Charming Grace

  “We could be in a shack in the woods, for all I care. It’s not about where we are, or how fine it is, or isn’t—it’s who we are when we’re together, and why we have to hope for the best, and this.” I cupped his chin in my hand. “All I can promise you is that I want to feel the way I did the other night, with you.”

  He kissed me roughly. I wound my arms around him and he slid my blouse over my head. With a quick jerk of his hands my skirt came up to my waist, then he lifted me off the floor and I wrapped my legs around him. Hard against me, he climbed on the cheap, jumbled motel bed and lay down with me underneath him, my hands already working quickly to unfasten his soft gray trousers. He put his mouth to my breasts and bit carefully on each nipple as they strained against the white lace of my bra. I arched upwards, drugged by the sensations.

  Sex is the catalyst for everything vital and raw about life. A few minutes later I had Boone’s hard pulse inside me, and our wordless, sad, angry, tender and rough collision rose on a tide of lust and the hiss of cold air across the bed’s coarse sheets and slick, dull-colored bedspread. I felt rich with grief and confusion and need; I writhed against him as if tied down by wanting him, escaping on the low, coarse moan of coming; it electrified him. He bent his head next to mine and pounded against me in waves of feverish movement, convulsing over me and inside me until one final lunge pushed me deep into the thin mattress, submerged in the hoarse sound of my name in his throat.

  We tilted our foreheads together, eyes shut, breathing hard. Finally he kissed me lightly but angrily on the mouth, then moved away and sat beside me on the bed. I lay very still, naked under his gaze, daring him to tell me we controlled very much about our lives outside the borders of that bed. His eyes grim, he put a hand on me as if trying to learn all about me, my thoughts, my thirty-four years before I’d met him, smoothing that big, splayed hand over my breasts and stomach and thighs as if scanning me into his mind. When his hand returned to its starting point near my throat, he lightly pressed the tip of his forefinger to a tender pulse point beneath my ear. “So now we proved I’m a lover and Harp’s dead but not forgotten,” he said in a graveled tone. “What do we do next, chere?”

  I had no easy answers, and he didn’t expect any. I pulled him back down on the bed, and he let me.

  I was now Stone Senterra’s prize, a trophy to be shown off like his animal heads and his box office awards. I had to play by his rules, even as I searched for ways to beach the S.S. Senterra before it sailed into port with Stone’s version of Harp’s life. And I had to stay away from Boone, for his sake as well as mine. Not so easy. I’d slept with only two men in my

  life—one dead, one so alive he made me cry in my sleep.

  “What are you doing up here?” G. Helen called into the pitch-dark night and rain. “Pretending to be a weather vane?”

  Soaked in a long white nightgown, I huddled on a tiny third-floor balcony at Bagshaw Downs, hugging Dancer in her clay pot. The balcony faced the deep ridges and forest that led to Ladyslipper Lost—toward all that was left of Harp, in body. Lightning slapped the night sky. Thunder shook me. I stared at my elegant, ageless grandmother with spine-tingling fear and awe. Even in the stormy darkness she glowed with diamonds and silk. The surreal G. Helen. Dispenser of Survivor Magic. It was two a.m. and she’d just come home from dinner and Atlanta nightclubbing with the infamous, not-yet-introduced-to decent-Bagshaws, Jack Roarke.

  “I can’t sleep in mine and Harp’s bedroom, anymore,” I called over the wind. “I’m not sure what kind of wife I am, anymore. What should I do? What am I doing?”

  G. Helen wrapped me in the billowing softness of her silk wrap and pulled my drenched head on her shoulder. “You sweet, idiotic romantic. All you’ve done is fall in love and get on with life. Now you have to make peace with that fact.”

  “Right now I miss Harp as much as the day he died, but if he walked out of the woods—” my voice broke—“if he walked out of the forest right now, alive, again, I don’t know if I’d be happy to see him. That’s a twisted way to feel. It hurts.”

  “Just keep breathing. You’ll figure out what to do next.”

  “Breathing is the easy part.”

  “Answers come when you’re ready.” She touched Dancer’s naked flower stem. “Orchids bloom when they know it’s time.”

  Rain drops made Dancer’s soft green, rabbit-ear leaves twitch as if the orchid were listening intently and would pass the news along to Harp’s other ladyslippers, those surrounding him, guarding his memory better than I might, now.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 14

  “Noleene,” Stone yelled when I came back, “if you ever quit on me again, you crazy Cajun, I’ll fire your ass permanently!” Then he pounded me on the back, looked as if he might hug me, and offered me a raise. I turned it down. He yelled for an assistant and told her to do the paperwork, anyway. And that was that. He never mentioned Grace’s name. Never asked me to stay away from her. Never wanted to know if I was on her side instead of his. I’m on both sides and trapped in the middle, I could have said. But he trusted me. I’d stay out of Grace’s bed and do my job.

  She made it easy. And hard. We managed to pull off the just-friends act pretty well, unless people noticed how the magnetic pull of the earth changed every time we got within fifty feet of each other, or how a haunted look came in her green eyes every time we copped a glance, or the way my general mood deteriorated to the charm of a wounded gator around her.

  Diamond didn’t mince any words. She only minced me, as soon as she got the chance.

  “You’re toast,” she said, flexing in an ruby-red Versace pantsuit with a big diamond S on one lapel. “Put some etouffee on your French bread and stick it in the oven. Toast.” She delivered that news in a cat hiss while I was stationed outside the big, stained-glass front doors of the Dahlonega house on a late-June day so hot the big yard oaks curled up their leaves to catch bug sweat.

  I was in no mood to parley-vous with her. “The Devil called. Said bring back his air conditioner.”

  “Very funny. You think you can say anything to me and get away with it, because my brother likes you. He gives you credit for saving Leo’s life on that raft trip last year. Kanda and the girls think you’re Mr. Southern Gentleman. Everyone’s giving you a pass on that shit down in Savannah, except me. I don’t care if you admit it or not—you were screwing Grace Vance instead of doing your job.” She waved a hand. “Look at what you really are. Just a glorified horn dog who’s only good for guarding cars and candy.”

  Limos filled the driveway. A dozen execs from one of the big L.A. studios were inside with Stone, discussing Hero whilst downing ice-cold imported beers and marinated buffalo wings from Rick’s, a restaurant up the street. Beside me was a pair of big ice chests filled with gift boxes of Fudge Factory fudge, which Stone would dole out to the execs when they left, their low-carb South Beach diets be damned. My job was to guard the fudge. And the limos. She was right. I counted to ten. Twice.

  “Not just cars and candy,” I said. “Big cars and fudge.”

  “You don’t think I know what you and Grace are up to?”

  “I’m only goin’ to say this once. Grace has nothing to do with how I do this job. I’ll do my job and do it right. You have my word on that.” I bent my head close to hers. “Now leave the subject be, or I’ll drop a dime on you and your muscle-o-matic pills.”

  Kablam. Got her, right between the two-hundred-dollar custom-made eye shadow. She backed up a step. “You’ve got no proof!”

  “Oh? Tell your Singapore connection not to ship your steroids here by mistake. I signed for ‘em. If word got out. . .poof. There goes your line of natural bodybuilding supplements on the Home Shopping Network—all that marketing talk about how clean livin’ made you what you are today and how your supplements can make millions of flabby women look like they work out five hours a day, too. You don’t want Stone to know you’re still jacking up your brawn with those pills, after you promised hi
m you’d quit.” I arched a brow. “Capice?” I drawled.

  “You fucking con.”

  “Glad we have an understanding.”

  She regained enough oomph to get up on the tippy toes of her strappy red dominatrix shoes, grab me by the sweat-stained front of my golf shirt, and grind out a little warning that smelled like a whiff of three-day-old shrimp. “I don’t need to catch Grace. All I need to do is catch you, helping her screw up my brother’s movie. And I will.”

  She thunked me under the chin with her thumb, then stepped back as we heard someone slamming big feet on the cherry floors inside. She put on a big premiere-night smile as the front doors burst open. Stone poked his head out in a whoosh of fine, cold air. He beamed, happy about God, country and Hollywood now that he thought he had Grace on his band wagon.

  “Baby Sis! Come in here. The studio boys and girls want to hear about Siam Patton’s fight scenes! I told ‘em we might throw in a couple of floaters. A little airborne kickboxing, you know. Real Matrix action-stunt stuff. I’ve been explaining how it won’t hurt the nitty-gritty of the story. The boys and girls love the idea!”

  I put in my two-cents’ worth without even thinking. “Grace won’t like it if you make her husband look like a cross between Bruce Lee and Peter Pan.”

  Diamond hissed at me. “She told you that? When? In bed?”

  Stone frowned. “You got some inside information from Grace? Anything I should know?”

  This was a test. I was supposed to know what he thought I should know, and not know what I shouldn’t know. Anything else would mean I had more to tell about Grace and me than I wanted to tell. I did a 360-degree mental round-up of my options, and then I said, “There was no air kung-fu in Titanic, but it did okay at the box office.”

  When in doubt, mention movies that made more money than the annual income of a small country. Stone laughed. “Good point! But teenagers buy a lot of tickets and they all want to see that hanging-in-the-air crap. Calm down—I’m only filming the secondary fight scenes that way. Not Vance’s character. He’ll stay on solid ground.”

  “All I’m sayin’ is—”

  “You think Mr. Holier-Than-Thou Mel Gibson would’ve hesitated to put a little air kung fu in his Life-of-Christ movie if he thought it would sell more tickets?” Stone’s face turned dark at just the thought of Gibson being a more respectable Catholic than him. “Hell, he’d have had Judas and Peter air-kicking the crap out of each other at the Last Supper if he thought it’d up the opening weekend grosses.”

  “I’m just tryin’ to warn you—”

  “Grace is a happy camper. She’s got no beef with me, anymore. Relax. You worry too much.” Stone grabbed his sister around the shoulders. “Come inside and tell the boys and girls all about your stunt plans for Siam’s fight scenes!” He grinned at me. “What’s my Sis been up to out here? Did she filch any fudge out of the coolers, Noleene?”

  “We were just talkin’ religion. I wondered if the Devil really does have horns and carries a pitchfork. Diamond says he does.”

  Diamond glared at me, but the insult fluttered right over Stone’s head. He leapt past us, grinning and opening his arms. “Hey! There’s Grace!” I looked around to see Mojo opening the gate for her. My heart and everything else pulled up in a tight knot. She parked a shiny, restored, baby blue Chevy alongside the limos in the side yard.

  Stone nearly puddled with happiness. “She’s driving Harp’s Chevy! I asked her to bring it for the L.A. boys and girls to see, and she did!” Stone galloped across the lawn to meet her.

  “I wish she’d drive the thing off a mountain top—with her inside,” Diamond muttered, then caught the warning glint in my eyes. “Poof,” I reminded her. She tromped inside and shut the doors hard.

  I stood there on the hot, wicker-filled veranda with love and unhappiness coating me like honey, meeting Grace’s eyes for just one second before she covered the look and smiled tightly at Stone. She got out of Harp’s beloved muscle car looking as good as cream rising in a pitcher—all curves in a simple pale dress, plain, low-heeled shoes, a little gold jewelry, her wedding band, and that red hair streaming in copper rivers down her back. I had had my hands in her hair, my lips, my face in that hair. I had slept, holding her, with her hair streaming over my chest.

  “You brought the car!” Stone boomed. “I’ll send my people out to take pictures! We’re getting an exact replica! Sure you haven’t changed your mind about loaning it to me for the film?”

  “Yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll loan it to you if you’ll donate twenty-thousand dollars to Noah’s Ark.”

  “You got it! What’s this ark thing?”

  “Our local women’s shelter.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  She headed across the lawn toward the verandah, him trailing her, her eyes on me. She stripped me down, burned me up, set me free, chained me in place. “And twenty thousand to the humane society.”

  “Twenty-thousand for the kitties and puppies. Consider it done.”

  “And twenty-thousand to White Christmas.”

  He began to scowl. “It’s not even Fourth of July, yet.”

  “White Christmas is a coalition of Dahlonega civic and charity groups. They provide goods and services for families in need.”

  “At your prices, I could buy five old Chevy’s.”

  “But you wouldn’t have Harp’s real car for the film. I’m only helping promote your image as a director who cares about this film’s authenticity.”

  She hasn’t heard about Diamond’s fight scenes, yet, I thought.

  He grumbled, chewed his cud a minute, then shrugged. His smile broke through. “You’re right. What’s twenty-thousand here and there, to me? Just pocket change.”

  “I know,” she said grimly.

  She reached the verandah steps. “Afternoon, Ms. Vance,” I said.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Noleene.”

  Stone leapt ahead of her. “Outta the way, Noleene. Let me open these doors for the lady. . .”

  “He’s here! He’s here!”

  Stone’s daughters burst out of a side door and went tearing across the lawn. They’d been watching from a window all day. Mojo waved a small van up the drive. Kanda and the Irish nannies—sturdy, black-haired twenty-somethings dressed in jeans and J Lo t-shirts—ran after the girls.

  The van’s driver opened its back doors, slid a ramp into place, and opened a travel crate. I dreaded what I knew was coming next.

  Shrek waddled out into the Georgia sunshine, grunting happily as the girls patted and hugged him. When he spotted me, he squealed and headed my way, tugging both laughing little girls along behind at the end of his custom leather leash.

  Stone chortled. “Your pig’s here, Noleene! Look’s like Schwarzenegger’s missed you!” Stone had nicknamed the pig for Arnold that summer. Schwarzenegger—the human one—was riding high after the third Terminator movie, plus planning to run for governor of California, so in Stone’s mind the big Austrian had risen back to a pig-sized dissin’ level. “Take Schwarzenegger for a walk, Noleene, and give him a bite of fudge.” Stone grabbed Grace by one ladylike elbow. “Comeon, Grace, let’s go inside out of this heat. I can’t wait to present you to the big studio execs!”

  I tried to ignore Grace’s eyes but I felt her looking at me and couldn’t resist. Her greens were sad and sympathetic. I shook my head. You can’t help me, and I can’t help you.

  Stone dragged her inside the house, leaving behind a cold rush of indoor air with her light perfume on it, making me dizzy and crazy with need and mad at the world. I forced my face into prison-yard neutral. Shrek waddle-trotted up the veranda steps and slobbered all over the front of my khakis. His pink, curly tail twitched. The girls giggled and pulled on his leash, but he oinked merrily and gnawed my kneecaps. I scratched him between the ears.

  “Call him by his Cajun name, Boonie!” the girls begged.

  I nodded. “Hello, Le Snout Du Oink.”

  The girls laughed. Shrek
drooled happily on my shoes.

  There I was. Guarder of fudge and cars and drooling pigs.

  Stone decided to debut me, his prize Hero widow, during the most prestigious cinematic event in all of northern Georgia: The Dahlonega International Film Festival. Okay, yes, most people didn’t usually put “Dahlonega” and “International” in the same sentence unless they were talking about dinner at the Magic Wok Chinese restaurant next to the Wal-Mart. But though it was only a few years old, the DIFF had begun to chug along respectably.

  A small army of student volunteers from North Georgia College and a cabal of hip urban indie film types from Atlanta ran the annual summer film fest, which featured nearly two-hundred entries from all over the world, most of which were exhibited at the town’s renovated, 1930’s-era, one-screen theater, The Holly, or at makeshift auditoriums on the tree-shaded college campus. The DIFF awards, which looked like abstract blue peanuts cut out of plywood, would be presented on Sunday night.

  The films ran the gamut from avant-garde to avant-garder. One of that year’s prime entries was titled The Life Of A Bicycle From Prague, in Czech with French subtitles. Not exactly popcorn-scented, Saturday-night-at-the-drive-in fare. The average DIFF film buff was a sincere alternate-lifestyler with a vegetarian sandwich in his or her knapsack, wearing a nose ring, a vintage Grateful Dead t-shirt, and skin the color of a three-day old corpse.

  By comparison, the average Stone Senterra fan was a ruddy-faced burger-gulper who looked like he’d just parked his jacked-up SUV in a handicapped zone while he kicked some sissy ass before raising the Stars and Stripes over a picture of Mom and Apple Pie. When Senterra Productions put the word out that Stone was going to introduce me, talk about Hero, and show clips from his film oeuvre at the DIFF, his fans showed up in mass. Stone’s fans fit in at DIFF the way bubblegum goes with granola.

  “There’s another guy wearing a fake spacesuit,” Mika chortled. We were standing behind the curtain on The Holly’s tiny stage, waiting for Stone to arrive. She peeked around the curtain’s edge, again. “This is the most incredible costume event since my last Star Trek convention.” She pointed. “And look at that one! Leo! Which film of your dad’s is that guy paying homage to? He looks as if he’s wearing a mummified horse head with antennae on it.”