Crude, largely guess work, but the idea that the mind can be understood and fixed makes a huge difference. I found autohyp-nosis did wonders— We’ll talk about this later. Oh, we have so much to talk about.”
“I guess you never got too badly confused, then.”
“No, I kept control throughout. Of course, I moved around. It hurt to leave the Dufours, but people were wondering why I didn’t age like them. Also, more and more I wanted independence, true independence. I went from job to job, acquired skills, saved my money. In 1900 I moved back to the States. There a colored person was less conspicuous, and here in New York you can go as unnoticed as you care to. I opened a small cafe. It did well—I am a good cook—and in time I was able to start a larger place, with entertainment. The war boomed business. Afterward Prohibition made profits larger yet. White customers; I kept another, less fancy den for blacks. One of my white regulars became a friend. At City Hall Be saw to it that I didn’t pay off exorbitantly or have to worry about the mob muscling in.”
Clara considered her surroundings. “You didn’t buy this with the proceeds from two speakeasies,” she said.
Laurace smiled. “Shrewd, aren’t you? Well, the truth is that presently I took up with a pretty big-time rumrunner. White, but—”
4
Donald O’Bryan loved wind and water. At home he filled shelves with books about sailing ships, hung pictures of them on the walls, built models of them whose exquisite detail seemed impossible for such large hands. Besides the power cruiser he used in his business, he kept a sloop on Long Island Sound. When he started taking his black “housekeeper” on day trips, she went unchallenged by members of the yacht club. Everybody liked Don but nobody who was smart messed with him.
Heeled over on a broad reach, the boat rushed through swoosh and sparkle. Gulls soared white above.the wake, into which he had merrily cast scraps from lunch. When you ran before the wind, its booming was hushed to a cradle song and the air grew almost snug, so that you caught the live salt smell of it.
Reaching, a steersman must be careful. Don had secured the boom against an accidental jibe, but control remained tricky. He managed without effort. His body belonged where he was. His being had turned elsewhere.
Between watch cap and pea jacket, the snub-nosed face had lost its earlier cheerfulness. “Why won’t you marry me?” he pleaded. “I want to make an honest woman of you, really I do.”
“This is honest enough for me,” she laughed.
“Flora, I love you. It’s not only that you’re grand in bed, though you are, you are. It’s ... your soul. You’re brave and dear and a thousand times more bright than me. It’s proud Fd be to have you bear my children.”
Humor died. She shook her head. “We’re too different.”
“Was the Queen of Sheba too different from King Solomon?”
“In this country she would be.”
“Is it the law you fret about? Listen, not every state forbids marriage between the races, and the rest have to respect it once it’s happened where it’s allowed. That’s in the Constitution.”
The same Constitution that says a man can’t take a glass of beer after a hot day’s work, she thought. “No, it’s what we’d have to live with. Hatred. Isolation from both your people and mine. I couldn’t do that to our children.”
“Not everywhere,” he argued. “Listen, you’ve heard me before, but listen. I won’t keep my trade forever. In a few more years I’ll have more money piled together than we could -spend in a hundred. Because I am really a careful, saving man, in spite of liking a good time. I’ll take you to Ireland. To France. You always wanted to see France, you’ve said, and what I saw made me want to go back, during the war though it was. We can settle down wherever we like, in some sweet country where they don’t care what the color of our skins may be, only the color of our hearts.”
“Wait till then, and we’ll talk about this.” Maybe by then I can bring myself to it, to seeing time eat him hollow. Maybe I’ll be sure by then that he won’t grow bitter when I tell him—because I can never deceive him, not in any way that matters—and will even be glad to have me there in my strength, holding his hand as he ties on his deathbed.
“No, now! We can keep it secret if you want.”
She stared across the dancing waves. “I can’t do that either, darling. Please don’t ask me to.”
He frowned. “Is it you fear being the wife of a jailbird? I swear to God they’ll never take me alive. Not that I expect they’ll catch me at all.”
She looked back at him. A lock of hair curled brown from beneath the cap and fluttered across his brow. How like a boy he seemed, a small boy full of love and earnestness. She remembered sons she had borne and buried. “What difference would it make whether a justice of the peace mumbled a few words over us, if we aren’t free to stand together in sight of everybody?”
“I want to give you my vows.”
“You have given them, dearest. I could weep for the joy of that.”
“Well, there is this too,” he said, rougher-toned. “I don’t plan on dying, but we never know, and I want to make sure I leave you provided for. Won’t you give my heart that ease?”
“I don’t need an inheritance. Thank you, thank you, but I don’t.” She grimaced. “Nor do I want more to do with lawyers and the government than I can possibly help.”
“Um. So.” He gnawed his lip for a minute. “Well, I can understand that. All right.” His smile burst forth like the sun between clouds. “Not that I’m giving up on making you Mrs. O’Bryan, mind you. I’ll wear you down, I will. Meanwhile, however, I’ll make arrangements. I don’t trust bankers much anyway, and this is a profitable time to liquidate my real estate holdings. We’ll put it in gold, and you’ll know where the hoard is.”
“Oh, Don!” The money was nothing, the wish was the whole world and half the stars. She scrambled to her knees in the cockpit and pressed herself against him.
He bent over. His left arm closed around her shoulders, his mouth sought hers. “Flora,” he said huskily. “My beautiful strange Flora.”
5
“—We loved each other. I’ve never been afraid to love, Clara. You should learn how.”
The other woman stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a fresh one. “What happened?”
Voice and visage grew blank. “A revenue boat intercepted him in 1924. When he bade fair to outrun them, they opened fire. He was killed.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Laurace shook herself. “Well, we’re familiars of death, you and I.” Once more calm: “He left me a quarter million in negotiable instruments. I needed to get away, sold my night clubs and spent the next four years traveling. First Ireland, England, France. In France I unproved my French and studied about Africa. I went there, Liberia, then the colonies along that coast, hoping to discover something about my ancestors. I made friends in the bush and added to what I’d learned from books, more of how those tribes live, what they live by, faith, ritual, secret societies, tradition. That caused me to return by way of Haiti, where I also spent a while.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “Voodoo?”
“Voudun,” Laurace corrected. “Not black magic. Religion. What has sustained human beings through some of the crudest history on earth, and still does in some of its most hideous poverty and misrule. I remembered people here at home, and came back to Harlem.”
“I see,” Clara breathed. “You did start a cult.”
Momentarily, Laurace was grim. “And you’re/ thinking, ‘What a nice racket.’ It isn’t like that in the least.”
