Butterflies in Heat

by Darwin Porter

  Milton Goldenburg's office extended the Old Spanish look, with its carved armchair placed behind an imposing heavy desk. In the nearly dark office, an art nouveau lamp cast a forgiving light.

  "Miss La Mour," Goldenburg said. "So good to see you."

  "It's Mrs. Le Blanc," Lola corrected. "I'm married, remember?"

  "How could I ever forget?" Goldenburg asked, more amused than embarrassed. Taking her hand, he seated her on a deep green velour sofa.

  After introductions, Ned and Amelia were shown to matching overstuffed armchairs. After everybody settled, there was a momentary silence. Lola surveyed tapestry scenes of Granada and Seville, hanging from wrought-iron spears. On the opposite wall was an impressive collection of floor-to-ceiling law books. "That's a lot of books," she said. "You read them all?"

  "No, not even half of them," Goldenburg said. "But they are there, nevertheless, in case any peculiar circumstances might arise."

  "Like today," Amelia said, sitting up stiffly. Her eyes were martini-glazed.

  Ned shifted uneasily in his chair.

  Reaching into her purse, Lola took out a magnifying mirror to adjust a false eyelash. "There's not too much light in this room."

  "Enough," Amelia added as Goldenburg started to raise the venetian blinds onto a small patio with a waterless fountain. Hand fluttering at her long throat, Amelia said, "Sure is a hot day—but then I'm used to heat." Her last word carried some ominous threat.

  Goldenburg buzzed his secretary. A short, stocky woman entered the room. "Get these people something to drink," he ordered. "You name it—we're stocked with it."

  As the second round of drinks was being served, Lola got up and started to prance the floor. "Before we arrived here today, Sister Amelia and I got some tentative agreement worked out." She put her hands on her hips. Fortunately, Ned and I got up there to save her from the clutches of those two child-molesting dykes, Joan and De la Mer." She patted Amelia on the shoulder. "Now Sister Amelia had never heard the word dyke before, but when I explained the gory details, she got the picture perfect. Why, I saw that De la Mer with my own eyes letching after this poor gal named Dinah." She glared at Ned, daring him to interrupt her story. "Dinah's only thirteen, a perfect innocent till she started running around with the wrong company."

  Ned squirmed in his seat.

  "What is your agreement?" Goldenburg asked.

  "You can do the fancy papers and stuff," Lola said. "Sister Amelia has decided not to contest the will. All the bad publicity and all." She inspected her wedding diamond. "Seems that a lot of people in her family and their friends don't take too favorably to the commodore marrying up with a black lady. Also, she ain't got a lot of money to keep you expensive lawyers in tapestries."

  "So tell me," Goldenburg asked impatiently.

  "I'm going to get half the proceeds from the Garden of Delights," Amelia interrupted. "I've been led to understand that that comes to thirty thousand dollars a year. That will certainly payoff my mortgage."

  "I've always handled the commodore's affairs," Goldenburg said. "But I've never heard of any Garden of Delights."

  "What kind of lawyer are you?" Amelia asked. "You should look after my brother's affairs much better. Familiarize yourself with his holdings. Lola assures me the Garden is the best restaurant in Tortuga."

  Lola quickly interrupted. "The Garden of Delights," she said to Goldenburg, "recently had its name changed. Up to now, it's been known as Joan's Place."

  "I see!" the attorney said.

  "Thank God it's not the Joan who called me from New Orleans," Amelia said.

  Lola's expression warned the attorney to keep quiet.

  "Lola here tells me that wicked woman operates a bordello," Amelia said. "She sounded so clean and decent over the phone. But then Lola told me she used to be an actress. Actresses can pretend to be respectable people. You just can't tell the difference."

  "And this arrangement, this guarantee of thirty thousand a year, this is okay with you?" Goldenburg asked.

  "Yes, I was never a greedy person," Amelia said, "but I want my share in life." She reached for another martini.

  "We all do," Lola added, smiling at her diamond. "We want you to draw up the papers."

  "You have my every guarantee," Goldenburg said. "It'll be a simple thing to arrange. I handle all of Mrs. Le Blanc's affairs."

  "I would appreciate it if you'd stop calling her that," Amelia said. Her fingers tightened on the arm of her chair.

  "Forgive me," Goldenburg said.

  "Sister Amelia, " Lola said, "in exchange for your cooperation, I'll never use the name again, I promise."

  "I would appreciate it—not that I'm prejudiced or anything," Amelia said. "And one more thing, my name is Miss Le Blanc, not Sister Amelia."

  "Of course," Lola answered, searching desperately for a mirror. There was none. "Milton, if you're going to have me as a client, you've got to get a mirror in this stuffy office. A lady likes to see how she looks every now and then."

  "Next time you come here," Goldenburg said, "a bigger mirror you've never seen."

  After the meeting, Amelia gracefully turned down another ride in the Cadillac. She preferred going back to the airport in the car of Goldenburg's secretary. She also elected not to receive Lola's goodbye kiss. Most of her departure time was spent checking and doublechecking the tentative agreement she'd been given in Goldenburg's office signed by Haskell Hadley Yett and herself. Hadley as a girl's name, Amelia had understood. But calling a girl Haskell had been too much for her.

  "Now you understand why I changed it to Lola?" Lola was asking in the parking lot.

  "It makes more sense," Amelia said. "No girl wants to go through life known as Haskell. However, I do think you could have selected something more dignified than Lola. Something like Mary." With that parting comment, Amelia was chauffeured away by Goldenburg's secretary.

  Ned laughed loudly.

  "What you laughing at, nigger?" Lola asked, shielding her eyes from the burning sun.

  "We'll never know for sure if Amelia thinks you're a real girl or not," Ned said. "I suspect Joan didn't go into the facts of life with her when she made that call. But the last comment floored me. 'Something like Mary'. Amelia may be hipper than we think."

  "I don't care if she takes me for a hermaphrodite," Lola said. "As long as she signed that agreement."

  Goldenburg's secretary was circling back, bringing her car to a complete stop only feet away from Lola. Lola jumped back.

  With an agility nobody knew she had, Amelia sprang from the car. She was reaching for Lola's hand.

  "You forgot a handshake?" Lola asked, baffled.

  "Yes, my dear," Amelia said, slipping the Old Mine diamond from Lola's finger. "That was my mother's ring, and I'd like to have it back." Saying no more, she got back in the car. The secretary pulled out again.

  Ned laughed once more. "Some chick!"

  "I didn't like the old thing anyway," Lola said. "It never did shine." She looked at her bare finger.

  Ned opened the car door for her.

  She got in, sinking back into the hand-rubbed leather. It'd been too easy, she thought. It took the challenge out of life getting everything you wanted handed to you. A girl needed to struggle for something. Lola had it all.

  No, one thing missing.

  She didn't have Numie where she wanted him. He'd defied her. But now she'd buy him, too.

  Ned was driving her back to her hotel. A chocolate ice cream cone already acquired, and a vanilla waiting in the freezer. The mixed flavors would taste good.

  Ned had succumbed quickly enough. Of course, having Dinah off hustling that De la Mer bitch had speeded up his conversion from Dinah to Lola. Little did De la Mer know what a hig favor removing Dinah was for Lola. Dinah was too young and pretty to have around. Lola would have to be more careful who she hung out with from now on. Every woman she'd hire would have to be old, fat, and ugly.

  There was growing room for only one gardenia in the g
arden.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Swathed in white towels and coated with cream, Leonora was lying on a hard board. On a night table beside her bed was an unflattering news photo from a copy of a New York paper. The caption read, Tm Dateless and Alive'. Her reply to the Metropolitan Museum had made the front page. Every now and then, Leonora glanced at the picture out of the comer of her eye. The owner of the paper obviously had it in for her. Probably out of jealousy. Pressing a buzzer, Leonora summoned Anne.

  In moments Anne was in the beauty chamber. "Good news," she said. "This wire came in about half an hour ago. I didn't know you were up. A firm offer to publish your memoirs."

  "My memoirs?" Leonora sat up abruptly. "You write your memoirs when your life is over. Mine isn't!"

  "The publisher isn't suggesting it is," Anne said. "He says through your personality he wants to recapture ... I'll quote directly, 'a glorious, vanished time'."

  "Vanished?" Leonora coughed on her own fury. The insults around here were becoming unbearable. She rose from the hard board. First, the news photo flashed in front of her, then her creamed face in the mirror. She'd been badly bruised by the glass doors.

  Outside it was still raining. It'd rained all night. Lightning trembled over the treetops of the garden. She crossed the room, throwing open the French doors. Rain pelting her in the face, she stood there for a long moment.

  "Has it really come?" she asked herself. "Time to admit defeat? To say that my life is nearly over?" Discovering herself talking out loud, she stopped and glanced back to find Anne listening.

  The unwritten pages of her memoirs passed before her eyes, her failure as a woman reflected. If published, the memoirs would be obvious, revealing she'd never found what she'd always wanted: love.

  Though she'd never known the love of one man or one woman, she was adored by the public. Still. "Tm desired," she whispered to herself, knowing the rain would drown out her voice.

  That rain pounded her face harder, and it was telling her something. That she didn't belong here any more locked behind the walls of Sacre-Coeur. She belonged to her public. They hadn't forgotten. They wanted her back. The caption told it all: 'I'm alive'.

  Like a patient waking from a deep coma, her eyes were open, but her mind foggy. It was hard to make decisions. But she'd be back on her radiant path soon, back where she belonged, in the main stream again.

  Wet from rain, she rushed back into the beauty chamber, grabbing the telegram from Anne's hands. The words flattering her raced through her brain. Only then did she pause in horror. In the comer of the cable was the date: September 13.

  The day she was going to die!

  September 13, the day a fortune teller long ago had predicted she'd die. Born on September 13, she was also firmly convinced she'd meet her death on that same day. So firmly did she believe this, she'd ordered the date engraved in advance on her tombstone.

  How had it happened that this day had come upon her without her knowing it? Each year, she dreaded the approach of September 13.

  If she died now, her entire life would be like a promise unfulfilled.

  Carefully, she studied her reflection in the mirror. The bone structure, perfection. Yet could this outward perfection be camouflaging something decaying inside? Could this body that walked and talked be made suddenly silent and inactive? The whole idea of creation—followed by the eventual destruction of life—struck her as the work of a sadistic monster who gave life, forced the victimized human into wanting it, then brutally snuffed it out.

  Was what lay beyond the plotting of the most devious of schemers? She knew the transition between lives wouldn't be easy. The thought of what the master schemer had conjured up as her punishment caused her to shudder. Perhaps in her purgatory, she would be locked away in a coffin. There, forced to smell the stench of her own dying body. Perhaps she'd try to breathe when breath was no longer possible. Or perhaps she'd have a fantastic urge to move one muscle, to lift just one finger—and this, too, would be impossible.

  What had her life meant this time around other than sheer survival? Had her sorrows been as futile as she now feared? During her lifetime, her cunning had made it possible for her to conquer and subdue her environmeht. But in spite of this amazing show of strength, she remained fragile and afraid of what lay beyond.

  She'd been on this earth before. Of that, there was no doubt. In her wanderings through time, she was Nefertiti ('The Beautiful One is Come"), walking on the mauve sands of what is now Alexandria; Huitzilopochtli, the fearsome god of the Aztecs hungry for human blood; Sappho on the island of Lesbos writing verses to her young female pupil-companions; a pretty Pompeian girl who dressed in elaborate clothes and pursued cultural pastimes, and an Indian maiden in North America who with her brave lover set out to explore the vast regions of a continent.

  Now what new fate awaited her?

  The rest of this rainy day stretched out. It burned into her flesh.

  In a few hours the night would come.

  A time for terror.

  The buzzer sounded again, Leonora pressing extra hard, as if every decision she made today had to be emphatic.

  In moments, Anne was in her bedchamber.

  Leonora glared at her. Suddenly she hated Anne's youth, her beauty, the fact she had so many more years to live. "That dear child hasn't been in to see me all day. Send for her."

  Without saying a word, Anne turned and left. She was gone for a long time. When she returned, her voice was hesitant. "There's been some trouble."

  "What do you mean?" Leonora asked, dropping her face towel.

  "Dinah ... she's been badly beaten."

  "What?" Tossing her mirror on the table, Leonora lunged toward the door. "Who did it?" Hand at her head she felt a migraine beginning. "Get a doctor."

  "I've called already." Anne turned away from Leonora.

  Clutching a flimsy robe tighter around her nude body, Leonora was heading down the hall.

  "Found her sulking in her room," Anne said, trailing behind. "Said she's used to getting beaten."

  "But who could have beaten her here?" Leonora asked. Her purple-glassed eyes and the dim lighting made her see Sacre-Coeur in an eerie glow. "I know the house is filled with monsters, but I thought civilized ones." In her race to Dinah's room, Leonora could hear the rush of her own breath. During the last hour, the rain had let up, becoming a slow mist. The whole house seemed to contain nothing but looming shadows and gaunt silhouettes.

  Now she was inside Dinah's room. The girl was on her bed, her face hidden in the pillow. The only illumination came from a silk-shaded bedside lamp. The drawn draperies gave a deathly feeling to the room.

  At her side, Leonora reached for Dinah trying to tum her over.

  "I don't want you to see me this way," she sobbed. "You think I'm so pretty and everything."

  "Don't be ridiculous, I must see you." Leonora's determination was reflected by her grim-jawed look. Though perspiring, Dinah had an odor both sweet and aromatic.

  Unfulfilled desire knotted Leonora's stomach, even when touching the girl in this condition.

  Trembling, Dinah turned over. Her face was bruised. Her tears blurred the vision of her large dark eyes, which were bloodshot and blinking. She lifted her head from the pillow.

  Leonora gently ran her fingers across Dinah's face. "Who would do such a thing?"

  "That goddamn Ned!" Dinah said, talking with apologetic slowness. "The son of a bitch beat me up for leaving him for you."

  Leonora looked at Dinah with infinite reproachfulness, then softened her glare. She released the girl.

  "I wasn't his real girl friend," Dinah protested. "He used me ... against my wishes."

  "Of course it Wc;lS against your wishes," Leonora replied quickly, her back stiffening. The first awful reality that Dinah was a liar flashed through her brain. "I've been close to you. I know what your real feelings are."

  Dinah's hand reached out for hers. This one action warmed Leonora. The girl's flashing ey
es closed as Leonora tightened her grip. "How did he get in here?" Leonora asked.

  "Ralph brought him here," Dinah said. ·Picked him up cruising. Ned came to my room after Ralph had gone to sleep. Held me and beat my face against the bed."

  "Why didn't you scream for help?" Leonora asked. The icy white of the room was drenching her. She wanted to scream herself.

  "I did," Dinah said weakly, "but he turned the music up loud."

  "I remember that," Leonora said, softly cupping Dinah's breasts. "I was going to send Anne up to complain to you." Her fingers gently caressed the flesh.

  "Ned was just using Ralph," Dinah confessed. "Got Ralph to agree to let him drive up to the mainland to pick up the commodore's sister. Lola was with him."

  The word, Lola, was like a wasp sting to Leonora. Now she saw it clearly. A betrayal. Ralph was to blame. Controlling her emotions, she reached down and smoothed the wrinkled covers of Dinah's bed. Then she bit down on her lip. "The cocksucker." She was shocked at her use of the word. Normally, she didn't use vulgarity and loathed its use in other people. But this time it just tumbled out.

  "Ned works for Lola," Dinah said.

  "This is incredible." Leonora turned to Anne. "Your husband's going to pay for this."

  "All of a sudden he's my husband," Anne protested. "Ralph's no husband to me. You got me to marry him, remember?"

  Leonora resented Anne all the more. Everyone was turning against her. Then she felt Dinah squeezing her hand again. No, there was one loyal person in the snakepit. "Get the commodore's attorney on the phone. I've been doublecrossed." She raised her hand, "This time Ralph Douglas has gone too far!"

  Leonora was alone. Gales of rain pounded the house in fury. But upstairs her bedroom seemed far removed from the storm, a safe haven.

  She lay quietly, listening to the lashing rain. In spite of the violence outside, it was a moment of peace from the storm raging inside her during this all too brief summer. The rain pounded against the house, the wind rattling the shutters of her bedroom window.