“Why don’t you put something in your hair?”
She looked in the mirror at her round face. Last year, she’d chopped off her thick, wavy chestnut hair above her ears, and had taken to wearing it combed straight back with a hairband. Now, at least, it had grown out a little.
“Like what?”
I opened up the suitcase and pulled out the present I’d gotten her in Miami. It was a straw hairband with little white shells glued all over it, in flower patterns. “Merry Christmas.”
“Oh.” She looked at the hairband as if it were an object from Mars. Then, shyly, she plunked it on her head.
“Like this.” I rearranged her hair so there was a kind of wave over her forehead. “See?”
Well, funny thing, it worked. Her face looked longer and less moony. In fact, without the glasses, you could see that in a year or two, she would be even prettier than Deane. But pretty was the wrong word for Deane, anyway.
“Thanks, Fatty,” June said. She said it nice, though, so that was okay.
We got our coats and went out into the hallway and knocked on their door.
“Just a minute,” said Stan.
“What a surprise,” said June. “They aren’t ready.”
Then the door opened.
“Don’t you girls look cute,” Stan said. “Eggnog?”
We walked into their room and found Linwood sitting at the table, in some kind of black dress that made her skin look like milk. Her rhinestone earrings were big as Christmas tree ornaments. Stan was wearing his usual dark suit, but he had a red carnation in his lapel.
The best part, though, was the eggnog! Four motel glasses were laid out with the thick creamy stuff.
“Oh boy!” said June.
We all sat at the table, and they didn’t even like eggnog. It was really just for us.
We all raised our glasses in a toast:
“To our new home, wherever it may be!”
We headed down Bourbon Street in the cold December night. We’d avoided this area after dark before, and you could see why. It was solid bars, all of them packed with people, their doors open wide. Sailors moved freely and frequently from place to place, tall drinks in funnel-shaped glasses balanced precariously in their hands. Right to our left, a window above a bar opened, and a nearly naked woman glided out on a swing. Her breasts bobbed up and down, only the very tips protected from the cold by silver-tassled decorations. She was lovely, really, but she looked awfully cold, with her long blond hair swept over one shoulder. You could see the goosepimples on her thighs around the G-string.
“Gross!” June said.
Stan and Linwood were striding ahead, perhaps pretending that we were not their children trailing past strip-tease joints and gawking.
“Look at that!” I pointed to the other side of the street, where the saloon doors were swinging open and shut so you could see a woman taking a bubble bath in a great big champagne glass. She had one of those big sponges like you wash the car with, and she was merrily squeezing it over her astonishing chest.
“Yuck!”
“Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”
“With those great big boobs? She looks deformed!”
I made a protocol decision in favor of clamming up. It was almost Christmas; why bicker? I kept my admiration to myself, but these big sleek women filled me with awe. Real live naked women! The closest I’d ever gotten to seeing Linwood naked was one morning, mid-makeup, when she dashed from bathroom to bedroom—but even then she was wearing a brassiere and underpants and a full-length slip over that. Still, I remember being delighted by the round curve of her arms and shoulders, and the place where the breasts meet.
“Why don’t they have hair there?” I asked June. Deane had explained to me about the hair.
June ignored me. She wasn’t trying, like I was, to catch glimpses of Naughty Nan through the swinging doors. Instead, she was watching a trio of tap-dancing boys, shuffling dutifully along on the street corner. An older man, probably their father, played the harmonica with no great show of enthusiasm.
“Pet,” she said. “You can dance as good as that. I could be your manager and we could—”
Stan materialized before us. “What in God’s name is taking you girls so long?” Arms akimbo, previous good humor only a memory, he glared down at us. “Pet, this stuff is strictly for adults. Do you want to end up like Deane?”
I didn’t quite see the connection. What I did see was the threat, so I squared my shoulders and we marched along in two neat rows of two, like Madeline. I tried to close my ears to the sound of low-down music, the wailing trumpet and the raspy beat of the strippers’ snare drums.
Stan and Linwood veered abruptly off Bourbon, and here it was quiet and dark, only a few couples strolling past the antique stores, their windows filled with shadow puppets from Bali, carved jade Buddhas, Mardi Gras clown masks, jeweled boxes with hidden interiors, spilling enameled beads.
Forgetting my resolution, I stopped to stare in the window of a particular store. There was a carved wooden face, with Spanish moss for hair and big carved mouth, eyes, and nose, a little like the stuff at Ripley’s. And there were also all kinds of colored candles in the window, and tiny baby dolls, the plastic kind painted black and gold. They were all bound together with rope and crow feathers.
Not very pleasant. It reminded me of… Deane’s room. Gone now, dust to dust.
I glanced at the sign above the door.
My whole body wrenched, like I was about to throw up. Then I looked both ways on the street, quickly: no truck hurtling toward us.
My heart slowed to normal. No truck, and no family either. They’d already turned the corner to Antoine’s. Plus, we weren’t in the T-bird.
“Goddammit, Pet!” Stan’s voice carried well. “You’ve got exactly thirty seconds to—”
But I was already running. Next morning, I’d be back, alone.
Chapter Fourteen
As soon as the first pale gray rays of light filtered through the white curtains, I was up. I emptied out the poodle bags and counted $112.39. That meant I could spend a hundred dollars in the voodoo shop. Twelve dollars plus the fifty for Christmas presents left sixty-two dollars, which was enough for three of the good kind of plastic horses for June, a real silk tie for Stan, and something wonderful for Linwood, if I found it and it was under forty.
I put the hundred dollars in a Hilton wet-laundry bag. But what about the toys? My gut feeling was: carry them with you. Afterward, they’d go back in their individual bags. And Deane’s book.
I dressed quickly, hoping to beat the storm. The gusty wind might wake up June, but actually people always seem to sleep later when the weather’s bad, as if it prolongs their dreams.
I grabbed the sack and my coat and an extra room key and stealthily slid out the door. Outside, the cold breeze was flattening down the green bushes, fluttering their tendrils.
But this would be okay. I felt powerful and rich and strong. Whatever the disaster was, I thought I could avert it.
Down on the street, the world was stormy and wild, and you couldn’t smell that usual day-before-Christmas odor. Bourbon Street, from my position at the far end, appeared deserted. Discarded cups, rolling about, cocktail napkins, bits of foil blew everywhere, an urban snowfall. Yet, as I passed one grimy bar after another, I saw they were still open—there was always one old guy talking to the bartender—but not alive, and the sour whiff of last night’s drinks and cigarettes kept hitting me smack in the face.