It was Christmas before Noel was seen again at Bonne Vie. He claimed that he had been working on a project. His major was business administration, but his minor was in electronics, so it was just barely possible. Since his father did not question the excuse, Riva hardly felt she had the right, though she wondered.
The visit passed without real incident, if not without tension. On Christmas Eve the three of them, Riva and Cosmo and Noel, went to see the bonfires on the levee, those huge fires made of logs, scrap lumber, timbers, and cane bagasse, the last being the squeezed and dried stalks left after the extraction of the juice from the sugarcane. The bonfires, constructed in the rough shapes of pyramids and steamboats and even sometimes an antebellum mansion, were set on fire, so it was said, to help guide Pére Noel in his flight along the river to deliver presents to the homes of Cajun boys and girls. Presumably to aid in this goal, there was also music and dancing on the levee by the light of the leaping flames, plus the liberal consumption of strong drink to keep out the damp, penetrating cold of December.
Cosmo was content to ride slowly up and down in the car viewing the scene or else, after they stopped, to sit visiting with friends who came up to speak while dispensing shots of bourbon from the limousine’s backseat bar. He urged Riva and Noel on, however, encouraging them to get out and stroll among the others lining the levee, to have some of the jambalaya and hot cider being hawked by enterprising businessmen, and even to dance.
The music of fiddles and accordions and the sound of voices with lilting backcountry French accents raised in joy were infectious. Combined with the smell of spicy food and woodsmoke and the sight of the leaping flames reflecting yellow and orange in the dark waters of the wide and slow-moving river, they were like something out of another time. As a celebration it was fun; as a tradition it was joyous.
When Noel caught Riva’s hand to draw her among the dancing couples, it seemed natural to go with him, to match her steps to his and follow the movements of others. The tune was a waltz, but one with a difference, with a stronger and faster beat. Noel moved with deft sureness in time to the music, as if he felt it pulsing in his veins. Together they circled and whirled, now spinning with dizzying speed, now breaking apart to sidestep and turn with one hand clasping each other’s waists and the other placed behind their backs. Their eyes met and held in the light of the flames that leaped to the same rhythm. Riva stared at Noel’s face that was slashed by a smile of breathtaking tenderness, of mind-shattering openness to her. The brightness that gleamed deep in the black irises of his eyes made her heart lurch with a painful quickening. A trembling began deep inside, growing with a terrible fear. She wanted to stop dancing, to break away and run back to the car, back to Cosmo where it was safe. At the same time, she knew there was no such thing as safety.
Later, they all went to midnight mass at an old and beautiful church at Gramercy nearby on the river road. The ceremony by candlelight was solemn and moving. Riva knelt on the kneeling bench with tightly closed eyes and clasped hands, but though she prayed she could find little comfort and less peace.
It was a relief when Noel returned to Georgia Tech. The turmoil of emotions he had aroused in Riva subsided. She went back to working with Cosmo, to learning to cope with the management of Bonne Vie, and to becoming gradually a part of the New Orleans social scene that was so frenetic from January to March as the usual winter charity-ball-and-culture season coincided with the carnival of Mardi Gras from Twelfth Night to Lent.
By the time summer came, Riva had decided that it would be best if she and Noel remained somewhat estranged. Friendship between them, she sensed, could be dangerous. And so she was cordial but cool for those months while Cosmo’s son was at Bonne Vie and working at Staulet Corporation. She made certain she was never alone with him for any length of time and that any discussion between them was either extremely general in nature or else brief and to the point.
In this way a year passed. Then Noel graduated from college. He decided to use the house in the Bahamas to get away for a month or two, to relax before he took on the job of fitting himself into Staulet Corporation. Two weeks after Noel’s departure, Cosmo announced that he wanted to talk to his son about his future. It would be best if it could be done well away from everything and everybody, and there was no better place for that than on the island. Besides, he and Riva hadn’t been away for more than a day or two since their honeymoon. They both needed a vacation.
The island house, designed in the style of a Mediterranean villa, was plastered and painted white and edged with terraces that descended to the sea. It was not large since it had been built as a retreat rather than a place for entertaining large groups. There were only three bedrooms with adjoining baths, a kitchen and dining area, and a fairly large living room with sliding glass doors that overlooked the terraces and the beach. Surrounding the house was a wall with a wrought-iron gate. Inside the wall was a profusion of hibiscus and bougainvillea, croton and casuarina and sea grape, while overhead swayed the dark green fronds of majestic palms. The sea rolled in lazy green and turquoise splendor onto the stretch of pink and white sand that came right up to the steps of the lower terrace. There were no other houses in sight, no other people for at least a quarter of a mile.
The beauty of the island was insidious, a balm that seemed to smooth away difficulties and encourage the sybaritic enjoyment of the moment. Somehow the discussion that had brought Riva and Cosmo was put off from one day to the next. The relationship among the three of them was so easy, the atmosphere so relaxed, that Riva began to think she had been imagining a problem.
Cosmo didn’t swim. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, just that he didn’t care for the feel of sand against his skin or the stickiness of chlorine or salt water in his hair. It was basically a messy, useless activity, he said, though he was ready to concede its benefit as exercise. His feeling about it was one of the reasons he hadn’t been to the island house in recent years. It had been bought for the pleasure of his first wife, Noel’s mother, as well as for Noel himself while he was growing up.
Riva loved swimming, loved the glide of the water against her, the feeling of near weightlessness as she floated on its surface. She particularly loved the sea with its changing colors, changing moods, and the song and motion of its endless waves. The idea of the beach had always appealed, and her introduction to the French Mediterranean had been grand, but she had not known how much she would love it until she came to the island.
One morning Noel got out the snorkeling gear. There was an area down the beach where it was possible, he said, to see fan and brain coral, plus vivid blue parrot fish and a dozen other odd varieties. Riva had never been snorkeling before but had discovered within herself an appetite for new things. She could hardly wait to try.
It was ridiculously easy. It was also fascinating to discover so many wonderful plants and animals beneath the surface of the water, easily visible through the translucent depths as they were penetrated by the hot tropical sun. No small part of it was the enthusiasm of the young man beside her, the camaraderie of swimming shoulder to shoulder and pointing out new finds to each other. Their shared pleasure in the day, with the infectiousness of close companionship, silly jokes, and horseplay in the water, made her feel young and carefree in a way she had not been in ages, not since before she had left home. She hadn’t wanted to stop, hadn’t wanted to go back to the beach house, not even when Noel told her the skin of her back was broiled to medium-rare and she would be sick if she wasn’t careful.
She was not the only one sunburned. That he was red here and there, too, made this ending of their day comical instead of agonizing. Wincing at the rub of their suits on smarting flesh and their own foolishness, they trailed back down the beach toward the house as the sun leaned toward midafternoon.
Cosmo was taking a nap with the bedroom door closed. The house was still. The air-conditioning was chill on their heated flesh and wet suits. Since Riva could not get to her own bathroom without waking Cosm
o, she showered quickly in the one of the extra guest room. She was also cut off from her clothes, and the thought of putting her suit, which was still embedded with grains of sand, back on was intolerable. Catching sight of a short cotton robe on the back of the bathroom door, she slipped it on.
Noel had been busy putting away the snorkeling gear. He barely glanced at her as he passed her in the hall, or so it seemed, but it was obvious he saw enough.
“There’s a T-shirt and a pair of shorts in my room you can borrow, if you want,” he said.
“Thanks, anyway, but I don’t think I could stand anything that close fitting right this minute.”
“Suit yourself. Let me wash off some of the sand, then maybe we can find something to eat. I’m starved.”
He skimmed past, being careful not to touch her, then disappeared into his room. After a second or two, the bathroom door closed. It was some minutes before the water started to run.
Riva wandered out to the kitchen where she rummaged around in the refrigerator for a snack. The island couple who came in every morning to clean the house, take care of the flowering shrubs, and do the marketing and cooking were gone for the day. The wife had left baked chicken and salad for lunch, along with fresh pineapple slices and a plate of English tea cakes. Riva set these things on a tray with paper plates and glasses of iced tea, then carried it out to the shady end of the terrace.
The stillness of the waning afternoon had descended. The heat was oppressive. A lavender haze had appeared far out on the horizon over the water. Nothing moved except the waves lapping on the beach and now and then a palm frond stirred by a fitful breeze. The glare off the sand was so bright that it was necessary to squint against it even behind sunglasses. The effort was tiring, especially along with the draining fatigue of sunburn. All Riva wanted to do was to have a long cool drink, eat something, then lie back in her lounge chair and sleep. She picked up a spear of pineapple and bit into it, then turned her head as Noel emerged from the house.
He wore only khaki shorts and his hair was tousled, as if he had done no more than run his fingers through it. His face was red across the bridge of his nose and the tops of his ears, and his shoulders were burned, but he was already brown from two weeks of island sun and would soon be browner.
He looked at her, however, and shook his head. “You look like a well-done lobster.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said with sugary sweetness. “Have some chicken.”
“Don’t mind if I do. Then we’re going to have to do something about your skin, or you’ll shrivel up and turn into a raisin right before my very eyes.”
She tilted her head and pulled out the front of her robe so that she could look under it at her chest. “Is it that bad?”
“You’re three shades redder than when we came in.”
“Am I really?”
“Never mind, I have some cream. If we spread it on thick enough, there may be some vestiges of your former beauty left after you peel.”
She looked at him in mock annoyance. “You’re such a comfort.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it.”
As she met his gaze across the table, it was tinged with self-deprecating humor. Then the amusement faded, leaving it open and vulnerable and shadowed with something that could not be named. She felt a constriction in her throat and a burning behind her eyes. Blinking quickly, she looked down, pushing the plate of chicken toward him.
“Eat,” she said.
“Yes, stepmama,” he answered in deep tones.
Once more they looked at each other, then quickly away again. Out on the horizon, where the sky met the sea, the haze had become dark purplish-gray and there came from it the dull percussion of distant thunder.
They were sitting in the same lounge chair, with Riva between Noel’s spread knees and the robe draped open exposing her back to the waist, when Cosmo woke from his nap and walked out onto the terrace.
“What is this?” he said, the words hard-edged with anger and suspicion. The rising wind fluttered his hair. The sun had gone behind the cloud rising out of the sea so that his face was dark.
Riva raked the flying tangles of her drying hair out of her eyes. She automatically tightened her hold on the robe just above her breasts even as she attempted a smile. “I feel so dumb for staying in the sun so long. Noel had some special cream—”
“I’ll just bet he did. Get in the house, both of you.”
Riva could sense the blood draining from her face. At the same time, she felt Noel’s hand leave off its smoothing action on her raw back, lifting away with guilty haste. An icy chill settled in the pit of her stomach. The contrast with the fever of her skin made her feel disoriented, ill.
“I mean now!”
It was an order. Noel could not move until she did. Riva tried to settle the robe around her, but the wind sweeping onto the terrace caught it, flapping it open to show a long length of naked thigh. She whipped it closed, then tightened the belt and pushed to her feet. As Cosmo stood aside, she moved in front of him through the sliding glass doors that led into the living room of the house. She did not turn, though she knew Noel was directly behind her.
“Put some clothes on,” the older man said to her. “Then I want to see you back here.”
She went into the bedroom and put on a strapless sundress without a bra. She brushed the tangles from her hair with hard, swift strokes and pulled it back on either side of her face with tortoiseshell clasps. She could hear the raised voices of the two men, but what they were saying was muffled by the closed door and drowned in the rumble of thunder. Still, the sound and what it meant made her so clumsy that it seemed to take twice as long as it should have to make herself presentable.
By the time she returned to the living room, it was much darker outside. Gray clouds were scudding over the heaving sea beyond the glass doors, and sand was blowing with a soft, sighing whisper against the house.
The two men turned to face her when she entered. Their faces were flushed and their fists clenched. They looked so much alike that she stopped in consternation, staring from one to the other.
Cosmo spoke at last, “I think we have agreed that it’s best for Noel to work for the next year or two in the Paris office as he learns the business. That’s what I intended to talk to him about when we came down here, and it seems doubly wise now.”
“What do you mean ‘now’?” Riva asked. Her anger had been slow in coming, but she could feel its rise inside her. “Didn’t he tell you there was nothing going on between us out there?”
“You forget, I saw what was going on.”
“You saw nothing!”
“I saw my son fondling my wife while she lay half naked in his lap. That isn’t nothing!”
“If you say that, it’s only because you have a dirty mind. He was putting cream on my back.”
“I see you don’t deny the nakedness.” The words were said with trenchant scorn.
“I was less naked than the first time you ever saw me,” she cried.
“And look where that got you!”
She drew back in shock, then her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
Noel stepped forward. “Stop this! None of it matters. I’m not going to Paris.”
“You’ll do what I tell you,” Cosmo said, swinging around to him.
“The hell I will!”
“If you don’t, you won’t work at Staulet Corporation!”
“Who needs Staulet Corporation?” his son instantly returned. Whipping around, Noel lunged across to the glass doors. He opened them with a hard shove and stepped through. In an instant, he was swallowed up by the growing storm.
“Noel, wait!” Riva called, moving after him.
Cosmo caught her at the door, swinging her around with hard fingers gripping her forearm. “Where do you think you’re going? Come back here.”
She stared up at him with the wind coming through the open door and fluttering her hair and her dress around her. “He’s your son. You
have to go after him.”
“When he remembers he’s my son and not my rival, he can come back. Until then, let him go.”
“You can’t do this,” she pleaded, reaching to grip a handful of Cosmo’s shirt in her clenched fingers. “It isn’t right, not over me.”
He stared down at her with fierce pain in his face. “There’s no other way. I’ve tried to find one, but there is none.”
“There has to be,” she said, her voice taut as she gave him a hard shake that ended with a push. “There has to be!”
Dragging herself free of him, she flung herself out the door. She heard him yelling her name as he blundered after her. She knew when he stopped and cursed, then spun around and reentered the house, slamming the door behind him. She didn’t look back. In an instant she had clattered down the levels of the terraces and was on the beach.
She narrowed her eyes as she looked up and down the long stretch of sand. The wind tore at her hair and dress and sand stung her face. As she grimaced against it, she could taste the salt of the blowing spray. There was nothing to be seen in either direction except the tossing waves and the fast-moving darkness of the storm. Then came the first raindrops, wet, warm splashes the size of silver dollars. They splattered around her, and she could hear them rattling on the sea’s surface as if it were made of tin.
It was then she saw the footprints. They were no more than shallow depressions in the soft sand, which were fast disappearing with the smoothing action of the wind, but they made a line that had not been there before. They led away from the beach toward where the gardening shed stood beneath a cluster of rattling palm trees. Among the dark shapes of the tree trunks was the tall shape of a man.
Riva plunged among the palms just ahead of the rushing downpour. Half blinded by rain, she didn’t see Noel coming to meet her until she crashed against his hard form and was gathered in his arms. She made a sound between a laugh and a sob, then his lips came down on hers. For long moments they stood locked together, mouth to mouth. When they drew apart, they stared into each other’s eyes in fear and desire and the residue of anger, then as they felt the increasing wetness pouring down on them, they turned without words to seek the cover of the shed.
Crimes of Passion Page 128