Except she can’t get out of her head that remark about dangerous men. Lorna has been careful to avoid dangerous men. Dangerous men are violent and stupid and tend to be male chauvinists, so she has always thought. Romantic is okay, preferred actually, but that only means a certain savoir faire, the ability to discuss the films and books of the day, the correct liberal ideas, and of course professional brilliance, the ability to take the risk of an unusual academic stance, to write a controversial paper.
But not anything like this, right now, which is driving down the center of a two-lane blacktop road at ninety miles an hour with the siren going. Now there is no lagging behind the trucks, now they whip around the trucks and play chicken with the oncoming traffic. Lorna has heard about pissing in terror but has never actually experienced the urge. Night falls in the theatrical manner of the tropics?a blush of red in the west and then black velvet, especially here in the lightless Glades?the world vanishes except for the headlights of Paz’s unmarked police car, the fearful beams of the near misses in the northbound lane, the red glow of swiftly overtaken taillights. The siren is boring into her brain, her muscles ache with the continual tensing for the crash. Paz has explained over the noise that he has to get to the crime scene to exert some control, even though he will have no official standing. The importance of this is lost on her, she thinks he’s crazy, she hates him. He is smoking a cigar, she can see his face in the red glow of its tip. She decides to hate that too, unhealthy, disgusting….
Now they head west on Alligator Alley, blasting through the official no-toll gate and accelerating on the ruler-straight freeway. Lorna has never traveled above one hundred miles an hour in a car. She finds it is almost like flying, the thumping of the wheels is now absent. Suddenly she is beyond fear; sinking into an almost sensual passivity. She slumps into the corner of the seat, her thighs lolling open.
A cluster of flashing lights appears ahead. Paz slows and pulls onto the shoulder, nosing among a cluster of police and emergency vehicles. He says, “Stay here, this won’t take long. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says. He vanishes.
She is not fine. She is shaking. It is stifling and humid with the car AC shut down, and her throat is raw with thirst, she has a headache and feels, really, quite ill. Despite this, and the damp heat, she sinks into a light doze.
She is awakened by the slam of the car door. Immediately afterward, the engine starts and a grateful frosty breeze dries the sweat on her face. Paz’s face looks grim as he moves the car off the shoulder. State troopers are controlling traffic, and they are able to swing back onto the eastbound highway.
“What happened?” she asks.
“What happened is that our main suspect just got himself killed. This is probably the guy who hired the guy I shot, who was probably the guy who actually killed al-Muwalid. So we’re screwed, plus I called my major to report this and get him to use our chief to grab hold of the body, car, and contents, but apparently that’s not going to happen. The murder took place on an Indian reservation, so the FBI has jurisdiction, and apparently they don’t intend to cede it. In fact, the FBI is now showing a keen interest in the whole case?the Sudanese, Dodo Cortez, and Jack Wilson all getting killed seems to have lit up some kind of light on the big board in Washington. Anyway the feds are in it. Oliphant is pissed as hell, but I can’t see that he can do much about it.”
“What about Emmylou?”
“Unclear. There’re these new antiterror laws, which seem to let the feds do pretty much what they please. Maybe they’ll name her an enemy combatant and disappear her.”
“No, seriously…”
“I’m being serious. I wish I wasn’t. Oliphant is sure taking it that way. He pointed out that Emmylou essentially belongs to the state’s attorney, who belongs to the governor of the state, who happens to be the president’s little brother. I don’t think the state’s attorney will put up much of a fight if they want to grab her up. Shit!”
Lorna feels a chill that has nothing to do with the air conditioner. Her modest and controllable life seems to have come apart. She seems to be involved, even if only peripherally, in something huge. Murder. International intrigue. Governors and presidents. She wishes none of this had happened. She wishes for it never to end. And there is something else happening to her. She is going into the most intense sexual heat she can readily recall.
They arrive at her house. She says, “Would you like a drink?”
“Oh, Jesus, would I!” he says.
Inside, she turns on the living-room AC, but the house has been sucking in heat all day and it will take some time for it to cool down. She makes two huge rum and tonics. They sit together on the couch and drink as if it were Gatorade, then catch themselves doing it and giggle.
“Want another?”
“I’m game.”
She brings out the cold-beaded tumblers and says, “You know, I’m dripping sweat out here. Aren’t you?”
Paz is nearly sweatless as always, but he agrees, yes, sweaty. She adds, “This time of year there’s only one cool room in the house.”
He follows her into the bedroom, which is like a meat locker. He perches carefully on an armchair. She says, “I feel like I have grease and slime all over me. I’m going to take a quick shower.” She does so, lickety-split. It might’ve been the fear, or the violence, or him, but she feels no need to resume her clothes as she returns to the bedroom.
When Georges died in 1889, all the family except for Alphonse were amazed at the size of the estate. De Berville et Fils was the largest refiner of kerosene in Europe and controlled the gaslighting companies in most French cities. Its founder had also owned, through his Rockefeller contacts, nearly 7 percent of the stock of the Standard Oil Company of New York as well as large holdings in other petroleum firms. Alphonse inherited the business, and Jean-Pierre was given stock and property worth many millions of francs. But two of his children were in Holy Orders and could not own significant property. For them, Georges had established a trust, named Bois Fleury after his beloved country estate, to “advance the cause of Christ through works of charity.” Into this trust he placed all the Standard Oil stock, and gave his son Father Gerard de Berville the responsibility for managing it.
It took nearly two years for Marie-Ange to put her plans into effect. Gerard had been as supportive as she might have wished: funds would not be a problem. But her superiors in Bon Secours and especially the anticlerical government officials to whom she applied were adamant that the idea was absurd. In that era, respectable women working at nursing was itself a suspect notion, but for such women to also travel unescorted into war zones? The idea was preposterous.
While affairs were at this stand, she went on with her preparations. An organization was formed, and young women were recruited into it. Most of these were tough, working women, from the mines around Lille or, like Otilie Roland, from the working-class quarters of Paris. A life of dedication to the sick, possibly at risk of death, was less daunting to such women than it would be to those more delicately raised, although the first twenty members included the daughters of a count and of a senator of France.