by Lou Berney
“Of course you do. Everybody has a secret or two.”
“Then shall you go first?”
He grinned with approval. “I can see why Frank likes you. All right. Let me think. Once upon a time, there was a boy. He had nothing. He wanted everything. So he worked hard. He made certain sacrifices. He held on for dear life. That’s the best way I can describe it. Now the boy has everything he ever wanted.”
“But?” Charlotte said.
“But?”
“There’s not a moral to the story?”
“Sure there is,” Ed said. “Decide what you want and let nothing stand in your way. Come, see, conquer. That’s the moral to the story. It’s what I like about Frank.”
About Frank? The assessment surprised Charlotte. And then she remembered what she’d said to Frank the other night, after they’d made love. I don’t really know much about you, do I? She remembered the thought that had nagged at her from the beginning, how she might know even less about him than she thought.
And what, really, did she know about Ed? The limousine, the yacht. Frank said that the two of them had become friends at an insurance convention in Minneapolis, that they’d discussed policy proceeds. Now that she’d actually met Ed, Charlotte found every individual part of that account difficult to grasp.
She looked over at Frank, who was obediently following Rosemary’s instructions. Clap clap shimmy clap, down down baby. Frank was watching her and Ed, too, Charlotte realized, from the corner of his eye.
“Ed?” Charlotte said. “How did you and Frank meet?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Do I look like a sucker to you? It’s your turn. How did you and Frank meet?”
“Frank didn’t say?”
“I want to hear your account.”
She told him about the accident with the car, the motel, the mechanic.
Ed grinned again. “And so in Frank galloped, your knight in shining armor.”
“He’s been very kind. And so have you.”
He leaned closer. “And tell me. What’s that on your finger?”
Her gold wedding band. Charlotte had forgotten to remove it. After all these years, it had become a part of her, invisible. She tugged the ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl,” she said. “She didn’t know what she wanted. Or rather she knew what she wanted but was afraid to admit it. And then one day …”
“She wasn’t afraid anymore,” Ed said. “She made her decision and held on for dear life.”
“Yes.”
He contemplated her. “I will tell you another secret,” Ed said, but then Frank materialized next to them, the girls at his side.
“How are you two hitting it off?” he said. “I told you she was a peach, Ed, didn’t I?”
“That you did. And that she is.” Ed gave Charlotte’s knee a fatherly pat and stood. “Join me below in the salon, boychick. There’s a business matter I’d like to discuss in private.”
Frank groaned. “Ye gods, Ed. I’m on my vacation. Let’s wait till this evening at least. I’ll drive out to the house. Don’t ask me to abandon these three beautiful ladies on such a beautiful day.”
“Cindy will keep them company,” Ed said. “Cindy! Come play with the new kids!”
Ed waved to his niece, who stood off by herself, leaning far out over the railing and gazing at the water.
“Ed, please,” Frank said. It was unmistakable this time, the pinch between his eyebrows, a pucker as when the fabric is too thin and the thread too tight. “We can talk later, as much as you want.”
“We’ll be just fine,” Charlotte said. She didn’t understand why he was so reluctant to leave her and the girls alone for a few minutes. “Really, we will.”
Still Frank hesitated. But he could see her puzzling. “All right, Ed,” he said finally. “Down the hatch we go. Your wish is my command.”
Frank and Ed went below deck. Ed’s nephews helped Leo pack up the buffet. Cindy floated over, trailing a finger along the rail and swaying to a song it seemed only she could hear.
“What’s that?” Cindy asked.
“This?” Charlotte said. “My camera.”
“Do you want to take my picture? Ed’s friends always take my picture.”
Cindy was indeed striking, with her blue eyes and heart-shaped face. “All right,” Charlotte said. “Are they photographers? Ed’s friends?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte waited until Cindy turned her head to gaze back out over the water and then snapped the photo. The slant of Cindy’s chin, the blond braids beginning to fray, a dreamy expression that made her face seem ever so slightly out of focus.
“Do you know how to play Down Down Baby?” Rosemary asked Cindy. “It’s hard to learn, but we can teach you.”
Cindy didn’t seem to hear. “I’m looking for her,” she said.
“For who?” Rosemary said.
“The ghost.”
Rosemary was immediately transfixed. “What ghost?”
“The girl,” Cindy said. “She went for a swim in the middle of the night, when everyone else on the boat was in bed. We were all asleep.”
“It was this boat?” Rosemary said.
“The summer before last. Yes. She went for a swim and never came back.” Cindy giggled. “Down, down, baby.”
Joan pressed against Charlotte. Unlike her sister, she didn’t enjoy ghost stories. Neither did Charlotte, and certainly not this one.
“Let’s talk about something else, shall we?” Charlotte said. “Let’s make a list of our favorite boats from books and movies.”
But Rosemary would not be deterred. “Who was she? The ghost?”
“A cocktail waitress at the Stardust,” Cindy said. “That’s what she told everyone. But we knew she was lying. She was a dirty little liar. That’s what Ed said.”
The splinter of uneasiness that had worked its way under Charlotte’s skin began to ache. Surely none of this was true. Surely this was just a story that Cindy had invented to frighten the girls.
Cindy put a finger to her lips. Shhh. “You have to promise,” she told Rosemary. “To keep the secret. You know what happens if you can’t keep secrets.”
“That’s enough,” Charlotte said, more sharply than she’d intended. She pulled Rosemary closer.
Cindy regarded Charlotte placidly. “Okay.”
“But I want to hear more about the ghost,” Rosemary said. “Don’t you, Joan?”
“No,” Joan said.
“I saw her once,” Cindy said. “The ghost. She’s beautiful now. Like a flower after it dies. She’s peaceful. She thinks she’s dreaming. She thinks someday she’ll wake up.”
“Mommy,” Rosemary said, “I can feel your heart beating.”
Cindy’s attention drifted back to Rosemary. She crooked a finger at her. “Come with me,” she said. “Let’s go look for her together.”
Frank was still below deck. Leo and the nephews were out of sight, on the far side of the cabin, nowhere near. Cindy reached for Rosemary’s hand, and Rosemary reached automatically to take it, and just as automatically Charlotte seized Cindy’s wrist, yanking it roughly away from Rosemary.
The girls stared at Charlotte, shocked.
Cindy stared at Charlotte’s hand on her wrist. “Wow,” she said.
Charlotte tightened her grip. “Go away. Do you understand? Leave us alone.”
For the first time, Cindy really looked at Charlotte, really seemed to register her. Cindy’s expression—no anger, no surprise, no anything—chilled Charlotte. She remembered the stray dog, when she was a child, that bit two neighborhood children. Before her father chased it off with a rake, the dog had approached Charlotte, too. Moving slowly, calmly, with what seemed the utmost indifference.
“You’re going to be sorry,” Cindy said.
“Do you understand?” Charlotte said. “Leave us alone.”
And then the deck shuddered beneath Charlotte’s feet. Ed had returned t
o the bridge and started the engines. Charlotte dropped Cindy’s wrist, and Cindy spun away with a laugh, her plaid skirt flaring.
The blood rushed back into Charlotte’s body as Frank walked toward her and the girls, smiling.
28
Guidry knew that Ed had no pressing business to discuss below deck. He was just tugging Guidry’s strings, making him dance, having what he, Ed, called fun. Guidry couldn’t cause a scene. For his sake and Charlotte’s both. She and the girls would be fine for five minutes. Leo was up there with them. He wouldn’t let Cindy get out of hand.
“Scotch?” Ed poured without waiting for an answer. They were down in what Ed called the salon. Guidry had seen cathouses with a more subdued use of brass and red velvet.
“Where’s the fire, Ed?” Guidry said. “Don’t say you’ve had a change of heart about sending me to Vietnam.”
Who, me? Ed waved away the mere suggestion. He settled into a stuffed leather wing chair and put up his feet.
“Boychick,” Ed said, “this is your masterpiece. How’d you do it? You should see how she looks at you. She thinks you’re the cat’s meow. Don’t sweat, I won’t blow it for you.”
“You just want to see me squirm a little,” Guidry said.
“Just a little, sure.”
“I still need her, remember. I’m not in Saigon yet.”
“Don’t sweat. The kids are on their best behavior. You like their getups? That was my idea. I knew you’d get a kick out of it.”
Guidry listened to the slap and mumble of water against the hull. He listened to Ray Bolger snoring on the other side of the wall. Guidry couldn’t hear what was happening up on deck. Anything at all, he knew, could be happening up on deck.
He lifted his glass and admired how the light filtered through the scotch. Don’t rush. If he tried to rush, Ed would slow it down and make him pay.
Ed lit a cigar. “So. Our dear Charlotte. You really dig her, don’t you?”
“Dig her?” Guidry said. “What do you mean?”
“Frank Guidry, of all people. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
There was no safe way to play this. Guidry could hold his bluff and pray. He could come clean and pray. Ed might decide it was a weakness he couldn’t afford: Guidry’s feelings for Charlotte. Ed might decide it was a weakness he couldn’t afford: Guidry sticking to a weak bluff.
Guidry shrugged. “Sure, I dig her,” he said, “but what does it matter?”
What does it matter? He asked himself the same question. What did it matter if he might want to spend his life with Charlotte and the girls? What did it matter if he’d lost his goddamn mind? Tomorrow he’d be on a plane to Vietnam or he’d be dead. Either way he would never see Charlotte and the girls again.
Ed kept working away at his cigar. The first match burned down, so he lit a second one. He nodded, satisfied with Guidry’s answer.
“Ray was supposed to sing for half an hour,” Ed said. “That goggle-eyed bean-eater. He’s not getting his money, I can promise you that.”
“Let’s toss him in the lake,” Guidry said. “Make him swim home.”
“Come by the house tonight. Nine o’clock or so. I’ll have what you need for tomorrow. You want me to send Leo for you?”
“I remember the way.”
“C’mon.” Ed stood. “Back to the party.”
Charlotte and the girls were safe and sound. It had never been in doubt, Guidry told himself. Ed raised anchor, and they headed back to port. Guidry had to prove to the satisfaction of Rosemary and Joan that he remembered the game they’d taught him, every word and every handclap.
Sweet, sweet, baby,
I’ll never let you go,
Shimmy, shimmy cocoa pop,
Shimmy, shimmy pow.
Charlotte sat by herself, watching them, watching Guidry. Dusk falling, the lights of the marina twinkling. In the fading glow, Charlotte seemed to be fading, too, just a figment of his imagination, and that thought—she wasn’t real, none of this was real—filled Guidry with a dread unlike any he’d ever known. Unlike any he’d known for a long, long time. He’d lost his mind. He’d fallen from grace. Until Charlotte and the girls came along, nothing in heaven or earth had been able to move him.
Guidry rode up front with Leo so that Charlotte and the girls could stretch out in the backseat of the Rolls. Rosemary and Joan slept all the way to the Hacienda. Charlotte did, too, curled in the far corner, her head resting against the window. Images flickered and flared on the glass behind her, headlights and billboards and a forked tongue of lightning far off across the desert. It was as if Guidry could see the dreams passing through her mind, projected up onto a movie screen.
He couldn’t go to Los Angeles with her and the girls. The idea was too impossible to even entertain. Carlos would find Guidry, anywhere in the country, only a matter of time. That was if Ed didn’t kill him first, when Guidry said, No thanks, Ed, I’ve changed my mind about Vietnam, sorry for any inconvenience.
“Leo.” The backseat was a mile away, the tires on the pavement a noisy hum, but Guidry kept his voice soft anyway. Leo, absorbed by thoughts of his own, didn’t hear him the first time. “Leo.”
“Yes, sir?” Leo said.
“I could use some good advice, Leo,” Guidry said.
“As could we all, sir.”
Guidry couldn’t go to Los Angeles with Charlotte and the girls. But what if they came with him to Vietnam? Guidry would have to convince Ed. Wasn’t that an even more impossible, and dangerous, idea?
“A man finds himself in a dark wood,” Guidry said. “And then he finds himself in a different, even darker wood. He becomes exasperated with the hand of fate.”
“Quite understandable,” Leo said.
“It’s Milton, isn’t it? Where Lucifer falls from grace? I never read Milton. I never really read Dante either. Just enough to fake it.”
“‘Awake, arise, or be for ever fall’n.’”
“Is that Milton? Don’t show off, Leo. With that accent of yours, it’s not a fair fight.”
Leo nodded in pleasant agreement.
“I know the knack to a happy life, Leo,” Guidry said. “So that should make every decision an easy one, should it not? I’ve never had any struggle before.”
Leo didn’t ask Guidry to explain the knack to a happy life. He didn’t even raise a wry eyebrow. He seemed to grasp the point that Guidry was making. Guidry supposed that if Ed had detected his feelings for Charlotte, Leo had probably detected them, too.
“Say something, Leo.”
Nope. Nothing. Not a single twitch of the Clark Gable mustache. Guidry gave up. But then Leo sighed.
“With every decision we create a new future,” Leo said. “We destroy all other futures.”
“That’s heavy, Leo,” Guidry said.
“Is it?”
“It sounds heavy, at least. With the accent.”
Leo raised that wry eyebrow and pulled the Rolls up to the hotel entrance. Guidry reached over the seat to touch Charlotte’s knee, but she was already sitting up. She hadn’t been sleeping after all.
“Here we are,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
No one had much of an appetite after the feast on Ed’s boat, so they skipped dinner and watched the go-karts instead. Noisy insects, oily little exoskeletons, scuttling around the track. Guidry, Charlotte, and Joan watched—Rosemary pined to be out there, her fingers clutching the chain-link and steering each driver around the turn. Guidry smiled, but Charlotte hadn’t noticed. After the go-karts, Guidry had a drink at the bar while Charlotte supervised baths and prayers, tucked the girls in.
Upstairs, his room, Guidry put a hand on Charlotte’s waist and drew her close for a kiss. But she slipped away before he could get properly started.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
She crossed to the window. Her back to him, her troubled face in profile. How had he missed it before now? On the boat, in the car. Frank Wainwrig
ht had missed it. Guidry, if he’d been himself, if he hadn’t lost his goddamn mind, would have seen this coming from a mile away.
“Feeling all right?” he said. “Too much dessert earlier?”
“Frank,” she said.
What had Cindy said to her on the boat? God only knew. God only knew what damage Guidry would now have to repair.
He walked over, caressed Charlotte’s shoulder. “What is it?”
She turned to him finally. “Is there something you’re keeping from me, Frank?”
He looked into her eyes. Tell her everything. Everything. Guidry had to fight the impulse. Tell her everything and beg her to believe that he’d changed, that he was changing, that he might change, just give him half a chance.
She’d be moved by his honesty and throw her arms around his neck, just like the actresses did in the movies, a swirl of perfume and violins. Sure, just like that. Oh, Frank, you only needed a good woman to save you, didn’t you?
“Am I keeping something from you?” he said. “Of course not.”
“It’s Ed,” Charlotte said. “Maybe I’m being silly, but it just seems … I don’t know. I’ve seen you with him, Frank, and something just isn’t quite … right.”
“Well …”
“His niece, Cindy, told us a story about a woman who drowned. A woman on Ed’s boat, a cocktail waitress at the Stardust. Or the woman claimed to be a cocktail waitress. Cindy made it seem as if Ed … I thought at first it was just a silly ghost story, but now I’m not sure.”
J. Edgar Hoover’s undercover girl. Guidry silently cursed Cindy. “That’s why I didn’t want to leave you alone with Cindy,” he said. “I should have been honest from the beginning. It’s why I didn’t want to go to Lake Mead in the first place.”
“Why?” Charlotte said.
“Ed does everything he can for her. She’s his sister’s only kid. He’s paid for half a dozen different private schools. Cindy gets things mixed up in her head. She’s a little … mixed up. You figured that out.”
They were the right lyrics, but Guidry could tell that he was botching the melody. Charlotte’s eyes searched his. You had to put your heart into deception, you had to give it everything you had. But Guidry didn’t want to be doing this, he didn’t want to lie to her, ever again.