“You’re not talking because you know something.” No sign of her laughter remained, and a deep line formed between her brows. “That’s it, isn’t it. You know Celina wants Wilson, too. They’re in it together with Neville. Bitsy doesn’t know the full extent of it because she’s too stupid to be trusted. But—”
“No!” He went to her and lowered his head to look into her face. “You’re not even making sense anymore. You’re a very unhappy woman and you’re searching for some way—someone to blame so that you don’t have to look too closely at yourself.”
She crossed her wrists over her breasts. “I’m a very...How do you tell a priest you love sex? I’m sexual, Cyrus.”
“Most human beings are sexual.”
“Except you.”
He took a deep, calming breath. “I didn’t say that. And neither do I have to discuss my sexuality with you. I have a calling. That calling demands celibacy of me. It isn’t easy, Sally. Sometimes there are days or weeks when I’m virtually an asexual creature because I’m too busy to think about it. But that doesn’t happen very often, not nearly often enough.”
“Look at this dress,” she said, her head bowed while she spread the skirt. “I put it on partly so I was less likely to be recognized, and partly because I’m still embarrassed—about the night of the stupid prom, a hundred years ago, and because I was all but naked in front of you again at the fund-raiser. People think I’m outrageous. They think I’m hard and manipulative. I’m not. I scare myself. Cyrus, I don’t want to lose Wilson.”
“I don’t think you will.”
“You are a trusting man. I know what I know. He never touches me anymore.” Pain crossed her features. “Sometimes I think he might prefer men.”
“Don’t talk wildly. Not if you’re going to hurt someone to make yourself feel better.”
“It’s just that—Oh, nothing. But I’m right about Celina. Wilson wants to get rid of me and be with her. He’s trying to get damning evidence that I’ve been unfaithful so people will feel sorry for him and forgive him for getting involved with another woman.”
Cyrus regarded her without blinking, and waited.
She lifted her chin defiantly. “I have been unfaithful. Lots of times.”
“Do you want to ask for reconciliation?”
“Not yet. Not until I think I can intend to change the way I am. I don’t intend to yet.”
This was a pointless exchange—except for giving him a warning he should pass on to Celina. “If you aren’t interested in changing, then why would you want help from me?”
“I need it. I need a champion. I’m alone, Cyrus. Since my daddy died, there’s been no one I can trust.”
“Surely, Wilson—”
“I don’t trust Wilson!”
“Hush,” he told her. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
Sally raised her chin again. She went to him and rested her fingertips and palms on his chest. “Not a soul, Cyrus. I am surrounded by people, but alone. And I try to fill myself up by taking men to bed, or anywhere else I can get them. Are you shocked?”
He glanced down at her lowered eyelids. “It would be hard for you to say something I haven’t heard before.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into the hollow beneath his shoulder, and he felt her tense as she expected him to push her away.
Cyrus didn’t push Sally away, neither did he put a hand on her.
“You loathe me, don’t you,” she murmured. “I’m everything you and your kind fight against in this world. I’m the other side.”
“You are a woman in need. It’s my job to try to help you.”
“Because it’s your job. Gee, thanks.”
Her breasts were a softly obvious pressure on his ribs. Her body layered his, and he called all his carefully honed control into action.
“I think I walked into a trap Wilson set,” she told him. “He put a man in my way knowing this man is just the type I’m likely to notice and want. I didn’t see it at first because my pride couldn’t take it that he—that this man wasn’t another conquest of mine, that he was a plant. But I’ve been thinking things through, and I see it all now.”
Cyrus touched her back lightly. Whatever it cost him, he was charged with giving comfort to the suffering, and Sally Lamar suffered greatly.
She looked up at him. “Hold me, Cyrus.”
He patted her shoulder. “You don’t have any proof that Wilson did this thing. Perhaps you want to believe he did because it would lessen your own guilt?”
“I wish I could cry. Why can’t I cry unless I’m drunk?”
“Because you’ve shut down what should be natural. In self-defense. You aren’t going to risk having Wilson see you’re vulnerable. Tears make you vulnerable, so you think.”
She nuzzled her face on his chest again. “You are so wise. How’d you get so wise, young Cyrus, who was a kid with me only yesterday. Wasn’t that just yesterday?”
“If you want it to be,” he told her quietly. “You can turn the clock back, Sally. Be new again. God lets you do that—He wants you to.”
“They’re going to smash my marriage. I’ve pretended I was hard, but I’m not. I’ve been wrong. I’m sorry about that, but I want to keep my husband. Your father is working with Wilson to make that impossible.”
“Ι’ll deal with my father,” Cyrus said.
She clutched him tighter. “Don’t tell them I said anything. Wilson would be so angry.”
“I won’t. I don’t have to.” He wasn’t happy at the thought of Celina and Jack getting together, but it would solve more than one problem.
“That man—the one Wilson’s using to trap me—he’s got evidence against me.”
“If you are right about that, let me know and I’ll talk to Wilson. I can’t promise anything, but perhaps I can soften his heart.” And if he couldn’t, perhaps he could remind Wilson Lamar that Cyrus was a man with a very long memory, and there were some behaviors an electorate might not swallow too easily.
“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?” Sally said. Her body had relaxed.
“I’m going to do my best.”
“So am I.” She sounded breathless. “I’ll read the book. I’ll read it this very night so we can talk about it tomorrow.”
He stared straight over her head. “I’m not sure I can make it tomorrow.”
“Oh, please say you can. Just for a little while?”
“Sally...” This was getting tougher by the second. “I’ve got to go.”
“I understand.” But she didn’t release him. “I’m being selfish. You’ve told me you’re a man with a man’s needs, and you’ve suppressed those needs for so long. Does it make it harder when I hold you?”
“I think you know it does,” he said quietly.
Sally let out a long, long breath. “Would you just hold me, too? Just this once? I don’t know what it’s like to be held by a good man, Cyrus. Α man who doesn’t want something from me.”
In his mind he knew he must refuse and break the contact. And that would be another rejection, this one from a person she considered “good.”
Cyrus put his arms around Sally and embraced her awkwardly.
“Thank you,” she said, and sighed again. “You are the kindest man on earth. Come tomorrow—to this room. I promise I’ll have questions about the book.”
He hesitated, but said, “All right.”
“Same time?”
“Same time,” he agreed, and dropped his hands.
Sally touched her brow to his collarbone, took her arms from his waist, and turned aside.
Her left hand brushed over his penis—his erect penis.
He grimaced and felt heat in his face. Their eyes met and he thought he saw pity in hers. He didn’t want her pity!
“Good-bye, Sally,” he said, and strode to the door. “Good-bye, dear Cyrus,” she told him. “See you tomorrow.”
He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t he there t
omorrow, or any other day.
The afternoon had turned even more sultry. Cyrus barely saw where he walked. He had no cause to be ashamed of having natural bodily reactions, yet he felt deeply shamed by allowing himself to react to Sally, and letting her know he’d reacted.
A few large raindrops fell.
He passed the open doors of a club where a single horn sent its sad sounds into the late afternoon humidity.
Her body had felt so good. He’d come close to disgracing himself entirely.
Another rush of hot blood hit his face and neck. He stopped and faced bars that closed off the courtyard of a cafe.
He pretended to study a menu attached to the bars.
Inside people chattered over wine beneath a glass canopy where grapevines dripped from webs of twine.
If he decided not to return to see her tomorrow, he’d have to make sure she didn’t go either. Her frail ego didn’t need another blow.
If he decided not to return. What was happening to him? He could not go. He’d already told himself he couldn’t.
At a table to the right, a trio caught his attention. Rather the raised voice of the only woman at the table caught his attention because it was familiar. The three were too engrossed in an angry encounter to notice a man in black watching them from outside, where the day was turning dark.
The woman said, “You will regret it.”
One of the two men held her wrist against the table and said something Cyrus couldn’t hear. The next time the woman spoke, her face was still contorted with anger, but she kept her voice low.
Cyrus drew back, using the angle between himself and the trio as his blind, or he hoped it would work that way.
They knew each other, these three. They hadn’t met only days earlier, or by accident this afternoon, and for the first time. There was connection there, and it ran deep.
Finally the younger man stood and threw money onto the table. He looked down at the other two for several seconds before opening his wallet and extracting a large wad of bills. This he slammed against the other man’s chest. He sneered when it was promptly accepted.
Walt Reed quickly pocketed the cash, giving his wife a triumphant smile as he did so.
When Wilson Lamar’s young bodyguard stalked from the cafe, he was too angry to notice Cyrus watching from the doorway to which he’d retreated.
Chapter 26
Until Amelia’s return to New Orleans, Celina had been increasingly convinced she would, indeed, marry Jack and that it was the right thing to do.
Although she’d wanted to get away sooner, she’d stayed with Amelia until Tilly ventured down from her domain, and then it had been impossible to refuse the woman’s evident attempt at making peace by asking Celina to have some tea and cake with them.
Celina was still certain she would marry Jack, but not so certain it wouldn’t turn out to be a mistake.
She hadn’t intended to stay so long in Chartres Street. Darkness began to close in and she hurried on her way to Royal Street. Despite the slowing down of Dreams’s business, she still felt an urgency to keep working. Jack had surprised her by taking his new duties very seriously. He was convinced that at least at present their focus should be on individual needs among children who were no longer hospitalized. To that end Celina had obtained a list of discharged patients from St. Peter’s and was in the process of making calls.
She was tempted to make a detour past Les Chats and try to talk to Dwayne privately about Antoine.
But if someone was watching and listening, searching for any sign that Celina or Dwayne knew more that they’d admitted, it would be a mistake for Celina to go to Les Chats.
Celina automatically looked behind her. The evening crowd was revving up. Locals moving with purpose. Tourists laughing and drinking from plastic cups while they gazed through open doors into clubs. Many already carried bags of the obligatory souvenirs—T-shirts, cheap masks and trinkets, incense sticks to ward off evil spirits they’d forget about the instant their visit to The Big Easy was behind them.
The scene was surreal. She paused and drew back against a building, saw the laughing faces and expansive gestures in slow motion. A kernel of panic assailed her, but she took deep breaths and willed herself to be calm. Too much had happened. Too much more was about to happen. Wilson’s assault…She put a hand on her belly and tried to think of the baby, not of how she had been conceived. Errol’s death needed closure. But what could a citizen do if the law wasn’t interested—or appeared not to be interested? And Antoine. Tomorrow she would go—No, Rose had specifically begged her not to try to make contact. The woman had promised she’d get back to Celina somehow.
Why hadn’t Rose come back to see her yet?
Jack would be angry when he discovered Celina hadn’t told him the details of Rose’s visit.
“Hey, good lookin’,” a man who was barely more than a teenager yelled into her face. “How about you and me goin’ dancin’?”
She shook her head. His face was too close to hers. A sun-reddened face. Straw-pale hair. Bloodshot blue eyes that closed slowly and opened slowly. He held a plastic cup of pink slush. A fruit daiquiri from one of the bars that sold nothing else.
Celina turned from him and walked on, swallowing gulps of air. Sweat formed between her shoulder blades and instantly turned cold.
She was going to marry Jack Charbonnet and live with him and his child in Chartres Street. This week she would take that step. What did she really know about him? Only what was public knowledge. And that when they made love he could chase away any doubts.
The kid with the straw hair passed her with several buddies. They called out to her but kept on moving.
A street vendor slapped a disc into his CD player and snapped his fingers, dancing while he straightened rows of cheap jewelry pinned to boards atop a trestle table. Some who walked by clicked their fingers too, and bopped their own dance steps.
The gaudiest city in the world. Celina loved it, or she did when she didn’t jump at the slightest sound and panic in crowds.
She walked on, deliberately keeping her pace leisurely. But her heart didn’t slow down, and her stomach didn’t relax.
An elderly woman sidestepped a tall, emaciated girl on Rollerblades who wore psychedelic elbow and knee pads with her cutoff jeans and halter top. Unfortunately the girl was no expert on the blades. She lost control and walloped into the woman, who dropped a basket overflowing with groceries.
Apples rolled, and oranges. Grapes splatted on the sidewalk, as did a carton of milk. A bottle of vitamins broke, scattering pills in all directions.
The girl yelled, “Watch where you’re goin’, you old hag,” righted herself, and skated away.
Celina hurried forward and went to her knees to help.
“Young people,” the woman muttered. “They got no respect no more. Sign says you can’t have them things on the sidewalk. Them skates. Do they take notice? Not them. Look at my grapes. And them vitamins cost a bundle.”
“It’s awful,” Celina said, gathering items and returning them to the basket as quickly as possible. The grapes she picked up and began to drop in a garbage can.
“Don’t do that!” the woman said. “I gotta take ‘em back. They packed ‘em in the bottom of the basket, didn’t they? Bound to get squashed. The store will have to replace them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Celina said, only vaguely shocked. She rounded up the plastic net for the grapes and scooped them inside.
“Look at those apples.” The woman tutted and pointed to the bruised fruit. “I’ll have to make a pie with ‘em.”
“I bet it’ll be a great pie.”
“If there’s enough of them left. Where’d they all go?” Celina searched in all directions and caught sight of both apples and oranges that had rolled into an alley. Despite the darkness, she went after the fruit and began picking up pieces.
The alley was dank. Overhead the walls of the old buildings on either side bulged. Clothes flapped on lines along g
alleries. If they’d dried at all today, they’d already be wet again because they’d been left out too long.
She felt movement behind her and started to turn around. A blow between her shoulder blades caused her to stumble. Before she could cry out, a length of fabric was jammed into her mouth and her head was forced back against a shoulder.
Celina kicked with her heels. And she jammed her elbows backward and struggled. She tried going limp and dropping her dead weight in the other’s arms. She was promptly jerked upright with the gag. It cut into her cheeks and threatened to make her vomit.
She squirmed and tried to scream. Only a muffled squeal emitted. One arm was free, and she reached over her shoulder, scouring about for the man’s eyes. His response was to capture that hand too, and anchor it behind her back.
Celina stared down the alley toward the street. Surely the woman had seen what happened. Surely she’d go for help.
People passed the end of the alley. They laughed and jostled. They didn’t look into the darkness between the buildings.
There was no sign of the woman or her dropped groceries.
The man behind her spoke not a word. The gag was secured, and he dragged her backward, backward, backward, and against a wall. That was when she saw what she hadn’t noticed before. A van, black or some other dark color. It gleamed dully. Celina saw it from the corner of her eye, gradually saw more of it as her assailant pulled her along its side.
Once past its length, she was shoved against the back doors of the vehicle and her hands were lashed together behind her back.
She kicked out again, but the doors of the van swung open and she was pushed, facedown onto the floor inside. With several efficient movements her ankles were also secured.
The van sagged as the man leaped in behind her. Then a bag descended over her head and she saw nothing.
Screaming silently, choking on the gag, she writhed and tried to turn over, but a foot came down in the center of her back and she lay still.
Her baby. She must protect her baby.
A sharp rap sounded. The van’s engine turned over and the hard floor vibrated beneath Celina.