Magnolia City (27 page)

T
he call came during those dead weeks after New Year’s. Hetty usually spent the mornings ironing clothes in one crowded corner of the living room. The air hung heavy with steam and smelled of gas from the radiant heater that hissed nearby, the only source of warmth in the tiny apartment. The iron thudded as she tried to get the wrinkles out of Garret’s work clothes. He had surprised her by following Cleveland Yoakum’s advice and trading in his crisp white collars for khaki ones. He had knuckled in to learn the oil business as a roustabout on a rig over in La Porte, even surviving the first week of hazing that could make life utterly hellish for a weevil down on the derrick floor. He choked back his temper and made it through. It was exhausting work. She didn’t mind that he came home worn out and dirty, but she hated the way he fell right into the easy-spending ways of the oil workers. Garret came stumbling up the stairs in the wee hours Saturday morning, reeking of Jack Daniel’s. He’d sleep all day, leaving her lonely and bored on the chaise in the living room. As she lay there, she would hear his footsteps echoing in her memory, down the back hall of the Warwick—the day she’d agreed to elope. Those hollow footfalls would always haunt her:
He’s coming for me. Should I run or stay?
Her feet wanted to run, she remembered, but her heart wanted to stay. She would always wonder if she’d made the right decision.

Then, one Wednesday morning as she stood pressing Levi’s, the phone rang. Hetty set the iron on its metal stand with a clink. She walked over and stood looking at the shiny black handset, shivering as it rang. The phone number she’d scribbled on Lamar’s pack of cigarettes had nested in her mind like a row of spiders, scratching at her doubts and hopes. Would he spin her a silk ladder, after all—or simply weave another one of his glistening webs to entrap her before she knew what was happening? The phone rang. And rang again. She picked up the handset and paused a moment before saying, “Hello.”

“Hetty? It’s Lamar.”

She lost her breath and had to sit down on the chaise lounge to catch it again. “Hey, kiddo. I was wondering if you’d call.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d lost that pack of cigarettes.”

He chuckled on the other end. “Don’t tell your sister, but after the concert, I went into one of the bathrooms at Bayou Bend, tore your number off, and put it in my billfold.” A moment passed while he let that sink in. “What are you doing?”

“Laundry. Garret’s on a rig.”

“Tell him to work his way up to driller,” Lamar said.

“Driller?”

“So he can attract the attention of my people.”

“Your people?”

“Interest owners.”

“Who are they?”

“Oh . . . some folks I know who buy interests in oil wells. Garret can sell shares to raise the money he needs. We’ll put together a consortium.”

“So that’s how it’s done?”

“Yep. I’d be happy to introduce you to these folks.”

Hetty wasn’t sure how to respond. He was throwing out the first glistening thread. Where would it lead? “Lamar, that’s so decent of you! I really appreciate this. When can we all meet?”

“I’d prefer to introduce you first, Hetty. Garret can be—well, you know, an embarrassment.”

Suddenly the glistening thread felt sticky, but she had to agree. “Yeah, like that night at Bayou Bend. He’s still raving about Dad Joiner and the big strike they’re going to make in East Texas. I finally told him he wasn’t to mention that name again in this household, but I can’t guarantee what he’d say at a meeting. What did you have in mind?”

Lamar’s voice dropped into a more intimate tone. “Would you have dinner with me?”

“Dinner, huh?” Hetty stretched out on the chaise and tried not to sound too eager. The truth was she longed to see Lamar again in person, to meet furtively in some dark, swanky restaurant and continue reciting the rough saga of her marriage. There was something so inappropriate but irresistible in talking to him about Garret. But she wasn’t sure what it might lead to—and how she would break the news to her husband. Then she remembered Garret’s weekly benders with the other roustabouts. “Could it be on a Friday night?”

“Sure thing, kiddo. How about next week?”

“Next week, then.”

Lamar took her to The Montrose for dinner the following Friday. After improvising martinis from a flask, he snapped open a silver-and-black-lacquered cigarette case and offered her a Turkish Murad—preferred, as he liked to point out, by the transatlantic cruise set. She inhaled deeply as she sat back, letting a rush of excitement flow into her head. She hadn’t felt this alive in months.

Lamar made the perfect audience for the melodrama of her marriage. She told him about everything, beginning with her honeymoon in Galveston and ending with her recent snub by the haven of Houston’s oilmen, the Cupola Club—feeling more a need for sympathy than status at the moment. His warm, discreet support made her open up even more, until she found herself saying silly things like, “God, how I hate linoleum!”

“It’s not you,” he agreed. “Listen, kid, I’ll take you to the Cupola Club. Let me be your entrée.”

The thought brushed her lips like a fresh coat of lipstick. She smiled. Later, she would blame it on the combination of Murads and martinis. As the evening wore on, she found herself sharing with him her deepest doubts about her marriage. She laughed, cried, and confided, her cheeks flushed and glowing.

“Perhaps I made a mistake marrying Garret,” she said at one point. The consequences of such a confession were too tantalizing for them to discuss openly and were allowed to dangle dangerously above, out of the reach of their conversation. But she noticed Lamar growing serious, putting his wry humor on hold, and looking her straight in the eye as she catalogued her disappointments with her husband. “I think you’re absolutely right not to introduce him to the investors right off.”

“I’ll let you charm them first,” Lamar said. “Which you will—they’re all men.”

“Who are these fellows?”

“A bunch of Texans who hate Yankees.”

Hetty threw him a puzzled glance.

“They want to invest in a real Texas oil company, not one owned by Rockefeller.”

Hetty giggled drunkenly. “One like Splendora, you mean.”

“You laugh. But we are the only pure Texas company left.”

“What about Humble?”

“Rockefeller owns half of Humble.”

Hetty looked at him wide-eyed. “Go tell it to Sweeney!”

“It’s true.”

“When did this happen?”

“Right after the War. The Blaffers, the Fondrens, they all sold out. Everyone but my dad.”

“So Chief Rusk is the only real honest-to-God red dirt oilman left in Texas, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yep. Another reason not to introduce Garret to the investors right away. They’ll see he’s not from these parts. You’ve got to impress them first—you know, daughter of the founders and all that. I think our next dinner should be at the Cupola Club. You’ve got to haunt the place if you want to meet the right folks.”

“You’ll really take me there?”

“How about next Friday?” Their thighs touched under the table. Their eyes met. The alcohol in Hetty’s bloodstream rose like a slow-moving river, wide and sleek. She felt like it flowed from her eyes into Lamar’s, then banked back into her body out of his thigh.

“I don’t have anything I could wear to the Cupola Club,” she said.

“Then I guess we’ll have to go shopping.”

It had been almost a year since a man had uttered those magic words to Hetty.

After lunch Monday afternoon, Hetty found herself being led by Lamar across Texas Avenue, the invisible border beyond which the dress shops waited. She was surprised there weren’t all kinds of red caution signs along the road as the streetcar rumbled by. Once they stepped up onto the curb, she knew she was past the point where she could fend off any fashion temptations. When they came in front of Everitt-Buelow, where she used to shop with her mother, there were embroideries on display of such haughty elegance they made her heart ache with deprivation: one-of-a-kind smocks across which delicate Japanese lilies shimmered in shades like lilac and teal blue. Lamar remarked on their beauty, but Hetty only shrugged and looked away, thinking to herself,
It’s been so long since I could afford a dress like that. ¡Ay, dios mio!

As Lamar pulled her toward the entrance, she wondered how he planned to slip unseen by floorwalker Ellison. No sooner had they stepped into the fragrant first floor, then the gentleman appeared, tipping his hat and greeting them both by name.

Hetty avoided his eyes, but Lamar shook his hand warmly and said, “Afternoon, Ellison—has Miss Allen been in lately? Do you know what she’s been looking at?”

“Not lately, sir.”

“Then it’s up to you, Hetty. You’ll have to help me pick out a gown for your sister. You know me—all thumbs.”

Hetty smiled. “I’d be glad to, Lamar. I should know what Charlotte likes by now.”

Ellison waved them by. They kept the charade up as they headed toward the salon at the back of the second floor, the one appointed with couture gowns for evening. One thing unraveled into another; they were shopping their way along, trying on jewelry, sniffing perfume.

“Shopping for Charlotte,” Hetty told all the saleswomen and the customers they recognized.

After rifling through lush embroideries for spring, she turned. And spotted it. A dress slung across a mannequin in a halo of light. Her heart stopped beating when she saw it, and when the blood surged back into her ears, it thundered like the first chord on an organ in a church. A low-cut gown in black and red sequins. It was more black than red, and black was her color. The red ran down it here and there like a scandal breaking. Like melted roses. She took it into a dressing room and tried it on immediately. She looked at herself in the mirror, the spangles clinging to her like scales on a fallen mermaid, her white breasts exposed just enough over the extreme décolletage. She knew it was the right thing to wear. Black, for things hidden, for the night. Red, dripping through it. Just a little. Bringing in the warning, the ripeness, the burn.
The blood.
What they were doing wasn’t wrong. It was just risky. Very risky. As Lina liked to say,
“Cria cuervos y te sacarán los ojos.” Breed ravens, and they will take out your eyes.

He bought her the dress. “Charlotte will love it,” he said.

He not only bought her the dress, he insisted she get some sexy new black lingerie to wear under it. Late Friday afternoon, Hetty stood naked in her bedroom and drew them on piece by piece: the black satin bra and panties, the chemise that slid over her silk stockings like whispers in bed. The dress she swung out of the closet, heavy as a coat of mail. She stepped into it and slid the zipper up. It enclosed her curves like the arch of a night sky where all the stars were red. Hetty’s hands smoothed the dress over her midsection. It gurgled. Her stomach was corkscrewed from hunger and nerves. She tried to remember her favorite dishes at the Cupola Club. “Shrimp,” she murmured and buttered her lips with the brightest red lipstick she could dig out of her drawers.

Footsteps creaked outside on the steps. In the mirror, she saw someone stumble through the dark living room. Fear corkscrewed her stomach even more. A light came on. “Anything to eat?” Garret asked. “I’m famished.”

“Garret! You scared me to death! I thought you were a burglar.” She raised her voice to cover the guilt that was clutching her throat like a velvet choker.
He’s caught me dressing to go out with Lamar!
“The only thing we have to eat is bacon and eggs, since you didn’t leave me any money to shop. I’ve had breakfast four times since yesterday.”

In the silence that followed, she swiped at her hair then slapped the brush down. He tiptoed into the bedroom and began unbuttoning his shirt.

She stayed busy in the mirror, jabbed on a dangle of onyx earrings. “I thought you went out with your oil buddies on Friday night.”

“Bunch of them are working. Refinery fire. It’s good money, but I was too tired.”

Hetty went over to the closet, unzipped a bag, and hid her breasts inside the sable stole that had capped the afternoon’s shopping Monday. She bent to pull on her sandals then drew up, ready for the night, a tall lustrous column of sable and sequins.

“Where are you going?”

“Well . . .” Hetty took a deep breath. “I’m having dinner with Lamar actually.”

“Lamar? Why?”

“He’s offered to introduce me to some interest owners.”

“What’s that?”

“People who want to buy an interest in an oil well. This is for us, Garret.”

He brushed past her. “This isn’t for us—you just tell yourself that so you won’t feel guilty.”

“How come you know me better than I know myself?”

“No, I know men. Because I am one.” He sat on the bed and took off his boots. “You don’t need to do this. I’ll make us the money for a well.”

“How much have you saved?”

Garret was silent as he shrugged his shirt off.

“Just as I thought. You’re gambling all our money away. That’s why I have to do something.”

He looked her up and down. “Where’d you get that stole?”

“If you were ever home, you’d know, Garret. It’s been hanging in the closet.”

“It has?”

“Yes! Haven’t you noticed? I’ve got to go.”

He came close enough to smell her perfume. “Can’t I even have a little smooch? You look so gorgeous tonight. Is that a new perfume?”

“Yes. I have to keep those interest owners interested.” She spread the red fingernails of her right hand across his chest to hold him back. “No kisses for weevils. I’m mad at you. Besides, you’re too greasy.”

With her nails, she drew red trails across his pectorals and noticed for the first time how they’d beefed up in the last month. The musk of his sweat made her head swim.
God, I must be in heat,
she thought.
I want to jump him, grease and all
.

Garret puffed his chest out and let her caress his nipples. “Be careful,” he said, gazing straight into her eyes. “I don’t like this.”