The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  “Why, Courtney! Hello!” Several women rushed over to greet her, including her old cheerleading buddy, Stephanie Speer, who had gained about fifty pounds. Courtney felt better immediately. And Beverly Midgett had let her hair go completely white, Courtney couldn’t imagine why. But she was really, really glad she’d come. And when Carla Potts, whom she’d never even particularly liked, came up to her, too, she found herself blinking back tears. Honestly, it was so stupid! But clearly there had been life before Hawk; these people obviously recognized her, so obviously she had existed then, too.

  “Listen, where’s Gene Minor?” she asked Stephanie. “I thought he’d be here. He’s the one who got me into this.”

  Stephanie pointed to the stage. “Right there.”

  “That’s Gene Minor? That guy? But he used to be so skinny.” Courtney couldn’t believe it.

  “Well, he’s not skinny now,” Stephanie said. “But then I’m not one to talk, am I? Anyway, he’s a real character, just wait. I think he got some kind of an arts degree, I’m not sure, but then his father died and he started helping his mother run the flower shop and he’s been there ever since. He’s never married, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Courtney said. But even then, staring up at Gene Minor on the stage wearing his cowboy boots and those thick glasses, she’d thought he was cute. In a weird way. But definitely cute. Though he was clearly crazy—after the palms had been installed to his satisfaction, he began dancing around the stage singing “All night, all day, Marianne, down by the seashore siftin’ sand,” fingering an imaginary instrument.

  “Air ukelele,” he announced, looking out at his impromptu audience for the first time. “Courtney!” He jumped right off the stage. “I’m so glad you made it!” He towered over her, crushing her hand.

  “Yes, well, I am, too.” Oddly, she meant it. Then she looked down at his hand.

  “Oh, those aren’t real,” he said with his high-pitched giggle. “I’m just getting used to them for tonight.” He wore three huge rings on one hand, four on the other, all of them gaudy.

  “Why?”

  “The Elvis act, silly,” Gene Minor said. “I do it at every reunion, it’s a tradition. But I guess you haven’t been to any of our reunions before, have you?”

  “No, this is the first one, but I’m certainly looking forward to it.” Courtney’s practiced social voice rang false even to herself. “My husband is out of town”—she didn’t know why she said that—“so I’ll be coming with Jean and Buzzy.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you pick me up, and Elvis can be your date? I might need a little help with my costume, wig adjustment, whatever. My house is right on your way.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Easy. We’ve delivered to you a lot. Miss Evangeline used to order all her flowers from my mother—Miss Evangeline, what an old horror she was!”

  “Okay,” Courtney heard herself saying. “I’ll pick you up. What time?” The address turned out to be surprisingly near Magnolia Court, though it was a street Courtney had never heard of, and she had a sudden sense of worlds within worlds, another Raleigh, a secret Raleigh down inside the one she knew. Or maybe she was inside that one. It made her nervous to think this stuff. Still holding the phone, Courtney phoned Jean to say she was coming to the prom after all. Jean screamed when she heard who she was coming with. “But I guess he’s harmless,” she said at the end of their conversation.

  “HELLO,” COURTNEY CALLED three hours later, pausing at Gene’s gate which was partially open anyway. She couldn’t even see his house, hidden deep in the trees.

  “Hey now. You look beautiful.” There was Gene Minor himself, wandering around his wild overgrown garden with a watering can, not even dressed. Except for those ridiculous white satin bell-bottoms and that big flashy belt. His breasts were as large as Courtney’s. “This is for you.” He picked up a white box from an old glass-topped table.

  “A wrist corsage?” Courtney hadn’t seen one for years. It was a pink orchid.

  “Yeah. But wait a minute, I need to get you to help me do something before I finish getting dressed, if you don’t mind.”

  Curiously, she didn’t.

  “It’s my chest hair.”

  “What?”

  “Well, there’s some things you just can’t do for yourself, you know what I’m saying, and one of them is dye your own chest hair. You think you could . . . ?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, then, walk this way.” He did a funny Harpo Marx duck walk into the house with Courtney following. They mixed up the dye at the kitchen sink and Courtney began applying it gingerly with the corner of a tea towel. “You don’t have to do it all,” he said. “Just put some right up here, where it’ll show.” She dabbed it on. Elvis’s jeweled V-neck shirt hung over the kitchen door. His black wig lay on the kitchen table.

  “You know one thing I’ll never forget about you,” Gene Minor said, almost whispering. “It was junior year, on the trip to Spring Lake, and you had that green two-piece bathing suit, and you kept diving off the float in the middle of the lake. You were doing swan dives, back flips, everything. You dived all morning. You were amazing.”

  Courtney nodded. She used to be very athletic as a girl, before she realized that boys didn’t like this.

  “You were great,” Gene Minor said sincerely. “I was out on the float the whole time, watching you. I’d reach over and pull you back up.” He hesitated. “I remember one time, I was pulling you up when your strap slipped off your shoulder and your top fell down and I saw your breast, just for a minute. Then you flipped your strap back up and grinned at me. It was just a second. You knew I saw it, and you didn’t even care. You were so cool. That was the coolest thing, the sweetest moment.” He paused while Courtney, hardly breathing, dabbed the dye into the pulsing hollow in the middle of his collarbones. “And you don’t even remember it.”

  “I—”

  Gene Minor put his finger to her lips. “It’s okay. I know you don’t. You wouldn’t. I wasn’t the kind of boy that a girl like you would even notice.”

  “I do remember you, though—”

  “Sshhh.” Gene Minor continued to run his finger around her lips, almost absentmindedly. “We’re old. It’s okay.” He stood very close to her, then closer, pushing her against the sink. She leaned back as he pressed his hips against hers, staring into her eyes.

  “Gene!”

  “Surprise!” He grinned.

  “But I thought you were gay.”

  “Everybody does, darling,” he said. “You can’t imagine what an advantage it is for me.”

  “Now listen here, you quit that.” But she was laughing just as hard as she ever did in study hall. “If you get dye on this dress, I’ll kill you. Besides, we’re going to be late.”

  “Just one little kiss,” he said. “Just one. Doesn’t count. Won’t hurt a bit, I promise. Anyway, Elvis can be as late as he wants. The show won’t start without him.”

  Now Courtney shows Harriet the eight-by-ten picture of herself and Elvis at the prom, posing in a giant seashell. Elvis points at the camera, displaying his rings, while Courtney stands radiant in her tacky pink dress with those funny dark stains on the front of it, wearing her wrist corsage. The last photograph shows Elvis closing his act with “Heartbreak Hotel.” His wig looks awful, but by then Courtney had understood that it was supposed to. This act was not so much Elvis as Gene Minor doing Elvis. Gene’s whole life is like this, in a way. An elaborate put-on, a lot of fun. Oh, why does he have to change, especially now? Why does he have to get so demanding? Courtney knows it’s all because of that life coach, what’s her name? Rosalie. This is all Rosalie’s fault. In the photograph, Elvis’s glasses have clouded up. His blue eyes swim in mist. His belly hangs over his belt. His dark chest hair glistens with sweat in the jeweled V of his stand-up collar. Courtney smiles, remembering. Then she almost cries remembering how he had turned and looked straight at her right at the end of th
is song, at the end of his act, on “I’m so lonely, baby, I’m just so lonely I could die.” Because it was her, not him, that those words referred to, Courtney Gray Ralston, who had everything she ever wanted, who was just so lonely she could die.

  Mile 736

  Memphis, Tennessee

  Saturday 5/8/99

  1400 hours

  ANNA PULLS THE BRIM of her trademark black hat down over her trademark auburn curls, right down to the rims of her enormous black sunglasses, and sweeps grandly up the Belle of Natchez gangplank on Saturday afternoon. Ta-da! She has always imagined herself boarding a steamboat and now, just like everything else she has always imagined, it is happening. Dare to dream! This is her main message to the world. Dreams really do come true; you just have to be careful what you dream. Anna inclines her head graciously to the various uniformed staff who assist her onto the Cabin Deck, taking her arm, her bag. Too bad Robert couldn’t make this trip with her, he’d just love all these cute smiling boys in uniform. The Forward Cabin Lounge is decorated like a whorehouse with its flowered carpet and all these tasseled Victorian lamps and curvaceous brocade love seats and marble-topped coffee tables. It is just divine.

  Hand to her breast, Anna stops to catch her breath and appreciate it all. When she finally finishes this damn Confederacy series, she’ll have to get back in shape. A personal trainer, that’s it. And she can buy some of those shiny little workout outfits you see on the Home Shopping Channel late at night when you can’t sleep. “How much farther?” she calls to the slim-hipped steward, but now he’s too far ahead to hear her, dodging blithely through all the luggage placed outside the stateroom doors, bouncing up the magnificent Grand Staircase with its brass rails and the hand-painted trompe l’oeil ceiling replete with cherubs and doves. Tiepolo, for heaven’s sake! Or Michelangelo! It doesn’t matter, she’s going to die. These steps will be the death of her. Thank God—finally the steward is waiting for her now on the landing of the Promenade Deck, grinning like Huck Finn himself, towheaded and cute, a college student no doubt.

  Now there’s an idea: towheaded young man—let’s call him Huckle -berry—older woman, one week in paradise, drifting down a river of love, outside of time and place, she’s got so much to teach him, he’s got so much to learn . . . Too racy for a category romance—maybe a Silhouette Special Edition or Gothic Contemporary. Isn’t that what they call this style of architecture anyway? Steamboat Gothic.

  “Here you are, ma’am. The Verandah Suite.” Huckleberry opens the door with a flourish. He heaves her three enormous suitcases inside, placing two on the luggage racks and one—for lack of anyplace else—on the velvet daybed.

  “I just love the way you say ‘ma’am,’” she says to make him blush, which he does, charmingly, obligingly, waving away the twnety-dollar bill she thrusts at him from her cleavage.

  “Oh no, ma’am, no tipping until the end of the trip.”

  He’s too adorable! Anna waggles her fingers at him as he closes the door. Well! It’s certainly snug in here; if this is the most luxurious suite they offer, then she can’t even imagine the rest of them. Little boxes. Anna begins to unpack as best she can; she misses Robert, who always insists on doing this for her, wherever they travel. He has a real nesting instinct.

  Anna pulls a golden cord to open her thick lace curtains; the window gives out upon her own private balcony and the busy Mud Island dock, with Memphis in the background. She sees a woman who might be Courtney Gray heading down the hill in a smart white suit. She looks terrific, damn it. Ah well. There’ll be plenty of time to renew her acquaintances, not that these women have ever showed the slightest interest in doing so. But Anna herself has never even attended a reunion—they always seem to fall in the middle of a book tour. And perhaps it’s true that the more successful you are, the more people are afraid to approach you. God knows, she’s been successful—why right now she’s at the top of the heap with a new book just out (at number seven on the best-seller list) and another in the pipeline.

  Anna pours herself a tulip glassful of cognac from the cut-glass decanter on the candle-stand table. There! She tosses the hat and the Italian scarf on the bed, kicks off her black patent leather sandals, hangs up her white silk blouse and black jacket. She’ll have to call for more hangers. She loves the way her full breasts spill over her bustier, never mind her somewhat pleated cleavage. Too much is always preferable to not enough. Damn all this sunlight anyway. What is it Robert always says? “Hell is direct lighting.” She removes her black slacks and folds them just so over the back of a chair, then finds her billowing purple caftan in the suitcase and slips it on. There now. Three hours to write before they even leave the dock—good. She can knock out the first chapter of the new book, perhaps, or do a little brainstorming for the next one. Those women will just have to wait to see her, no matter how curious they are.

  She closes the curtains; Memphis disappears. She dims the chandelier. She opens her folding file, puts her notes and special fountain pens out on the spindly desk, then the custom-made notebook with its famous pink unlined paper that she always uses for her first drafts. Interviewers are so surprised to learn that she doesn’t even own a computer. “Romance is physical,” she has explained again and again. “I don’t want anything mechanical to come between my body and the page. This way, my emotions simply flow from my body through my fingertips, straight onto the paper.” The interviewers always nod, enraptured. Now Anna lights a scented candle—ah! that’s better. She thrusts the fountain pen between her breasts, for luck. Touch, she thinks. See, smell, hear, taste. Feel. It is her mantra. Feel. And out of the blue, out of the creative empyrean, a title comes to her. The Louisiana Purchase, she writes at the top of the pink page in her flowing, flamboyant hand. Perfect!—or parfait!—as it all begins to come to her in a rush, the hot lush Louisiana swamp teeming with gators and gars and snakes, cypress trees rising like wraiths from an earlier, more primitive time . . .

  Morning. Morning on the bayou. Morning on Frenchman’s Bayou, the hot pink dawn fading ever so slightly now as Vanessa . . . no, Jewel . . . no, Jade turns the rusty key in the ancient lock of her grandmother’s dilapidated mansion set on its own tilted hummock in the spreading steaming (teeming? No, just used it) alluvial world of the swamp. Strange birds cry out in warning as they swoop low over the black water. A lizard races up a weathered porch column like a bright green streak. Behind her, the putt-putt-putt of enterprising developer Jean St. Pierre’s motorboat grows fainter and fainter, then disappears. Oh, she should not have angered him! She should not have been so haughty. She should have accepted his offer of aid, should have allowed him to accompany her into the deserted house despite all those warning signs (the lingering touch, the eager moist gaze) that told her his interest was more than entrepreneurial. Jade stomps a delicate foot in frustration which only mounts as her shoe goes right through the rotten boards and disappears forever into the secretive black water. She leans down awkwardly to free her delicate foot from its painful vise.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle!”

  Jade almost jumps right out of her creamy skin! Who can it be, out here in this godforsaken swamp in the middle of nowhere? Jade twists around to see, hot breath catching in her throat at the first glimpse of Adrian Batiste. It is as if he is a part of the swamp itself, a force of nature, a natural man. He sits low and easy in the water in his sleek pirogue. His chiseled face is dark and commanding; his eyes flash silver. A man as wild as his surroundings despite his loose open shirt and that ridiculous rakish hat—honestly, a pimp’s hat!—which he sweeps off now, inclining his head in the mockery of a bow. His shoulder-length black hair gleams in the rising sun. “Dis-moi qui tu es, mignonne. Dismoi ton nom.” His voice is husky.

  Jade pulls herself up to her full five feet four inches with as much dignity as she can muster, aware that the tight skirt of her Chanel suit is riding up her thighs and that her stockings are in shreds.

  “I do not believe I have granted you the right to address m
e with the familiar pronoun,” she spits at him.

  His lazy grin is scornful. “Pardon,” he says, still with the French accent. And then, in heavily accented English, “My name is Adrian Batiste.” He pronounces it Ah-dree-ahn. “My family has lived here in Frenchman’s Bayou for seven generations. And you must be—”

  “Jade Cameron,” she says.

  “Ah! I knew your grand-mère, a lady without peer.”

  “Indeed. Well, she has left me her house, in fact she has left me this entire island, and I’ve come to decide what to do with it.”

  “Then I am zee man for you.” In one fluid catlike motion our hero has tied up the pirogue and sprung onto the porch. He kneels to retrieve her foot from its splintery trap, his touch like fire on her instep. “I will tell you what to do with zis property, mam’selle—rien! It is to say—nothing! Theese property belong to the birds and the feeshes and the other wild things of the earth, eet must remain as eet is, a sanctuary . . .”

  With all the strength she can muster, Jade kicks free of his hard, capable hand and stomps her little foot indignantly. In the back of her mind, she replays Pierre’s suggestion for Creole Corner, the planned, gated community that could make her a very wealthy woman. “I will be the one who decides what to do with my own property! Now, get off my grandmother’s porch!”

  But the audacious Cajun is in no hurry, lounging insolently against the rail. “Ah, ma petite, well do I remember all the eve-e-nings I spend here avec your grand-mère. How she loved music, old Marie! I come to fiddle jus’ for her, ‘Jole Blon.’ How she loved to dance . . . She was-a something, your grand-mère. You resemble her, I tink.” Without warning, he reaches out to stroke Jade’s cheek with a caressing finger.

  “Ooh! That does it! Get out of here!” With both hands, Jade pushes at his well-muscled overwhelmingly masculine chest—the old rail breaks—and now he is splashing in the black water. Furiously he retrieves his hat, claps it down over his dark, streaming locks, hoists himself into the pirogue and glides out into the bayou, silver eyes shooting sparks like bullets back at Jade.