Butterflies in Heat

by Darwin Porter

  "Five years ago," she said, pressing her hand to her aching head.

  "Did you go to Copenhagen?" he asked.

  "No, Johns Hopkins," she replied.

  "Who's he?" Ned asked.

  "That's a fucking hospital," she said, getting up from the bed. She was heading toward the bathroom to repair her makeup. "They even had psychiatrists talk to me about emotionally conditioning myself to becoming a real woman. Hell!" she called out, "I know more about being a real woman than anybody at that castrating hellhole. I could give them lessons."

  "I bet you could, " Ned said, smiling to himself and slipping off his pants. "I bet you could at that. Now you get that cute little thing in here." A frown crossed his face.

  "Honey, you don't have to take those pills like Dinah, do you?"

  The next morning, Leonora's new secretary was calling over the intercom. "A colored girl's out front and wants to talk to you."

  "Sorry," Leonora snapped, "I'm too busy. " She banged down her compact on the desk. Probably a job applicant. With Ralph gone, she was the only one in charge. Everybody in town thought she was a regular employment bureau.

  "The girl is very insistent," the secretary went on. "Claims this business is half hers. Says she knows you very well. "

  "My God," Leonora exclaimed, jumping up. "That could only be Lola." Out from behind the desk, she carefully studied her appearance in the full-figure mirror. If Lola was here, Leonora knew her dress would be severely scrutinized. She smiled in approval at her figure, clad in an ecru jacket over a mauve print shirt and a gunmetal gray skirt. In her rosy pink high-heeled pumps, she paraded around the floor several times, a hammered gold medallion dangling from her neck. Satisfied with the way she looked, she barged into the outer reception lounge.

  Hands on her hips, Lola was standing, glaring at the secretary. "You must be new in town, if you haven't heard of Lola La Mour." Lola was attired in daytime pants under a belted jacket with two patch pockets. In the presence of Leonora, she began to doubt her choice of outfit, wishing she had worn something more elegant. She tossed her blonde curls haughtily.

  "What are you doing here?" Leonora asked in feigned politeness. "You know I'm busy." She deliberately wanted to be insulting, but not obviously so.

  "I'm here on business myself," Lola answered. At this moment it seemed a dozen movie cameras were focusing on her. Her voice quivered slightly, and this horrified her, as she wanted to present a portrait of total coolness. It was Leonora who had something to fear from her-not the other way around.

  "Let's conduct this brief interview in my salon," Leonora said, her delicate hands directing the way. In the privacy of her office, Leonora lit another one of her interminable marijuana cigarettes. "What brings you out today, or did I ask that?"

  "This is an official business call," Lola said, "and I demand to be treated like a lady."

  Lola swallowed hard. Chalk up round one to Leonora. Gazing at Leonora brought an immediate dizziness.

  Leonora returned the stare. To her, Lola seemed a glutinous mass of mascara and rouge, all tinted with turquoise. And that wig. Only a bird of prey deep in the desert would consider it enticing.

  Lola grandly stalked the room, asserting her sense of proprietorship.

  To Leonora, Lola was like an unwanted cloud blotting out the sun. "Please state your business."

  Lola instinctively reached to touch Leonora's arm. Leonora withdrew. "Please don't touch me," she said. "I can't stand to be touched."

  Lola backed off in anger. She tossed a manila envelope on Leonora's desk. "I understand you are the only designer employed by our fashion house."

  "I am the fashion house."

  "No more," she said defiantly, stretching her lips into something resembling a smile. "I've just retired from shaking my moneymaker, and I'm cruising for another profession. Just look in that folder."

  At the window, Leonora raised it slightly, to let out some of the penetrating odor from Lola's perfume. She seemed to have doused herself with an entire bottle. I don't have to take your commands," she said finally.

  "That's a matter of opinion," Lola said, standing her ground. When was this white bitch going to start showing her some respect? "I suggest you look inside that goddamn folder."

  Curiosity drove Leonora to the desk. She opened the folder and brought out the sketches. She tossed the designs on her desk. "My God, what is this? Tribal rites south of Pago-Pago?"

  "You racist!" Lola snapped. "It's the beginning of a new Afro collection." Every worm in her brain was moving from that insult. "You've always made women look like cheap drag versions of Dietrich."

  Covering the sketches with paper, as if her eyes could no longer tolerate the sight of them, Leonora said softly, but pointedly, "You're the one to talk about cheap drag."

  Lola huffed. "My designs will shake up this house. Get customers to open up their purses again." She snorted in front of one of Leonora's half-clothed mannikins. "Afro all the way, starting with Dahomey."

  "What's that? Leonora asked, arranging her posture at the desk almost like one of her mannequins. "Something for women's hygiene?"

  Without permission, Lola slid some panel doors open revealing an array of fabrics in all colors. "A country," she said loudly. "Didn't you go to school? On second thought, there probably wasn't a Dahomey when you was in school."

  "What do you know about fashion in Dahomey?" Leonora asked. "Assuming there is such a place."

  Rummaging through some hat boxes, Lola looked up. "I've seen pictures," she said. "Besides, I suspect my kin came from there."

  "Those are the weirdest and most unsuccessful designs for women's clothing I've ever seen," Leonora said. The sound of boys scurrying by the side of the building drifted in. Leonora felt threatened. "I thought you liked frilly, feminine things. Most of the times I've seen you, you were dressed like Jean Harlow."

  Closing the panel doors with contempt, Lola said, "You're speaking of the past. I've gone through many changes since finding out who I am." She sashayed over to the desk, holding up one of her sketches. "These are from the Fon people. They scar the bodies of boys-it's called cicatrization. Now ain't that a four-million-dollar word? They work colors into the wounds. I mean, like real primitive. Now, I'm not talking about making scars on no woman's body, but re-creating that same thing in fabric."

  "Disgusting barbarism!" Leonora charged. She turned from the sight of this horrible creature and her hideous designs. Her very presence made Leonora feel she was suffocating.

  "The concept of black fashion will one day take over this country," Lola predicted. She seemed to be losing out in this battle-not at all the way she'd fantasized when she'd rehearsed it in front of the mirror this morning. "What I'm offering is a chance to set fashion ahead instead of trailing it."

  "I beg your pardon!" Leonora said, through clenched teeth.

  A deathly silence fell over the room.

  Leonora eventually resumed smoking, furiously blowing out. "Me in black fashion? The idea is too absurd for comment."

  "My designs will make us even more rich and famous than we are." Why wouldn't Leonora listen to reason? she kept asking.

  "I'm rich and famous," Leonora asserted, casting a disdainful look at Lola. "You are merely rich." She crushed out the remainder of her cigarette. "You'll never be famous." With a quick brush of her hand, the designs inspired by the Fon people were tossed on her carpeted floor. "Your designs appall me. I'm the star of my own show. I don't want or need another designer. I'm certainly not in the market for a totally untalented one."

  "You've got one, anyway, sugar," Lola said, feeling her power real good now. It was erotically thrilling. "I own half this business."

  "You don't seem to realize," Leonora said calmly, walking around the room as if she were venturing into cold water. "If I were some poor, struggling artist, just getting her start in life, you could have power over me-power you inherited, I might add. You certainly never earned it." She stopped short right near Lola, gl
aring into her liquid eyes.

  "I earned it, bitch!" Lola said, standing up to her. "If all those years with my commodore wasn't earning it, then I don't know the meaning of singing for your supper."

  Leonora backed away. The pathetic creature was probably right. After all, Leonora had had her Norton Huttnar. "If you don't mind, let's dispense with the name-calling." Leonora seated herself behind her desk. "The point is, you're not in a position to intimidate me. We're selling our joint businesses."

  "Exactly what does that mean?" Suddenly, Lola was scared. She didn't fully understand how white people did business, except they were always capable of surprises.

  "Exactly what I said," Leonora answered coolly. "Our partnership is dissolved, or soon will be." She reached for another cigarette, then put it down. Her head was already swimming. Besides, it was the wrong color. "Anything we own jointly, we're selling. I don't want to be associated with you on any level."

  Lola laughed in Leonora's face, but her laugh didn't sound quite human. "You're prejudiced against black people?" She turned to the window. This line she'd used so many times was starting to bore even her.

  "I'm not," Leonora asserted firmly. "If that were true, why would I be living with a black girl?"

  The image of Dinah came back through Lola's head like a freight car out of control. When she was fully together, she was going to insist that no one mention that black pussy's name ever again. "She's a cheap hooker," Lola charged.

  Leonora let the words pass over her. Of course, Lola's accusation had crossed her mind. Many times. But she couldn't afford to think those things about Dinah. Only she wasn't going to tolerate another Joan. "Dinah has far more class than you ever will," Leonora said. She wanted to hurt Lola, for saying such a thing about Dinah, for daring to repeat what was already in her own mind.

  "Dinah, class?" Lola was fuming now. She, Lola La Mour, was generally regarded as the arbiter of taste in blacktown. Why, many people called her up to ask how to decorate their shanties. "She's the town whore! Everybody's had her. She's just using you."

  Leonora spun around in her chair. She had to get this vile creature out of her sight, but yet there was business to conduct. No one had had power over her since Norton Huttnar. She'd prided herself for years on never being in the presence of anyone she didn't want to see. Now, this!

  "All of us use each other," she said in a hesitant voice. She reached for a pair of sunglasses, then used them like a mask. "Dinah and I will soon be leaving for New York. She's going to become one of the most successful high-fashion models there. I'll see to that. Soon you'll be staring at her face on the cover of Vogue."

  Leonora could find no crueler words to say to Lola. Even more than the commodore's money, even more than Sacre-Coeur, Lola wanted to be on the cover of Vogue. To think that she, Lola La Mour, set Dinah up for this job. "Dinah on the cover of Vogue?" she asked, not really believing her ears. "You are out of your mind, like everybody says."

  "No, I'm not insane," Leonora said, feeling almost immune from the accusation that had been made so often. "Time will tell who's the crazy one."

  "Crazy, am I?" Lola asked. She rocked around the room at fever pitch. "You can't tongue-lash me no more. The day is over when you can come grandly into my bar and lord it over me, ordering that cheap champagne." An almost cannibalistic, blood-pounding frenzy was churning away inside. "You're no longer allowed in Commodore Philip's bar." She slammed her ringed hand down on the desk, hurting herself. "The name, incidentally, has been changed to Chez Lola."

  "I only went to that contemptible bar because I didn't want to insult the commodore by staying away," Leonora said. "I couldn't stand the vile place. As for last night's performance, it was beneath me."

  "Beneath you?" Lola questioned. "Baby, that bar has class. Something you wouldn't know anything about. You're used to taking some little spik cunt up the steps at the Garden of Delights, as you call it."

  "You miserable transsexual! Get out of my shop."

  "I'm part landlady here myself," Lola said. "You keep forgetting that."

  "No. I don't," Leonora protested. "To forget that would be like forgetting a recurring nightmare."

  "You're nothing but a pit viper," Lola charged.

  "I see acquiring money has done nothing for your humility, something I have always managed to possess regardless of my position in life. You've got the money, but that's where it stops for you. You're too crude and vulgar to obtain anything else in life. The only thing you can do at this point is to buy your twobit hustlers and pretend you're a lady."

  "The patron of the town whore," Lola said. "Look who's talking!"

  "Say what you will about Dinah," Leonora said. "She's immune from your criticism. You thought you could come in here in triumph. You're wrong. You see, I've had it in Tortuga. I'm selling everything but Sacre-Coeur, and I don't plan to visit the island ever again. My house will become a ghost mansion." She sighed. "It was never mine anyway. The memory of Norton Huttnar is in the woodwork, just like the termites eating away at it."

  Lola felt awesomely ill. The feeling started at her feet and worked its way up.

  "You can imitate my clothes, my name, my car, everything, but not my talent," Leonora said. "I've made it in the world on my own creativity. You have nothing to offer. You took advantage of a senile degenerate."

  "Baby, so did you!" Lola shouted.

  Leonora paused momentarily. "In that you succeeded I'll admit. But what about the rest of your life? I don't envy the years ahead of you-trying to maintain a fast-fading illusion."

  "What a joke!" Lola said, her pride so wounded she could scream. "How dare you talk to me like this. You're a has-been!"

  "It's true, I was a has-been," Leonora said. "But no more. In this crazy world, has-beens are back in style. Perhaps swept there by a nostalgia craze, I really don't know. The point is, I'm on the verge of my biggest acclaim. I've lived so long and gone so far I am a living legend."

  "You're feeding off the past."

  "Yes," Leonora admitted, "I am pumping blood from it, but at least I've got a past to feed off. It's like insurance. As for you, you've won the battle, but lost the war."

  "I hate you, you stinking white bitch," Lola said.

  "I don't hate you," Leonora said, her calm returning. "Actually, I feel sorry for you. But all is not lost. With me out of Tortuga, you can dominate the town. I'll be back in New York, ana you'll be left the biggest fish in the pond. Ruthie Elvina is hardly any competition."

  Her words stabbing the air, Lola suddenly demanded, "I want Sacre-Coeur." Now was her only chance. "I've always wanted Sacre-Coeur. Ever since I was a little girl and used to walk by at night wondering what was going on inside. I'm tired of standing on the outside, wondering what's going on inside."

  A fit of madness overcame Leonora. Throw caution to the wind. A way out of all this was emerging, part of her new lease on life. Sacre-Coeur had become her prison, her death-trap. Discard it. Without time to reconsider. "Let's make a deal, if I may speak in the vernacular. I'll give you Sacre-Coeur, providing you relinquish any control over my fashion house and the properties I own out at the beach."

  "You'll give me Sacre-Coeur?" Lola was astonished. She had expected Leonora to fight for her life.

  "Yes, I'll even give up my interest in the Garden of Delights, an establishment far more suited to your temperament than mine. Call your attorney on the mainland. Dollar for dollar from a standpoint of value, I'm offering you a good deal. You in Sacre-Coeur, how fitting. A fitting memorial to that bastard, Norton Huttnar. He, like you, loved drag. And how fitting that you and Amelia Le Blanc are splitting the revenue from the Garden of Delights."

  "Your offer sounds good to me," Lola said. "I don't like land without buildings on it. Sacre-Coeur is the showplace of the island. Only thing is, you have only thirty days to move out completely."

  "That's no problem," Leonora said. "I'll be gone long before that."

  "Me, the grand lady of Sacre-Coeur." The words we
re spinning through Lola's head.

  "My darling, I'm sure you'll be the grandest lady Sacre-Coeur ever had, " Leonora said facetiously. "Excepting present company, of course." She smiled. "Good night."

  "Good night," Lola chimed, shrugging off the insult. "I dismissed my chauffeur, not knowing how long I'd be here. Frankly, I thought we'd be all night."

  "No problem," Leonora said. "My chauffeur will deliver you back to your hotel."

  Emerging from the ocean, Numie slowly walked toward the Cuban exiles lounging in front of a wooden-framed bar with a side porch. They were drinking beer, but the blacks at the other end were downing straight hot bourbon from Dixie cups.

  Next door was a grocery store. The aromatic smell of spices on its shelves-anise, cumin, chamomile flowers--seemed to drift across the graveled courtyard. Ringing its gingerbread veranda were stalks of ripe yellow bananas. Inside the shop, Numie passed open sacks of beans, pigtails of garlic, and canned magnolia milk to a pile of straw hats in the corner. He bought one, giving the shopkeeper a dollar.

  The yellow sunlight of the late afternoon was bathing the docks as he came out. He paused for a long moment, then decided he'd better get back to the Lincoln parked nearby in front of Leonora's fashion house. In an hour or so, it'd be time to take her back to Sacre-Coeur.

  A chill came over his body, as a breeze blew in from the turquoise water. In nothing but a skimpy white bikini, he suddenly felt nude. His pants were in the front seat of the limousine. He headed back.

  Lola stood propped against the front fender of the Lincoln. "I'm not a lady used to waiting for her chauffeur."

  He swallowed hard. "I thought Ned was your driver."

  "I got rid of him for the rest of the day." She sighed, excited at the sight of Numie's body. "He's a pest he's so jealous of me. De la Mer said you was to drive me back to my suite. My temporary home, I might add." She placed her hands on her hips. "In thirty days Sacre Coeur will belong to this gorgeous lady you see before you."

  "Leonora's turning over Sacre-Coeur to you?" he asked. "I can't believe itl"