Butterflies in Heat (34 page)

"Look," Numie said, not concealing his anger, "that was a pretty tough line for a chick to hear from her old man. Do you have to call me your husband, for Christ's sake?"

"Yes," Ralph said, growing stem. "It's part of my coming out of the closet. Too long I've hidden around and kept things secret. I'm fed up with that. This shouldn't surprise you. It was you who convinced me. You ashamed to be my husband?"

Numie stared unblinkingly at him, his eyes narrowing, and his mouth tightening into a thin line. "Not at all. It's okay with anybody else. But in front of Anne ... come on, man."

Ralph clutched Numie's arm until
it
hurt. "Anne will have to get used to
it."
He waltzed around the room. "So will Lola. So will her commodore. So will Leonora." He came to a stop in front of Numie. His face was stiff and expressionless. "So will you."

The palms fluttered in the first real wind that had stirred this morning.

Numie parked the Lincoln in an adjoining lot, then trailed Ralph up the flower-lined path to an old gingerbread house. Except for its size, no one would know it was a house of fashion. Only a small sign outside—fashions by De la Mer—provided a clue.

Inside, the reception room was empty. A melange of flowers, monumental polka dots, and bold zebra stripes competed for attention. Everything, a monument to the ego of Leonora de la Mer.

Pictures on the wall showed her with prominent figures of her heyday: Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Winchell, even Franklin
D. Roosevelt. More pictures, of Leonora in her elegant, extravagant gowns.

Mannequins displayed her latest creations. The range was vast: everything from Scarlett O'Hara dresses in white lawn to
femme fatale
stuff—skirts slit up to the crotch, long and tapering bare backs.

The room itself was like a theater setting. White bird cages from Edwardian days hung in the comers. Pink hollyhocks scaled the cerulean walls. Like a Tiepolo ceiling, clouds floated overhead. Fitting rooms were shaped like gazebos in white trellis; and the lighting was from art nouveau lamps. The wind from outside was gently rustling the lavender organdy curtains.

"What a place!" Numie said.

"She really
was
big," Ralph answered.

Numie's fingers ran along the smooth arm of a mannikin. "Who buys her stuff now?"

Ralph sighed. "About eight old dowagers, one who has retired to Palm Beach and owns a string of newspapers." He sat down at his desk, as
if
he were reluctant to begin the day.

"They were with her in the old days, but they never switched to Dior or any of the other post-war designers. They still like Leonora's distinctive look." His voice sounded burned out. "She's finished elsewhere."

Numie's eyes slowly took in the salon. Though immaculate and fresh appearing, the room was unreal, as if it had never known people. "But she said they were selling her dresses in Paris and London."

"Her old ones—that's true. They have a certain antique value today." He paused for a long moment, as
if
he found the silence profoundly comforting, then went on. "In these crazy times, anything is fashionable, including gowns Leonora designed in 1935. She's not really taken seriously, though."

"She was probably through by the time you came into her life," Numie said.

"That's right—and how it hurt her." A touch of rare sympathy entered Ralph's voice. "All her grand posturing today is to cover up that pain."

"She sure made others feel a little bit of it, too."

Ralph just looked at him, making no comment. He propped his feet up on his desk. He didn't seem to have much to do today. "We would go twice a year to Paris to see the collections. We went to every showing, then we'd dine at Maxim's or Tour d'Argent. In the old days, she'd been given the best tables in the house. But it was all different when I went with her. We were tucked away in some corner. Once on a crowded night we were turned down."

"That must have been a bitter pill," Numie said. "I can't imagine anyone saying no to Leonora."

"I think she returned to Tortuga because it gave her a chance to recapture a bit of that grandeur she'd lost in New York." He suddenly sat upright. "Let's face it. In Tortuga, Leonora is the grandest creation there is."

"For sure." The stirring of the wind lasted only for a little while, and then it, too, succumbed to the inertia hanging over the island.

In the late afternoon, two incidents were conspiring to taint Leonora's mood.

Seated in a throne chair, she was clad in turquoise ostrich feathers. In her chalky hands, she held a letter with a newspaper clipping.

It
was addressed and delivered to her, even though its anonymous sender in Palm Beach used the name she was born with, not Leonora de la Mer. The old postman had remembered Leonora and had delivered
it
to the fashion house. Even now, she couldn't bear to repeat her real name.
It
was so hideous she'd never breathed
it
to a soul once she left Tortuga.

Norton Huttnar, her late husband, had insisted on using that name. Norton and one other person, Ruthie Elvina.

Leonora had to invent a name right for her. Why go around with an awful name if it's just as easy to be known as Leonora de la Mer? Too many people begin by accepting their names, then all the other dreary names things are called. The next step, she knew, was in accepting the world's standards of thinking and behaving.
If
she had ever done that, she realized she would be doomed for certain.

The second thing this vile letter-sender had done was to enclose a newspaper clipping. In it, one of her clients was described as wearing a "preposterous creation by the one-time popular dress designer, Leonora de la Mer."

Tears came to her eyes.
It
was amazing how approval flowed in and out of a life. The moment you allowed yourself to think you're saturated in it, that's the moment the tide goes out and leaves you stranded. She clenched her long fingers, crushing the letter even more. The tide had gone against her. She knew that. The strain of maintaining differently was weighing heavily upon her. At some point in life, each famous person—harlot or saint—becomes a public joke. There was a time in New York when just the mention of her name would invoke laughter. The laughter reserved for a has-been still trying to maintain an illusion of former glory.

She regained her composure. Suddenly, she felt flippant. Momentarily she had conquered her depression. After all, life was one great big masquerade. You have to know who you are and what you want—and not be afraid of either. That's how she climbed so far. The letter fell from her hand. "And, dear heart," she said softly to herself, "that's why I've had so far to fall." Her voice seemed to drown in the well of its own despair.

Nervously she pressed a buzzer, summoning Numie to her office. Instead of the letter, her hands held a marijuana cigarette, wrapped in red.

"Are you stoned all the time?" Numie asked, realizing belatedly how impertinent that sounded.

She didn't seem to notice.
"If
that's what you call it," she said, annoyed at herself for explaining any of her actions. "I've smoked marijuana since 1932. I don't plan to abandon it now that it's become a popular middle-class pastime."

"That makes sense," he said. "May I have one?"

"No, you cannot," she said harshly. "I don't like my employees smoking on the job."

He frowned. "You're the boss lady. May I at least sit down?"

"Of course," she said. "Ralph says I have to treat you more democratically—not so much like a servant—now that you're one of our little family." A wry smile crossed her lips. "How is married life?"

His face reddened. "I'm not married to anybody," he said defensively. All this talk of marriage was really getting to him. "Ralph and I are together—that's all."

"Call it what you like" Remembering her own name change, she said, "I've always believed in being inventive about names or labels people give to things." She stopped talking, and the cigarette fell from her hand.

He quickly retrieved it, returning it to an ashtray on her desk.

She didn't seem to notice his action.

He shifted uneasily in his chair.

She spun around and glared. Was she aware of his presence for the first time? He had the distinct impression she had forgotten he was in the room.

"I think you've made a major improvement in your choice of partners," she said. "Lola La Mour, after all!" Her smile was sweet yet menacing. "Of course, both Ralph and Lola are cop-outs; a sign of weakness, of not being able to stand on your own feet."

His throat was drying up by the second. "I think you're comparing me to yourself. You have the guts to make the world listen to you. But you're different from me. You have talent, something to sell to the world."

"Never admit to your own weakness," she said, virtually shouting. "You have to be convinced of what you are so powerfully that others will feel it, too." She reached into the ashtray and handed him the marijuana cigarette. She was amused when other people finished cigarettes or drinks, even food, she had started. "Or else ... , you've got to run so hard that for a few years your weakness won't. expose you. But eventually it will. Rest assured of that." Her voice grew threatening.
"It
always does."

He smiled gently, the comfort of the cigarette relieving him of the anxiety she'd aroused. For a long while, he didn't speak, enjoying the rest of her cigarette although he questioned the wisdom of smoking the red paper when blue was his color. She had touched a chord within him. Like her, he wanted to fly across the sky on the wings of a giant bird, feeling his power. But he was a loser already.

"You've lost your innocence," she said, "and found nothing to replace it with."

That statement shot the wings right off that bird he was flying across the sky.

"The world saw to that innocence soon enough," she said. "One is not meant to keep it—no more than I was."

"Were you ever innocent?" he asked.

"God knows, I was the most innocent creature who had ever lived until I met my husband, Norton Huttnar."

"You married him."

"A mistake
I'll
live with forever," she said. "He was such a degenerate. But he taught me something. The whole world is degenerate and depraved."

"That's some lesson," Numie said, uncomfortable with the conversation. "When was your innocence completely gone?"

"By the time I was seventeen," she said. "I was thoroughly jaded—like so many other seventeen-year-olds in the world. Degeneracy and depravity didn't matter any more."

"What did?" he asked.

"I realized then we all play the same sinful roles. The only thing that seemed important was how we chose to deceive the world."

"That's a pretty tough forecast, but I guess you're right." The cigarette was finished now, and he wanted another one, but was afraid to ask.

"I know I'm right." Her eyes opened wide. "At twenty, though, we realize who we're
deceiving
—o
urselves."
She was fighting back tears.