Beautiful Blood

Following another patch of silence, she said, “Well…” She sat up and undid the fastening of the peignoir, letting it slip from her shoulders to reveal a breast. When he displayed no reaction, she lifted a breast and made a lascivious show of licking her nipple, keeping her eyes on him all the while.

“Stop it!” he said angrily.

Dropping into the patois she had once used with her clientele at the brothel, she said teasingly, “You mus be a jumbie mon, you don wan to slip-slide wit this fine gyal.”

“Stop!”

She stared at him heatedly. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“What I wanted…” He gave his head a violent shake, frustrated by her misreading of him. “Yes, that’s part of it, but I wanted more, I wanted…”

“Would you like me to fetch another woman? Perhaps the two of us could please you.”

“That’s not what I meant by ‘more.’”

She watched dispassionately as he positioned himself cross-legged on the pillows.

“We were friends once, weren’t we, Ludie? More than friends. We used to talk for hours, we…” Rosacher made a fist, as if he intended to pound on something; then he relaxed his fingers and lowered his hand. “I hoped we could go back to how things were.”

“Then you’re a fool, Richard. It’s sweet in a way. It’s all that’s left of the boy I met in Morningshade. And you were a boy. You had a boy’s passion, a boy’s recklessness. But your passion has changed into a lust for wealth, and your recklessness has matured into ruthlessness. You don’t see that in yourself. You’ll pay it lip service, you’ll admit to it. But you don’t really see it and so you remain a fool.”

Full darkness had fallen—the windowpanes like black semaphore flags salted with a message of stars. She had spoken with such mildness that her characterization of him had the tenor of sage counsel.

“I love you,” Rosacher said.

“No, you had a feeling. Your brain sparked and you had a feeling. You said to yourself, I’ve got to get back with Ludie, back to how things used to be. Even though how you thought things were, that truly wasn’t how they were. You know that, but you want to deny it. You want to hold onto that feeling, because it’s the only one you’ve had lately that has nothing to do with business.”

Everything she said diminished him. He thought that if she kept talking, he would wind up the size of a homunculus, a tiny man sitting on a vast pillow, a plush island upon which he’d been marooned.

“I’m a fool, too,” she said. “There was a time I thought I loved you. I knew all the love in me had been dragged out and kicked into the street, but I hung onto that thought. Love was something I could dream about whenever some foul-smelling bastard was riding me. It was a story I’d been told. A fairytale. But I couldn’t hold on for long. It passed…and your feeling will pass as well. In a week you’ll be consumed with something else.”

“We’re friends, though, aren’t we?” Rosacher said. “We’re at least friends.”

“We have a bond, but…”

“Yes?”

“I owe you everything, Richard. My life. Money. Freedom.” She tapped the side of her head. “You taught me how to use this, and how to behave like a lady. I’m grateful for that. It’s why I stay. But for that very reason, because you did everything, because you lifted me up from Morningshade, I can’t help resenting you. I still feel owned, owing you so much, and that feeling trumps friendship.”

“That’s absurd. You don’t owe me a thing, and you don’t have to stay. I can get someone else to manage the books.”

A wounded look crossed her face. It pleased him to recognize that he could yet hurt her, that she was not without emotion where he was involved.

“I’ll stay until it’s right to leave. And when I go, it won’t be farther away than the other side of the hill, where I won’t have to look at that damned lizard every time I step out the door.”

She reached between two pillows, withdrew a lacquered box and put it on the table; she removed from it a pipe with a long, straight stem and a brass bowl, the image of a miniature dragon raised on its surface. “This is what you want. To touch that night again, the night Arthur came into our lives. I think it’s what we both want. Things have gotten crinkly between us and this is what we need to straighten it all out.”

“Thank you, no.” 

Ludie packed the bowl with a bed of moist tobacco. “Have you forgotten how to play?” She embedded a grayish white pellet of mab in the tobacco. “I think you have. I think you forgot the instant the idea for the business came into your head. One minute you were the Richard I knew. A sweet, intemperate boy. The next, you were acting smooth as a bishop on Sunday morning. Can’t nothing catch on you now, you’re so smooth.”