It was awkward, however, standing there while Margaret sobbed out her tale and her husband held her. When Margaret finally fell silent, Riva said, “She won’t go to the doctor.”
“I’m not hurt,” Margaret said, defiance in the husky tone of her voice as she wiped her face.
“You’ve had a shock.”
Boots released his wife and got slowly to his feet. “Best thing, maybe, will be if she goes to bed.”
Margaret clenched her hands in her lap as she stared up at them both. “Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here!”
“Be quiet now,” Boots said. “You just get undressed and lie down.”
“What are you going to do?” Margaret’s brief anger disappeared as she stared at her husband.
“Never mind. Just do as I say now. Maybe somebody can bring you some soup or something for lunch, then you can try to rest.”
“I couldn’t eat a bite.”
“You can try.”
There was an undertone of iron in Boots’s words. Margaret looked at Riva with bitterness etched in her face. “I told you it would change everything.”
Riva exchanged a long glance with her sister but made no reply. After a moment, she turned to leave the room. “I’ll see about that lunch tray.”
She didn’t know Boots was following her out until Margaret called, “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back,” her husband said, then closed the bedroom door behind him as he stepped into the hall.
Riva paused to look back, then walked on as her brother-in-law joined her. It was a moment before either of them spoke, then she said abruptly, “I’m sorry.”
He looked at her and frowned. “What for? It’s not your fault.”
“Oh, not exactly, but I suppose it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t started this whole thing.”
“You couldn’t sit back and do nothing.”
“That’s what I tell myself, but it might never have come to anything, anyway, this thing with Erin and Josh.”
“Then again it might.”
“I guess it’s too late to worry about it now.” When he made no answer, she went on. “You know, I can’t understand why Edison did it. Not that Margaret isn’t attractive, and going to his hotel wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, but why? Why would he do it?”
“A lot of reasons, but mainly because he wanted to.”
“You don’t think it was to get back at me?”
“Oh, maybe a little, but it goes back further than that. I remember him saying once how you three Benson girls were the most gorgeous he’d ever seen, and he’d like to—Well, you know. But mainly, I expect, Margaret was there when the urge struck him. He never did have much control.”
“Why would he take such a risk? It seems so stupid for a man in the public eye.”
“People like that think they can get away with anything. They get the idea they’re above everybody else, that nothing can touch them.”
They had reached the stairwell at the back of the house. Riva stopped and faced Boots. “What are you going to do?”
“What makes you think I’m going to do anything?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
“Edison is my kin. I thought I’d have a little talk with him, sort of in the family.”
Riva looked down at Boots’s fist which was clenched at his side, then up to his face again. “A friendly chat to explain the error of his ways?”
“Something like that.”
“You’ll be careful?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
Curiously enough, she wasn’t worried. Another curious thing was that she had not the least inclination to try to stop him.
“I did think,” he went on, “that I ought to warn you, in case you felt it would make a difference to what you mean to do about Erin and Josh.”
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it,” she said with a frown between her eyes, “but never mind. This is your business.”
“So is Erin.”
She met his steady gaze for a long moment. This man was more her daughter’s father, had had more to do with making Erin the open, outgoing young woman she had become, than any of them. “I suppose she is, and it was foolish of me not to consider it. You should have said something.”
“Oh, well. Margaret was making enough noise for the both of us.”
It was unusual in the extreme for him to criticize his wife. It was an indication of his estrangement from her over what had happened. Riva said, “It’s her nature to worry and try to manage people.”
“I know. I also know you’ve been trying to do what’s best for Erin without making a fuss. I hate that Margaret let the cat out of the bag about her. I mean to do what I can to make sure Edison don’t use what he knows to hurt Erin.”
“Such as tell her?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I think I can convince him that that wouldn’t be smart. About the rest of it, I don’t know.”
By the last Boots meant he could not control how Edison might use the knowledge to hurt Riva. “Never mind about me. I’ll take care of it.”
“I thought you’d feel that way,” he said. “But if there’s anything I can do, any way I can help, just ask.”
“I’ll do that,” Riva said.
Boots nodded, then turned and walked back toward the bedroom. Riva, watching him go, found she meant what she had said. There was more to Boots than she had ever known. As an ally, he might prove more dangerous than an enemy as he went blundering into this affair; still, it was good to have him on her side.
THIRTEEN
“HE USED ME, RIVA.”
Margaret’s voice came out of the dimness of the bedroom where she lay with the drapes closed. Riva sat in a chair beside the bed. Her sister had insisted she stay once she returned with the lunch tray. Margaret didn’t want to be alone. Riva wanted nothing so much as to get away, away from her own guilt and compassion and anger at her sister, and away also from Margaret’s self-pity. Didn’t her sister know that she had been used, too?
Riva said, “Don’t think about it.”
“I have to, I need to, don’t you understand? I’m so humiliated. I thought at first, when Edison let me into his room, that he was attracted to me. He smiled and acted so interested. But then he just—just pounced like an animal. It didn’t mean a thing to him, not a thing. I didn’t mean anything. He had something to prove and he used me to do it. He used me to get back at you!”
“I’m sorry. I never intended to involve you in this.”
“I am involved. I’ve always been involved.”
There was a spent sound in Margaret’s voice. Riva thought the tranquilizers she had taken were finally beginning to work. She hoped so. Still Margaret was not finished.
“I used to think he was something special, so handsome and rich. So much more sophisticated than poor Boots.”
“Edison?”
Margaret nodded in the dimness. “I envied you and Beth, I really did, because he wanted you, because he had you. Oh, I know it didn’t turn out for either one of you with him, but that didn’t matter. I used to think about him sometimes when I was washing dishes or in bed at night when Boots—Oh God!”
“Don’t talk about it. You’ll just upset yourself again.”
Margaret ignored her. “I used to think that if I had been free, if I hadn’t been half engaged to Edison’s cousin, it might have been me he ran off with. I used to look at Erin sometimes and think what it would have been like if she had been my daughter by him. Isn’t that silly? Isn’t that the stupidest thing you ever heard?”
“Margaret—”
“If it wasn’t for daydreams like that, I might not have gone to see him. Just think of all that wasted time, wasted feeling. And he wasn’t worth it. He was never worth any of it. You might have told me.”
“I did,” Riva said quietly. “You just didn’t hear me.”
“He made a fool out of me, leading me on with a line coated w
ith sugar. I’ll never forgive him for that.”
There seemed no answer to that. The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of the central air-conditioning kicking on and the whisper of the chill air through the vent into the room. After a time, Margaret turned her head fretfully on the pillow. In querulous tones she asked, “Where’s Boots?”
Riva kept her voice neutral as she answered. “I don’t know.”
“He should be here. It’s not like him not to be here.”
“I’m sure he’ll be back in a little while.”
“Are you? But where did he go? He didn’t—he wouldn’t go after Edison, do you think?” Margaret raised herself on one elbow to stare at her sister in the dimness. “Oh, God, is that where he is? Tell me, Riva, is it?”
“Try to sleep.”
“It is, I know it is. Why did you let him go?”
“I couldn’t stop him.”
“There’s no telling what Edison will say to him, what lies he’ll tell.”
“I doubt he’ll get the chance. Boots was…not in a mood to talk.”
“Edison will call the police and have him arrested, I know he will.”
“We can’t do anything about it now. Just lie back and rest.”
Margaret threw herself back down on the pillow with a moan. “I’m not tired and I’m not sick, I’ve been raped! Can’t you understand that?”
Riva could. Her own first time with Edison had not been so different, from the sound of it. And there had been that other time, with the foreign man on Bourbon Street, almost. But she didn’t say so. As her sister remained quiet, Riva leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
On that hot May night in the rear office of the bar on Bourbon Street she had backed away from the two men watching her. Their faces had shone in the overhead light, and the look in their eyes had been leering and confident. The foreigner had taken a wallet from the pocket of his suit coat and began to count out twenty-dollar bills. When the bar owner reached out a pudgy hand to take them, Rebecca turned, threw open the door, and ran.
Behind her she heard the scrape of a chair and a yell. Footsteps thudded. She glanced back over her shoulder to see the foreigner barging out of the office doorway with the bar owner behind him. Three-inch heels were not made for running; still, she sprinted down the dingy hallway toward the curtained opening that led into the bar.
The walls seemed to vibrate with the heavy footfalls behind her. The sound was like thunder, blending with the pounding of her heart in her ears. She felt horribly uncovered, without protection, totally vulnerable. In her mind was a hot core of terror and rage and determination.
The curtain over the opening into the barroom swayed in front of her. She batted it aside and stumbled into the crowded, noisy, rock music-filled room. She saw men sitting bleary-eyed at tables and watching nearly naked women sway and turn above them, saw the fog of gray cigarette smoke shafted by the spotlights on the tables. No one looked her way.
Her arm was caught from behind in a hard grasp. She slammed into the wall and she was swung around. Her breath left her in a gasp of pain that turned into a cry as the foreigner thrust himself against her and grabbed her throat. His hand was tight, digging into her soft flesh. His breath was foul. The smell of it, mingled with the greasy odor of the oil on his hair, was sickening. His teeth were bared in a grin of pleasure and anticipation.
“You won’t get away from me that easy,” he said, grinding his pelvis against her fringe-covered pubic bone. The bar owner, standing in the doorway, grunted.
Rebecca’s hands were pressed against the foreigner’s chest. She gave him a hard push so that he staggered back. A man loomed behind the foreigner. He grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, at the same time hooking a leg behind the foreigner’s knee so that he went sprawling. The man on the floor took one look over his shoulder, then scrambled to his feet and dived out of the bar. Rebecca’s rescuer turned toward the bar owner.
“Now, don’t get mad, Mr. Staulet!” the fat man said, throwing up a hand and backing away. “How was I to know she wasn’t willing? Everything’s all right. Everything’s cool. The gal can dance for you now, if that’s what you want.”
“The question is,” the man called Staulet said, “what does she want?”
He turned to look at Rebecca. She stared back at him. He was the older man who asked her to dance for him so often, the one who tipped her with twenty-dollar bills. In his eyes was fading anger, infinite kindness, and odd bemusement, as if he were surprised at his own actions.
She took a deep, gulping breath. “I want out of here.”
Staulet nodded. “Get your things.”
There was nothing to get except her cheap cotton dress, her underclothes, and the grubby sandals she had worn to work. She changed out of the rhinestone heels and G-string in trembling haste, afraid that Mr. Staulet would leave without her. Kicking the excuse for a costume into the middle of the floor, she hurried out to join him.
He was still standing at the curtained doorway. The bar owner was nowhere in sight. Mr. Staulet took her elbow and escorted her from the bar, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
He stopped for a moment on the sidewalk out front. Bourbon Street was littered with plastic cups, noisome with wet splashes where drunks had been sick, and nearly deserted. A few couples still straggled up and down in the multicolored light of the blinking neon signs, however, and a hot-dog vendor trundled his mustard-smelling cart along the gutter. Music with a hard beat played, though rising above it were the mellow and haunting notes of a blues trumpet, a sensual yet inconsolable sound.
There was such an abstracted look on the face of the man beside her, as if he were considering a matter of extreme importance, that Rebecca was quiet. A slight trembling ran through her whole body, but she tried to suppress it. Finally Mr. Staulet looked down at her, offered his arm, and smiled. He said, “My car is just along here.”
“I can walk. It isn’t far to where I live.” She took his arm because it wasn’t polite to let him stand there holding it out to her without some acknowledgment, and because she was afraid her knees might buckle if she didn’t. His sleeve was silky under her fingers and the muscles of his arm were firm.
“Permit me to drive you,” he said, and turned her gently in the direction he had indicated, where his car was parked on a side street.
It was a gray limousine. The driver, a young black man nearly as wide as he was tall, got out and held the door. If he thought it strange to see his employer escorting a young woman in cheap makeup and a cheaper dress, he gave no sign. Staulet spoke to him in a low voice. The chauffeur nodded, then shut the door. He got behind the wheel and they pulled away from the curb.
The limousine was like a cool, velvet-lined cocoon insulating them from the activity and noise of the close, narrow streets. It gave Rebecca a feeling of safety. At the same time, it was intimidating. She swallowed hard before she spoke and still her voice came out soft and uncertain.
“I should thank you for what you did for me.”
“It was my pleasure, I assure you.”
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”
He smiled. “But then I’m always there to see you dance, or I was, as you must know.”
“Really, Mr. Staulet—”
“Call me Cosmo, will you? I would like that. Do you realize this is the first time we’ve exchanged more than a few basic words such as hello and thank you?”
“Yes, I—”
“It must seem strange to you. It doesn’t to me because I’ve talked to you quite a lot, in my head. I love you, you know.”
She stared at him with her lips slightly open. She could not have heard him right. People like him just didn’t say such things, not to people like her.
He laughed with the sound of burgeoning excitement in his voice. “That surprises you, doesn’t it? You thought I was a dirty old man lusting after your luscious body. Well, I plead guilt
y, but it’s more than that, more than you can know.”
“You—you should not make fun of me.”
“Is that what you think? I swear on my father’s grave I’m doing nothing of the kind. And I don’t take such an oath easily.”
Rebecca looked away from the brightness in his dark gray eyes that was illuminated by the flash of street lamps as they glided past them. Still he was imprinted in her mind: the silver among the fine wings of hair at his temples, the strong line of his nose, the square set of his jaw, and the grace and strength of his hands. There was about him that indefinable something known as breeding and the self-assurance that comes with wealth. She was daunted by his monied sophistication, and she didn’t like it.
She focused her wandering attention on the fence-enclosed area they were passing, one crowded with plastered white tombs and monument-like small houses above the ground that caused such cemeteries to be known as Cities of the Dead. She blinked. “This isn’t the way to my apartment.”
“No, I know. That’s why I told you I love you so quickly. I wanted you to hear it before you discovered my treachery.”
She moistened her lips, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m not taking you home.”
“Where—where are we going?”
“To my house, to Bonne Vie.”
“I can’t go with you!” The words were strained as she fought to stay calm.
“Why not?”
She slewed around on the seat to sit with her back against the door. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“I know more than you think,” he answered, and began in his calm, aristocratic voice to give the vital statistics of her life: her date of birth, birthplace, father’s name, mother’s name; the schools she had attended and her grade point averages; her favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite flowers; the date and approximate time she had left town with Edison; the date and approximate time Erin was born. Something in his voice told her he knew more but felt it better not to say it.
Crimes of Passion Page 125
