Part 20 (1/2)

”Right.” I vaguely remember agreeing to bring a tray of rumaki.

”People are supposed to get here in half an hour.”

”I'll be there,” I say.

I say it as though nothing has happened. And then it becomes as though nothing has happened. My brother is the same. I am the same. Somehow we've all agreed. It is the only way to go forward, to speak, to move. I can do it. There is some strange steel to me ...

I open the refrigerator door. I don't have any chicken livers for the rumaki, so water chestnuts will have to do. As I stand wrapping the bacon around each piece, sliding in a pineapple chunk, my mind keeps shuttling back to seeing Bill again, how I'll see his face and know. Know what? There is nothing to know.

I set my jaw, focus my eyes.

The busier I make myself with the food, the slippery pineapple and the frilly toothpicks and the sticky honey glaze on my fingers, the more I am able to send myself back to my Bill, the Bill who never surprises me except with the extent of his flinty decency, his goodness, his deathless integrity.

The more I think of this, the more I think of what he might do for me if I were so ensnared. The more I think of this, wrapping the rumaki in wax paper, the more the fog in my head clears, my thinking becomes razor-sharp. I can go to the party and I can see what she has brought upon him, what she has brought him to. I can look the damage in the face and then I will know what to do.

The staggering thing is this: amid everything, amid all Alice's efforts to conceal a murder, to entrap her husband in the treachery, to bribe one partner in crime and frame the other, she still manages to orchestrate another one of her extravagant spectacles.

j.a.panese lanterns have been artfully positioned to spread a pink haze everywhere, over the platters of egg rolls and plum sauce, fried wontons, fortune cookies, glistening pork on bamboo skewers, and the tureen of chow mein, over the tall vases filled with moon lilies and bamboo stalks, the hanging temple bells tingling serene music from the patio, over the sandalwood fan party favors in the basket by the door, the paper dragon stretched across the fireplace. It is pitch perfect. It is almost obscene.

And there is Alice, her dark hair pulled back tight and her eye makeup straight out of a Charlie Chan movie, emerging from under one of the cherry blossom parasols on the patio in a searing turquoise cheongsam dress, all the rage since Jennifer Jones wore one in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.

As she moves across the room to greet me, I feel a hard chill drag down my spine. Can I really do this, be here, see them? It is as though time has slowed to a hypnotic crawl as she makes her way toward me, the silk of her cheongsam shus.h.i.+ng, her feet, in wooden sandals, making no sound on the thick carpet, her head lowered like a good geisha. Then, as she approaches me, her darkly lined lids rise and she looks at me and in that look ...

In that look, perhaps for the first time since I've known her, she conceals nothing. Her gaze-filled with rage, terror, shame, ugliness, and still, her keen beauty-scissors through me, and I feel I have been gored.

”Lora! And you remembered the rumaki,” she coos with a kind of honeyed slither. ”I can always count on you.”

I can't speak, can't bear to, then- ”Sis.”

I feel the familiar warm, heavy arm on my shoulder, and something in me, something held tight, collapses.

”Hi, Bill.” I can't look up at him. I merely feel him, smell his old-fas.h.i.+oned aftershave, the scent of which is pressed, warm and peppery, into everything he owns.

And then they are both gone, people coming in behind me and Alice whisking my platter off to the kitchen.

It is only then that I notice the dozen guests already in the room, drinking Singapore slings and mai tais, the women waving their fans languorously and the men lighting cigarettes and the Four Aces crooning, ”Your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing,” on the stereo and everything going on as if nothing ...

I float around the s.p.a.ce like a ghost, avoiding conversations, speaking to no one, trying to disappear into the crimson haze of the decor.

Looking at Alice from across the room, I see that, although her face is powdered an impeccable white, a faint sheen of perspiration is beginning to pearl on her skin. She is laughing and talking and mixing drinks and adjusting the lanterns as men's heads. .h.i.t them, but she isn't pulling off the performance with her usual elan. And it both thrills and frightens me.

As for Bill ... Bill is no good at all, half-hiding in a corner chair, continually, compulsively running his hand through his hair, rubbing his jaw until it turns red, tugging at his pants legs, reaching for his drink and then changing his mind and returning his hand to his knee, to his ear, which he tugs, to his tie, which he loosens, then straightens, then loosens and straightens again. Oh G.o.d, Bill.

The things I heard him say, only hours before, to that woman, that horrible woman: ”We're talking a lot of money here. And all the protection you could want.”

”... you've got what I need to pin this on Avalon?”

But then I look back at him, at the tightness around his eyes like when, like when there's things going wrong, things he can't control. Like when a masher grabbed me in the movie theater or when a teacher scolded me in front of the cla.s.s or when my grandparents pillaged my forbidden box of Dubarry face powder and the only bottle of perfume I'd ever had-Soul of Violet-or when ... or when ... a very bad and dangerous criminal slipped just out of reach.

I reach over to the bar cart and pour myself a small gla.s.s from the first bottle I touch. The feel of it fresh in my throat, I walk across the room to him.

He just wants to save us all, I think. It sends him down some very dark alleys. He can't help it. He never could.

”Hi.”

He looks up at me and when he does And when he does and I can't forget this it is with unbearably guilty eyes.

I think I might burst into tears.

”Sis,” he says scratchily, one hand to my arm, soft. ”I'm glad you're here.”

This is what he is really saying: ”I had to do it, Lora. Otherwise, it all would have meant nothing.”

And suddenly I understand.

Then, he averts his eyes from mine, rises, and walks away.

I think I might die.

Moving past guests, pretending not to hear anyone who might call my name, I step out onto the empty patio and around the corner to a darker patch of the small yard. A shot of brisk air tingles on my face, and I take another long drink.

”I didn't think you'd show.”

Jumping, I turn and, through the growing dark, make out Mike Standish leaning against the jacaranda tree, hands in his deep linen pockets.

”Likewise,” I say, catching my breath.

”Well, as you know, I've always been a great supporter of law enforcement.”

Peering through the tree's feathery leaves, I think I can see him smiling. He makes no move to indicate he plans on coming out from the shadows.

”Why are you here?”

”I've been asking myself that a lot lately. Almost every time you ask it of me, King.” ”I can't talk to you,” I say, my chin faintly trembling. I remind myself that everything he says is at least half a lie.

”Why not,” he replies, cool as ever.

”I can't talk to you at all.” I feel my hands jerking, and surprising myself, I see that this moment may in fact be about Mike and Mike and me and I can't do it, not now, and I feel the supple, insinuating warmth of his voice as he says my name and I want him to come out from the shadow of the tree, but I'm afraid if he does, I will be lost.

(One thing, Lora, one thing, Alice had said, he warns you that he's going to charm you, and that warning becomes part of his charm.) ”Just stay away,” my voice, somehow, rings out.

”You think you know things, but you don't.” At last, he steps out of the heavy darkness of the low black branches.

For the first time since I met him I can almost see a path of stubble, a slight wrinkle of the collar, a hair out of place. It's heartbreaking.

”King-Lora, you don't know anything. At least not where I'm concerned,” he says.

This is too much. Something slips in me and there's no going back. ”Don't come any closer!” I say, my voice at a higher timbre than I'd meant.