Nine Women (15 page)

“Feels like fog,” Dan said.

It was low tide; there was the swishing sound of surf and then the long sigh and rattle of shingle drawing under.

“We always sit out here on the last evening,” Katy said.

“Not when it’s raining,” Dan said. “It was raining three years ago.”

“Of course not when it’s raining.”

“And eight years ago there was a hurricane Labor Day. We sure didn’t sit out here then.”

“Oh, Dan, you’re being silly.”

“You remember the trouble I had getting the generator to start.”

“But you did.”

And their house blazed with light on the blacked-out coast.

Katy said, “Do you remember the hurricane that came during daylight—when would that have been—in the fifties, I guess.”

“Fifty-eight.”

“The rabbits were all flattened and spread to the ground, holding on.”

Dan poured more Laphroaig into their glasses. Neither moved to add water. “Pretty tonight,” he said.

“I wonder how many more summers for us.”

“Mother is in her eighties and she’s still here.”

“When the stairs and the slopes are too much for our arthritis, will we build ourselves a little low one-story house?”

He chuckled. “Katy, you do plan ahead.”

“Do you want to be buried at sea?”

He chuckled again. “Now I know you’re drunk. No, I do not want to be buried at sea. And maybe you better watch the booze, love. You’ve got to get through dinner.”

“Do you remember when Blanche set off the fireworks and one rocket landed in Caleb’s jeep.”

“I’ve done this ever since I was a child,” Dan mimicked his sister’s voice, “of course I know how to do it … Then she fell flat on her face trying to run for the extinguisher. And she just lay there, screaming: ‘Fire, fire.’”

“People always drink too much on Labor Day.”

A small stray puff of wind blew from the house. “That smells terrible,” Dan said, sniffing the heavy moist air.

“Let’s see,” Katy solemnly counted, “cigarettes and those nice cigars Onslow smokes. And beer. Somebody must have spilled some, I hope it isn’t in the rug.”

“I smell garlic.”

“That big kosher salami is in the window right behind you. The sour vinegar smell is the platter of sashimi Larry always brings and nobody ever eats.”

Dan held the bottle up to the dim reflection from the house. “Last drink.”

Katy went on itemizing the odors that floated across the porch. “The diesel smell is from Roy’s car, he had trouble starting it. And of course there are all sorts of alcohol smells.”

“Pine trees.” He sniffed.

“Retsina. Somebody brought it, there’s a little left. And I smell a bit of mildew and just a bit of camphor from the mothballs in the closets upstairs.”

“I’m getting hungry,” he said. “Dinnertime.”

“All these years.” Katy lost the rest of her sentence. Something about memories and people. Something like that. She stared accusingly at the glass of whiskey. Whatever was it? No matter. Everything was fine. This house, her wooden shell, protected her. On all sides in the fields and meadows her family lived in their companionate shells, following the same seasons, blooming in June and folding, shutters like petals, in September. Always together. Tribal migration. Tomorrow morning cars would form like a caravan of laden camels, with striped beach blankets for saddlecloths.

“Dan,” she said, “what do you call the wife of the ranking male member of a tribe?”

“Drunk,” he said.

So he knew what she was thinking. Well, that did save talking.

“Let’s go to dinner,” he said.

They brought their glasses into the house and added them to the clutter on the dining room table. Then, leaving the door wide open for better ventilation, they went down the steps, which were again covered by drifting leaves. Comfortably, silently, holding hands, warm finger hooked to warm finger, warm breath venting peaty clouds of Laphroaig into the salt air, to the last ceremonial dinner of the summer.

A
T FIVE-FIFTEEN WHEN
Angela Taylor got back to her office, there were six telephone messages waiting for her.

Dinny, who worked afternoons at the reception desk, said, “Mrs. Marshall called twice. She was getting impatient.”

“
The
Mrs. Marshall?
My
Mrs. Marshall? God.”

Dinny giggled. Mrs. Marshall was old, rich, difficult, and fond of buying and selling houses. Of the fifteen agents at Peerless Realty, only Angela Taylor dealt with her successfully.

“Well,” Angela twirled the note in small circles, “she pays my commission, so I don’t care. How long has she been in her present house, Dinny?”

“A couple of years,” Dinny said.

“A year to remodel, a year to live in it. And now she’s getting restless. Maybe I can talk her into selling this house and moving into a hotel while we look for another. That would make it easier on me.” She flicked through the other messages, began whistling quietly through her front teeth. It was a childhood habit she had never corrected, and it meant that she was extremely pleased.

Dinny said, “Good news?”

“If this is what I think it is, I have just sold that monster of a Boudreaux place. I’ll get on this right now.”

In her glass-walled office cubicle, she kicked off her shoes, wiggled her toes against the soft carpeting. Her back was aching—wrong shoes again. She’d just have to start wearing sensible laced oxfords. They looked dreadful, but she was on her feet too much and the days were just too long … She dropped into her chair and fought off the desire to put her feet on the desk—hardly proper office behavior. She rubbed her face briskly; her makeup had worn off, leaving the skin slightly rough to the touch. It was time to go back to Monsieur Raoul for another series of treatments.

She tossed a half pack of cigarettes into the wastebasket; she would take a fresh one tomorrow morning. She always did. She’d discovered that no matter how annoying or stupid a client was, how devious, uncertain, and utterly exhausting, she needed only to light a cigarette, slowly, slowly, and after the first puff consider the burning tip as if it were the most interesting thing in the world—her annoyance would vanish, her calm return. (Even clients seemed impressed by her solemn ponderous movements.) In all this time—and she’d been a successful agent for twenty years—she’d never grown to like tobacco. She needed it, and it became part of her working day, like the pale pastel suits she wore all year round, very smooth, very well-tailored, with never a pleat or a ruffle on them.

She arranged her telephone messages carefully in order of importance. Took a deep breath and began. It was then five-thirty.

“Miss Prescott, please.” A pause. “Look, Vicky, just wait for me. I think I’m finally getting rid of the Boudreaux house and I’ve got to close before they change their mind. I’m running late, I just got back here, and I’ve got a list of other calls—a good half hour before I can leave. Okay?”

She scarcely waited for Vicky’s answer, she was so eager to get on with the business of the Boudreaux property. The old uptown Victorian house had been on the market for two years, it was way overpriced—and now she had a buyer.

It wasn’t until she’d finished—all calls answered, details for the Boudreaux transaction settled, Mrs. Marshall put off until the end of the week—that she remembered the edge in Vicky’s voice.

Angela paused, hand holding the phone halfway to the cradle. Dear lord, not one of Vicky’s moods. Not when things were going so well and she was feeling so very pleased with herself … She remembered that cool edgy voice … Another mood, probably made worse by that hasty phone call.

She shrugged away her annoyance. Vicky was like that—constantly demanding assurance as if she were a child and not a nearly middle-aged woman.

And that, Angela thought, never would change.

She put her shoes back on, grimacing. She was the last in the office; she switched off the lights and set the burglar alarm as she left.

In the parking lot the summer air was still and hot, the fading light an uncertain pale yellow. She hurried to her car, turned on air conditioner and radio, and took her place in the slow-moving lines of traffic.

Vicky was waiting just outside the shop. Over her head, across the entire second-floor facade, a five-foot signature announced
Victoria.

Angela looked with approval at the large flowing white script. My idea, she thought, and a damn good one. Flash without trash, she chuckled to herself.

There were still people in the shop: late afternoon was always busy. The last customers often didn’t finish until nearly seven, crossing paths with the incoming night security guard.

She’d been right about the location: Angela gave herself another little pat on the back. She didn’t usually handle commercial property, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know a good thing when she saw it. And this location was perfect for an expensive shopping area. She knew it and she worked hard to see that it developed correctly. She even put a lot of her own money into the area—at the start when things needed a push. Eventually she sold out very profitably, so that now the only thing she owned, with Vicky, was the handsome two-story building that housed the dress shop.

Angela brought the car to a stop. Vicky, small, trim, dark, wearing a lavender dress, slipped quickly inside. Bal à Versailles filled the car.

Ever so much the trim businesswoman, Angela thought with a glint of amusement, except for that perfume. Too heavy a scent, too many flowers had died to produce it.

“I thought you’d never come,” Vicky snapped. “Another half hour and I’d have called a cab.”

“And be deprived of my charming company?” Yes, Vicky was in one of her moods; the only thing was to pretend not to see it, to be flip and casual. “A good day?”

“Average.” Vicky wiped an invisible speck of dust from the dashboard. “The shipment from Arnold didn’t arrive, of course.”

“They’re always late,” Angela said. “Don’t I remember some terrible confusion with last fall’s line?”

“You do.” Vicky slumped back in her seat and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know why I keep dealing with them. They are so impossible.”

“Because, luv, you like their clothes, and your customers like their clothes and they pay ridiculous prices for them and you turn a tidy little profit. Which is why you put up with all the nonsense from Arnold.”

“Huum,” Vicky said. And fell silent.

The flowers of Bal à Versailles were as suffocating as smoke.

Except for a single lamp in the entrance foyer, their apartment was dark. “Well now,” Angela said as she flipped the wall switches that filled the rooms with soft irregular patterns of light, “home at last, far from the madding crowd, the bustle of commerce. Now we discover what Madame Papa has left for us to have with our cocktails.”

“Angela, why do you call her that? If she hears, she’s going to quit and she is such a good housekeeper.”

Angela raised her eyebrows. So the silence is over, she thought. How nice of you to make your first words criticism … I was really getting used to the quiet. I really enjoyed whistling and humming to the radio all that long drive home.

But she said nothing aloud. In their fifteen years together she had learned that nothing she could do would alter Vicky’s moods. Sometimes she wondered if Vicky herself controlled them. Sometimes she knew she did not, that they were seizures or spasms quite independent of the body they inhabited.

Ignoring the neatly stacked mail, Angela crossed the living room. “I’m having a drink. You want one?” The curtains were closed, and she wondered if she should open them—there was still a bit of soft twilight in the park outside their windows. No, she thought, drink first. “A drink, Vicky?”

“You’re not going to open the curtains?”

She reads my thoughts. Angela gave a mental shrug … “Later. I need my drink to celebrate. This was a very good day.”

In the small bar the glasses and bottles and ice were waiting. God bless Madame Papa, Angela thought fervently. She filled the largest glass with ice and poured the gin, not bothering to measure. The feel of the bottle in her hand cheered her immensely, as did the small dish of lemon peel. Madame Papa, whose name was Papadopoulous, was a most efficient housekeeper. And, Angela thought, taking the first long taste of her martini, she makes the most marvelous baklava; why didn’t I ever have baklava when I was a child …

She stopped abruptly and laughed out loud. The thought was so silly, so utterly silly. The kitchen in her mother’s house had been staffed by large black women who presided over greasy black stoves that were never cleaned and large black pots whose outsides were crinkled with grease and age until they resembled an alligator’s skin. The pots rattled, half-burned wood spoons thumped against their sides, and the kitchen filled with steam and loud voices and laughter. The food was greasy and heavy and delicious. But, she thought, it wasn’t baklava.

She waved her glass and laughed again.

“What did you say?” Vicky called.

“Nothing.”

“You were laughing.”

So shoot me, Angela thought. But she only said calmly, “I was thinking of the kitchen when I was a child.” She added more gin and ice to her glass and turned back to the living room, where Vicky was thumbing through the mail.

“Here,” Vicky said. “A fund-raiser for Hart.”

“For who?”

“Gary Hart. You know, the next President of the United States.”

“Ah,” Angela said. “Didn’t we just go to something for him? Cocktails in the park with little zoo animals wandering around underfoot.”

“That was cocktails and only twenty-five dollars.” Vicky was studying the heavy card carefully. “This one is two hundred and fifty.”

“Good lord,” Angela said, “he must really be serious.”

“Look at the list of sponsors.” Vicky’s practiced eye scanned the long list. “At least ten are customers. We’ll have to go.”

“I suppose,” Angela said to the ice cubes, “you are going to sell them dresses for that event and you are going to make a lot more than the five hundred dollars it’s going to cost us.”

Vicky said, “I’ll put it in the book. The twenty-second.”