Iron Lace (24 page)

She walked along the grass edging the drive until she had to cross the oyster shells. Her feet were tough, but she didn’t like the way the shells crunched under them. The duchess talked about laying bricks on the drive instead, but she never had. The duchess talked about a lot of things.

The carriage was closed up, which seemed strange on such a hot morning. If Nicolette had a carriage, she would open it up to the air, stick her head out the side and let the breeze cool her skin. The old man sitting on the open front seat stared as she approached. She smiled at him, smiled Violet’s most winning smile, but he didn’t smile back. The carriage looked as old as the man, and just as battered by time.

“I can take a message,” she said, in her most grown-up voice. “I can do just about anything.”

He didn’t answer, but he stopped staring. He looked away, as if the sight of her pained him somehow. As she waited, he tapped on the carriage wall. She wondered what she should do next. Then the door opened.

A woman sat by herself inside. Nicolette’s smile faltered. Men were unfailingly generous with her, but women were a different story. They held on to their money the way Tony Pete held on to Trooper’s reins when he led her around the yard. They might fix her hair or let her dress up in their clothes, but money was something else entirely.

The woman stared at her. Nicolette was suddenly aware that her face was dirty and her dress was sticking to her thighs. She stepped closer anyway.

“Lady?” Nicolette curtsied; it was an affectation that always made the gentlemen laugh. “Can I help you?”

The woman nodded. Her lips moved, but no words emerged. She cleared her throat. “Can you come over here?”

“Sure.” Nicolette ambled closer, craning her neck to peer into the carriage. The lady was older than Violet, but younger than the duchess. She was a white lady, with soft brown hair and eyes so pale a blue they reminded Nicolette of a cloudy sky.

“Would you like to sit in here with me?”

Nicolette frowned, until she remembered that she looked like a monkey when she did. Violet had showed her once in the mirror. “Is it hot?”

“Not very.”

“Okay.” She sprang up onto the running board with enthusiasm. In a moment she was seated across from the lady, who was looking her over very carefully.

“My face is dirty,” Nicolette said. “I washed it, though. Yesterday.”

“You…have a beautiful face.”

“Violet says men’ll pay a lot for me.”

The woman dug her fingertips into the seat. “Who is Violet?”

“My best friend.” Nicolette considered that. “No, Clarence is my best friend.”

“And who’s Clarence?”

“He plays the piano in the dogwood parlor. He sings, too. Professor Clarence Valentine. You heard of him?”

“No.”

“He can play anything. Two-steps. Rags. Jass. Sometimes he sings the blues. But just late at night, when the gentlemen are gone. Do you sing?”

“No.”

“White folks don’t—least, not very well. Clarence said so.”

“Do you sing?”

“I do,” she said proudly. “Clarence says I got just enough nigger blood to make me sing real pretty.”

The woman had no answer for that.

“What’s you doing here?” Nicolette asked.

“I brought you something.”

“Me?” Nicolette looked puzzled. “Why?” She reconsidered before the woman could respond. The question wasn’t in her own best interests. “
Merci.
See? I can speak French. All the women at the Magnolia Palace got to speak French, ’cause some of the men want to hear it. There’s a house up the street called a French house. You been there? They don’t speak French, though. They do French things.”

“How do you know what they do there, Nicolette?”

“You know my name?”

The woman nodded. “Yes.”

“How come?”

“I knew your mother.”

Nicolette forgot about monkey faces and mirrors. She frowned. “I don’t got a mother.”

“I know. But once you did, and I knew her. And I know that today’s your sixth birthday.”

“Nobody told me about any birthday.” She was puzzled.

“They must have forgotten.” The woman drew a small box from beneath her skirts. It was wrapped in silver paper with a white silk ribbon. “This is your birthday present.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” The woman reached across the space between them and took Nicolette’s hand. Her hand was as soft as Violet’s, but it trembled.

“Will you open it now?” She put the box on Nicolette’s lap.

“Sure.” Nicolette tore into the paper. When she lifted up the top, a gold locket lay on soft cotton. “Mine?”

“Yes. But, Nicolette, this must be a secret.”

Nicolette’s eyes brightened. “A secret?”

“Yes, dearest. You mustn’t tell anyone. Especially your father.”

“Why?”

“He would be unhappy with me.” The woman’s voice caught for a moment. Nicolette decided that maybe she had the croup. Once Nicolette had gotten a bad cough, and the duchess had made her drink wine with a candle melted in it.

“Has he told you anything about your mother?” the woman asked.

Nicolette fingered the locket. “I don’t got a mother.”

The woman sat back. “He hasn’t, then. He was very unhappy when your mother went away.”

“She died.”

“Yes. When she went away to heaven. He wouldn’t want to be reminded of her. And this locket was hers.”

“My mother’s?”

“Yes.”

Nicolette held up the heart, dangling it on the gold chain. It was simple, nothing like the jewelry the women in the house wore, but six tiny diamonds set among etched roses sparkled in the sunlight. “Was she pretty?”

“Oh, not as pretty as you are. But she loved you. Very much. And she didn’t want to leave you.”

Nicolette slipped the locket over her curls. It tangled, but she managed to free it without the woman’s help. “Then she shouldn’t have gone and died,” Nicolette said.

“Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we plan, dearest.”

“I don’t need a mother, anyway. I got Violet and Clarence.”

“And your father?”

Nicolette didn’t know what to say about that. She shrugged. “And Mr. Rafe.”

“You call him that?”

“Everybody calls him Mr. Rafe.”

“Is he good to you, Nicolette?”

Nicolette was perplexed. She had never really considered that.

“Does he ever hurt you?”

Nicolette shook her head. “He’ll like me better when I’m not so much trouble.” She heard tapping. The woman did, too, Nicolette saw her glance at the side of the carriage.

“Do you remember what I said about hiding the locket?” the woman asked. “You must hide it, or your father will be angry at both of us.”

Nicolette tried to pry the locket open.

The woman reached over and spread it wide. “See how it’s done?”

“There’s nothing inside.”

“Someday you can put a photograph in there.”

The tapping sounded again. This time louder.

“You’d better go now,” the woman said. But even as the words passed her lips, she reached across the seat to hold Nicolette there.

“Will you come back?” Nicolette asked. She had decided that the lady was pretty, even though she didn’t smile much. And she was nice. Nicolette wouldn’t mind seeing her again, especially if she brought another present.

“I want to. But if your father finds me here, he’ll be very angry.”

“Do you live in the district?”

“No.”

“You work here?”

“No!”

“Then I guess I won’t see you again.” Nicolette pushed the door open and started to stand.

“May I hug you?” the woman asked. “For your mother?”

“I guess.”

She reached for Nicolette and pulled her onto her lap for a hug. Nicolette was surprised at the ferocity of it, but she circled the woman’s neck and hugged her back.

“Remember, don’t tell your father,” the woman whispered. She tucked the locket inside Nicolette’s dress so that it wasn’t visible.

“I like secrets.”

“Goodbye, dearest.”

Nicolette slid off the woman’s lap and jumped to the ground. She started to run toward the stable yard, but just before she was out of sight, she turned and waved. The woman was still there. Watching.

N
icolette stood on tiptoe in the closet and rested the side of her face against the wall to peer through the hole. As sweat dripped into her eyes, she blinked, but she didn’t move. She could feel the lady’s locket brushing her chest. She hadn’t seen the lady in the carriage again, but the locket was still a secret. She had found a hiding place in her room, a missing chunk of plaster covered by peeling wallpaper. When she was forced to take a bath, or when she was wearing her nightgown, she hid the locket there.

Now it felt cool against her skin, but the rest of her was hotter than a summer afternoon. There was no air stirring in the small space where she stood, and the heavy folds of Florence’s gowns were smothering her.

“See anything yet?” Fanny whispered.

“Shhh….” Nicolette squinted to bring the room next door into sharper focus. Most of the rooms at the Magnolia Palace had armoires. A closet, like the one in which she stood, was unusual, and therefore worthy of exploration. Fanny had
been the first to find the peephole. She had been dusting Flo’s room, and she had gone into the closet to put away a corset.

The hole was perfectly round, as if someone had put it there on purpose. It was high over their heads, but the girls had solved that problem by piling hatboxes one on top of the other until they could peek through the hole into Violet’s room. Now they were taking turns.

There was a man with Violet. Nicolette could just see him. He wasn’t short or tall. His hair wasn’t dark or light, but somewhere in between. There wasn’t anything interesting about him except the way he leaned back in an upholstered chair and watched while Violet took down her hair.

Nicolette knew that Violet always took her time for this particular man. The other women said that Violet could lure a man into her depths, then close like steel around him until she had wrung out every last drop of passion. All in sixty seconds or less. But this man was a regular, and Violet had told Nicolette that he paid her well not to hurry.

Nicolette didn’t know exactly what any of the women meant, but she thought maybe she’d learn if she stayed on the hatboxes long enough.

Now she watched as Violet removed the last hairpin. Gold slid over her shoulders and hid her naked breasts from view. It spilled over her back and the sleek curve of her bottom, shimmering as she crossed the room. “Shall I leave my shoes on, Henri?”

“Can you see somethin’?” Fanny whispered again.

“Shh… Nothin’ to see yet,” Nicolette lied.

“Fanny…” The sound drifted into the closet, despite the fact that there were two closed doors and a staircase between them and its source.

Fanny muttered. “Shit. My mama’s calling. She be coming to look for me, I don’t git.”

“Better go. She finds you in here, she’ll beat you good.”

Fanny cursed again. Nicolette was jealous of her vocabulary. “You caught, don’t go tellin’ anybody I was in here,” Fanny warned. “Tell, and I’ll git you.”

“You don’t go tellin’ anybody where I am!”

There was a discreet swish of the closet door, and Fanny was gone.

Nicolette returned her attention to the man in Violet’s room. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She could see everything, but nobody seemed to know she was watching. Fanny had searched for the hole on the other side when she dusted Violet’s room. It was between two pictures hanging close together. Even though she knew it was on the wall somewhere, it had taken Fanny a long time to find it, because of the pattern in the wallpaper.

The man shoved his hand through Violet’s hair and took her breast in his hand. She didn’t flinch when he squeezed it. “Leave the garters on, too,” he said.

“Oui.”

Violet wasn’t French, but Nicky knew some of the men liked her to pretend that she was. For enough money, she would be anything they wanted. The duchess was familiar with all the girls in the Basin Street mansions, and she said that Violet, with her baby-doll blue eyes, golden hair and touch of colored blood, suited more customers than almost anyone in the district. The duchess claimed that the colored blood was for flavor. All her girls had a touch of color for flavor.

Clarence said that the duchess herself had more than a touch. “Shall I take off your clothes, Henri?” Violet asked.

“Unless you want me to fuck you with them on.”

“This will be better.” She slid onto his lap and spread her legs around him. Then she began to undress him. Her hands slid against his skin, and his head slipped back.

More sweat dripped into Nicolette’s eyes. The air in the closet, like the rest of Florence’s room, smelled terrible, as bad as castor oil tasted. Fanny said the smell came from medicine the women used when they washed the men.

As Violet’s hands fluttered over the man, he stared at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

“You smell like a whore,” he said. “Like the man who had you last.”

“I smell like violets, M’sieu.”

“Five-and-dime-store toilet water.”

“Perhaps you’d like to give me expensive perfume to wear for you. You have no wife to spend your money on, Henri.”

“That’s about to change.”

Violet’s hands stilled for a moment. “Then you won’t be coming to see Violet anymore?” Nicolette thought she sounded glad.

“I don’t think that’s what I said.” He leaned forward so that she could slip off his shirt. His hands rested at her waist before they slid to her breasts. He cupped them and drew them close together into one hand.

Nicolette heard Violet take a quick, sharp breath.

“Such tiny breasts for a whore,” he said. “I don’t know why I bother with you, Vi.”

“Because I give you pleasure,” she said.

Nicolette frowned. Violet sounded funny. The man was tugging at her breasts.

“Do you like that?”

“Oh,
oui.
” She whimpered, deep in her throat, and Nicolette thought she was lying. The man had hurt her.

“I like to hear you whimper. No woman should forget who controls her.”

She unbuttoned his trousers and slid her hands inside. “Henri,” she whispered. “Come to my bed.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked.

“I’ll wash you there.”

He tugged her closer. “Tell me how bad you’ve been this week.”

She whimpered louder. “Oh, I’ve been very, very bad.”

He released her breasts, and she sighed. But before she could move away, his hands tangled in her hair, and he began to twist. “Tell me.”

“I’ve…I’ve slept with other men, Henri.”

“And did you like it when you did?”

Her eyes rose to meet his. “No. No, Henri.”

“You’re a liar.” He jerked, and her head snapped back sharply. She cried out as he grazed her breasts with his teeth. “What else did you do?”

“I…I danced naked for money. I’m sorry!” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Please, I’m sorry!”

“Sorry enough?”

“Please…”

Nicolette wanted to run into Violet’s room and make the man stop what he was doing, but she knew she wasn’t big enough. Worse, she knew nobody else would stop him, either, because the man had paid to do this, and the duchess always said that the men should get what they paid for. No matter what it was.

More sweat poured down her forehead, and her stomach
began to roll. She had thought it would be fun to watch Violet, more fun than it had been to listen through the door. But now she wished that Fanny had never found the peephole.

“Show me how sorry you are, Vi,” Henri said. He yanked her hair again, then released it. Violet slipped off his lap, and he let her go. Nicolette felt a moment of hope; then he stood, and his trousers slid to the floor. He let Violet lead him to the bed.

Nicolette couldn’t seem to stop watching, no matter how sick she felt. She knew what a man looked like. She had seen men in various states of undress in the halls. Once a naked man had run after her when she opened a parlor door early in the morning and found him on the floor with one of the maids.

But this man was different. His man-thing pointed straight at Violet, like one of the nightsticks the policemen who patrolled the district used to break up fights. Nicolette knew that his man-thing was a weapon, too, and that Henri was going to hurt Violet with it.

Violet washed him, and the smell of the disinfectant seeped through the peephole and nearly choked Nicolette. Violet took her time, murmuring in a voice so low that Nicolette couldn’t hear her. When she was finished, she lay down beside him in her little-girl shoes, her stockings and garters. She didn’t move toward him. She waited for him, wide-eyed and apprehensive.

He stretched out over her, pressing down on her shoulders so that she would remain still. “Don’t play the whore for me,” he said. “Don’t move, and don’t pretend. I plan to take as long as I want, and when I’m finished, I might start all over again. Do you understand?”

Violet nodded, gnawing nervously at her bottom lip.

“You’re nothing,” he said. “A vessel to catch my seed. You exist to give me pleasure, and not for any other reason.”

But as Nicolette watched, she didn’t think that the man really took any pleasure from what he was doing to Violet. He didn’t smile, and he didn’t make any noise. He moved up and down on top of her like he wanted to force all the breath out of her body. And when he was finished, he threaded her hair through his fingers so that she couldn’t escape and fell asleep.

Violet, trapped by her own golden hair, lay quietly beside him and stared at the ceiling. Nicolette watched her for a while, just to make sure she was all right. Violet didn’t cry. She just stared at the ceiling, like there was something there she wanted to see.

That evening, Nicolette bathed and struggled into her prettiest dress, then slipped the locket around her neck again. She wished Violet was around to help her with the buttons, but Violet still hadn’t come downstairs. Her father was gone, and she guessed he wouldn’t be coming back that night. If she had expected Mr. Rafe to return, the duchess wouldn’t have told Nicolette that she could listen to Clarence play.

The duchess didn’t like Nicolette, but she didn’t mind having her in the parlor sometimes. She said the men behaved more like gentlemen when she was around, and some of them were particularly fond of little girls. Tonight she had promised Nicolette that she could serve wine and keep whatever coins the men gave her. In only a few months it would be Christmas, and Nicolette was saving to buy Clarence and Violet presents.

Clarence was playing the piano when she skipped into the dogwood parlor. It was a fine piano of lustrous dark wood, with almost all the ivory still on the keys. There was a mechanical piano in the Azalea parlor. A man could feed
it two bits if he wanted music. But the Azalea parlor was where the newest girls entertained, and the men the duchess seated there didn’t deserve a professor of their own. The duchess could tell by looking at a man which parlor he belonged in.

Clarence didn’t approve of her being in the parlor when the gentlemen were there, so she said nothing to him, slinking past the piano as quickly as possible. Two men were seated on plush green chairs beside the stained-glass windows. Dora and Emma sat with them, and Maggie, who had just been moved up from the Azalea parlor, was wandering the room, twitching her hips as she went from fireplace to window. Nicolette saw one of the men eyeing Maggie, and she knew he wouldn’t be downstairs for long.

“Please, gen’lmen,” she said, just the way Violet had taught her, “may I get you some wine? Or mebbe champagne?”

One of the men laughed. He was tall, with whiskers all over his face. “What have we here?” he asked. “A baby whore?”

“Hush.” Auburn-haired Emma looked down her elegant nose at him. She was very good at looking down her nose at gentlemen—she claimed some of them came especially for that. “Come here, Nicolette, and meet our callers.”

Nicolette moved closer. She wasn’t sure about the man with the whiskers, but the other one looked nice. She was glad that neither of them was the man she had seen with Violet earlier. “We have Mumm’s Extra Dry,” she said. “Only the best.”

Both men laughed, and the one without whiskers ordered a bottle. When she came back, Maggie took it and poured it into glasses on a table by the door. Nicolette brought the men their glasses first. She knew that what Maggie served the women would be mostly water.

The man with the whiskers held out a dollar when she handed him his glass. “Give me a kiss, sugar, and I’ll give you this.”

“You be careful with her,” Emma warned.

“A kiss on the cheek,” he said.

Nicolette thought that was a fair swap. She kissed his cheek. His whiskers were soft, but not unpleasant; then he turned his head before she could pull away and kissed her hard on the lips. She jumped back, and everyone roared with laughter.

Nicolette narrowed her eyes. “Two dollars,” she said, holding out her hand. They laughed harder. “I mean it!” she said, stamping her foot. “Two dollars!”

The man reached in his pocket and pulled out another dollar bill. “You’re worth the price, sugar,” he said.

She decided she liked him. She took the money and stuffed it down her dress, like she’d seen the women in the house do. “I can sing. Do you wanna hear me sing?”

She heard a noise behind her. Clarence had been playing softly, but now he was clearing his throat louder than he was playing. She backed up, until she was even with the piano bench. “Please?” she asked, rolling her eyes at him. “Just one song?”

“Your papa’s gonna take a stick to you, Nickel, he hears about this.”

“He’s not here.” She rolled her eyes. “Please, Clarence?”

He was a large man who’d made his living hauling bales of cotton on the riverfront in the days before he could get jobs with his music. He was an uptown black man—not as fine a thing to be as a downtown Creole—who had taught himself to play the piano. He couldn’t read a note, but play a song, any song, for Clarence, and he could play it right back, the same or better.

Tonight he was dressed in gray, shades lighter than his skin.
He had a gray and white striped vest, and a jeweled stickpin in his stock-tie that showered rainbow flecks against the creamy wallpaper. He sighed, but when he ran his nimble fingers over the keyboard, the sound was almost too joyful for the room to contain.