“Ah’m talking about the confession,” Melanie Kreuger said. She was Scarlett’s mother, a woman of forty-two who, presumably because of her Atlanta upbringing, affected all the cutsie-poo mannerisms of a southern belle; she was wearing tonight a lavender confection that might have been more appropriate at a Homecoming Queen Cotillion than at a party here in Rutledge, where the women generally looked sleek and sophisticated. Her mother had named her ten years before reading Gone With the Wind. Melanie, later delighted to learn that her name had been used for one of the major characters in a best seller, paid homage to the author by naming her own daughter Scarlett. Her husband, Larry, worked as a translator at the U.N. He rarely said very much at parties, apparently too burdened was he with all the woes of the world. “Bucher said he had no excuse whatever fuh his crim’nal act,” Melanie said. “He told the whole world he was spyin’ on the No’th Koreans.”
“Come dance with me,” Diana Blair whispered behind him, and Jamie put his drink down on the coffee table, leaning over the back of the sofa and incidentally the back of a man named Byron Lewis, who was Jimmy Lewis’s father. Byron published photographic books under his own imprint and a distribution setup; he had approached Jamie only last month about getting together on a project. He now said, “Hey, hi, Jamie, nice to see you,” and then turned back to Alistair York’s redhead, who had abandoned Marvin Klein after their first dance, and who now denounced — with an intensity as flaming as her hair, and with a surprising Middle-European accent — the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia that August. Someone liked the Herb Alpert record; as Jamie led Diana onto the floor, “A Taste of Honey” started again.
Diana was wearing her dark hair tonight in a feather cut that framed a narrow oval face with high cheekbones, a nose for which any New York model would have killed and pillaged, and a wide mouth with a bee-stung lower lip. She was long-legged and slender, and whereas Connie found her truly spectacular breasts “exaggerated,” most of the men in Rutledge appreciated them with an openness bordering on stupefaction. Diana always danced extremely close, as if attempting to flatten and nullify nature’s splendid achievement against any partner’s cooperative chest.
The moment she was in his arms, she put her cheek against his and whispered, “Walk right into me, baby,” an invitation she presumably extended to any man with whom she was dancing. Immediately pressing herself against him, she began pumping at his obliging thigh purposefully and methodically, pulling away once abruptly and only for an instant, to roll her smoky eyes in mock surprise and to register girlish shock, and then slitheringly adjusting the long length of her body to his again.
In the seconds-long interval between “Green Peppers” and “Tangerine,” she held him protectively close, her crotch nestled snugly into him, waiting for the music to start again. The moment it did, she began a rhythmic, excruciatingly slow tease, grinding steadily against him, their vertical quasi-fornication hidden by their own paper-thin proximity and the press of other dancers around them. Jamie glanced nervously toward the bar where Connie was now chatting with Perry Lane, a New York literary agent who had a weekend place in Rutledge, and whom Lissie called “Penny Lane” after the Beatles’ song. Gently moving Diana away from him, he said, “Let’s sit the rest out, okay?” and led her off the floor, and went to join Connie at the bar.
“You okay?” he asked, putting his arm around her.
“Yes, sure,” she said, “why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Jamie?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Mmm.”
“What did you think of the party?”
“Nice. Nice party, hon.”
“The people from New York added a lot, don’t you think?”
“Mm-huh.”
“That redhead with Alistair was very pretty.”
“Mm-huh.”
“Didn’t you think so?”
“Yes, very.”
“How old do you guess she was?”
“Thirty? I don’t know.”
“Twenty-three, I’d say.”
“Mm-huh. Maybe.”
“He picks them very young, doesn’t he?”
“Always has.”
“You danced with her often enough.”
“Three times.”
“That’s a lot in Rutledge.”
“Well, she’s a foreigner.”
“I didn’t know she was a foreigner.”
“Didn’t you hear her accent?”
“I thought she was putting it on.”
“No, she’s from someplace in the Balkans.”
“You learned a lot about her.”
“Well, when you dance with someone, you naturally talk to her.”
“Do you talk to Diana when you’re dancing with her?”
“Not very much.”
“You were dancing very close. With Diana, I mean.”
“Diana dances very close.”
“Do you get a hard-on when you’re dancing with Diana?”
“I only get a hard-on with you,” he said.
“Oh, sure.”
“That’s the truth,” he said, and put his hand on her thigh.
“Well, don’t get any ideas,” she said, and moved away from him.
“Why not?”
“My parents are coming tomorrow...”
“It’s today already.”
“Whatever it is, it’s late.”
“Never too late,” he said, and rolled in against her.
“Jamie, I want to get some sleep. Really. Not now, okay?”
“Give me your hand,” he whispered.
“They’ll be here at noon,” she said.
“Put your hand here on my...”
“Will you please cut it out?” she said. “Jesus!”
The room went silent.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Tell me again how I never want to make love.”
“You said it, not me.”
“I do want to make love. But not now.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Fine, we’ll make love tomorrow.”
“Save it for tomorrow night, okay? After they’re gone.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll take a bath after dinner, and then we can make love. I’ll check the calendar in the morning, but I think tomorrow’ll be fine.”
“Fine, you check the calendar.”
“Are you angry?”
“No.”
“Don’t be angry. It’s just that I have to get up early to start the turkey and...”
“Fine.”
“Do you want me to... you know?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he said. “Happy New Year.”
1969
2
The letter was dated February 10. It was typewritten on Henderson School stationery, with its embossed seal proclaiming EDUCATIO SUPER OMNIA. It read:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Croft:
I regret the necessity of writing this letter but Melissa’s behavior leaves me no choice. I will be blunt. As I am certain you’re aware, there is a stringent rule at the Henderson School against the use of marijuana or other harmful drugs. The penalty for such an offense is immediate expulsion. Your daughter, together with her roommate Jennifer Groat and several other boy and girl students, was discovered yesterday at an off-campus party where a great deal of marijuana smoking was in evidence. Even though your daughter, her roommate, and another graduating senior named Rita Cordova have each separately claimed they were only present at the party and had not been indulging in the smoking of marijuana, we have nonetheless felt it necessary to give them each one month of Intermediate Discipline commencing this date and continuing through March 14.