“No!” Sloane cried. The ghost looked at her disapprovingly. “I mean, no, thank you.” Sloane had the most terrible feeling that her mother was watching her, that at any moment the statue would turn its marble head and look at her with stony eyes that would see right through her and find her wanting. “I can’t,” Sloane said. Her breath caught in her chest. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Don’t cry, girl,” Miss Bettie said sharply. “Remember who you are.”
“I’m not anybody,” Sloane shouted, and she slammed her hand down on the piano, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve never been anybody, not in my whole life. All I’ve ever been is Not Jane Gardner. Not Odessa Gibbons.” Her breath jerked and caught, her shoulders shook with it. She must look terrible, she thought. Lindsey’s rotten mascara wouldn’t be up to this. “Please,” Sloane begged, too ashamed to meet Miss Bettie’s frosty eyes. “Find someone else. I’m not cut out to save this Island. I’m not cut out to be a princess. I’ll only let you down.”
“When the time comes, you’ll do what you have to do.”
“I didn’t!” Sloane yelled. “I ran. Not Jane Gardner is all I know.”
“There’s more to you than that,” Miss Bettie said. She reached under Sloane’s chin and tipped her face up. The touch of her fingers was like ice against Sloane’s throat.
“I’m an executive assistant,” Sloane said. “Oh, I suppose Mother will always be a part of me. But…” But Odessa was part of her, too, with her witch’s cackle and love of clothes. She was Scarlet, for that matter, or could be: dramatic and impetuous. And of course she was Sly. Even when she was being dutiful, deferent Sloane, she had never been Jane Gardner. She had been her executive assistant. Her job was to handle people: to flatter and coax, to wheedle and compromise and delegate, as she had with Randall Denton and Ace and Alice Mather.
“Oh,” Sloane said.
Miss Bettie looked at her sharply.
Sloane met the old ghost’s eyes. “I’ll help any way I can.” she said softly. “But unless we’re very careful, what with Jeremiah gone, either Randall Denton or I will end up running the Krewe of Momus.” She saw Miss Bettie begin to nod. “Which would be fine, if there wasn’t a much better candidate available.”
The ghost frowned. “There isn’t anyone more suitable than you. Miss Gardner.”
“Ah, but there is,” Sloane said. “There’s you.”
“Her?” Scarlet said from over in the armchair.
“Me?” said Miss Bettie. Her hand dropped out from under Sloane’s chin.
“But she’s dead,” Scarlet objected.
“It doesn’t seem to have slowed her down.” Sloane forced herself to take Miss Bettie’s cold white hand. “Who has more creditability than Bettie Brown? Why, you are still acknowledged as the greatest society woman in the Island’s history, even after being, ah, indisposed for eighty years. And think what you could bring to the position. The Krewe of Momus has always been a stuffy lot. Do you really think it can adapt to this miraculous new world? With Jim and Randall and me bickering all the time? But you! You know more about magic than any of us,” Sloane said reasonably. “For that matter, you also lived when there was no magic at all.”
Miss Bettie gave Sloane a long, amused look. “Don’t think I don’t see why you’re doing this.”
“Just because I’m a coward doesn’t make you less perfect for the job,” Sloane said evenly. She wiped the tear tracks off her face and saw smears of cheap mascara on the side of her hand. “You even live at Ashton Villa. How convenient. I would be happy to lend a hand. If you needed an executive secretary, for example. Someone the other members of the Krewe know a little better. Someone, ah,—”
“Breathing,” Miss Bettie prompted.
“That, too. I’d be happy to assist you.” The corner of Sloane’s mouth began to turn up in the smile she had once thought of as Sly’s, but now had become simply her own.
“Rascal.” Miss Bettie fingered her pearls, eyeing Sloane with grudging amusement. “There is a certain sort of impudence,” the ghost said, “which I find it hard to disapprove of as much as I ought.” Miss Bettie tapped her fingers on the frosted crystal of the Rolex. “Well,” she said. “Hm.” She frowned. “There are certainly things I would like to see done.”
“Repairs to be made.”
“Your mother was an excellent woman,” Miss Bettie remarked, “but a little more elegance would not be amiss.”
“I might suggest—”
“Don’t,” the ghost said. She put one chalk-white finger in front of her lips. “You have tempted me, Sloane Gardner. That is enough for tonight. You go sleep on it. I will do some musing on my own.”
“You really are the only person for the job,” Sloane said. She rose and picked Scarlet out of Jane Gardner’s unfeeling lap. Her smile faded. She was still waiting for her mother to turn the page of her book, to rise from her chair with a little sigh and go about her work. Sloane thought that if she were only not so tired, her heart would break: for Jane, and Odessa, and Ace, and Josh. Everyone on Galveston Island, really, living their little lives upon this sandbar until Time’s inevitable wave came to carry them off. “We all have to serve,” Sloane said. “We all have to help. Otherwise who could stand it?”
From Miss Bettie, a small, sad smile. “It just doesn’t get any better than this,” she said. And then, after a time, she moved her cold hand to cover Sloane’s. “Or any worse either. This one life is all we are given, dear, with all its imperfections.” She looked around the Gold Room, at the square piano and the chandelier, the twelve-foot mirrors and the gold wallpaper and the portrait of her arm in arm with the Emperor of Austria. “Oh, how I loved to live!” Miss Bettie said. “I loved it so well that I came back to it, despite all the suffering, when I could have chosen to sleep instead.” The ghost looked at Sloane with eyes that had seen the chandeliers of Vienna and the dunes of the Sahara. The most famous Texan belle of her day, as gay as Sly and as dutiful as Sloane. “Even a civilized woman does have choices,” Miss Bettie said. “She just has to choose well.”
A few days later, Josh was thinking about Miss Bettie Brown as he walked toward Ashton Villa at dusk. Sloane Gardner had invited him to play cards. Josh suspected Sloane of trying to finesse a reconciliation between him and his father. It was the kind of meddling she liked to do. Ace had come through his fever. He was still very weak, but as soon as Josh had given the okay for him to be moved, Sloane had sent a carriage to bring him to Ashton Villa. It added insult to injury that she and his father were now fast friends. There was a funny side to that, but Josh had found it easy not to laugh.
At first he had said he couldn’t make it, he was too busy to play cards. Somehow she had coaxed him into coming. A Gardner talent, that. Josh wondered if Miss Bettie would be there. He hoped not. He had nothing against the old lady personally, but she could only remind him of the horror of taking off Joe Tucker’s leg. And besides, the last thing he needed was another sign of magic. Piece by piece the last fragments of the twentieth century were foundering under the tide of miracles creeping steadily over the Island. He had already begun to see things which looked like diseases but weren’t. One of Ham’s pals from the Gas Authority was watching his skin thicken day by day into something hard and woody as bark. Yesterday Josh had seen a woman with lesions springing up all over her body, caused, he suspected, by nothing but the guilt of having survived the storm that had taken her son.
But then, Josh thought, even back when medicine worked, doctoring was never a very good gamble. Sooner or later, the house always wins.
The houses got larger and nicer as Josh walked out of the barrio and turned onto Broadway. At Seventeenth Avenue a lamplighter was lifting his wick to the wrought-iron streetlight on the corner. The flame caught, flickered, and steadied within its white glass globe, hanging like a small moon over the intersection. Josh glanced at the sky. No sign of the real moon yet. Momus had been sighted a handful of times in the last few days, looking o
lder and more withered each night, but so far he had never been seen in the town before moonrise.
Josh wondered if Sloane was doomed to be Momus’s Consort. He hoped not, his mind fleeing uneasily from what that might entail. Bettie Brown had announced her intention to stand for the position of Grand Duchess, to the bewilderment of almost everyone. The members of the Krewe of Momus were supposed to vote on it later in the week. Everybody agreed they ought to have the matter settled before the next moon came full. And here Josh had thought the Krewe of Rags would get the revellers and the monsters. Still not good enough for the likes of Bettie Brown, apparently. Talk about being buried with a silver spoon in your mouth.
Slowly Josh walked on. Weariness sat in his joints like rheumatism. Not that he could complain. If he had worked hard since returning to Galveston, plenty had worked harder. Two days ago he had found himself stopping by the Mather place, but Rachel was the only one home, watching the kids. Without meeting his eye she had told him that Ham was very busy. First there were the natural gas lines to get back up and running. After hours, half the folk on the Island had wheedled Ham into helping rebuild their houses and toolsheds and piggeries. He had towed away their garbage, replanted their gardens, patched boats and put shoes on a horse or two. “Always ready to help anybody—you know how he is,” Rachel had said. Yeah, Josh had said, that was Ham all right.
Naturally the Krewe of Rags had chosen Ham to be its leader. Not that people hadn’t thanked Josh for his part in overthrowing Sheriff Denton. But when push came to shove, folk pretty much left Josh alone, except when they were sick. Score one for me, he thought. How clever I must be, to manage that.
It was possible he could join the Krewe of Rags if he asked. He hadn’t asked.
He found himself slowing down as he neared Ashton Villa and it irritated him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been back to this neighborhood before. He had, plenty of times, but always in daylight, when every specific detail—clothes on the line, kids playing, chickens clucking—said this was just another place, not steeped in his lost childhood. But in the deepening dusk, details melted away. The tall Victorian houses were reduced to the same silhouettes he remembered, and the smells leaking into the evening air, of poblano soup and shrimp étouffée, were the same as they had been dozens of evenings as he ambled home with his dad after an afternoon of cards at Jim Ford’s house.
What had Ham said? It wasn’t Sloane he was in love with, it was her house. Her wealth and position and fine friends. Probably true. But then, hadn’t Ham been guilty of the same thing, really, when he decided to be Josh’s friend? He might have stuck up for Josh out of general principles, at first. But he had stayed friends with him, year after year, exactly because Josh wasn’t really part of the barrio. Because he represented something different from the rest of Ham’s world.
So there, I win the argument, Josh thought dourly. And only a week late. But it had been ten years since he learned the schoolboy lesson that once you’ve been dumped, you can’t just demonstrate the logical flaws in your girlfriend’s reasoning and expect her to take you back. Life is like poker, not chess, and logic is only a tiny part of the game.
He couldn’t see himself sending Ham flowers.
The shutters were open at Ashton Villa and the windows glowed with pale yellow gaslight. Josh found himself hesitating at the top of Sloane’s walk. The ghosts of his childhood crowded around a little thicker, buzzing like mosquitoes. At least this place didn’t smell like his mother’s house. She wouldn’t be waiting for him inside, melting wax in her little fondue pot or distilling thymol or boiling plantains for their mucilage.
Sloane met him at the door. “I was beginning to worry,” she said. “Come on in. I’ve given the servants the night off. We have a card table set up in the back room.” She paused. “You know your father’s here, don’t you?”
“I guessed.”
When he followed Sloane into the kitchen it wasn’t the sight of Ace that threw him, sitting in a wheelchair by the kitchen table. Nor was he surprised to see Scarlet, the little reveller girl, in his father’s lap. It was Ham he hadn’t expected. The big man was bent over in front of the Gardners’ fine refrigerator. “Are you out of beer, Sloane?” he said, rummaging. His butt crack showed. “Damn, but I’m thirsty.”
Josh looked sharply at Sloane. “I see you’ve invited all sorts of people.”
Ham stiffened at the sound of Josh’s voice. “Oh, man.” He straightened and turned. “Hey, Josh,” he said uncomfortably.
This was so unlike the flat tone the big man had been using with him since they escaped from George and Martha that it made Josh instantly suspicious. “Or maybe you didn’t invite Ham,” he said slowly. “Maybe he’s just here because…he stayed over last night?”
Ham wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sunburned skin was still peeling from his face like confetti. “Well, hell, what are we waiting for?” he blustered, dragging a couple of bottles of beer out of the fridge and setting them loudly on the table. “Let’s play some cards!”
So Josh was right. Ham was here because he was staying here. Ham was sleeping with Sloane Gardner.
You had to appreciate the irony of it.
A smile so tight it made his face hurt settled on Josh. “Hell yes, let’s play cards.” He glanced at Sam Cane. “Are you in the game?” He had no doubt that his father was still so skilled, and so lucky, that he would easily overmatch anyone else at the table.
“Thought I’d just give Scarlet a few pointers,” Ace said.
“A little bit of dinner first?” Sloane said brightly. “Sarah made chili rellenos before she left.” The smell of them woke Josh’s appetite. He dug in while Ham fussed at the stove. The big man had brought a bucket of shrimp, and set about preparing a braise for them by dicing two fat cloves of garlic into a skillet of butter. Josh hadn’t thought to bring anything himself. Of course. As if the fact that Sloane was rich excused him from making the simplest act of courtesy. Josh tried to wash the thought away with a quick bottle of beer.
The rellenos were stuffed poblano peppers, hotter than usual, with minced fatty pork and cilantro and other succulent things Josh could not identify. Within three bites his whole mouth was gently simmering, and he washed the relleno down with another beer. He noticed that he was the only person at the table not to cross himself like a Mexican before he started to eat. The habit had spread all over the Island now, as people tried to protect themselves with any charm or ritual or stupid chant.
After dinner Sloane broke out the cards. She told them she was staying up late almost every night playing for real money at the Bishop’s Palace, slowly whittling away at her debt to Randall Denton. “Not that I still don’t owe him the earth, but every little bit helps. Tonight, for once, I’d like to play just for fun.”
A weak knock sounded at the back door. Sloane stood up to answer it. “Probably one of the servants forgot something. I was thinking we could bet with rice grains and pecans,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve got a collection of sand dollars upstairs we could use, too.”
Josh heard the screen door squeak open. A gust of wind swept into the kitchen, surprisingly cold. “Oh,” Sloane gasped, out of sight. The screen door banged shut. Sloane returned, white as Miss Bettie’s fancy dress.
Behind her, paler than she, came an ancient man, thin and dry and brittle, as if twisted out of wicker. Josh knew instantly it was Momus. The god’s skin was as white as a cue ball. Moonlight fell from it. “Heard there was going to be a game,” Momus wheezed. “Thought I’d sit in, just for one hand.” His breath was short and his steps were crabbed, and he spoke in the thin voice of the very old. He smelled faintly of talcum powder and ice. Age and imminent death fell from him like the pale light from his skin. Josh felt himself shrivel up with fear.
“Grandpa?” Scarlet said, but she didn’t leave Sam Cane’s lap.
Joshua’s father showed no tells. “Evening,” Ace said. He tipped his head. Ham, who had been working near the st
ove, backed against Sloane’s kitchen counter and stared wide-eyed at the god. Blood drained from his beefy face.
Momus rubbed his hands together with a sound like dry twigs scraping, and lowered himself into the empty chair between Josh and his father. “Well? Let’s play, shall we? Who’s up for a game? Sly, you’ll play, won’t you, doll? And Ace, of course. How about the little girl?”
“No!” Sloane cried. She seemed to catch hold of herself. Slowly one corner of her mouth turned up in a small, cold, reckless smile. “I’m in,” she said.
Momus chuckled. His white stare fixed on Josh like a searchlight pinning down a fleeing fugitive. “And you must be Sam’s boy. Ace taught you a thing or two, I bet.”
“How to lose,” Josh said, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to speak. He felt a little spark of fury answer the god’s cold gaze. “I’m in.”
Momus turned to look at Ham with eyes as old and barren as the last ice age. “How about you?”
“I can’t,” Ham whispered. He shook his head. “Too scared,” he said. Shame filled his eyes at his own confession.
“Leave him alone,” Josh said. Momus looked back at him with cold amusement. It felt as if the air had frozen in Joshua’s lungs, but he forced himself to speak. “He can’t play worth a damn anyway,” he said. “Four’s enough.”
Momus shrugged. “Just one hand. I was on my way out of town for a day or two. But I’ll be back soon, I promise you, and much refreshed.”
“I’ll deal,” Ace said, reaching for the pack.
The god laid his withered fingers on Ace’s hand. “You’re too lucky. It wouldn’t be sporting.” Not to mention that the god would have had to make the first bet, Josh thought, knowing his father’s tactics well.
“I’ll deal,” Sloane said. A look passed between her and Sam Cane. He passed the cards to Josh, who cut and handed them back across the table to Sloane.
“Now, we’re not going to play for rice and pecans,” Momus said. “Poker means nothing if there’s nothing at stake.” He pulled a wallet from his breast pocket, counted off ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and laid them on the table. He peered around like an aging uncle who has made a joke. “Ante up, kids.”