inscribed in big letters, and the flowers withering in the suffocating heat?
He forced himself out of this, and went for the best distraction he knew. Just looking at her, just looking and thinking about touching her, and resisting the urge, though she was only inches from him, and willing, yes, almost surely, willing to be touched.
It was working. A little switch was suddenly thrown in the ruthless mechanism called his brain. He was thinking of how her naked legs looked in the lamplight, and how delicate and full her breasts looked beneath her short silk gown.
Breasts always struck him as miracles; when you touched them and suckled them, they seemed entirely too luscious to be more than momentary-like sherbet or whipped cream, you expected them to melt in your mouth. That they stayed there, day after day, just waiting for you, was part of the whole impossibility of the female sex for him. That was all the science he knew. He bent forward, pressed his lips against her neck, and gave a little determined growl.
“Now you’ve done it,” she whispered.
“Yeah, well, it’s about time,” he said in the same deep voice. “How would you like to be carried to bed?”
“I’d love it,” she purred. “You haven’t done that since the first time.”
“Christ! How could I have been so thoughtless!” he whispered. “What kind of an old-fashioned man am I?” He shoved his left arm under her hot silky thighs and cradled her shoulders with his right, kissing her as he picked her up, secretly exultant that he didn’t lose his balance and go sprawling. But he had her-light and clinging, and suddenly feverishly compliant. Making it to the bed was a cinch.
On Tuesday, the air-conditioning men began their work. There were enough gallery roofs for every piece of equipment. Joseph, the decorator, had taken away all the French furniture that needed restoration. The beautiful old bedroom sets, all dating from the plantation era, needed no more than polishing, and the cleaning women could take care of that.
The plasterers had finished in the front bedroom. And the painters sealed off the area with plastic drapery so that they could get a clean job in spite of the dust from the work going on in the rest of the house. Rowan had chosen a light champagne beige for the bedroom walls, and white for the ceiling and the woodwork. The carpet men had come to measure upstairs. The floor men were sanding the dining room where for some reason a fancy oak floor had been laid over the old heart pine, which needed only a fresh coat of polyurethane.
Michael had checked out the chimneys himself from the roof. The wood-burning fireplaces of the library and the double parlor were all in good condition with an excellent draft. The rest of the hearths had long ago been fitted for gas, and some of them were sealed. It was decided to change the heaters to the more attractive kind which looked like real coal fires.
Meantime the appliances in the kitchen had all been replaced. The old wooden butcher-block countertops were being sanded. They would be varnished by the end of next week.
Rowan sat cross-legged on the parlor floor with the decorator, surrounded by swatches of brilliant-colored cloth. It was a beige silk she chose for the front room draperies. She wanted something in darker damask for the dining room, something that would blend with the faded plantation murals. Upstairs, everything was to be cheerful and light.
Michael went through books of paint chips, choosing soft peach tones for the lower floor, a dark beige for the dining room which would pick up a major color in the murals, and white for the kitchen and pantries. He was soliciting bids from the window cleaners, and from the companies which cleaned chandeliers. The grandfather clock in the parlor was being repaired.
By late Friday morning, Beatrice’s housekeeper, Trina, had purchased all new bedding for the various upstairs rooms, including new down pillows and comforters, and the linens had been packed with sachets into the armoires and the dresser drawers. The duct work had been completed in the attics. The old wallpaper was down in Millie’s room and the old sickroom and Carlotta’s room, and the plasterers had almost completed the proper preparation of the walls for fresh paint.
The burglar alarm system had also been finished, including smoke detectors, glass protectors, and buttons to summon emergency medical help.
Meantime, another crew of painters was at work in the parlor.
The only flaw in the day perhaps was Rowan’s noontime argument by phone with Dr. Larkin in San Francisco. She had told him she was taking an extended vacation. He felt she had sold out. An inheritance and a fancy house in New Orleans had lured her away from her true vocation. Clearly her vague statements as to her purpose and her future only further inflamed him. Finally she became exasperated. She wasn’t turning her back on her life’s work. She was thinking in terms of new horizons, and when she wanted to talk about it with him, she’d let him know.
When she got off the phone, she was exhausted. She wasn’t even going back to California to close up the Tiburon house.
“It chills me even to think of it,” she said. “I don’t know why I feel so strongly. I just don’t ever want to see the place again. I can’t believe I’ve escaped. I could pinch myself to know for sure that I’m not dreaming.”
Michael understood; nevertheless he advised her not to sell the house until a certain amount of time had passed.
She shrugged. She’d put it on the market tomorrow if she hadn’t already rented the place to Dr. Slattery, her San Francisco replacement. In exchange for an extremely low rent and a waiver of deposits, Slattery had cheerfully agreed to box up everything personal in the house and ship it south. Ryan had arranged for warehouse storage.
“Those boxes will probably stay there unopened,” she said, “for twenty years.”
At about two on Friday, Michael went with Rowan to the Mercedes-Benz dealer on St. Charles Avenue. Now this was a fun errand. It was in the same block as the hotel. When he was a kid walking home from the old library at Lee Circle, he used to go into this big showroom and open the doors of the stunningly beautiful German cars and swoon over them for as long as he could get away with it before a salesman took notice. He didn’t bother mentioning it. The fact was, he had a memory for every block they passed, everything they did.
He merely watched with quiet amusement as Rowan wrote out a check for two cars-the jaunty little 500 SL two-seater convertible, and the big classy four-door sedan. Both in cream with caramel leather upholstery, because that is what they had there on the floor.
The day before, he himself had picked up a neat, shiny, and luxurious American van, in which he could stow anything he wanted, yet still speed around in comfort and ease with the air-conditioning and the radio roaring. It amused him that Rowan did not seem to find the experience of buying these two cars to be anything remarkable. She did not even seem to find it interesting.
She asked the salesman to deliver the sedan to First Street, drive it in the back carriage gates, and drop the keys at the Pontchartrain. The convertible they would take with them.
She drove it out of the showroom and up St. Charles Avenue, to a crawl in front of the hotel.
“Let’s get out of here this weekend,” she said. “Let’s forget about the house and the family.”
“Already?” he asked. He had been dreaming of taking one of the riverboats for the supper cruise tonight.
“I’ll tell you why. I made the interesting discovery that the best white beaches in Florida are less than four hours from here. Did you know that?”
“That’s right, they are.”
“There are a couple of houses for sale in a Florida town called Destin, and one of them has its own boat slip nearby. I picked up all this from Wheatfield and Beatrice. Wheatfield and Pierce used to go to Destin at spring break. Beatrice goes all the time. Ryan made the calls for me to the real estate agent. What do you say?”
“Well, sure, why not?”
Another memory, thought Michael. That summer when he was fifteen and the family drove to those very white beaches on the panhandle of Florida. Green water under the red sunset. And he’d been thinking about it the day he drowned off Ocean Beach, almost an hour exactly before he met Rowan Mayfair.
“I didn’t know we were so close to the Gulf,” she said. “Now, the Gulf is serious water. I mean like the Pacific Ocean is serious water.”
“I know.” He laughed. “I know serious water when I see it.” He really broke up.
“Well, look, I’m dying to see the Gulf.”
“Of course.”
