“I do.”
“I have Beelzebub to thank for that.”
“There.” Kissing the spot, she pulls back when a groom appears with both arms full of hay.
“Marse, mistis,” he says, smiling shyly, tossing clumps before the tethered horses in the line.
“That, now, is a respectful greeting. Hello, James,” he calls. “Yes, we see you winking there.” His tone is friendly, bluff, but cool, yet when the hounds set up a cry and leap against the kennel fence, his face lights up.
“No, Sultan, I’ve not forgotten you.” He takes a scrap out of his handkerchief and throws it to a large bloodhound, which turns viciously on the other dogs and takes his prize into the corner of the pen. “That’s right, boy, show them who is Lord God of the yard.” Harlan gives a lusty and approving laugh. “But damn me, which one is the key?” he says, examining the padlock on the storehouse door against his heavy ring.
“What a charming little house,” says Addie, leaning over the fence of a white cottage with a begonia vine in bloom along the porch and flowers in the yard. “But, Harlan, aren’t these they?” She cups and sniffs a fragrant, large white rose that’s rioting along the palings.
“I’m sorry, dear?”
“The ones you sent that morning…after the Jockey Club Ball? I put them in my drawer with my…intimate things, and, ever since, every time I opened it, I thought of you.”
“Oh, yes,” he says, with a vague, false smile, “yes, I do recall. They’re banksias, I think.”
“These? Banksias?” she says. “They’re musk roses, Harlan. They aren’t like banksias—not the least little bit!”
“Well,” he answers, caught, “I was never good with common names. The Latin, though, I think, is rosa muskaplentia.”
Addie laughs aloud. “Harlan DeLay! You know I married you for them?”
“I hope that was not the only reason.”
“But it was!” she cries. “The only one! Because you didn’t send those silly flowers on a stick! Now we must call it off.”
“You are pleasant, madam.” He is smiling, but his ginger eyes have narrowed a degree.
“Blame your Colonel Lay. His punch is quite insidious. It’s gone straight to my head. Truly, though, who lives here? It must be a woman.”
“No, it’s Jarry’s house. He and Father, though, are thick upon the floral theme.” His expressive lips—which have always struck her as almost, but not quite, sybaritic—take a slightly sour twist as he says this.
“I see the way of it. Your brother is your Cyrano.”
The key now finds the lock, but when he looks back up, the smile is gone. “He’s not my brother, Addie. Never call him that. If a man said that to me…”
“My dear!” she says, her hand over her heart. “Forgive me, I only meant…”
“I know,” he says, “I know it was a jest. But I cannot smile at it, Addie—not at that. What I have to say concerns him, though.”
Opening the great plank door, he extends his arm, and Addie precedes him into the redolent dusk.
NINE
Whew! Fuck me!”
Climbing the stairs backward, Ransom power-jerked the pot behind him, step by step.
“Damn, boy! You really need to get back to the gym!” Hands on knees, he panted on the upstairs landing till his wind came back, and then he dragged his heavy find into the bath. With a doleful harbor-buoy clang, the pot landed in Claire’s antique clawfoot tub, and Ran wheeled on the taps.
Setting the water to its loosening work, he gazed through the same window where he’d seen the figure looking out. The ants…the gun…the pot…now, the silhouette…Ransom had the sudden, fleeting sense that he was being led…. But where? By whom? Another clue, some voice whispered in his head. Was it the same that in the morning helps you choose between the blue shirt and the red? How come, at times, that voice seemed like someone else?
“Nah, you just imagined it, amigo,” he reassured himself, smoothing his hand over the swirls and eddies in the pane. The glare of sunlight on old hand-blown glass…“That’s all it was…. And while we’re at it, let’s stop talking to ourselves, all right? You know, and I know, it’s no big deal, but certain other parties might not understand. So mum’s the word, agreed?” Ran zipped his lips and smiled, amused by his own wit. He knew, of course, how this conversation would be viewed—hadn’t he seen his passengers’ expressions in the cab? But the truth was, he felt perfectly okay—Ran, in fact, felt better than okay: strangely good.
When he turned back to the tub, a drift of red earth had begun to bleed into the water, releasing a faint smell that seemed familiar somehow, though he couldn’t quite say how. Ran felt suddenly hungry, though. Remembering his resolution to make nice, he turned the water off and headed downstairs to start dinner.
As fate would have it, there on the bottom shelf of the fridge a package of Perdue whole fryer parts sat waiting for him. The moment Ransom saw it, gleaming in Saran, he knew fried chicken was the very thing he had to have and set to work, assembling the sacerdotal implements like a priest for Mass. Into a brown paper bag, two heaped cups of flour—self-rising, naturally, with a double pinch of cayenne and
