Gilded Mountain, page 13
“Get comfortable, Sylvie-ster,” Jace said, and held a chair. “A lotta nuts here. And not just in this bowl either.” Wine roses bloomed in his pale complexion.
I sat, wary of his attention but also preening in it. He’d ignored the serving girls, who left to smoke cigarettes behind the Cardboard Palace with their roustabout suitors.
“Leave the bowl on the counter,” Easter said. “And Master Jace, you leave the bottle!” She headed out the kitchen door.
“Leave the bottle empty, is what she means.” Jasper went to the sideboard and poured two glasses, handed me one.
“No, thank you.” I cracked a walnut.
“A good girl, are you?” He sighed as if I were a disappointment, and cracked walnuts, while goodness like a hard shell around me cracked under his warm glances. I returned his smiles and picked out nutmeats, like wrinkled brown butterflies, and resolved to be less disappointing.
“Hell’s bells,” he said. “How’d you do that? Get that one out whole.”
“By not breaking it.”
Jasper laughed.
“What was the incident in Richmond?” I asked.
His face fell. “Two weeks ago back home—a mob hanged a man off a tree just outside town. A blacksmith named Orion Peterson—was a friend of Caleb Grady. White lady said something about him—” Jace was agitated, his face red. “See, when I was a kid, my old man took me and the Grady boys—to see a man lynched. ‘For a lesson,’ Dad said. A whole crowd watched.”
I listened hard, a hand over my mouth.
“Some neighbor men hanged Peterson right near Belle Glade, and the Grady family—it’s dangerous now. It could happen to them just for no reason, it’s—” He broke open a shell and then another, the sounds cracking the air. “I’m sorry to dwell on such a gruesome topic. But thank you for listening.” He drank more as if to wash the subject down his throat. “We’ll attempt to speak of pleasant things. Of pie and walnuts.” He chewed one, musing. “Did y’ever notice how walnuts taste like metal? Like sucking on a penny? Tastes of copper. See if I’m right.” He fished pennies from his pocket and cleaned them with a handkerchief. He handed me one and put one in his mouth, where he rolled it around like a lozenge. “Try the copper. Tastes like walnut. Go ahead.” Like a dare, the way he said it. He was a strange bird.
“But money is not… sanitary.” I held his gaze.
“Ha! Tell that to the gents in the smoking parlor.” He waited till I placed the penny in my mouth as if it might poison me. Maybe it did. Perhaps it gave me a taste for bigger sums.
“It has a walnut flavor, you’re right.” I removed it fast and dried it on my apron.
Across the table, he savored his own penny like a sweet. It clacked against his teeth. “Copper now, to me, tastes like the future.”
“The future has a taste?” I asked. He was possibly deranged, not just drunk.
“Copper futures is all they talk about in there. My daddy and his pals.” He removed the penny from behind his teeth. “Copper, copper, blah, blah. Some fool’s trying to corner the market. Somebody else trying to run up the price. Another fella’s short-selling. All that garble.”
“I don’t have a head for finance,” I told him, I just like money.
“Me neither. See? We hate the same things.” He removed his glasses and smiled at me in such a way that I wished to hate everything he hated and love what he loved. His boredom and anger like my own. His face as flushed as mine. We cracked nutshells and the air crackled with heated looks, awkward smiles flaring.
I held up two unbroken halves for inspection.
“Geez,” Jasper said, “another perfect nut. Like my stepmother, eh?”
“She’s not a nut! I like her.”
“The Sociological Department? Please. A joke.”
“But it’s a real philosophy.”
“Just tonight she handed the Colonel her so-called report and forced it on us as a topic for conversation. He does not enjoy having a lady tell him how to run a company.”
“Her ideas will help.”
“But they won’t. Because her sociology is a fantasy. My father plays along. To give her a toy. Keeps her busy. He’ll never do those improvements they promise. He tried it at Ruby, and the men went on strike anyway. Billy clubs do the work, candy doesn’t.”
“You’re very negative,” I said. “Also, I wrote that report.”
“You did?” He smacked his head with the heel of his hand. “Excuse me. Pay no attention to my rantings whatsoever. I’m a rude unhinged son of a gun.”
He was. He was provocative and disheveled and strange, eating pennies. I liked him for all these reasons. He seemed to like me too, grinning. “I apologize.”
“Apology accepted,” I said, and liked him more.
“You wrote it, then? Quite an accomplishment,” he said. “The Colonel praised it, and I can tell you he is not easily impressed. Congratulations.”
The compliments worked on me as compliments do. He opened another bottle and poured, his eyes narrowed in a challenge. “Sure you don’t care for a swig?”
The Devil whispered, What harm in a swig? “All right,” I said.
“Atta girl.” Jace watched me drink with approval, as a teacher watches a fast learner. When we’d finished with the walnuts and dusted our hands, I found myself in a pleasant state of intoxication, weaving a little as I hung my apron by the back door.
“Let’s go out!” he said. “To the river.”
“It’s dark, though.”
“That happens at night,” he said. “Let’s go!” He gestured for me to come along, scooping the air with his whole arm. He knew I’d follow, that I wanted to.
How could I resist his grins and attention, his charms and offers of—what? I pressed down warnings and hopes, so my lungs were tight, and learned then why desire is called a crush. To be crushed. I would die of it.
“C’mon, now, Sylvie girl, step on it.”
It was a risk. Alone with a man. I dismissed caution and listened to my demon friend, who said, Allez-y.
* * *
Outside, the moon was a round eye above the sloping August lawn, watching us. The mountains themselves watched, silent and silver all around. Jasper strode toward the trees with the bottle and pulled aside low branches to make a path. We could hear the river talking to itself on its way to the sea, singing and rambling over the rocks. We bent and ducked under pine boughs till there it was, streaming in the moonlight, the Diamond River. Jasper took his shoes off, rolled his trousers above thin shanks. I undid my shoes and stockings, trembling, but not from the cold.
“Be careful, darlin’, the rocks are slippery.”
The word darlin’ flashed like a firefly in the dark. Jasper took my hand, and we waded in, our bare feet in the riverbed. Mother of God. The water was melted ice off a glacier, cold to the marrow.
“You’re shivering.” He handed me the bottle. The liquor burned down, scalded beneath the ribs, woke secrets where the immortal soul resides in its bony cage. Revealed what I wanted. Surely he saw it. I drank more, giddy and laughing.
“Thatta girl,” Jasper urged me on. “Drink up and drink down deep at every opportunity. That’s my philosophy.”
Everyone had a philosophy, it seemed. I needed one.
We traded the bottle back and forth, our feet numb. “Drink!” Jasper encouraged me like a teacher.
“Your turn.”
“No, no, your turn,” he said. It was hilarious, our elaborate drinking. I was never so happy, barefoot in the river, the two of us conspirators, cackling at ourselves.
“Ready?” he said. “On the count of three.”
“Three and then what?”
“Sink down. Swim.”
“Sink or swim,” I said. Perhaps that would be my philosophy. I repeated it for courage. “Sink or swim.” Devil may care, but in the moment, I didn’t.
“One. Two. Three!” He fell backward into the water and I fell too, anointed beside him in an ice bath, spluttering upright till his hand flew out, pressing me down in the frigid water, an arm across my shoulders.
“Stay!” he commanded. “See the stars.” The dome of the sky was brimming with sparks. We lay freezing in the riverbed till, with a thump, Jasper kicked up a spray of water and the drops showered down on us, lit by moonlight. Screeching, we leapt up and shook ourselves like dogs, both of us drunken and laughing. He howled at the sky and I splashed him in the stream, throwing water and caution to the wind.
“Damn,” he said. “I thought you were such a good girl. A goody-good quiet girl. The angel. Saintly Sylvie.”
“Don’t count on it.” I kicked water, danced away.
He went after me, splashing. It was a full-on water war, a play fight that was an actual fight, me in strange combat. To win him. He ducked me under.
“I’ll fix you!” I cried, throwing big handfuls of river like joy in the moonlight. He splashed and dodged, and then we quit and jumped to the bank. We stood there dripping and winded, happy as spring ponies in a field.
“Pelletier,” he said. “You’re a wild demon.”
I felt the weight of his judgment, appraising me as a demon when I’d aspired to be a butterfly. I wrung the soaked skirt pasted on my legs, and crossed my arms over my chest, shivering.
“Oh, no, you’re cold,” Jace said. “Go like this.” He jumped and jackknifed his arms. We leapt around on the gravel, slapping ourselves for warmth, and traded the bottle till it was drained. He took his dry jacket off the branch where he’d hung it and wrapped it around my shoulders. “You’re still cold. Poor Sylvie.”
“I am not poor.” I have twenty dollars.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—” It was not pity but kindness he was offering, with the warm jacket he drew across my shoulders. The silence filled with the sound of the pulling river. Cicadas in the trees. My limbs trembled on alert, and there was Jasper looming, his breath raw. “Sylvie?” He brushed my cheek with his whiskey lips.
I stumbled, light-headed, so he caught and held me up in the wrapper of his coat, braced together, listening to the water as it pulled over the rocks. When I swallowed, I meant to speak, but he stopped me, kissed me with eyes open, his face silvery.
I did not know about boys. Men. Only the rules to be a daughter of God, that to kiss him was to choose danger. Possible damnation. And I chose. He was doubled in my vision. Two Jaspers. Two rivers. Two moons. What to do about the weakness and liquor in my blood. Was it the fear, or the thrill, or something worse that caused this—overpowering. The crush of it. So this is it. Love swallowed by mistake or circumstance. Romance and the moon conspired to make a summer fool of me.
“J’espére qu’on va pas se perdre,” I whispered, close to tears.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t want to get lost.”
“No, no, no, sweet, you won’t. If you get lost, I’ll find you.”
And I was so happy to be found, to stand by the river with Jace entwined as if we slept standing up, peaceful and soaking wet. I could feel his heartbeat along the side of his throat where my cheek rested.
“I never did kiss anyone before,” he said, as if it were a miracle.
A great wild eagle of feeling spread its feathers in my chest. “Not me either,” I said, and held his face in my two hands, kissing him wanton and brazen and fallen, all the words for wrong, and did not care about the Devil, only the wild raptor ahold of me. In the swoon I braced for the wrath of the Lord, the bird to fall, shot from the sky.
“Sylvie.” He said my name with amazement. Both of us so surprised at our hands smoothing along cheeks, along shoulders, the gooseflesh of our young and green trembling.
“It’s so cold,” I said, in a fluster. “It’s late.”
“No. All right. Yes.” He found his glasses in the pocket of his jacket. “Here,” he said, and put them crooked on my nose.
“No, like this.” I hung them off his ears, under his chin.
“No, like this.” He arranged them on the back of his head and groped backward, as if he had hindsight. He squinted and clowned. We were howling with laughter again. I’d never laughed so much.
“Ready? Set? Race you back.” He gave me a head start.
I leapt and ran in his beautiful coat through the silvery leaves, while he whooped and chased after me. “Sylvester!” I was a fast runner with strong legs and came out of the trees to the lawn ahead of him, safe, but then he broke into the open, streaking past like a racehorse in the moonlight. He stopped at the top of the hill and watched me catch up, breathless and giddy. He put his arm around my neck, his finger across my lips, looking toward the house. “Shhh.”
Hidden in the shadows, we watched. A woman came out onto the porch. Inge. She stood for a moment in the moonlight between the marble columns. A man came to join her. Jasper’s father. He put his arms around her shoulders and she circled hers around his waist. They looked up at the glittering sky.
A carriage pulled in front, the horses waiting. The Colonel and Mrs. Bowles came outside, saying their good-nights. The women embraced, the men shook hands. Their voices carried over the lawn in the stillness.
“Your report is most excellent, Inge, my dear,” the Colonel said. “You can be sure I’ll act on it immediately.”
Hearing that, excellent, a leech of pride attached to me.
“Oh, you are too kind,” said Inge. “Merci bien, Colonel.”
“No, thank you,” he said. “Merci.”
We waited in the shadows. The guests’ carriage passed us by, wheels on the gravel. The Duke and the Countess gazed up at the stars. “Where’s that boy Jace got to?” his father said. The lit end of his cigar glowed in the dark, the foul smell in the breeze. “I worry about him.”
Jasper whispered, his breath electric in my ear. “Go around the back way. Don’t let them see you.” I slipped his jacket off my shoulders and he took it. “Now you’re cold again. Poor Sylvie—you’re trembling.” He squinted and sagged against me, kissed my cheek. “Good night, angel.” He went backward up the hill in a crooked line, a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he said. “Quiet.”
I watched till he turned and strolled up to the porch, where he came into the light next to his father.
Chapter Eleven
THE NEXT MORNING, INGE SENT me to mail her correspondence at the proud new Moonstone branch of the U.S. Post Office. Walking down the drive in the dappled sunlight, I feared to meet anyone in town. An encounter with ordinary mortals would break the spell of myself transformed, kissed, enchanted in a rainbow bubble. A secret was hidden in a new layer under my skin. I was hungover and rearranged, as if I’d been hit on the skull with a mallet and enjoyed the swooning stars. I especially did not want to run into K. T. Redmond, but there she was, sniffing the breeze.
“Sylvie Pelletier!” she cried. “Are you back in town? I could use a hand.”
“Not until the end of September, but then—”
“Too bad, because that Havilland girl working for me now is a Giddy Gertie.”
Certainly K.T. had talked about me behind my back, but now I nursed a mean-hearted pleasure to think of Millie Havilland suffering in her hairbows under the sharp tongue of Redmond.
“What’s the news from the castle? Have they got you fanning them with palm leaves? Feeding ’em grapes?”
“I only take notes.”
“Save them! Every scrap! Find the ledgers! Keep a diary!”
“I am only a secretary. A social secretary.”
“So I see.” She perused my clothes with a jaundiced eye. “What’s the news? What’s on the social calendar at the manse? Human sacrifice? A bacchanal?”
“King Leopold,” I blurted in surrender.
“King Leopold?” Her eyes went wide. “Of Belgium? That one?”
I made excuses, but she wormed information out of me: the royal itinerary, the guest list. The more thrilled she was, the more I said, leaking like a bad pair of boots.
“The Elkhorne hunting party week? An entire week? Pity the poor wild creatures. It’ll be a slaughter. Leopold is called the Executioner for a reason.”
“It’s not only hunting,” I said. “There’s a quarry tour, picnics, dinners. Lectures. The Hunters’ Ball is held on the last Saturday.”
“Oh, la-de-da. The Bloodbath Ball. And I’m invited?”
A sinking doom took hold of me. Susie Society would show up and ruin everything. The music and the dancing. The gossamer green dress. The spell. She hopped up and down on the boards of the sidewalk like a mad Rumpelstiltskin.
“King Leopold! Of all bloody tyrants,” she marveled. “Did I tell you that the office is now hooked up to the telephone? A party line all around town. I intend to use it for the purpose of fact-finding.” She hurried away on a mission.
* * *
My new amour Jace Padgett sat unsettling me in the kitchen, reading the Moonstone City Record with his toast. Since our grappling at the river, he had lingered at breakfast. After dinner. A zone of tension around him kept me taut and clumsy and distracted. “Hiya, Sylvie,” he said, and I jumped. The river expedition was there between us. The baptism and whispers. The kiss. While he sat reading, the air vibrated without noise. His eyes were heavy on my back. Once, when no one saw, he caressed my hair. A voltage of current hooked between us, soft glances, sodden looks. At the sight of me, he smiled. Easter fixed us with stares as if to ask: What are you up to? We pretended not to notice that she noticed.
Hiya, Sylvester.
It was his name for me, so I liked it, liked our talk of books—Did you read the Wharton? What’d you think?—and liked him, the pale curls at the back of his neck, the flat broad fingernails drumming on the table. His luxurious yawn. I watched, waited for the minute he would say, Steal out with me behind the icehouse, and we would steal. For five nights we went out in the dark, kissing and drinking with a drunkenness that felt like love and sin, craving and danger. Which was it? All these but sin.
A girl of no means has to be doubly careful with a rich man, not to become a broken toy, as such people have so many. They don’t repair what they break, or mend their shoes. They want a new pair and discard the old. But I did not know that then.
