Then he heard something, like a bell, or a telephone; then another faint sound, like an animal scratching overhead. Carefully he twisted to stare upward, trying not to betray himself by moving too fast. Something skittered across the ceiling, and Leo’s stomach turned dizzily. What could be up there? A second blur dashed to join the first; golden eyes stared down at him, unblinking.
Geckos, he thought frantically. She had pet geckos. She has pet geckos. Jesus.
She couldn’t be here. It was too hot, the stench horrible: putrid water, decaying plants, water everywhere. His trousers were soaked from where he had fallen, his knees ached from kneeling in a trough of water pooling against the wall. The floor had warped and more flowers protruded from cracks between the linoleum, brown fronds of iris and rotting honeysuckle. From another room trickled the sound of water dripping steadily, as though a tap was running.
He had to get out. He’d leave the door open—police, a landlord. Someone would call for help. But he couldn’t reach the door. He couldn’t stand. His feet skated across the slick tiles as his hands tore uselessly through wads of petals. It grew darker. Golden bands rippled across the floor as sunlight filtered through the gray curtains. Leo dragged himself through rotting leaves, his clothes sopping, tugging aside mats of greenery and broken branches. His leg ached where he’d fallen on it and his hands stung, pricked by unseen thorns.
Something brushed against his fingers and he forced himself to look down, shuddering. A shattered nautilus left a thin red line across his hand, the sharp fragments gilded by the dying light. As he looked around he noticed other things, myriad small objects caught in the morass of rotting flowers like a nightmarish ebb tide on the linoleum floor. Agates and feathered masks; bird of paradise plumes encrusted with mud; cracked skulls and bones and cloth of gold. He recognized the carved puppet Helen had been playing with that afternoon in the Indonesian corridor, its headdress glittering in the twilight. About its neck was strung a plait of flowers, amber and cerulean blossoms glowing like phosphorescence among the ruins.
Through the room echoed a dull clang. Leo jerked to his knees, relieved. Surely someone had knocked? But the sound came from somewhere behind him, and was echoed in another, harsher, note. As this second bell died he heard the geckos’ feet pattering as they fled across the ceiling. A louder note rang out, the windowpanes vibrating to the sound as though wind-battered. In the corner the leaves of the ficus turned as if to welcome rain, and the rosebushes stirred.
Leo heard something else, then: a small sound like a cat stretching to wakefulness. Now both of his legs ached, and he had to pull himself forward on his hands and elbows, striving to reach the front door. The clanging grew louder, more resonant. A higher tone echoed it monotonously, like the echo of rain in a well. Leo glanced over his shoulder to the empty doorway that led to the kitchen, the dark mouth of the hallway to Helen’s bedroom. Something moved there.
At his elbow moved something else and he struck at it feebly, knocking the puppet across the floor. Uncomprehending, he stared after it, then cowered as he watched the ceiling, wondering if one of the geckos had crept down beside him.
There was no gecko. When Leo glanced back at the puppet it was moving across the floor toward him, pulling itself forward on its long slender arms.
The gongs thundered now. A shape humped across the room, something large enough to blot out the empty doorway behind it. Before he was blinded by petals, Leo saw that it was a shrunken figure, a woman whose elongated arms clutched broken branches to propel herself, legs dragging uselessly through the tangled leaves. About her swayed a host of brilliant figures no bigger than dolls. They had roped her neck and hands with wreaths of flowers and scattered blossoms on to the floor about them. Like a flock of chattering butterflies they surged toward him, tiny hands outstretched, their long tongues unfurling like crimson pistils, and the gongs rang like golden bells as they gathered about him to feed.
It Was the Heat
Pat Cadigan
It was the heat, the incredible heat that never lets up, never eases, never once gives you a break. Sweat till you die; bake till you drop; fry, broil, burn, baby, burn. How’d you like to live in a fever and never feel cool, never, never, never.
Women think they want men like that. They think they want someone to put the devil in their Miss Jones. Some of them even lie awake at night, alone, or next to a silent lump of husband or boyfriend or friendly stranger, thinking, Let me be completely consumed with fire. In the name of love.
Sure.
Right feeling, wrong name. Try again. And the thing is, they do. They try and try and try, and if they’re very, very unlucky, they find one of them.
I thought I had him right where I wanted him—between my legs. Listen, I didn’t always talk this way. That wasn’t me you saw storming the battlements during the Sexual Revolution. My ambition was liberated but I didn’t lose my head, or give it. It wasn’t me saying, Let them eat pie. Once I had a sense of propriety but I lost it with my inhibitions.
You think these things happen only in soap operas—the respectable, thirty-five-year-old wife and working mother goes away on a business trip with a suitcase full of navy-blue suits and class blouses with the bow at the neck and a briefcase crammed with paperwork. Product management is not a pretty sight. Sensible black pumps are a must for the run on the fast track and if your ambition is sufficiently liberated, black pumps can keep pace with perforated wing-tips, even outrun them.
But men know the secret. Especially businessmen. This is why management conferences are sometimes held in a place like New Orleans instead of the professional canyons of New York City or Chicago. Men know the secret and now I do, too. But I didn’t then, when I arrived in New Orleans with my luggage and my paperwork and my inhibitions, to be installed in the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter.
The room had all the charm of home—more, since I wouldn’t be cleaning it up. I hung the suits in the bathroom, ran the shower, called home, already feeling guilty. Yes, boys, Mommy’s at the hotel now and she has a long meeting to go to, let me talk to Daddy. Yes, dear, I’m fine. It was a long ride from the airport, good thing the corporation’s paying for this, too. Yes, there’s a pool but I doubt I’ll have time to use it and anyway, I didn’t bring a suit. Not that kind of suit. This isn’t a pleasure trip, you know, I’m not on vacation. No. Yes. No. Kiss the boys for me. I love you, too.
If you want to be as conspicuous as possible, be a woman walking almost late into a meeting room full of men who are all gunning to be CEOs. Pick out the two or three other female faces and nod to them even though they’re complete strangers, and find a seat near them. Listen to the man at the front of the room say, Now that we’re all here, we can begin, and know that every man is thinking that means you. Imagine what they are thinking, imagine what they are whispering to each other. Imagine that they know you can’t concentrate on the opening presentation because your mind is on your husband and children back home instead of the business at hand when the real reason you can’t concentrate is because you’re imagining they must all be thinking your mind is on your husband and children back home instead of the business at hand.
Do you know what they’re thinking about, really? They’re thinking about the French Quarter. Those who have been there before are thinking about jazz and booze in go-cups and bars where the women are totally nude, totally, and those who haven’t been there before are wondering if everything’s as wild as they say.
Finally the presentation ended and the discussion period following the presentation ended (the women had nothing to discuss so as not to be perceived as the ones delaying the afterhours jaunt into the French Quarter). Tomorrow, nine o’clock in the Hyatt, second floor meeting room. Don’t let’s be too hung over to make it boys, ha, ha. Oh, and girls, too, of course, ha, ha.
The things you hear when you don’t have a crossbow.
Demure, I took a cab back to the Bourbon Orleans, intending to leave a wake-up call for six thir
ty, ignoring the streets already filling up. In early May, with Mardi Gras already a dim memory? Was there a big convention in town this week, I asked the cab driver.
No, ma’am, he told me (his accent—Creole or Cajun? I don’t know—made it more like ma’ahm). De Quarter always be jumpin’, and de weather be so lovely.
This was lovely? I was soaked through my drip-dry white blouse and the suit coat would start to smell if I didn’t take it off soon. My crisp, boardroom coiffure had gone limp and trickles of sweat were tracking leisurely along my scalp. Product management was meant to live in air conditioning (we call it climate control, as though we really could, but there is no controlling this climate).
At the last corner before the hotel, I saw him standing at the curb. Tight jeans, red shirt knotted above the navel to show off the washboard stomach. Definitely not executive material; executives are required to be doughy in that area and the area to the south of that was never delineated quite so definitely as it was in this man’s jeans.
Some sixth sense made him bend to see who was watching him from the back seat of the cab.
“Mamma, mamma!” he called and kissed the air between us. “You wanna go to a party?” He came over to the cab and motioned for me to roll the window all the way down. I slammed the lock down on the door and sat back, clutching my sensible black purse.
“C’mon, mamma!” He poked his fingers through the small opening of the window. “I be good to you!” The golden hair was honey from peroxide but the voice was honey from the comb. The light changed and he snatched his fingers away just in time.
“I’ll be waiting!” he shouted after me. I didn’t look back.
“What was all that about?” I asked the cab driver.
“Just a wild boy. Lotta wild boys in the Quarter, ma’am.” We pulled up next to the hotel and he smiled over his shoulder at me, his teeth just a few shades lighter than his coffee-colored skin. “Any time you want to find a wild boy for yourself, this is where you look.” It came out more like dis is wheah you look. “You got a nice company sends you to the Quarter for doin’ business.”
I smiled back, overtipped him, and escaped into the hotel.
It wasn’t even a consideration, that first night. Wake-up call for six-thirty, just as I’d intended, to leave time for showering and breakfast, like the good wife and mother and executive I’d always been.
Beignets for breakfast. Carl had told me I must have beignets for breakfast if I were going to be in New Orleans. He’d bought some beignet mix and tried to make some for me the week before I’d left. They’d come out too thick and heavy and only the kids had been able to eat them, liberally dusted with powdered sugar. If I found a good place for beignets, I would try to bring some home, I’d decided, for my lovely, tolerant, patient husband, who was now probably making thick, heavy pancakes for the boys. Nice of him to sacrifice some of his vacation time to be home with the boys while Mommy was out of town. Mommy had never gone out of town on business before. Daddy had, of course; several times. At those times, Mommy had never been able to take any time away from the office, though, so she could be with the boys while Daddy was out of town. Too much work to do; if you want to keep those sensible black pumps on the fast track, you can’t be putting your family before the work. Lots of women lose out that way, you know, Martha?
I knew.
No familiar faces in the restaurant, but I wasn’t looking for any. I moved my tray along the line, took a beignet and poured myself some of the famous Louisiana chicory coffee before I found a small table under a ceiling fan. No air-conditioning and it was already up in the eighties. I made a concession and took off my jacket. After another bite of the beignet, I made another and unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse. The pantyhose already felt sticky and uncomfortable. I had a perverse urge to slip off to the ladies’ room and take them off. Would anyone notice or care? That would leave me with nothing under the half-slip. Would anyone guess? There goes a lady executive with no pants on. In the heat, it was not unthinkable. No underwear at all was not unthinkable. Everything was binding. A woman in a gauzy caftan breezed past my table, glancing down at me with careless interest. Another out-of-towner, yes. You can tell—we’re the only ones not dressed for the weather.
“All right to sit here, ma’am?”
I looked up. He was holding a tray with one hand, already straddling the chair across from me, only waiting my permission to sink down and join me. Dark, curly hair, just a bit too long, darker eyes, smooth skin the color of over-creamed coffee. Tank top over jeans. He eased himself down and smiled. I must have said yes.
“All the other tables’re occupied or ain’t been bussed, ma’am. Hope you don’t mind, you a stranger here and all.” The smile was as slow and honeyed as the voice. They all talked in honey tones here. “Eatin’ you one of our nice beignets, I see. First breakfast in the Quarter, am I right?”
I used a knife and fork on the beignet. “I’m here on business.”
“You have a very striking face.”
I risked a glance up at him. “You’re very kind.” Thirty-five and up is striking, if the world is feeling kind.
“When your business is done, shall I see you in the Quarter?”
“I doubt it. My days are very long.” I finished the beignet quickly, gulped the coffee. He caught my arm as I got up. It was a jolt of heat, like being touched with an electric wand.
“I have a husband and three children!” It was the only thing I could think to say.
“You don’t want to forget your jacket.”
It hung limply on the back of my chair. I wanted to forget it badly, to have an excuse to go through the day of meetings and seminars in shirtsleeves. I put the tray down and slipped the jacket on. “Thank you.”
“Name is Andre, ma’am.” The dark eyes twinkled. “My heart will surely break if I don’t see you tonight in the Quarter.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It’s too hot to be silly, ma’am.”
“Yes. It is,” I said stiffly. I looked for a place to take the tray.
“They take it away for you. You can just leave it here. Or you can stay and have another cup of coffee and talk to a lonely soul.” One finger plucked at the low scoop of the tank top. “I’d like that.”
“A cab driver warned me about wild boys,” I said, holding my purse carefully to my side.
“I doubt it. He may have told you but he didn’t warn you. And I ain’t a boy, ma’am.”
Sweat gathered in the hollow between my collarbones and spilled downward. He seemed to be watching the trickle disappear down into my blouse. Under the aroma of baking breads and pastries and coffee, I caught a scent of something else.
“Boys stand around on street corners, they shout rude remarks, they don’t know what a woman is.”
“That’s enough,” I snapped. “I don’t know why you picked me out for your morning’s amusement. Maybe because I’m from out of town? You wild boys get a kick out of annoying the tourists, is that it? If I see you again, I’ll call a cop.” I stalked out and pushed myself through the humidity to hail a cab. By the time I reached the Hyatt, I might as well not have showered.
“I’m skipping out on this afternoon’s session,” the woman whispered to me. Her badge said she was Frieda Fellowes, of Boston, Massachusetts. “I heard the speaker last year. He’s the biggest bore in the world. I’m going shopping. Care to join me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I have to write up a report on this when I get home and I’d better be able to describe everything in detail.”
She looked at my badge. “You must work for a bunch of real hardasses up in Schenectady.” She leaned forward to whisper to the other woman sitting in the row ahead of us, who nodded eagerly.
They were both missing from the afternoon session. The speaker was the biggest bore in the world. The men had all conceded to shirtsleeves. Climate control failed halfway through the seminar and it broke up early, releasing us from the stuffiness of
the meeting room into the thick air of the city. I stopped in the lobby bathroom and took off my pantyhose, rolled them into an untidy ball and stuffed them in my purse before getting a cab back to my own hotel.
One of the men from my firm phoned my room and invited me to join him and the guys for drinks and dinner. We met in a crowded little place called Messina’s, four male executives and me. It wasn’t until I excused myself and went to the closet-sized bathroom that I realized I’d put my light summer slacks on over nothing. A careless mistake, akin to starting off to the supermarket on a Saturday morning in my bedroom slippers. Mommy’s got a lot on her mind. Martha, the No-Pants Executive. Guess what, dear, I went out to dinner in New Orleans with four men and forgot to wear panties. Well, women do reach their sexual peak at thirty-five, don’t they, honey?
The heat was making me crazy. No air-conditioning here, either, just fans, pushing the damp air around.
I rushed through the dinner of red beans and rice and hot sausage; someone ordered a round of beers and I gulped mine down to cool the sausage. No one spoke much. Martha’s here, better keep it low-key, guys. I decided to do them a favor and disappear after the meal. There wouldn’t be much chance of running into me at any of the nude bars, nothing to be embarrassed about. Thanks for tolerating my presence, fellas.
But they looked a little puzzled when I begged off anything further. The voice blew over to me as I reached the door, carried on a wave of humidity pushed by one of the fans: “Maybe she’s got a headache tonight.” General laughter.
Maybe all four of you together would be a disappointment, boys. Maybe none of you know what a woman is.
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 35
