Ciji Ware (24 page)

“Well, I wish I’d known. Might have kept me awake… Though, don’t get me wrong,” he hastened to add. “You all were great. It was just that I was jet-lagged and, well… I’m more a jazz and blues buff, myself.”

“So
that’s
why you were so up for going to all these funky little spots around here,” Daphne said, pleased. “Have you been to New Orleans much? Or New York?” Sim nodded. “Then you know what great music you can hear in those towns.”

“And don’t forget the San Francisco Bay Area,” he said loyally. “There’s a vibrant club scene in Fog City and over in Oakland that won’t quit. We even have a couple of jazz festivals. You’ve got to come out and let me show you what
we’ve
got.”

“If you’re ever there,” Daphne commented, pointing at his photographs.

An awkward pause caught them both off guard. Sim’s faintly guilty expression confirmed that he was rarely in his hometown. In fact, she wondered if they would ever see each other again when her visit was over. She considered the truth revealed in Sim’s portfolio. The man’s life was about traveling to the next location. She suddenly had a feeling that she’d fallen for the oldest ploy in the world. Didn’t the old saw go “Come up and see my etchings, my dear?”

She set her glass of water on the coffee table. “You know, Sim,” she said firmly, “on second thought, I think I’d better pass on dinner.”

“Why?” he demanded, concerned, and she knew her abrupt shift in demeanor had been obvious.

She paused for a long moment and then surprised even herself. “Look,” she began earnestly, “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you these last three days, and I’m a huge fan of what you’re doing and what your life is about, but—”

“But what?” He shifted on the small couch so that he could gaze directly into her eyes.

“It’s
me
,” she insisted. “I’ve just come off two years that would kill an alligator, and I’ve learned a few things about myself along the way.”

“You mean, blowing off your wedding? That must have been horrendous, but what’s that got to do with having crawfish soup?” he asked with an encouraging smile.

“It’s more than that,” she replied doggedly. “It’s a rather long, embarrassingly clichéd story. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“Try me, Daphne,” Sim said with an intensity that startled her. “I want to know how a knockout like you could ever have considered saying ‘I do’ to a jerk like Jack Ebert.”

“You should have seen Rafe Oberlin’s act,” she retorted, and then immediately regretted mentioning his name.

“Ah… the
rest
of the story. As you said the other day, life gets complicated sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“It does. And I don’t want it to get more complicated.”

“You mean… by me?”

She looked at him sharply. “Why are you asking about all this personal stuff?”

And
why
am
I
longing
to
tell
you
about
the
whole, sorry mess?

“Because I really want to know,” he said simply, then added, “And because I don’t want you to leave till we’ve had another dinner together.”

They both appeared startled by his declaration.

“But I
am
leaving,” Daphne said in a low voice. “One week from today, I’ll be back in New York, and frankly, I’m just not into brief encounters these days—should that possibly have been what you had in mind.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to be.”

“Because you see, that’s what it turned out to be with maestro Rafe Oberlin. Chump that I was, I allowed myself to listen to the flattery of a sweet-talkin’ travelin’ man,” she said mockingly, “and foolishly thought he meant what he said—and got my heart handed to me, big time.” Sim’s expression revealed that he didn’t fully understand her. “Rafe was
married
, but didn’t deign to wear a ring,” she explained. “His wife was a ballet dancer touring the world at the time the chamber orchestra was also on the road. When I found all this out, I of course felt like a colossal fool.” She laughed shortly. “I
was
a fool on several counts to have gotten involved with Rafe, since I already knew firsthand the crazy life of even an unmarried musician who was always on the road.”

“But wasn’t that more than two years ago?” Sim asked. “Before Jack?”

“But I was forced by my contract to continue to play in his chamber orchestra until—” Daphne hesitated and then made an impulsive decision. “Well, just last week, Rafe fired me for choosing to play at my brother’s wedding instead of our debut concert at Lincoln Center on Saturday.”

“Wow,” Sim said with gentle humor, “you certainly
did
have a tough week.”

“No kidding,” she replied, appreciating both his empathy and his effort to lighten the atmosphere.

“But with your talent, you’ll be able to sign on with another orchestra, won’t you?” he asked encouragingly.

“My tax accountant certainly hopes so,” she replied with a smile. “It takes a lot of teatime gigs to pay the rent in Manhattan.”

Sim nodded knowingly. “Ah… the freelance life.”

“Amen.”

He regarded her for a moment, and then brought the conversation back to a previous topic. “I would imagine that the miserable experience with Oberlin made you pretty vulnerable to Jack Ebert’s brand of persuasion.”

Daphne agreed glumly. “I was fairly clueless not to recognize instantly that I was desperately on the rebound when I got involved with Jack.”

“Probably everyone on the planet has made some foolish rebound play at one time or another,” Sim said charitably. “However, I admit that I
am
curious to know what finally made you call off the wedding at the last minute.”

“At the
altar
,” Daphne reminded him. “In front of the priest and five hundred guests,” she added. She paused, feeling her heart speed up at the memory of what she’d seen in the cloakroom at Antoine’s during the groom’s dinner. “It took something monumental to make me recognize the idiotic thing I was about to do, but I finally did… at ten thirty-five the night before the wedding, to be precise.”

“What happened?” he asked, incredulous.

Daphne stared at her glass of water, not seeing it at all, but rather the darkened cloakroom that led to the restaurant’s powder room farther down the hallway.

“The groom’s dinner was hosted by Jack’s parents for all the out-of-town guests,” she began. “The raucous toasts were over with. The dancing had begun in the private dining room hired for the occasion. I could tell Jack was pretty drunk because his toast to me had been less than heartfelt,” she continued, tracing her forefinger around the circumference of her glass. “Right afterward, he disappeared from the room, which created a fairly mortifying scene. About fifteen minutes later, I slipped out of the party in search of some quiet place where I could regroup, you know?” She looked up, finally meeting Sim’s steady gaze.

“And?” he prompted.

“This part’s almost funny,” she confided, though, in truth it wasn’t amusing in the slightest. “I was heading for the restrooms when,
ta-da
! There was my almost-husband facing away from the cloakroom door with his trousers around his ankles and his bare backside mooning me, his bride-to-be. And there was flame-haired Cindy Lou Mallory—my brother King’s
girlfriend
then, mind you—with her short, tight-fitting black cocktail dress unzipped to her fanny.” Daphne couldn’t bring herself to describe the woman’s bra bunched around her minuscule waistline, or the moaning encouragement she had been giving the incipient groom—who had ready access to Ms. Mallory’s ample mammaries.

“Oh, God, Daphne… I’m so sorry.” Sim covered her hand with his as he had done on the porch at King’s reception.

“Later, of course,” she said, her voice tight, “my brother and I discovered that they’d been having a torrid affair all the time
I
was in New York, finishing my master’s at Juilliard. Cindy Lou was just doing one of her prima magnolia maneuvers, trying to get King to ask her to marry him by making him jealous.”

“I see her ploy didn’t work,” Sim remarked, deadpan.

“Obviously no. Corlis came along a bit later—and theirs was definitely
not
a rebound bounce,” she added emphatically. “Even so, my new sister-in-law waited two years to marry King, just to make damn sure. As for Jack’s motives?” She shrugged. “Too much family pressure? Boob fetish? Insanity? Who the hell knows?”

“What did you do when you saw Jack and Cindy… uh…”

“In flagrante delicto?” she interrupted sarcastically. “I was literally speechless with shock. I backed out of the cloakroom, raced through the public dining rooms and out of the restaurant onto St. Louis Street, where I promptly lost my eighty-six dollar dinner—including wine—into the gutter.”

“What in the world did you do between then and the wedding the next day?” he asked, shaking his head in wonder.

“I think I was in a state of emotional paralysis.” She rose from the settee and walked toward the elaborately carved, white marble fireplace. “I felt sort of like a Stepford wife in training, you know? I just allowed myself to drift from moment to moment. The next day I got into my wedding dress. I got into the limousine. And I let myself be driven to the church.”

“Never telling anybody what you’d seen?”

“Not till I got to the cathedral. When I saw King in the vestibule, I burst into tears and dragged him into the men’s room and locked the door. I told him what happened and just kept sobbing hysterically into his starched shirt and tail coat.”

“That must have been some conversation,” Sim commented dryly. “It had to be a tough blow to your brother as well.”

“It was
horrible
,” Daphne said emphatically. “King had been betrayed just like I had. But you know something, Sim? He never hesitated for an instant. He just said ‘Darlin’… whatever you want to do, I’m right there with you.’ We found Althea LaCroix—my friend who was scheduled to play the organ during the ceremony—and told her what had happened and warned her to be ready for
anything
.”

“So you hadn’t made a decision what to do even by the time your father walked you down the aisle?” Sim asked, astonished.

“Call me crazy,” she replied grimly, “but I honestly didn’t know if I had it in me to say ‘I
don’t
!’ at the eleventh hour like that. By that time, remember, nine bridesmaids, including Cindy Lou, were lined up, ready to start the show. My mother had about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of wholesale flowers plastered all over Saint Louis Cathedral, along with five hundred of the Ebert and Duvallon’s nearest and dearest packed into the pews. They’d hired the New Orleans Country Club for the reception, which included a seated dinner, and a full twenty-piece dance orchestra—the whole nine yards.”

“What a nightmare,” Sim said sympathetically. “What finally made you run out on all of it?”

Daphne slowly shook her head in remembrance.

“The pain etched on my brother’s face when I saw him watch Daddy walking me down the aisle,” she declared without hesitation. “I suddenly imagined future Christmases and Thanksgiving holidays… what it would be like for King and me, knowing what we knew? Then I looked at Jack standing beside the priest and suddenly saw him as he was. A snake and a liar and the last person on earth that I wanted to be married to. I just blurted out everything to the wedding guests and took off down that aisle, heading for freedom from the whole, hideous thing.” Daphne turned her back to the fireplace. “Of course, my mother and father wanted to kill me.”

“Weren’t they upset by what
Jack
had done?”

“Honestly? I think they were more upset by what their friends would say. What upset them the
most
was that my bolting out of the church hurt their flower business.” She shook her head once more, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “What you need to understand is that my mother and father were never what you’d call a love match.” She looked at her watch. “But that’s another story, and I don’t really have the energy to describe the rest of my Faulknerian family history tonight.” A feeling of acute embarrassment suddenly swept over her. “Lord, Sim… why did I go on like this? You already knew the bare bones of the story. You heard it behind a hedge in the parking lot.”

“You filled in the details just now because I asked you to.”

“So tell me, sir,” Daphne said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere by speaking in an ersatz Southern drawl, “why would a gentleman like you be interested in such a sorry tale?”

Sim’s interest and sympathy seemed genuine enough, but Daphne wondered if such sentiments were merely the laying of groundwork for luring her into his gorgeous canopied plantation bed later this evening. His next words even gave credence to this disturbing theory.