Jewelweed (39 page)

The governor's mansion was on the other side of the lake. Lucky rolled up the drive and pulled in behind four cars and a limo. As soon as they came to a stop, a man in a short gray jacket came and opened Dart's door. “Good evening,” he said.

Dart smiled and prepared to tell him she was Danielle from Roebuck Construction, but he was at the other side before she could. “He's the valet,” whispered Lucky. “You don't need to talk to them.”

That was a first, she thought, climbing from the car. Nobody had ever told her there were people who did not need to be talked to. She thought about it while adjusting her dress. God, her feet looked great.

As she and Lucky walked up to the mansion, Dart didn't know what to think. Everything seemed fairly unreal. The yard was immaculate. Then Lucky opened the door, someone inside took their coats, and everything changed too fast to keep up with. She saw an intimidatingly gorgeous woman standing to her right, behind the person who'd taken her coat. Then someone else stepped forward and said, “Follow me, please.”

Lucky started walking, and as Dart fell in step beside him she noticed that the intimidating woman did as well. Upon closer inspection, she turned out to be Dart's own reflection in a mirror.

“What are you laughing about?” asked Lucky.

“Nothing.”

At the end of a hall—wide and tall enough to drive a semi down—stood a set of double doors. They opened into a room filled with fancy chairs, tables with appetizers, an enormous punch bowl, an ice sculpture of golf clubs recently presented to the governor by the Chamber of Commerce, and about sixty or seventy elegantly dressed people. Dart was one of the younger people in the room, and she could feel the attentive gaze. It felt great.

Five people came over. They seemed to know Lucky, and Dart didn't hesitate with a first round: “Hi, I'm Danielle with Roebuck Construction.” A few other people joined them, and after more introductions the little group moved to the drinks table. Lucky asked a man in a white coat behind the punch bowl for two, and he handed Dart one of them with a small square napkin.

Cinnamon was a nice addition, she thought, sipping and glancing around the room. She'd have to remember that the next time she made punch.

There was simply too much to take in, and all of it was completely unfamiliar. She followed Lucky and another half dozen people came toward them, precipitating another round of self-introductions.

“He's on the committee,” whispered Lucky.

“Who?”

“That last one, Thomas. He's an investor.”

“With the green tie?”

“Yes. His wife's an avid horsewoman.”

“Is she one of the seven?”

“No.”

“Then I thought she didn't count.”

“She doesn't, but you might want to know that for later on. Heads up, to your right, there's another one coming.”

Dart met Larry Parksletter. He smiled broadly in response to her introduction and asked, “Are we having fun yet, Danielle?”

He appeared to be about fifty. He was balding, but nice-looking in a whole-wheat kind of way. The inanity of his question put her strangely at ease. It was the kind of thing she'd often overheard people say in bars.

“Yes, we are,” said Dart. “And we're going to have even more when this punch ripens and one of these yahoos starts trying to golf with one of those ice clubs.”

Parksletter roared with wheaty laughter.

“I'll make sure to look you up later,” he added.

“I sure hope you do,” she said, and took another drink.

The catering crew roamed through the room in white jackets, carrying finger food and drinks, shuttling between ever-changing clusters of drifting conversations and the kitchen. One of the servers asked if she would like something. The voice seemed oddly familiar, and when Dart turned she discovered Vicki Well holding a half-filled platter of crackers and crab meat. She and Vicki had worked together several years ago, in a bar in Luster. It was the first job Dart could find after leaving the cement company.

“Vicki!” she said.

Vicki stared at her wearily.

“It's me. We used to work together, remember?”

“Nope.”

“Sure you do—in Luster. You parked your green Oldsmobile next to the dumpster one night, and the truck guy rammed into the side of it. We even shared a crappy apartment for a month, before my son drove you crazy and you moved in with the guy who rammed your car.”

“Oh, yeah. Now I remember,” said Vicki. “Now I remember. Jesus, what happened to you, Dart? How did you get to looking so fabulous? And what are you doing at this party?”

“No idea,” said Dart. “How's the job?”

“Beats the bar in Luster to death. You know, that guy always said he'd fix my car. Never did though. Bastard. Hey, Dart, we had some good times together, you and me. We both got fired on the same night, if I remember right. You still got that kid?”

“Still got him.”

“I'd go easy on the punch, Dart. They've got some real rotten stuff in there. Stick with the wine or bottled hard stuff.”

“Thanks,” said Dart, setting her drink down and meeting Lucky's eyes from halfway across the room. “Look, I've got to go. Old Lucky Two Shoes is glaring at me, and I think that means I should go over there. I'll talk to you later.”

“Good to see you, Dart. And congratulations on whatever happy hole you managed to fall into.”

Dart joined Lucky and a new group of polite, well-dressed people. She introduced herself dutifully. Four musicians arrived and set up at one end of the room. After an opening number, they settled into light, almost whimsical renditions of classic tunes picked at random from the last forty or fifty years of popular music.

A wave of latecomers washed into the room. “I'm Danielle with Roebuck Construction . . .”

Because of the novelty of her surroundings, Dart's mind attempted to familiarize her situation by calling up all the related memories it could find. Relying on the mad inclusiveness of dream association, no analogy was too loose. While listening to a white-haired woman named Carmen talk about the places not to get a manicure, Dart found herself thinking about the first day of school each year. She and Esther always dreaded it, confronted as they were with other kids whose parents not only drove them to the school and went inside to meet the teachers, but had bought them new clothes, shoes, pencils, notebooks, and filled their pockets with lunch money. She and Esther never had any of those things, and lunch money was always a problem because unless they could dig change out of the sofa or steal it from their mother's purse or stepfather's bureau, they were out of luck. Asking for money was grounds for a later whipping
under the pretense of some other infraction. Anything reminding their mother or stepfather of their shortcomings would precipitate some form of abuse. Esther once had a teacher who couldn't in her wildest sheltered imagination picture parents sending their daughters to school without clean clothes, lunch money, or notebooks. Thinking that something must surely be wrong, she made a few phone calls. Social Services sent out a case worker and miraculously picked an afternoon when their mother was sober and could carry through with a reasonable defense. That night their stepfather plugged in the iron, stripped Esther, and threatened to iron her pussy shut if she didn't drink a bottle of hot sauce. Esther vomited four times before she was allowed to stop. They could sometimes be insidiously clever that way, devising ways of hurting them without leaving marks.

“So don't ever go to them,” the woman continued. “They make you feel rushed and don't give advice on lotions and creams. Please promise me you'll never go there. What did you say your name was again, dear?”

“Danielle. I'm with Roebuck Construction.”

“Oh, yes. I remember now.”

“Let me get you another drink,” said Dart.

“Oh, thank you.”

“Would you like something else to eat?” asked Dart, understanding for the first time that the shame she had felt for being unable to protect her sister had actually added to their stepfather's pleasure in hurting her.

“No, thanks. The drink will do just nicely.”

Carmen was one of what Dart now thought of as the Magnificent Seven, and she rushed off to refresh her cocktail. As she did so, Dart thought again how remarkable it was that her lifelong hatred of rich people had come into question of late. Her disgust for all the greedy pricks who fed off the top layer of the food chain had been carefully nurtured into a foundational pillar of her thinking over many years. But her experience working for Amy and Buck had challenged this structure, and by this point she had come to conclude that those earlier assumptions were simply mistaken. After all, in the end Amy was Amy, Buck was Buck, Kevin was Kevin, Flo was Flo, and Wally was Wally.

And as for tonight, she was meeting rich people she couldn't deny liking at every turn. A couple of the better-dressed women were so
outgoing and jolly that they almost seemed nicer than anyone else Dart knew. She could hardly believe it.

And to think that Lucky Two Shoes had said this wouldn't be fun. It was great! She couldn't remember ever having had such a good time.

Lucky brought someone over to introduce while she was getting another drink for herself and Carmen.

“Hello, I'm Danielle with Roebuck Construction.”

After the man left, Lucky said, “Don't drink so much.”

“Okay, I won't.”

Some people started dancing at about that time, in front of the band. She got a couple of invitations, but every time she accepted Lucky scowled at her because she wasn't with one of the Magnificent Seven.

After a few minutes, a couple of drinks were dropped, someone fell against the punch bowl table, and a man with a Spanish accent tried to pry a piece of the ice sculpture off and put it in his glass. And then the woman Dart most liked came over and asked her to dance. She was maybe forty, with a long, narrow, and kind face. Her name was Frieda and her legs seemed longer than the rest of her.

“I'm not much of a dancer,” said Dart.

“I don't believe that,” said Frieda, jewelry latticed across her tanned chest like glittering mail. “If you can walk on those heels, you can dance. Now that man,” she pointed, “he can't dance. He's my husband. And most of the other men here as well, you'd think someone shoved a pole up their ass. It comes from sitting in front of those damn computers all day, reading about mergers, equity, and points. And then they go jogging to keep in shape. Jogging. God, I hate jogging. Come on. Wait. First drink this, all of it. Go on.”

Then they drank another. Frieda said drinking and dancing should never be separated.

Dart followed her companion into the designated area in front of the band, where Frieda was transformed into, well, Dart didn't know what. She'd never seen anyone dance like her, and she tried to keep up.

“You're really good,” said Dart.

“Thank you. What was your name again?”

“I'm Danielle with Roebuck Construction.”

“Right, Danielle. My mother had my sister and me going to ballet
classes before we could walk, and from there we branched out. My sister became a professional dancer, but I quit sometime after I went to college. I've always loved dancing, though.”

“I can tell,” said Dart. “You can really move. You've got every guy in this place looking at you.”

Frieda laughed. “Thanks, honey, but they're not looking at me. I thought I'd bring you out here to give the old boys a treat. Ten years ago they might have been looking at me, but now they're looking at you.”

“That's rat rubbish. You move much younger than I do.”

“You think so?”

“Sure I do.”

“Thanks.”

Just then the musicians began a much livelier song, and Dart's companion shouted, “I just love this one! Wait here. This necklace keeps biting me.” Frieda undid the clasp behind her neck and hurried the jewelry over to her husband, who put it in the inside pocket of his coat.

She returned to Dart. “There!” she yelled over the music.

Wow again, thought Dart. Without her diamond harness, Frieda was even more of what Dart could find no word for. Her limbs seemed to have joints everywhere, and they followed paths that could never be predicted, always in perfect rhythm. The musicians adored her. At one point the sax player even came out and walked around the two of them as he played.

At the end of the song, Dart saw Lucky Two Shoes frowning at her again. She excused herself and went looking for Whole Wheat, who was watching her from behind the punch bowl. He handed her a fresh drink and told her about the summer kitchen his grandmother used to have. “It's where they did most of the canning, in a separate building next to the house,” he said. “That way they could keep the heat out. They also had more space for hulling and washing produce.”

“Very sensible,” said Dart, using one of Amy's phrases. “Canning always makes a big mess.”