red roses and a round blue music box such as one might buy in a dime store. She lifted the lid. It played “I Love You Truly.” The tinny, quavering notes made her anger shift mysteriously into tenderness, touched by the very crudeness of the gesture. When she walked into the bedroom, she was undone completely.

Garret had fallen asleep waiting for her, the covers thrown off. His face was clean-shaven, sober, his black hair slicked back and glossy. A shaft of unshaded light fell across him at an angle from the bathroom’s bare ceiling bulb. She was reminded of a statue from Nella’s tome on classical sculpture—
The Dying Gaul,
the fallen warrior vulnerable yet still so virile in his defeat. That was Garret.

His naked white body in its sleep was marble-innocent, a broken god, so in need of rescuing. She reached out, appalled by the lust she felt for him, but still too intoxicated to resist it. She had wanted Lamar to lay his claim on her, and he had failed. She knew that Garret could give her what she wanted—after all, he was her husband. He had not betrayed her. He loved her truly, like the music box said. Was this whole thing with Lamar a big mistake?

When she woke Garret, he buried his face in the cleavage showcased by her low neckline. She stood, unzipped the heavy sequined dress and let it slink to the floor, then lifted the chemise over her head. She lay down and let her husband remove the black satin bra and panties that another man had bought, moved by the way he clung to her when she was naked, skintight, like a frightened child.

She clung back, slaking her lust on him, wondering the whole time if Lamar would really break up with her sister.

In the three weeks following that night, Lamar began calling Hetty almost every day after Garret left for work. She stretched out on the chaise and waited for the phone to ring, falling behind on her housework and ironing. They would talk for two hours at a time. She snuggled up with the warm fragrant receiver nestled against her ear and fantasized. Would she become his mistress? Is that what this was all leading to? Why not his wife? His wealth lapped at her dreams like azure water. It was vast as an ocean, deep and mysterious. It was the source of his power over her, giving him a radiance that was more than human. He would come for her, she believed, and release her from her poverty. In the Rusks’ private yacht, he would cruise up the muddy Ship Channel and bear her away to some island where the water was clear. She just had to reside on her chaise lounge and wait.

Hetty sat one morning studying the telephone cord, coiled with promise. It rang. After they talked for a while, she got out a calendar to fix a date for their tryst.

Suddenly, she noticed another date she had penciled in. For a moment, she thought that she’d gotten an electric shock off the telephone, such a flash of horror flitted across her nerves. It knocked the receiver out of her hand. Lamar’s voice crackled in concern. But she could only watch, speechless, as the receiver dangled out of control, twisting the wire into writhing tubelike forms.

She felt her hands instinctively cradle her abdomen. Otherwise, she was petrified.

Her period was a week late.

In the last cold quiet nights of February, the air stirred. Hetty listened to it rising around her as she lay sleepless beside her husband or sat alone in the afternoons watching the lace of bare branches flicker across the floor. March set the whole world into motion, blustering winds pulling at her wherever she went. But deep inside her, nothing moved. She waited through two windy weeks and prayed every night to wake up and find a bloody stain on her nightgown, the monthly flow. But as the weather swelled, the stillness inside her only grew deeper. Nothing broke. Nothing was lost. There was a breathless hush at her nub, like the quiet at the bottom of the ocean. A mystery. And a curse.
I can’t be pregnant,
she kept telling herself.
I’m only late. Lamar and I need more time to figure things out. And we’ll have that time. We have to.