by Brian Hodge
Napoleon shrugged with a nervous chuckle. Swiped one finger through the spill on Orvela’s tray, and popped it to his mouth. “A damn shame, this waste of planter’s rum punch, hey? They make it so good here.”
Justin rose, having lowered for a moment to one knee, picking up a glass that had fallen to the area rug, dropping back into it the mint sprigs and fruit. He set it back on Orvela’s tray, the least he could do in atonement by proxy.
“I’m really sorry about him,” Justin said. “He’s not usually like that, he’s just feeling stressed out this afternoon.”
Orvela nodded with a Mona Lisa smile. She looked wholly unruffled by the outburst, a lodestone of dignity inside. She turned again and gave an order for another of the maids to clean up the rest of the mess at their feet.
“You have no need to apologize for him. He does it himself or not at all.” Over her shoulder again: “Tulia, show the other gentleman to his room, then come see me please. Everyone, back to work.”
And like the aftermath of a hit-and-run, when the ambulance at last departs, the hallway began to clear. Leaving Justin with the maid, and Napoleon Trintignant.
“Where’s Mr. Mullavey?” Justin asked him. “Is he even here now?”
“No, mon.” Napoleon looked nothing if not relieved. “He was hoping to be here to greet you, but Orvela tells me he calls with his apologies, he couldn’t leave his office as early as he was hoping. He’ll be here soon.” He looked down at the wet spill on the rug, a big dark amoeba. Grinned. “Destiny, right?”
Napoleon left him with Tulia, who began to lead the way upstairs. He hoped they were giving him and Leonard separate bedrooms, at the very least.
Having some fun now.
Andrew Jackson Mullavey didn’t turn up for another two hours, leaving them time to freshen up, rest from the trip … and, in Justin’s case, lose the Scotch buzz from the limo. Separate rooms it proved to be, with Justin’s a full hallway’s length from Leonard’s. Guest rooms were a floor above the servants’ quarters in a separate wing, and these too were Deep South palatial by any standards.
His room was done mostly in soft tones of green and white. The floor long-leaf pine, burnished to a mellow gleam. In a far corner sat a Louis Phillipe-style writing desk, cherrywood, with legs of curved X’s. Fresh flowers sprung from a green pitcher atop the dresser, and the bed looked as comfortable as a favorite sin. The opened window overlooked oaks and gardens and a lawn cut to golf-green specs; white lace curtains, filtering the lowering sun, fluttered in the breeze. Eyes closed, Justin stood before it, let the wind and humidity wash over him, breaking sweat even as the breeze cooled it, dried it.
This was the sort of place where he would never accomplish a thing, were he to live here. Step through the main door downstairs, cross that threshold, and time slowed to a crawl. Days would seem longer here, and nights eternal. He would wander like a wraith from another age, baked by the sun, basted by the very air he breathed. Languid in sleep and dreams, in thought itself.
He knew right then he would always need a city in which to function.
Dinner was served at seven thirty. Tulia came up for the both of them, Justin and Leonard falling in step together down the hallway. Summoned for dinner — this was all exceedingly foreign. Like he was a child again, only this time under the rule of a patriarch whose word was unquestioned law. The solidly middle-class, Midwestern background had never prepared him for this. Or the peculiar feeling of emptiness. All at once it seemed that growing up this wealthy would eliminate a lot of life’s little day-to-day surprises. Whoever Mrs. Andrew Jackson Mullavey was, he couldn’t imagine some wiseass kid, circa middle school, running up to her and with great excitement suggesting pizza for dinner.
“You back anywhere near human again?” Justin asked Leonard on the stairway to the ground floor.
Leonard massaged his temples with thumb and middle finger. “I took a nap. Took my blood pressure pill a little early. Took a double dose of Tagamet.” He groaned. “I guess I was an asshole, wasn’t I?”
“Flaming.”
“Sony about that.”
“Don’t tell me, I’m not the one you slashed and burned.”
Andrew Jackson Mullavey was waiting for them in the dining room. It was the first Justin had seen of the man since that turnaround meeting in July, and Mullavey greeted them like strayed members of an extended family. Broad smile, arms outstretched as he rose from the table to shake their hands, slap their shoulders, usher them personally into their seats.
“Now aren’t you both a sight to a pair of eyes ready for a relaxing weekend,” he said. “I don’t mind telling you, getting those coffee bags out ahead of schedule must’ve taken a good two years off my life, but don’t you know, we kicked some ass fair and square. We did at that.”
Leonard went from straight schmooze to business. “What’s the latest you hear on your competition? How did Granvier and the Caribe people take it?”
Mullavey laughed heartily. “What I hear, they’re still set for a mid-October release, same as before. That boy’s eating my dust, and I hear tell he doesn’t like it one bit. No sir!”
“How do you hear that?” Justin asked.
“Well,” said Mullavey, drawing it out, wheedling, a man proud of himself and his empire. “I do believe in the exchange of information as a part of free trade.” Plump cheeks aglow, ruddy with prosperity. He grinned and spread his hands wide, let Justin figure out the rest. It wasn’t difficult. Spies were everywhere these days; Justin supposed a pair of remote control eyes could be bought just about anyplace.
“And for the part you gentlemen played in it, I want to thank you personally. Extend my hospitality to you, and if you’ve a mind to accept” — he winked — ”show my appreciation in more ways than one. Let you see what the fruits of your labor have earned you.”
Leonard was grinning right back. “And what would that be?”
Mullavey wryly twisted one corner of his mouth down, wagged one finger in the air. “Patience, Leonard. Patience. Let me just say that this is a gentlemen’s weekend, and my wife is spending hers in Atlanta. And for our first order of business, we’ve got to fill your bellies with the first of the finest meals I daresay either of you has ever eaten.”
Culinary excellence remained to be seen, but the setting was at least appropriate. The dining table, at whose end they occupied only three seats out of eighteen, spanned more than twenty feet in length, with two more of the dark lacquered brass chandeliers over either end. Whether intentional or not, it was easy to feel insignificant beneath this roof.
The appetizer was a seafood gumbo, served by one of the kitchen staff out of a silver tureen. French loaves on the side with butter, real whipped butter, none of that margarine pretense to health consciousness. The feast continued with a saucy trout Marguery, a spinach mousse, and a corn pudding. Everything was obviously cooked by expert hands, the kitchen some unimagined sanctum out of which this ambrosia just appeared. To eat this way on a daily basis was beyond comprehension. People exploded that way, didn’t they? With yellow arteries?
“Either of you eat much in the way of Louisiana cuisine?” Mullavey asked them.
Justin shrugged, figured he’d better say something. He had contributed perhaps ten lines of conversation throughout dinner, Leonard carrying the bulk of it. “I once tried to make blackened redfish,” he said, “but I ran out of shoe polish.”
Mullavey stared at him a moment, what-in-the-hell? written upon his face. Then he broke up, delayed reaction, and across the table Leonard looked as if he’d just relieved himself of a sudden sharp gas pain.
“I just might steal that line, Justin, next meeting I have with my seafood VP.”
As his chuckling mirth dwindled, you could see Mullavey’s mind chart right back to his original thought-line.
“A man has to admire the Cajun philosophy when it comes to cooking, that’s one of the things I love about this state. If it runs, flies, or swims, and they can catch it, then b
y God they’ll call it lunch.” Mullavey stretched back into his chair a moment, loosened the buttons of his vest. “A philosophy like that, it takes you back to an earlier time. A better time. A time when you had to be strong and fast and wily, or you and your family went hungry.” Shaking his head in mellow admiration, smiling up at the ceiling, perhaps at the dust of ancestral memories. “You have to keep touch with a heritage like that.”
Dessert, finally, strawberry shortcake. Mullavey exhibited great pride in telling them that he allowed only Ponchatoula strawberries in his kitchen. When the table was cleared, they groaned and Mullavey suggested they retire to his study. He took the lead, and Justin waddled right along with them.
Mullavey’s study was every bit the Southern sanctuary as the rest of the house, and they took velvet seats around a cold fireplace. Sure enough, the gallery of patriarchal portraits hung at the other end, near a vast desk. Five stony faces, including Mullavey’s own.
Justin had him figured for a brandy-and-cigars type, but this time was wrong. Café brülot was his cup of choice, sweet and spicy and as soothing as mulled wine in winter.
Justin kept both hands around the cup, for the comfort of its warmth in the face of a chill he had not expected to feel. Not here, not now, not southern Louisiana in late September. But feel it he did, and if at last he was more relaxed in the presence of the figurehead of the biggest account he’d serviced in years, he no longer cared. It was no triumph, no feather in his career’s cap. The man seemed to like him fine, or at least tolerate the mild eccentricities of his bent — creative type, wordslinger, painter of stolen images with bare-boned scripts — but Justin wanted only to be home. Plastic microwaved convenience meals would win over this bounty hands down, so long as April was there.
Sunday seemed very far away.
This weekend would be the longest they had been apart since before marrying, since his return from the Keys. It would pass in time, he supposed, this ache of separation. Some future day, a week might pass, two, three even, with a thousand miles between, and they might ride it out as easily as an errand into the next room. It seemed inevitable, couples just seemed to end up that way, and while he sat listening to one of New Orleans’s wealthier sons talk about his life, Justin knew this was the last thing he wanted to happen, to even acknowledge. Let this bittersweet ache remain forever, close to his heart, please — anything but the alternative of ruts and bland domestic ritual, of take-it-or-leave-it love.
It seemed very pertinent a matter all of a sudden.
Because Andrew Jackson Mullavey had just gotten around to unveiling why he had his wife off weathering the weekend in Atlanta. When the wife’s away, no doubt the gentleman will play.
“I’ve taken the liberty of making sure you’re not without a certain degree of companionship this weekend,” Mullavey said. “Just my little way of saying thank you.”
Justin had thought he’d heard a car, out front, distantly, a few minutes ago. And when Mullavey left the den for a moment, then ushered the two women in, there was no mistaking the intentions. These two were professionals, all the way, and if their high heels had ever clicked along a city street, it was only from a hotel door out to a waiting driver.
“Good night, gentlemen.” Mullavey took his arms from around the women’s shoulders and gave each a playful swat on the bottom. “I hope you don’t think me rude, but I’ll be taking my pleasures elsewhere tonight. So enjoy yourselves, with my compliments … and I’ll see you for breakfast.”
Gone, out the door, and even his footsteps were soon swallowed by the house. While these two, newly arrived, looked far more in control of the situation than Justin figured he or Leonard must have appeared. Although Leonard was on the quicker road to recovery of senses and charm — account rep, a salesman by any other name, he had the tools to spare. He rose to greet them both, and wasted no time zeroing in on his obvious preference, the busty woman of chestnut hair and tight blue Dior dress who said her name was Terri. The long-limbed blonde named Gretta was Justin’s by default, and if she was miffed at being passed over by Leonard, she didn’t show it. Professional demeanor. Justin looked briefly into her eyes, boring for soul, and saw the actress inside. Her choice of parts limited, but wow, was she good at those she won, and her delight at ending up Justin’s playmate seemed almost genuine.
That moral quagmire, here it was yawning right in front of him again. Life was cruel sometimes, in what it dropped into your path. Prostitutes, discretion, and hormones, such a potent combination. Marital fidelity was alive and well as an academic concept, but this was trench warfare. He had no doubt but that this Germanic Swede, or whatever she was, could twist and ride him to stellar heights. And given that his last thirteen months — not to mention the theoretical rest of his life — had been spent in exclusivity with a smallish Amerasian, the aesthetic draw to such a different partner was powerful indeed.
Advisory devils perched upon his shoulders, while their angelic counterparts chattered in frantic competition.
Shit. This was no-win. Doing the right thing could leave you feeling like such a lame weenie sometimes. Which at least gave him an idea for a semigraceful way out of this.
Justin rose from the velvet chair, found Gretta was, in her heels, as tall as he. What would she look like horizontal, or reclining on one elbow, and forget it, better wipe that mental slate clean if he didn’t want to backslide straight into love with an improper stranger.
“I’d only embarrass myself,” he said, with all the regret in the world and an apologetic, what-can-I-say? pat of his crotch. “Old war wound, sorry. You understand.”
Gretta blinked. Leonard turned his head sharply to stare in confusion. Terri didn’t seem to care.
There was at least one thing the power of surprise had going for it. You could buy yourself time to walk calmly out of a room before anyone had a chance to argue.
Justin kept walking. Always leave them wanting more.
He killed off the rest of the night in solitude, a walk outside until he felt like going to bed and putting this day behind him, only one-and-a-half more to go.
Louisiana by night — this was new to him. Out behind the main house, the trees looked bigger than hours before, harbingers of added menace. The Spanish moss looked more ragged, and now he thought he could smell the river somewhere nearby. An ancient brown scent of mud and catfish, of secrecy and sin. History smelled like this, between the lines.
He found a back stairway to take him up to the second floor. A few steps warped by seasons of humidity creaked beneath his shoes. He wondered at this house’s age, how many generations of properly bred gentlemen had met in its den to exchange dollars, acreage, crops. Had any accidental deaths been ordered to befall some competitor? Any marriages arranged, a planter’s daughter just one more commodity with which to consummate a deal with another family? Had any duels been fought, by saber or revolver, upon its lawn? Any skeletons resting uneasily in chambers of earth and roots?
Bedtime. He stripped to his underwear. Turned out the bedside lamp and lay beneath a kiss of night air. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. No closer toward sleep than he had been at high noon.
He thought he’d beaten insomnia last year, finally. Put behind him that chunk of his life, a year or three — who counted when the cocaine was always there for benefits both nasal and financial? — when sleep was just some pesky thing grabbed between videos. His own personal treadmill, he had built it himself, can’t close my eyes or I’ll miss something.
By conservative estimate, Justin had been lying there for over ninety frustrating minutes when he heard the creak outside his bedroom door. His body tightening, testicles crawling up closer, and he quietly rolled to face the door. Eyelids at half-mast, playing possum as someone’s hand dropped to the doorknob, he could hear every sound—
Knob turning—
Window, he could spring out of bed, be out the window in two seconds and worry about the landing later, just say the word—
The door opened
, and strange that he hadn’t noticed earlier how well oiled the hinge must have been, for all sound had been sucked into the door, the walls, the house itself. Assassins in the night, surely they would never be dissuaded by the bursting of his heart.
A moving shadow, come on in, and then he saw her standing beside the bed. By moonlight, she was quite the Nordic goddess. That she had presumably come for something far less sinister than his imagination’s first tangent was little relief.
“Couldn’t sleep either, Gretta?” His voice sounded shockingly loud in the room. All that wood.
“Oh. You’re awake.” She actually sounded startled.
He sat up. “What do you want?”
“I thought I might … you know … slide in next to you and, umm, change your mind. You didn’t give me a chance downstairs.” She wore only the sheerest of underwear now, probably had a fat expense account with Victoria’s Secret, and she wasn’t making this fidelity business any easier. Disease, take it for granted she had some venereal surprise lying in wait. “Sleepy men are more reasonable. What’s our problem?” Sitting on bed’s edge then, her eye contact unflinching as she ran a hand beneath the sheets. Checking, what did he wear to bed? Ah, undies. He drew a sharp breath as she disproved that war wound lie once and for all.
And why did she sound as if she were making this up as she went along? Definite limitations to her acting range. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to being turned down. What kind of numb-nuts passes on the offer of no-cost, no-obligation corporate perk carnality?
He stopped her hand. “There’s no problem. I just made a promise to somebody. I used to break so many promises to people that I want to see how it feels keeping a few.” He pushed her hand aside, and oh, had she ever made a liar out of him. The erection was raging. “Look, I’ll tell Mullavey you tried, you earned your pay. How’s that?”
A momentary flash of glaring eyes — apparently she wasn’t fond of being reminded of her station in life and vocation. Not the overpowering seductress after all, and perhaps that scared her, the thought of losing her edge. Let it. He’d never had much use for anyone, male or female, who took it for granted their looks would get them the upper hand every time.
