Page 7

Maybe this wasn't the night for getting him into bed. No, she'd rather everything be perfect for the assault. And not only had she been with David, she was soiled from the ground in the cemetery. Why, there were even a few dead leaves snarled in her hair, very Ophelia, but probably not very sexy.

Maybe it was the night for searching the attics. For finding the Victrola, and cranking it up. Maybe there were old records with it, that record that Ancient Evelyn used to play? Maybe it was time to meet Oncle Julien here in the shadows, and not time to be with Michael at all?

But he was so luscious there, gorgeously imperfect, her high prole Endymion, with the slight bump to his nose, and the soft creases in his forehead, very Spencer Tracy, yes, the man of her dreams. And a man in the hand is worth two ghosts in a dream.

And speaking of hands, look at it, his large, soft hand! Now that was a man's hand. Nobody would say to him, "You have the fingers of a violinist." And she used to find men like that sexy, the delicate kind, like Cousin David, with hairless chins, with eyes full of soul. Ah, her whole appreciation of masculinity was taking a turn for the rough and the deep and the better.

She touched Michael's jaw, and the edge of his ear, his neck. She felt his curly black hair. Oh, nothing softer and finer than curly black hair. Her mother and Gifford had such fine black hair. But Mona's red hair would never be soft, and then she caught the fragrance of his skin, very subtle and nice and warm, and she bent down and kissed his cheek.

His eyes opened, but it seemed he couldn't see anything. She sank down beside him--just couldn't stop herself, even though she knew this was an invasion of his privacy--and he turned over. What was her plan? Hmmm...She felt such a craving for him suddenly. It wasn't even erotic. It was all a kind of swoony romance. She wanted to feel his arms around her; she wanted him to pick her up; she wanted him to kiss her; common things like that. A man's arms, not a boy's. They should dance. In fact, it was plain wonderful that there was no boy in him, that he was all wild beast in a way some men never would be, very jagged and roughened and overgrown, with skin-colored lips and slightly wild eyebrows.

She realized he was looking at her, and in the even light from the street, his face was pale yet clear.

"Mona!" he whispered.

"Yes, Uncle Michael. I got forgotten. It was a mix-up. Can I spend the night?"

"Well, honey, we have to call your father and mother."

He started to sit up, deliciously rumpled, black hair tumbling over his eyes. He really was drugged, though, no doubt of it.

"Wrong, Uncle Michael!" she said quickly but gently. She put her hand on his chest. Ah, terrific. "My dad and mom are asleep. They think I'm with Uncle Ryan out in Metairie. And Uncle Ryan thinks I'm home with them. Don't call anybody. You'll just get everybody all excited, and I'll have to take a cab home all alone and I don't want to. I want to spend the night."

"But they'll realize..."

"My parents? You have it on good authority from me that they will not realize anything. Did you see my dad tonight, Uncle Michael?"

"Yeah, I did, honey." He tried to stifle a yawn and failed. He looked very concerned for her suddenly, as if it wasn't appropriate to yawn while discussing her alcoholic father.

"He's not going to live very long," she said in a bored voice. She didn't want to talk about him either. "I can't stand Amelia Street when they're both drunk. Nobody there but Ancient Evelyn, and she never sleeps anymore. She's watching them."

"Ancient Evelyn," he mused. "Such a lovely name. Do I know Ancient Evelyn?"

"Nope. She never leaves the house. She told them once to bring you up home, but they never did. She's my great-grandmother."

"Ah, yes, the Mayfairs of Amelia Street," he said. "The big pink house." He gave a little yawn again, and forced himself into a more truly upright position. "Bea pointed out the house. Nice house. Italianate. Bea said Gifford grew up there."

Italianate. Architectural term, late nineteenth century. "Yeah, well, it's a New Orleans bracketed style, as we call it," she said. "Built 1882, remodeled once by an architect named Sully. Full of all kinds of junk from a plantation called Fontevrault."

He was intrigued. But she didn't want to talk history and plaster. She wanted him.

"So will you please let me stay here?" she asked. "I really really have to stay here now, Uncle Michael. I mean, like, there's not really any other possibility now, logically, I mean. I should stay."

He sat against the pillows, struggling to keep his eyes open.

She took his wrist suddenly. He didn't seem to know what she was doing--that she was feeling the pulse the same way a doctor would do it. His hand was heavy and slightly cold, too cold. But the heartbeat was steady. It was OK. He wasn't nearly as sick as her own father. Her own father wasn't going to live six months. But it wasn't his heart, it was his liver.

If she closed her eyes she could see the chambers of Michael's heart. She could see things so brilliant and unnameable and complex as to be like modern painting--a sprawl of daring colors and clots and lines and swelling shapes! Ah. He was OK, this man. If she did get him into bed tonight, she wouldn't kill him.

"You know your problem right now?" she asked. "It's those bottles of medicine. Throw them in the trash. That much medicine will make anyone sick."

"You think so?"

"You're talking to Mona Mayfair, a twentyfold member of the Mayfair family, who knows things that others don't know. Oncle Julien was my great-great-grandfather three times. You know what that means?"

"Three lines of descent, from Julien?"

"Yep, and then the other tangled lines from everybody else. Without a computer, no one could even put it all together. But I have a computer and I figured it all out. I've got more Mayfair blood in me than just about anybody in the whole family. It's all 'cause my father and mother were too close as cousins to get married, but my father got my mother pregnant, and that was it. And besides, we're all so intermarried it doesn't make much difference..."

She stopped, she was doing her chattering number. Too much talk for a man his age who was this sleepy. Play it with more craft. "You're OK, big boy," she said. "Throw out the drugs."

He smiled. "You mean I'm going to live? I will climb ladders and hammer nails once again?"

"You'll wield your hammer like Thor," she said. "But you do have to get off all these sedatives. I don't know why they're drugging you like this, probably scared if they don't that you'll worry yourself to death about Aunt Rowan."

He laughed softly, and took her hand now with obvious affection. But there was a dark shadow in his face, in his eyes, and for a second it was in his voice. "But you have more faith in me, right, Mona?"

"Absolutely. But then I'm in love with you."

"Oh no!" He scoffed.

She held fast to his hand as he tried to pull away. No, there was nothing wrong with his heart how. The drugs were doing him in.

"I am in love with you but you don't have to do anything about it, Uncle Michael. Just be worthy of it."

"Right. Be worthy of it, just what I was thinking. A nice little Sacred Heart Academy girl like you."

"Uncle Michael, pa...leeze!" she said. "I began my erotic adventures when I was eight. I didn't lose my virginity. I eradicated all traces of it. I am a full-grown woman only pretending to be this little girl sitting on the side of your bed. When you are thirteen, and you cannot disprove it, because all your relatives know, being a little girl becomes simply a political decision. Logical. But believe me, I am not what I seem,"

He gave the most knowing laugh, the most ironic laugh.

"And what if my wife, Rowan, comes home and finds you here with me, talking about sex and politics?"

"Your wife, Rowan, isn't coming home," she said, and then instantly regretted it. She hadn't meant to say something so ominous, so depressing. And his face told her that he believed her. "I mean...she's..."

"She's what, Mona? Tell me." He was quietly and deadly serious. "What do you know? Tell me wha

t's inside your little Mayfair heart? Where is my wife? Give me some witchcraft."

Mona gave a sigh. She tried to make her voice as hushed and quiet as his voice. "Nobody knows," she said. "They're plenty scared, but nobody knows. And the feeling I get is...she's not dead, but...well, it might not ever be the same again." She looked at him. "Do you know what I mean?"

"You don't have a good feeling about her, that she's coming back? That's what you're saying."

"Yeah, kind of. But then I don't know what happened here on Christmas Day, not that I'm asking you to tell me. I can tell this, however. I'm holding your wrist, right? We're talking all about it, and you're worried about her, and your pulse is just fine. You aren't that sick. They've doped you. They over-reacted. They got illogical. Detox is what you need."

He sighed, and looked defeated.

She leant forward and kissed him on the mouth. Immediate connection. In fact, it startled her a little, and even startled him. But there wasn't much follow-up. The drugs took care of that, like folding up the kiss in a blanket.

Age made such a difference. Kissing a man who'd been to bed a thousand times was nothing like kissing a boy who'd done it twice, maybe. All the machinery was here. She just needed a stronger jolt to turn it on.

"Hold on, honey, hold on," he said gently, taking her by the left shoulder, and forcing her back.

She found it almost painful suddenly that this man was right there, and she probably couldn't get him to do what she wanted, and maybe never would.

"I know, Uncle Michael. But you have to understand that we have our family traditions."

"Is that so?"

"Oncle Julien slept with my great-grandmother in this house when she was thirteen. That's how come I'm so clever."

"And pretty," he said. "But I inherited something from my ancestors too. It's called moral fiber." He raised his eyebrows, smiling at her slowly, taking her hand now and patting it as if she really were a little kitten or a child.