A Small Hotel (15 page)

And Laurie says, “Here we are in this awesome place, and listen to me. Are you sure you don’t think I’ve got a bad case of the chronic ditzes?”

He looks at her. Her face is bright from a gibbous moon rising over his shoulder. He’s a defense lawyer, not a prosecutor. And she’s a perfect client. Surprisingly smart and self-aware and honestly self-critical. “I’m sure,” he says.

“I want to make you happy,” she says. “I really do.”

“I get that.”

She lowers her face and is moved to gently plant her forehead in the center of his chest. She tries and more or less succeeds but is leaning awkwardly far forward over her hoop skirt. “This doesn’t work,” she says, and she straightens.

“I’ve been thinking about when we first met,” Michael says. “No, the second time, I guess it was. At the pool party.”

Laurie shudders inside and she lets it out, exaggerates it so he can see. “What you must have thought,” she says.

Michael smiles at her self-criticism. This sort of thing about Laurie Pruitt is what he should focus on. This is why he’s here.

“I thought you had a great ass,” he says.

She slaps him lightly on the shoulder.

“Wasn’t that your point?” he says.

“Of course it was. Why do I behave like that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh right,” Laurie says. “Lawyer, not therapist. I’m on the wrong floor.”

“Did you see something I didn’t?”

“For me to behave like that?”

“Yes.”

“Something about you?”

“No.”

“I knew who your wife was. I don’t know what I saw.”

He cuts off these thoughts. He wants simply to stand on this levee in the moonlight with this woman now.

Laurie angles her head to the side, studying him. “You’re coaching me into an alibi.”

He laughs.

“For my bad behavior,” she says.

“You’re good at this,” he says.

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“You’ve got one.”

She likes this answer. “What do
you
need?” she says. “Right now.”

Michael would be willing to answer this, but the question renders him instantly dumb. He knows she is sincere. He knows this young woman truly wants to give him whatever it is.

She waits.

The long-practiced rhetorical part of him takes over. “Not to have to answer that question,” he says.

The moon is bright enough for him to see her roll her eyes.

He does think of one thing. “To have the divorce over with,” he says.

“Of course,” Laurie says. “But how about something I can give … Okay. I can give you this: you don’t have to answer that question.”

“Thanks.”

“But if I didn’t have this fricking dress on,” she says, “I’d give you a blow job. Right here, right now.”

Michael realizes that outwardly he is showing nothing in response to this. Inside, he churns. But
whatever gift Laurie has for figuring him out, she doesn’t pick up on this.

“Sorry,” she says. “Is it that codger lawyer in you?”

“No,” he says. “On the contrary. One of the things I’m finding about you is that you know what I need even when
I
don’t know it.”

She lifts her hand and touches his cheek. “Maybe,” she says. “But there’s something. Not the codger. It’s the old-school romantic in you. I shouldn’t be talking like that till we’ve made love. I know how you want the first time to be right. I admire you for that, Michael.”

∼

Kelly stops before the door of the Olivier House. Nothing is decided. Not quite. Not yet. If there’s any thought in her that perhaps something has been decided, any thought she can access, then her answer to herself is no, nothing has been decided. Except that she has to go to her room. But she stops before the door of the Olivier House and she looks around the street and she smells the night smells of New Orleans and there is a warm trace of boiling shrimp in the air and that’s a very good thing to her, but even the faint, unnamable fetidness of the Quarter at night is good to her, even that makes
the distant lamplight blur in her eyes, and she will start to weep now, weep fully and forever to the end, if she stands here any longer, so she goes up the steps and through the door and down the entrance hall and there is a smell of wood fire and she passes the door to the parlor and the flames are lashing in the fireplace and she approaches the freestanding reception desk and a woman sits there, a woman with a long drape of hair the color of dense November cloud cover and she has a thin, unmadeup face, pretty in a long-ago-flower-child way, and it is a familiar face, and the woman says, “Good evening, Mrs. Hays.”

“Good evening.” And though the context is obvious enough, Kelly tries to get her mind to work to summon up a clear memory of the familiar woman before her. She can’t. “I’m sorry. Have you been here many years?”

“I’ve worked the night desk here for … oh my, quite a few years now. I think for just about as long as you and your husband have been coming here. I’m Ramona.”

“Hello, Ramona,” Kelly says. “I’m here alone this time.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“We’re separated,” Kelly says.

“I’m sorry.”

Kelly presses her hand against the edge of the desk to steady herself. “I say ‘separated.’ Not that we’ll reconcile.”

“I understand.”

“Yes. Well. I’m going up to my room now, and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Of course.”

“It was not a good ending, you understand.”

Ramona puts her hand on the desk, not reaching for Kelly’s but showing Kelly that hers is there if she wants to take it. “I’ve been through it myself, cher. I work nights for a reason.”

“I’m not here,” Kelly says.

“I understand,” Ramona says.

Now Ramona lifts her hand and extends it and brings it very near Kelly’s and Kelly takes this woman’s hand and squeezes it, briefly, only briefly: she was wrong about wanting to touch someone’s hand. She doesn’t want to touch anyone.

She nods good night to Ramona and circles the desk and moves to the courtyard doors and she puts her hand on the latch and a phone rings behind her and Kelly pushes quickly through into the dark of the courtyard and the door closes behind her but it’s too late, she is sitting in her Mercedes outside the courthouse and she has dialed her cell phone and it has rung
and she has imagined it ringing in his hand just before he answered it and she has said what she has said, invited what she has invited, and she has gotten out of her car, but she leans back against the closed door, stays where she is, and she watches across the way, far across the way at the comings and goings at the courthouse doors, bodies vanishing into the building, bodies emerging, and then she thinks it’s him, coming out that door, and he pauses, and that distant face turns and looks in her direction and he moves toward her and she straightens and steps away from the car, but only one step, and he is clear now, she can see the tight, scruff-darkened contour of his face and she waits, and Drew Singleton crosses the street and he is before her, he is very close to her, and she thinks she can smell him, the Ivory soap and the shirt starch of him.

And he says, “I was afraid I’d mistaken …”

“You hadn’t,” Kelly says.

“It’s all terribly confusing.”

“I know.”

He squares his shoulders before her. “Kelly, I’m very happy to suddenly find myself standing in the middle of this street with you and not be mistaken. But I have to say this first.”

He pauses and his shoulders sag a little now with a difficult thing.

“Go ahead,” Kelly says.

“I still love her,” Drew says. “I love my wife. I’m not sure I can leave her. I don’t think I can.”

Drew pauses again and Kelly holds very still and she waits for what’s next, and contrary to the classic expectation in this circumstance, she’s okay with what he’s just said, more than okay, because it makes what she deeply hopes for in the next few moments possible, because his needing to say this thing to her in the middle of the street before they go on is the very reason he is the kind of man—though in her mind he is not a type, he is intensely particular, he is the
only
man—who brings these possibilities into her life, who reminds her how deeply these needs run, deeply enough that the risks are worth it, worth it for what she expects now from Drew Singleton.

And he goes on. “But. But. You need to know … Can I say this?”

“Yes.” Barely a whisper this. Kelly can barely make a sound.

“I love you too,” Drew says.

And everything stops inside her. If she could make this be enough, if only she could make this one time, this once, this spontaneous once, this once in the middle of the street, this once in spite of a husband and a wife, if only she could make this once be enough, she would
do that, if she could kiss this man now and say good-bye and return to her life and never need anything from Michael again that he can’t readily give, she would do that. She wants to do that. But she knows how impossible that is. She needs this now in the middle of the street and she needs it again and again—and soon—and she needs it while they are naked together and holding each other as close as bodies can on this earth, she needs to hear it, she needs to hear a man say he loves her, she needs that, she needs.

“Is that crazy?” he says.

“It’s not,” Kelly says. “But once said, it bears repeating.”

“I love you too,” Drew says.

“Simpler, please.”

“I love you,” Drew says.

And she is happy. And she is unutterably sad. And she says, “Where shall we go?”

And she is weeping now: she has moved into the deep night shadow of the loggia leading to the inner courtyard beneath her window and she has stopped and she has leaned against the stone wall and she is weeping, and she presses hard at her eyes with the palms of her hands, trying to press the tears away. She does not need to do this now, she just needs to go to her room and lie down, and if there is more to think
about, she can do it there and she can decide, she can decide what to do, she can decide what she will do about what she has done, and she straightens and she moves through the loggia and into the courtyard and she is focused so intently on the steps going up to her room that she does not see the pool and she does not see the young couple who were laughing with each other and leaning into each other when she arrived this afternoon, does not see them as they are stepping from their poolside room and the young woman is wearing her black panties and black bra as an impromptu bikini and the young man is wearing his workout-gray boxers as an impromptu bathing suit because it is a warm November night and they have been wishing they’d brought swimsuits for the pool and they see this woman emerge from the loggia and they stop but they know in the dim spill of blue light from the pool that they look perfectly natural, they look like they are wearing swimsuits and they look like they are in love and they see this woman across the pool who does not glance their way and the little trepidation they had about swimming in their underwear vanishes and the young man in the couple thinks the woman is pretty and he has a faint, unacknowledged wish that she had looked his way and had seen what a pretty girl he’s with and what a hunk of a guy he is in his boxer shorts and had
stopped and smiled and come to them and asked if she could join them, and the young woman in the couple sees that the woman is hurrying in a focused way and she thinks the woman is going up the steps to meet her lover and is a little bit late but it will be all right because her man is waiting patiently and is full of love like this young man is for the young woman.

And Kelly climbs quickly, needing to be in her room, and she comes up to the third floor and she goes to her door and her hand is steady now, her hand puts the key in the lock at the first try and she is opening the door and she steps inside her room and she closes the door behind her and she leans back against it and her heart is pounding hard, her heart is pounding so hard it is all she can think of for a moment, how hard her heart is pounding, how strong that heart is, how stupidly strong her heart is.

Laughter floats into the room. Like the stink of the streets in New Orleans on a warm night. She remembers the young couple from the afternoon. The stupid young couple, their hearts beating strongly out there, feeling their hearts beating inside them and being glad, putting their hands on each other and feeling each other’s heart beating. Kelly crosses the room and presses against the iron railing and she looks down. The two are in the pool, up to their chests and holding each
other close. And Kelly thinks: that girl down there never wonders what he’s thinking. She can feel free to laugh and do something without giving it a moment’s consideration because there’s never anything to wonder about, anything to worry her. She assumes she knows what’s in his head. And maybe he actually says it. I love you, my baby, my sweetheart. That’s part of her stupidity. He says something and she thinks it’s so. But that’s better than the alternative, isn’t it? Even if what he says is a lie, if he says it, she can just be with him and do things and if it’s all lies anyway, at least she can draw a breath without wondering how and why.

Kelly turns away from the balcony and takes a few small steps into the room and she has not yet driven to the courthouse and she has not yet phoned Drew and asked for him to come outside, to come outside to her, she has not yet done this, though it is in her mind to do it, and she is sitting at night on her deck with a pretty good Scotch, just two fingers and no more tonight, and Michael is sitting next to her and he is probably thinking about something other than sitting on the deck with her, or maybe thinking about how sitting on the deck with her is this utterly neutral thing, maybe thinking how there could have been a certain widely-longed-for strong feeling in his life and he either can’t figure out what it was supposed to be
or he knows, abstractly, what it is and what you call it, but out of his deep sense of personal integrity he will never speak of it overtly if he’s not sure he feels it, while her own sense of integrity will never let her ask about it overtly if she’s not already certain that it is so: she learned that much long ago, from another man, a man who, after all, upon due consideration, upon weighing everything even after waiting to see how his daughters turned out, simply preferred to be dead.