by Anne Rice
Everybody coming in knew everybody else. But they didn’t mind us being there.
“What do you mean you’re not writing a scenario?” I asked. “When are you going to tell me what you are doing? You mean people just take off from The Club like this and go back? If you have a slave, you can just take the slave out like this, and then bring him back? But what are the rules? Suppose I just split out of here right now, you know, left? I’ve got all my personal belongings. . .”
“You want to do that?” She was rubbing the backs of her arms, and she looked gorgeous to me in an Italian way, her dark hair really a mess now, her eyes getting bigger and bigger as she got drunker, her speech just a little slurred.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why did you say it?”
We were outside again. The rain had stopped. I couldn’t remember the rain starting. We were in the Café Du Monde next to the river, across the street from Jackson Square, and we were in a wash of white light, and there were already big noisy delivery trucks roaring through the Rue Decateur.
The café au lait was wonderful, hot and sweet and perfect, and I was eating dozens of hot little sugar-covered beignets, and telling Lisa all about cameras, and things about shooting faces and getting people to cooperate.
“You know I could stay here forever,” I said. “This is a seedy place, but it’s a real place. California isn’t real. Did you ever think it was real?”
“No,” she said.
I wanted more Scotch, or several cans of beer. I got up and went over to her side of the table and pulled a chair up right beside hers and wrapped my arms around her and kissed her and hugged her and lifted her out of the chair, and we stopped on the street corner realizing neither of us knew where the hotel was.
When we got there, the phone was ringing and ringing. She got furious.
“Did you call every goddamned hotel in New Orleans to find me?” she said into the phone. “And you call me at six o’clock in the goddamned morning!” She was walking up and down in her bare feet with the phone in her hand. “What are you going to do, have me arrested!” She hung up. She tore up the phone messages that had been tacked to the outside door.
“It was them, wasn’t it?” I think I asked her.
She had her hands up, rubbing her temples, and she sounded like she might cry.
“What are they so uptight about?” I asked her.
She leaned against my shoulder and I hummed something under my breath, very low, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love Baby,” and we sort of danced for a long time without moving our feet.
It was daylight and I was making a speech.
The garden was wet and more lush and fragrant even than it had been in the dark and all the windows of the little servants’ quarters house were open and she was sitting on the high four-poster bed in her white cotton slip. I could smell flowers everywhere. Flowers in California never smell the way they do in Louisiana. This was intoxication, the pink oleander and jasmine and the falling-apart wild roses. I called her “pretty baby” and I was explaining to her that I loved her, and I was making long intricate points about what the love was and why it was different from anything that had ever happened to me before, that we had peeled back this skin at The Club, and that she knew things about me and my secret desires that no woman had ever really known, no woman who knew me, and that I loved her. I loved her.
I loved who she was, that she was this small, dark-haired, dark-eyed, intense person who believed so passionately in what she was doing and that she wasn’t just a mystery to me like other women, that I knew what she was, I knew all about her, things she hadn’t even told me, that inside her was this locked-up place into which nobody could get, but I was going to get there. And it was even all right her thinking Pretty Baby was a good movie because she was projecting on it all her purity and defiance.
She was terribly upset. But she might as well have been behind glass. I was too drunk to stop.
She was taking off my clothes, and we were lying on the bed together and the phone was ringing, and I reached over, almost falling off the bed, and pulled the phone jack out of the wall. We were necking again, and I told her it was all right if she hurt me, really hurt me, that I was figuring on it, expecting it. It was worth it to love somebody like this. I said, “I am really drunk. I will not remember this.”
ELLIOTT
Chapter 23
Spies and Revelations
I did remember. Every single word.
I went out to breakfast at ten o’clock because I still couldn’t get her up, and there was no food in the hotel and I was starving.
She kissed me. I told her the coffee was perking right by the bed and that I was going to the Court of Two Sisters and she should come down there when she woke up or I’d be back when I was finished.
I went immediately to a newsstand for magazines and papers, and then to a camera shop to buy a Canon AEl—simple, reliable, and not so expensive that I wouldn’t mind giving it away to some kid before we went back to the island. You couldn’t bring a camera into The Club even in your luggage, otherwise my luggage would have been full of them.
By the time I reached the Court of Two Sisters on Royal, I’d shot a full roll and I knew that I had a blissful, psychedelic hangover. No headache at all, just this light-headedness, this happiness, and everything looked marvelous.
And I wanted to get drunk again, but I didn’t. These moments with her were too extraordinary. Today was going to be everything it could be with her, that is, if she wasn’t packing when I got back to her.
I told the waiter she might join me, to show her to the table if she came in. Then I devoured a couple of eggs Benedict, two extra orders of sugared ham, had three bottles of Miller’s beer which the hangover absolutely, unequivocably required and deeply appreciated, and settled back with a pot of coffee to tear through the latest Esquire, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Time, and Newsweek magazines.
The world was in the same mess it had been when I left, naturally, since a full week hadn’t passed, and look how long it took the world to get that way.
There were at least two new movies I really regretted not being able to see. Time had used three pictures of mine in an article on San Francisco gay writers. Okay. Death squads still operating in El Salvador, but of course, war in Nicaragua, marines still in Beirut, etc., etc.
I shoved all this aside and just drank the coffee. The open garden of the Court of Two Sisters was fairly quiet and I tried to think rationally about last night and what had happened. I couldn’t. I could only feel a purely irrational love, and a happiness and an extraordinary sense of well-being. It occurred to me that I ought to pick up the phone and dial my father in Sonoma and say, “Guess what, Dad, I found the girl of my dreams.” And you’ll never guess where. He’d never know how funny it was, or that the joke might be on me.
The realities started coming back.
Like, what does all this mean to her? And what if when we get back to The Club, she presses that button on her dresser and she says to Daniel when he comes in: “Take him. I’m finished with him. Give him to one of the other trainers.” Or, “I’ll send for him in a couple of weeks.” She could certainly do that if she wanted to, and maybe that was just what she did every time she took a slave out.
Maybe it was like checking out a book from the library and when you’d read it you were through.
No, this was not something to think about, that she could do that. And why think about it when we were here and I had her? As she put it, why think of Venice when you are in New Orleans? But I had to think about it, and when I did I remembered those last lucid moments, saying to her that she was going to hurt me, and there was this exhilaration, this sense of well-being still, of walking into it.
I wanted to get back to her.
But something else was bothering me too. It was the phone call and the way she’d said, “What are you going to do about it, arrest me!” I was sure that’s what she’d said. And what did it mean? I ke
pt telling myself she was just drunk, angry. But what did the words mean?
There was the other possibility, the grand possibility, that what she’d done, taking me out of The Club, was strictly against the rules, and they’d been looking for us.
But that was too farfetched, too purely, wonderfully romantic. Because if she’d done that, well . . . no. That was absurd. She was the boss lady. It’s heavy duty, going in and out . . . I can understand if you’re not ready for it. And why would she blow her cool like this when she was a scientist of sex, and had been all her life?
No, there was a good streak of the poet in her as there is in any good scientist, but a scientist is what she was, and she knew all about what she was doing. She’d just forgotten to check in, administrative responsibilities. So they call her at six o’clock in the morning?
This line of thinking was depressing me enormously. I poured another cup of coffee, gave the waiter a five-dollar bill and asked him for a pack of Parliament 100s. I thought about her last night when we had been walking together through the Garden District, and my arms were around her, and there had been no Club, just us.
The waiter was coming back with the Parliament 100s when something startled me. On the very edge of the courtyard, near the Bourbon Street gate, was somebody I knew from somewhere and he was watching me. He had his eyes right on me and he didn’t look away for a second when I looked at him. And very quickly, I realized he was wearing white leather pants, and white leather boots. He was all done out exactly like one of The Club handlers. In fact he couldn’t be anything else. And I knew this guy. I remembered him. He was the good-looking blond young man with the sea tan who had greeted me in San Francisco, and said “Good-bye, Elliott” on the deck on the yacht the first day.
But he wasn’t smiling now the way he’d been on those occasions. He was just looking at me, and leaning against the wall, and there was something almost sinister about his stillness and his steadiness and his presence in this particular place.
I felt a chill pass over me looking at him, and then a slow boiling rage. Hold it. There are two possibilities, right? This was usual, the surveillance when you took a slave out. Or, she’d bolted against the rules. And they had come looking for us????
I could feel my eyes narrowing, my defenses rising. What the hell are you going to do, have me arrested? I crushed the cigarette out and I rose slowly, and I started towards him. And I could see his face changing. He drew back a little against the wall, and then his face went blank. And he turned and went out.
When I got to the street, naturally I couldn’t find him. I stood there for a couple of minutes. Then I went back into the men’s room which was just inside the entrance. He wasn’t in there. He was just gone.
I looked across the courtyard.
Lisa had come in. The waiter was taking her to my table. She stood there, a little anxiously, obviously waiting for me.
She looked lovely enough to make me forget everything. She had on a white cotton A-shaped dress, with a high frilly neck and leg of mutton sleeves, and she was wearing white sandals. She even had a white straw hat, which she was holding at her side by the long ribbons attached to it. And when she saw me, her face brightened exquisitely and she was like a young girl.
She came to meet me halfway, and put her arms around me just as if there were no one around to see us, or to care, and she kissed me.
Her hair was still just a little damp from the shower and full of perfume. And she looked fresh and curiously innocent in the white dress, and for a moment I just held her, aware that I wasn’t hiding too well all the things that were on my mind.
She kept her arm around me as we went back to the table.
“So what’s new in the world?” she said, shoving the magazines aside and for a second she stared at the camera.
“I know, I can’t take it back,” I said. “So I’ll give it to somebody on the street, or some interesting-looking student in the airport on the way.”
She smiled at that. She told the waiter she wanted some grapefruit and some coffee.
“What’s the matter?” she said suddenly. “You look really upset.”
“Nothing, just that guy you sent to watch me. The handler. He startled me. I guess I thought they’d be invisible or a little more cool than that.” I studied her as I said this.
“What guy?” she asked, her head a little to the side. Her eyes narrowed just the way mine had about five minutes ago. “If this is a joke, I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”
“One of the handlers from The Club. He was right over there. He left when I got up to ask him what he was doing. Then you came in.”
“How do you know he was a handler?” she asked. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and her face was reddening slightly. I could see her temper rising.
“White leather drag, the works. Besides I recognized him.”
“You’re sure.”
“Lisa, he had on the full drag,” I said. “What kind of guy goes around in white leather boots and pants, unless he’s got a sequined cowboy shirt to go with it? And I remembered him from the boat coming in. No question, it was the same guy.”
The waiter set down the two halves of the grapefruit in their silver dishes of ice. She just stared at them. Then she looked at me again.
“He was over there, watching me. He wanted me to know he was watching. But obviously . . .”
“Damn bastards,” she said under her breath. She stood up and called out for the waiter. “Where’s the telephone?”
I followed her into the alcove. She put a couple of quarters down the slot.
“Go back to the table,” she said, glancing up at me.
I didn’t move.
“Please,” she said. “I’ll be there in just one minute.”
I backed out into the sunlight again, still watching her. She was talking to somebody now with her hand cupped around the receiver. I could hear her voice peak, shrilly, and then die off. Finally she put down the phone and came racing towards me, her bag nearly falling off her shoulder.
“Pay the check, would you?” she said. “We’re going to change hotels.” And she started across the court, not waiting for me.
I caught her wrist and very gently I drew her back towards me.
“Why change hotels?” I asked. I had an odd, light-headed feeling, and it wasn’t the hangover anymore. I kissed her cheek and her forehead, and I could feel her very slowly and reluctantly relax, sort of give in to me.
“Because I don’t want their goddamned surveillance!” she said, and she gave a little tug to free herself. She was more upset than she looked. I could feel it.
“What’s the difference?” I suggested softly. I had my arm around her and I squeezed her shoulder, urging her towards the table. “Come on, have some breakfast with me. I don’t like to run away from people. I mean what are they going to do? What are they supposed to do?” I was studying her. “Think about it. I don’t want to leave that little place. It’s our place.”
She looked up at me and I felt for a moment that everything was just the way I dreamed it was. But it was a dream so complex that I didn’t begin to understand it. I kissed her again, vaguely aware that more and more people were filling the court now and that some of them were watching us. I wondered if it made them happy, to see a young woman like this, so fresh and lovely and a man kissing her as if he didn’t give a damn about anything in the whole world but her.
She sat down and she bent her head forward, leaning on her elbows. I lit a cigarette and watched her for a minute, my eyes slowly scanning the court to see if the handler had come back or if anyone else had taken his place. I didn’t see anyone.
“Is it the usual thing, on trips like this?” I asked. “That they follow and watch so that I don’t bolt?” Almost fatalistically, I felt I knew the answer. This in and out thing wasn’t done with new slaves. It was done with those who had been there for months and months and knew the rules and could be counted on to behave. She’d done it a
bit early with me, that’s all.
But there was something deliberately ironic in her expression as she looked up, her lowered lids rising languidly, her eyes almost black.
“It isn’t usual,” she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear her.
“Then why are they doing it?”
“Because what I’ve done isn’t usual either. In fact, nobody’s ever done it before.”
I sat silently, weighing that for a moment. My heart was speeding up. I took a slow but nervous draw on the cigarette.
“Hmmmm.”
“Nobody’s ever taken a slave out of The Club,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
She sat still, her hands slipping over the backs of her arms, as if the place was cold. She didn’t look directly at me. She wasn’t looking at anything.
“I don’t think anybody else could even pull it off,” she said, “if you want to know.” Her voice was raw, and her lips gave a little bitter twist of a smile. “I suppose I’m the only one who could get everything going like that.” She looked at me slowly, with the same languid rise of the eyelashes. “Send for the plane, get them to load your stuff; get you onto the plane.”
I tapped the ash from the cigarette.
“They didn’t know you were gone till three o’clock this morning. You were checked out to me. I was gone. Nobody could find you. I left with a man on the plane. Who was the man? I had sent for your luggage. It took them a few hours to figure it all out. Then they started calling hotels all over New Orleans. And they found us a little before six. You may or may not remember the call.”