They call her Dana (45 page)

"Sure you don't want some?" she inquired.

I shook my head.

"It's delicious. The fillet of sole was, too. I don't know when I've had such a meal. When you're traveling all over the South with a third-rate theatrical company, the food you get is hardly first-rate."

"Your cousin's company is third-rate?"

' 'Second-rate, perhaps. Jason's very ambitious and has dreams of becoming a great theatrical entrepreneur, but the plays he produces—well, let's just say they're crowd pleasers. The crowds we get are rarely very discriminating. Jason writes most of the plays himself, and most of them are flagrantly cribbed from sensational French novels and English penny dreadfuls."

"Still," I said, "it must be a fascinating life."

"Life upon the wicked stage is frequently hazardous to your health and always stressful—but it's a living and, I must confess, quite a lot of fun if you don't mind towering temperaments and constant backstage feuding. Jason is not the most amiable of men—though he's a dear, actually. You just have to know how to handle him."

"Did you grow up with him?" I asked.

Laura nodded, pouring herself another glass of champagne. "I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle when my parents

died—I was five years old at the time. Aunt Megan was an actress and Uncle James managed the theatrical company—just as Jason does now. I grew up on the road, so to speak, living out of a trunk, traveling from one town to another, staying in wretched hotels and frequently sleeping in train stations. I loved it, of course, even though my aunt tried to keep me from the other actors and wouldn't dream of letting me go onstage. Jason is ten years older than I, and he was already taking an active role in the company. He considered me an insufferable pest. I was always tagging after him, and he was always pulling my pigtails or locking me up in a closet."

*'How dreadful," I said.

"I worshiped him," she confessed. "He was dashing and devilishly handsome even as a teenager. The women in the company spoiled him rotten. Those who didn't want to mother him wanted to get into his pants—a great many did. We lost so many ingenues because of Jason, a number of leading ladies as well. He was an unprincipled young rogue—still is, for that matter.''

"Your aunt finally let you go onstage?" I asked.

Laura shook her head. "She was a dear, straight-laced lady, even if she was in the theater, and she was determined I was not to be corrupted by the riffraff backstage. Jason she couldn't do anything about, but me she was going to give a proper upbringing. I was sent away to a number of schools—I hated every one of them, missed the company dreadfully. I finally ended up in a very refined finishing school in New England. It cost the moon, but Aunt Megan managed to pay the tuition. I hated it worst of all."

She smiled a wry smile, remembering.

"I'm afraid I had already been corrupted by the riffraff. I was 'fast' and not at all 'refined.' The other giris, prim, prissy blue bloods that they were, looked down their patrician noses at me. I was constandy rebelling and defying authority. I was miserable, but there was some consolation. A man, of course. I was sixteen and quite mature and rather pretty and much more sophisticated than the other girls. He was twenty-seven, our music teacher, and I thought he was the most exciting man I'd ever met. He was handsome and sensitive and moody and, I thought, wonderfully sympathetic."

"You fell in love with him?"

"As only a naive sixteen-year-old can. I was convinced it was love everiasting. We would run away together and get married

and I would be- his inspiration and he would compose great symphonies and we would live happily ever after. It didn't work quite that way," she said rueftilly. "I let him have his way with me and it was utterly divine and I thought I was ever so grownup, ever so superior to the other girls, smug little ninnies who didn't know beans about 'real life.' /found out about real life a couple of months later. We were discovered."

"What—what happened?"

"My handsome, moody, gifted Knight in Shining Armor informed the authorities that / had seduced him. He lost his job anyway. He left without so much as a polite good-bye to me. I was expelled, in total disgrace and terrified I might be pregnant. I wasn't, fortunately."

"Did you go back to your aunt?"

"I was too humiliated to face her," she said. "I ran off and managed to get a job with a rival theatrical company, even shabbier than Jason's—he was already managing it by this time. My uncle was in poor health, had handed the reins over to Jason."

Laura finished her champagne and set the glass down, a thoughtful look in those lovely sapphire-blue eyes. A faint smile lingered on her lips. After a moment she sighed, refilled her glass and gave me a wry look.

"So I was on the stage at last, in a rival company. I was dreadfully inexperienced, but I learned. I did dozens of small parts, gradually improving, going from abysmally bad to fairly competent. I still hadn't learned my lesson about men," she continued. "There was another one—an actor, God help me. Whatever you do, love, never, ever, under any circumstances, get involved with an actor. They're totally irresponsible and completely incapable of any genuine emotion, a pack of posturing egomaniacs who spend all their free hours admiring themselves in the mirror.''

I couldn't help but smile at her vehemence on the subject.

"I had been with the company for over a year when our new leading man arrived. He was even handsomer, even more exciting than the music teacher. I was eighteen by that time, extremely ornamental and receiving considerable attention from the eager chaps who hang around the stage doors. I ignored them all. Once burned, you stay away from the fire. Right? Not me, love. Like an idiot I went rushing straight into the flames. Oh, I was really in love this time—at least that's what I told myself.

The son of a bitch could charm the birds off the trees, and he had me eating out of his hand."

"How did it end?"

"It ended with me out on my ass, love. His wife arrived. He hadn't mentioned a wife. Wifey dear was nobody's fool. She saw what was going on immediately. She marched into the manager's office and informed him that I was to be dismissed instantly or she'd haul hubby back to Tbscaloosa, Alabama. Guess what? I was dismissed instantly. The company moved on to the next stop, and I was stranded in Macon, Georgia, without a cent to my name and owing two weeks' rent for my room in the fleabag boardinghouse we'd been staying in. The manager was supposed to take care of that. He didn't.''

"What did you do?"

"I charmed the landlord and wrote to Jason. My uncle had died of the flu the year before, and Aunt Megan had passed on a few months later. I'll always believe she died of a broken heart. I wasn't at all sure Jason would be willing to help me."

"Did he?"

Laura nodded. "He came to Macon, paid my bill, called me every kind of a fool and shook me until my teeth literally ratded. Then he tracked down the company, bloodied the nose of the manager who had fired me and beat the bejesus out of the leading man who had so heartlessly despoiled me—Jason didn't know about the music teacher. Violence dutifully done and my honor revenged, my dear cousin took me back with him to Jackson, Mississippi, where his company was performing Lord Roderick 's Revenge, a thundering melodrama he'd penned the previous summer. The ingenue came down with the hives. I took her place, and I've been with the company ever since."

"And—you got over the leading man?"

"In record time, love. One does. I learned my lesson, though. There've been other men, of course, but I haven't been burned again. A giri soon finds out how to handle such matters."

I stood up and stepped over to the porthole, peering out into the night. The bank was shrouded in velvety black shadow, tiny pinpoints of golden light glimmering here and there. The Mississippi was dull pewter gray now, spangled with silvery flecks of moonlight. The boat seemed to be standing still as the river and bank went drifting by.

"Want to tell me about him, love?" Laura asked.

I turned. "How did you know?"

"I saw the sad, lost look in your eyes this morning. I saw the tremulous smile. I've been there. I know all the signs."

"It's a long story," I said quietly.

"We have nothing but time, love. I've babbled on and on, telling you all about me. I'd like to hear about you, but—I don't want to pry, love. If you'd rather not talk about it, I'd certainly understand."

"There was a man," I said.

And I told her my story. I told her about the swamps and Ma and Clem and Julian, about Delia and the Quarter and how the people there thought me a harlot, an adventuress. I told her about Raoul and my reception at Conti Street, and finally I told her about Charles. Laura sat quietly, her eyes filled with sympathy and understanding as she listened to my tale. My voice broke once or twice, but I carried on, telling her about the house on Rampart Street and the fire and Charles' final words to me.

"So you see, I—I had to leave," I said.

Laura nodded in agreement. "There was nothing else you could do, love," she told me.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone, but—the situation was impossible. Julian must have read my letter by now and he must be desolate, but—I couldn't have married him, Laura. Not after sleeping with his brother.''

"Of course you couldn't."

"I know he won't understand—Charles won't tell him. He'll think me ungrateful. He'll think I—" I cut myself short, staring across the room without seeing. "He'll get over it," I said finally.

"So will you, love. I promise."

"I—I'll go on."

"I'll tell you a little secret," Laura said. "That's what life is all about—going on. Coping. Forging ahead. We're brought up on fairy tales, love, and we believe in them, we believe life is that way, too. It isn't. We all find that out eventually. The weak give up and accept defeat. The strong face facts for what they are and—make the best of things.''

I looked at my new friend, and I knew what she said was true. Her illusions had been lost at an early age, too, as had mine. She had had her share of sorrow and disappointments, yet she had managed to retain her vitality, her warmth, her strength and good humor. She was strong and she was a realist. I admired

her for that. I wished I could be like her. Laura sighed and pointed to the bottle of champagne resting in its bucket of melting ice.

"We might as well finish it," she said.

"We might as well."

"I'll pour. Here you are, love. Goodness, the bottle's almost empty and you've only had the one glass? There, that's the last of it. You know, love, we really should have a toast. Don't you think?"

"By all means."

Laura lifted her glass and smiled again. "To the men in our lives—may they all rot in hell. No, that's too negative. To Going On. Too self-consciously dramatic. How about—to friendship?"

"To friendship," I said.

We clicked glasses and drank. Laura finished her champagne and stood up, striped taffeta skirt rustling. She picked up her bag, set it on the bed and, opening it, began to pull things out: a lovely garnet satin gown, a black velvet shawl, a frock of expensive brushed sky-blue cotton printed with tiny sapphire and black flowers.

"Mind if I hang some of these things up in the wardrobe? I understand we have a charming Irish woman down below who does laundry and presses things for an exorbitant fee. This cotton could use a good pressing, and this taffeta I'm wearing will definitely need a going over."

She opened the wardrobe door and began to hang the garments up, examining some of my frocks when she had finished.

"What workmanship. Corinne's, I'll wager. Am I right?"

I nodded.

"I could never afford to go to a dressmaker like her. Dulcie makes most of my clothes. She's our wardrobe woman, an absolute wizard with a needle and thread and a bolt of velvet. She's sixty, built like a dumpling and takes absolutely no guff from anyone. Jason's terrified of her."

"She sounds delightful."

"I—I have a confession to make," Laura said.

"Oh?"

"I've never had a girlfriend near my own age, love. Older women like Dulcie and Melinda—she's the retired actress I was visiting in New Orleans—I get along well enough with them,

but women my own age don't like me. They seem to find me threatening."

"I shouldn't wonder," I said. "You're so incredibly beautiful, you probably make them feel like drab little sparrows. You certainly make me feel that way.''

Laura looked stunned. '"You? To begin with, love, I'm not all that beautiful—ornamental, as I've said. I make the best of what I've got. But you're the loveliest creature I've ever laid eyes on. Breathtaking is the word, I believe."

"Nonsense."

"Anyway, love, you're the first woman roughly my own age who hasn't wanted to scratch my eyes out the moment she saw me.

"I—I've never had a girlfriend either."

"Like I said earlier, love—it's fate." There was a merry sparkle in her eyes as she took out a purple velvet gown and hung it up. "We were meant to be friends. I already feel like I've known you forages."

"I feel the same way."

She looked delighted. "Really, love?"

I nodded. I smiled. I no longer felt lonely and lost.

The sky was a vivid blue the next morning and the sun was shining brightly as I stood on deck in a soft peach muslin sprigged with tiny white daisies. We had docked before dawn and the gangplank had just been lowered. Passengers strolled leisurely along the deck, enjoying the sunshine, some leaving here at Natchez, chatting with shipboard friends before moving down the gangplank with bags in hand. I moved over to the railing. The docks here at Natchez weren't anything like those in New Orleans. They were much smaller and there was none of the bustling activity, none of the exotic color. Negro men lolled idly on bales of cotton waiting for cargo to be unloaded, and a plump Negro woman in a ragged pink dress was selling coffee and hoecakes at a wooden booth. A sleepy, serene atmosphere prevailed. A number of expensively dressed people, obviously gentry, had come to meet the boat, and they stood around in clusters, talking in lazy drawls as they watched the gangplank for friends or relatives.