Antoinette dipped her paddle into the water again and again in a motion that had become second nature over the weekend. She watched the swamp become suffused with mist-shrouded light, and as they turned into Bayou Midnight, she watched the sun break over the horizon. She wanted to linger, even with the rain making uncomfortable puddles at her cold, bare feet, but Sam’s strokes were strong and even, and Antoinette couldn’t force herself to ask him to slow down.
Their progression up the bayou took on symbolic importance to her. The rain was still falling, but the mists were clearing, and slowly, carefully, the real world was becoming revealed in the light of day. She wanted to call back the mists, call back the weekend. She wanted to hold off all the forces that would make Sam forget or ignore what they had experienced together. Back in the real world he would find reasons to stop seeing her. Back in the real world she would let him, afraid to risk touching the remote policeman who claimed that his job was all the satisfaction from life he needed.
Their progression up the bayou had much the same effect on Sam. His arms had ached to hold Antoinette that morning. He had known she watched him as he shaved, known just how much she would welcome his arms around her. In the golden glow of the kerosene lamp, with her long hair tumbled around her face and her nightgown hinting at the sweet contours of her body, she had tempted him almost beyond reason. But reason had won out. Their time for loving was over. Now he watched her back as she stroked the water. She had not murmured one word of complaint as they maneuvered cypress stumps and stands of tupelo in the rain. He knew how uncomfortable she must be; he was that uncomfortable himself. It was like Antoinette to find enjoyment even in this. It would be one of the hardest things to forget about her.
Their progression up the bayou was watched by another. A man stood in the shadows of Claude LeBeaud’s boathouse as the canoe glided toward its destination. He cursed softly, the musical syllables falling to earth with the rain. He had forgotten that Sam-son’s car was there and that Sam-son and his lady friend would be returning to the city that morning.
Martin pulled himself farther into the shadows. He could be in plain sight, and then he could merge into nothingness. It was a trick that had served him well in the swamps and the marshes when he wanted to keep his presence a secret from the creatures there. It was a trick he had taught Sam-son. He knew enough about Sam-son’s job to imagine that Sam-son had used this skill, this sleek, spare use of his body, to save his life more than once during his police career. It had saved Martin’s life in Vietnam, too. It had saved it so that he could leave one swamp to come home to another. Saved it so that he could watch mankind destroy one part of the world, only to come home and watch society destroy another.
There had been a time when Martin could share his thoughts with Sam-son. That time had passed. There was nothing that he could share with anyone now. Not the burning rage that threatened to annihilate whatever sense he had left, not the terror that his family could be destroyed by his actions, not the sorrow for what he was being forced to do.
Martin heard the rustle of the water and the slide of the canoe onto dry ground. There was nothing he could do today about anything. And there was nothing he could tell Sam-son. Let him go home. Let him go back to the city and forget that Bayou Midnight existed. Martin would wait. He was good at waiting. He would move when it was time, and he would know when that time was right.
Sam stood on the shore, his body tensed and alert.
“Sam?” Antoinette hugged her arms around her for warmth. Now that they were on land once more, she wanted nothing so much as the rainproof interior of Sam’s car.
He was silent for a full minute, the rain battering the old cap he was using for protection. “I thought I heard something,” he said finally.
“You did. Thousands of raindrops.”
“No. Something else. Someone else.”
“Will it spoil your sleuthing if I go look for Tootsie?”
He shook his head, then turned to follow her. “I’ll help you. We’d better get going, or we’ll both be late for work.”
Antoinette walked toward the house, calling for the big sheepdog while Sam did the same as he carried her suitcase to the car. She was rewarded almost instantly by the sounds of Tootsie bounding down off the porch to leap at her, spreading mud and love in her wake.
Antoinette held her off, scratching the dog’s ears fondly as she did. “Toots, I don’t know which of us needs a bath worse.”
Tootsie followed her to the car, and Claude’s hound meandered behind to say a tongue-lolling goodbye. Antoinette towel-dried Tootsie with an old rag before she loaded the dog inside. Then she stepped out of the slicker, shaking it and jumping into the car simultaneously while Sam did the same. With the slickers folded in the back seat and the windshield wipers working full blast, Sam pulled out of the yard. The road was potholed and muddy, but Sam maneuvered the car along it as if it were a perfectly maintained speedway. They were on the clamshell road that meandered beside the larger bayou feeding into Bayou Midnight before either of them broke the silence.
“It’s over,” Antoinette said with a sigh, leaning back against the comfortable seat with a posture that signaled her resignation. “It was a perfect weekend, but it’s over.”
Sam wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. And he wasn’t sure if she was talking about more than the weekend. He didn’t want to talk, and he didn’t want to think about all the implications of her words.
“You’re remarkably easy to please,” he said finally because the silence had become uncomfortable.
“Do you think so?” she asked, hurt that he would make her pleasure in Bayou Midnight sound so childish. “Maybe I should be more discriminating.”
“Antoinette, I don’t want to fight with you.” As soon as the words were out, Sam realized they were a lie. He did feel like a fight, although he wasn’t sure why.
“I wasn’t aware that we were fighting. I thought we were talking about the weekend.”
“There’s a fight brewing.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She stared straight ahead, watching the windshield wipers. “If we fight, that’ll be what you remember about this trip. It’ll be easy to forget everything else.”
The words lit the tinder of his temper. She had understood his motivations better than he had himself. “Do you know what it’d be like to be married to someone who constantly tore you apart and put you back together again like a specimen in some damned laboratory?” Sam slammed his hand down on the steering wheel in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. “You think you know more about me than I know. Take a hike, lady. I don’t need your damned analysis.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Antoinette was stunned at his words.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“Now who’s reading whose mind?”
“I’m no fool. I don’t believe for a second you saw any of this as a fleeting affair. You’re a traditionalist to the core. You were taking a risk, but you were hoping that after one weekend together I’d change my mind about needing you in my life. And that means marriage.”
“I wasn’t thinking that far down the road,” she denied.
“Be honest. Do you believe you’d ever be happy with less?”
“I’ve had much less for six years. I’ve been perfectly happy without a man in my life at all. Don’t tell me you’re one of these men who believes every woman in the world is trying to lead him to the altar?”
“No one has ever gotten close enough to lead me anywhere.”
Until now. Antoinette heard the words, even though Sam didn’t say them. He was angry because he didn’t like what he was feeling. He didn’t like knowing that she was becoming important to him. Well, he wasn’t the only one who didn’t like his feelings.
“I can’t help what you think about women in general,” she said, losing her temper. “But I don’t like being put in categories where I don’t belong. If you think I’ve set my heart on
an obsessive-compulsive cop who’s a misogynist to boot, you’ve got another think coming!”
There was absolute silence in the car for the next half hour until they pulled up in the parking lot of the café where they’d eaten breakfast on Saturday. Even after the engine was turned off, Sam sat gripping the steering wheel, and Antoinette wondered if she would have to pry him loose to get him inside.
“Obsessive-compulsive cop?” he said finally. “Misogynist?”
“I may have laid it on a little thick,” she admitted.
“I don’t like fighting with you. If I did it to put the weekend in a different perspective, I’m sorry.”
Antoinette turned to watch him. She had wanted nothing more all morning than to touch him. Now she gave in to the desire. Her fingers stroked his hair, circling his ear to rest on the side of his face. “It was a wonderful weekend. And I know it was wonderful for you, too. No matter what happens now, I want to remember it just the way it was. I want the same for you.”
“You understand me too well.”
“I don’t mean to analyze you.”
“I don’t like sharing that much of myself with anyone.”
“It’s only me, Sam. Just Antoinette. I’m not making any demands just because I know who you are.”
He turned, bending toward her for the first kiss of the day. It was light and quick, and Antoinette thought it said a lot about what he was thinking. It was Monday morning, and he was afraid that even a kiss would trap him. “Let’s go eat.”
The rest of the trip was more pleasant. It was only when Sam put her suitcase on the front porch and waited as she unlocked her front door that the tension built again.
“Well, it looks like we’ll both be able to make it to work on time,” Antoinette said.
Sam checked his watch, even though they both knew what time it was. “I’ll have to hurry.”
“Yes. Thank you for everything.”
He bent to brush her lips lightly, but at the first real taste he groaned and pulled her closer. Goodbye was momentarily forgotten as he took what he had desired all morning. Antoinette let her arms circle his body, holding tight for this one moment that was being given to her.
When he finally pulled away, she didn’t even risk a smile. She went into the house without a backward glance and closed the door behind her.
Antoinette hummed one of her favorite songs, a soulful jazz ballad about missing New Orleans and dreaming of magnolias in June. She lifted her eyes to the fully blossomed magnolia tree that stood in the tiny yard of her office building and wondered if the person who had written the song had ever lived in the city or if he had just been overcome by the desire to rhyme June and tune. Magnolias in New Orleans were always open by May. This particular magnolia had been loaded with buds right before she’d gone down to Bayou Midnight with Sam. Now, two weeks later, it was fragrant with waxy ivory blossoms. It was the only thing in her life that had bloomed just as it was supposed to.
Antoinette realized that, if she was paying attention to the passage she’d been reading before she got distracted, she would have committed it to memory by now. She’d been over it at least six times, and she still didn’t know what it said. At the sound of her office door opening, she looked up, grateful for the break.
“Still hasn’t called?” Daffy came into the office and shut the door behind her. She was dressed in a brilliant blue leotard top and tights, with an orange plaid skirt that swirled around her calves when she walked. Her red curls were covered with a green paisley kerchief. Even the exuberant display of color didn’t make Antoinette smile. She shook her head in answer to Daffy’s question. There was no doubt who Daffy meant.
“Call him, then.”
Antoinette sighed and shut the journal she’d been trying to read. In the two weeks since she’d last seen Sam, her ability to concentrate had been next to nothing. She had refused to give in to the other signs of depression. She had eaten regularly, tried to sleep the required number of hours, spent time with her friends. But there had been little she could do at moments like these to force her mind to stay on track. Daffy had seen it, and in her typical take-charge manner, she had determined to do something about it.
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
Daffy’s face showed her concern. “I will if you really want me to.”
“I do.”
“All right.” Daffy turned back to the door and reached for the knob.
“Wait.” Antoinette stood and motioned to the sofa. The two women reached it together, dropping silently into opposite corners. “What would I say if I called him? Hello, Sam? Remember me?”
“You know, Antoinette,” Daffy began, “times have changed, even for New Orleans debutantes. Women call men now. They ask them out, pay for dates, offer their body if the man they want is shy. It’s a different world out there.”
“I’m not different, though.”
“You’re tearing yourself to pieces, and there could be a perfectly rational reason why Sam hasn’t called you.”
“Oh, I’m sure the reason is rational. He doesn’t want what I’m offering.”
“Call him and make sure you’ve got the message straight, then. You of all people know how important communication is.”
There was a knock on the door, and before Antoinette could answer, Rosy pushed it open and stuck her head through. “Still hasn’t called?”
“My life is an open book.” Antoinette shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the back of the sofa. She wished Sam were there to take away the headache that had nipped at her, just under the surface, all day. She wished she had a cigarette.
“Once, when I was between husbands, I was going out with a man who said he worshiped the ground I walked on.” Rosy came in and shut the door behind her. Idly, Antoinette wondered who would be the next person to come in and give her advice.
“Then,” Rosy continued, “he stopped calling. Just like that. I was so mad, I stuck my nose up in the air and minced around like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. Two weeks later I was reading the paper, and I glanced at the obituaries. John had been hit by a car, and they were having a memorial service for him that day. Here he was, deader than a doornail, and I’d been wasting all that energy getting mad at him. If I’d of known…” Rosy sniffed. “If I’d of known…” She sniffed again. “I could have been looking for someone new.”
Antoinette swallowed twice, but she couldn’t restrain the chuckle that finally erupted. “You made that up.” She opened her eyes and glared at Rosy, but another chuckle took the edge off it. “Darn you, Rosy, you’re trying to make me feel better!”
“Well, it’s part true!” Rosy defended herself.
“Which part?”
“Well, he stopped calling. That part was true.”
“And?”
“And I found out why from the newspaper.”
“What did you find out?”
“That he skipped town with the payroll from the cafeteria where he was working. Guess he’s still running.”
“Enough!” Antoinette stood, but the smile on her face was the first real one that had been there in days. “I’ll call Sam. I owe myself that much, I guess.”
“If he’s half the emotionless, repressed bastard I think he is, you’re better off without him,” Daffy said, standing to follow Rosy out of the office.
Antoinette knew exactly what Daffy was doing. If Sam made it clear he was finished with her, Daffy was giving her the ammunition she needed to get over him quickly. Sadly, Antoinette knew it wouldn’t work. Sam was neither emotionless nor repressed. She might have been able to make herself believe it before the weekend they had spent together, but now she knew exactly who he was. A man with all the warm, human qualities she desired. A man too careful and too controlled, but a man whose loyalty and affection had already enriched many lives. The man she loved.
At her desk she looked up the station number, dialing it quickly before she could change her mind. She half expected
not to have her call put through, but she was only on hold a few seconds before Sam answered.
“Sergeant Long.”
She shouldn’t have called. She sat down with a thump and cleared her throat. “Sam, it’s Antoinette.”
There was a silence, and Antoinette imagined the look on his face. He would not be pleased that she was on the line.
“Yes, Antoinette.”
She used her free hand to torment a strand of hair, twisting it like a corkscrew. “Is this a bad time to talk?”
“It’s all right.”
“I’ve missed you.”
More silence. “I’ve been very busy,” he said finally.
She shut her eyes and cursed Daffy and Rosy, but the blame was hers for listening to them. “Yes, well, so have I.” She heard her own words and realized she was pretending. Anger shot through her at being reduced to such adolescent behavior. She opened her eyes and sat up straighter. “And because we’re both busy people,” she continued, “I think I ought to lay my reason for calling on the line. I want to see you. You and I still have some unfinished business.”
“The investigation is taking all my time,” Sam said, and she knew he was going to use Omega Oil as an excuse for not seeing her.
“Then I won’t demand much,” she broke in. “Let’s meet somewhere for a drink. We can say what needs to be said over one round.”
“I don’t have the time….”
Antoinette refused to argue; she just remained silent, waiting for him to be honest.
“I don’t know what good this will do either of us,” he said finally.
“You owe it to me.”
“All right.” He named a French Quarter hotel, and they agreed to meet that night after happy hour was over.
Antoinette replaced the receiver and reopened the journal she’d been reading before Daffy intruded. With determination that was purely intellectual, she completed the article.
Sam was late, and the psychologist in Antoinette wondered if it was passive-aggressive behavior because he was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do, or just typical male reluctance when anticipating a scene. When he finally arrived, he took the seat across from her without a word of greeting. His suit was dark green and his tie curry colored. He was not the man she’d known on Bayou Midnight.
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