Ciji Ware (33 page)

“Thanks, Maddy,” Daphne said gratefully. She handed her a check for four hundred dollars. “And here’s my first rent check.”

Maddy stared at the amount. “Oh, Daphne, dear, that’s way too much.”

“Four hundred dollars for a two-bedroom suite with parking and a great view of the river?” Daphne scoffed. “In Manhattan, I was paying twelve hundred for a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up!”

“That was New York. This is Natchez. I can’t accept it. You’re family.”

“How much is that insurance policy a month?” Daphne demanded.

“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Maddy admitted.

“I rest my case. The extra fifty goes toward the utilities, and I’m giving you cash for a grocery kitty. Otherwise, I can’t stay,” she said firmly.

Maddy remained silent and pensive. “Oh, all right! You’ve let that Yankee stuff rub off on you some, but I deeply appreciate your doing this, darlin’ girl.”

Daphne gave her cousin a hug. “And I wouldn’t be able to throw myself into such a harebrained scheme, if it weren’t for your hospitality,” she replied seriously. “I just hope Mama doesn’t put a contract out on the two of us.”

Maddy grew somber. “I think it’s a very healthy thing that you’re starting to live your own life, Daphne Whitaker Duvallon.”

Daphne gazed at her cousin for a long moment. “So do I…” she murmured. “But I have to admit it’s a little scary.”

“Course it is… but that’s all right, darlin’. You’ve got Althea and me backing you up.”

“It’s probably a lucky break that my parents aren’t speaking to me,” Daphne noted wryly. “That way, my move to Natchez won’t be a subject for debate.”

When Maddy returned downstairs, Daphne set about getting her rooms organized into living quarters, with an office in the second bedroom. Another phone extension had been installed earlier that day, and an Internet connection and wifi modem were put in to handle her computer. Daphne glanced around her suite, surveying her handiwork, and was pleased with the results.

Maddy had donated a desk that had once been used by her husband, along with his handsome burgundy leather office chair. Daphne sat down, and tackled her to-do list, starting with a number of calls to people she wanted to invite to the opening night performance of the new-and-improved Aphrodite Jazz Ensemble. She glanced at the list and dialed the first number.

“Hello, is this Liz Keating?” she asked, “This is Daphne Duvallon… the harpist? You and Otis were kind enough to come to—”

“Why, Daphne!” Liz exclaimed. “I’d heard from Maddy when I saw her at the Piggly Wiggly yesterday that you were back in Natchez. When you get settled, I’d be pleased if you’d come out to the Trace and have supper with us.”

Daphne murmured thanks and then launched into her invitation. “We’re a real jazz ensemble now,” she finished. “We actually have five members—all women.”

“Why, Otis and I would be delighted to come,” Liz replied promptly. “Does Sim Hopkins know you’re back?”

“Sim? I heard he’d left Natchez,” she said, trying to ignore her racing pulse. “I stopped by Monmouth to leave him a note, and the clerk there said he’d left town.”

“He left Monmouth, all right.” Liz chuckled. “Bailey Gibbs offered him the cottage on his place to use as a sort of base camp. Sim’s been out there… oh… I’d say a week or more. Off in the woods, mostly, Bailey says. Even sleeps out there, brave man.”

Maybe
that’s
why
he
hasn’t responded to the email I sent when I got here
, Daphne thought, gratified.

“Wow… well… ah… if you see Sim or Doctor Gibbs in the next few days, please tell them I’ve made the big move, and that I’d love to have them join you and Otis at the Under-the-Hill Saloon Saturday night.”

“Will do,” Liz replied cheerfully. “Bye now.”

***

By Thursday morning, Daphne had secured a twice-weekly job, commencing immediately, playing her harp during the tea service and into the cocktail hour at the Eola Hotel on the corner of Pearl and Main Street. Prior to her four o’clock assignment, she checked her voice mail and her email one last time.

King and Corlis had called from New Orleans and left word that they were just checking in to see how she was faring in her new life. There was also a message from Bailey Gibbs who telephoned from the state capitol in Jackson, sending regards to Maddy and welcoming Daphne to Natchez.

“Liz Keating gave me a ring,” he explained in a hearty voice. “If these danged legislative hearings ’bout the toxic dump site wind up Friday, I surely won’t miss a chance to cheer you on. And, darlin’ Maddy, save me a seat for Daphne’s show Saturday night and I’ll do m’best to get there. Bye, now.”

But nothing from Sim.

More disappointed than she cared to admit, she quickly dressed and sped the short distance to town just as a pair of gargantuan tourist buses pulled up in front of the hotel. All afternoon, a stream of travel coaches had been disgorging eager visitors to the last four days of the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage. Some thirty-two grand mansions on this year’s home tour had enjoyed a steady flow of sightseers who now sought refreshment in the cool, dark green confines of the Eola’s cocktail and tea lounge.

In a stall in the ladies’ room, Daphne donned her “uniform”: a long-sleeved, black crepe, floor-length gown, a string of pearls, and demure black pumps. She strode past the foyer and positioned her gilded harp discreetly in one corner of the lounge. For the next three hours, she dutifully played “Greensleeves,” excerpts from
Swan
Lake
, and other “romantic background music favorites” from a pile of charts perched on her music stand. A few inebriated male customers attempted to engage her in conversation from time to time, but she easily deflected their advances with the skill of a seasoned New Yorker who had no qualms about politely telling the pests to get lost.

At seven o’clock, she swiftly wheeled her harp through a door marked “Employees Only.” She darted back into the ladies’ lounge, and reemerged in jeans and a T-shirt with “The Boston Pops” emblazoned across her chest. Then, she packed her unwieldy instrument into its wheeled traveling case, pushed it out a side door, and hoisted the harp inside a slightly rusty, silver-colored Jeep Cherokee that she’d purchased the previous day at River City Auto for five thousand dollars.

Daphne sat quietly behind the wheel, reflecting that Cousin Maddy was having dinner tonight with a friend, and Althea wasn’t due in from New Orleans until tomorrow. Somehow, she couldn’t face having dinner at the hotel employees’ dining room, loading her stomach with smoked ribs at the Pig Out Inn, or coping with the cluttered kitchen at Bluff House. She felt restless and out of sorts and aimlessly began driving up Main Street. Before she admitted what she was doing, she found herself on Highway 61, the road that led north to the Natchez Trace Parkway.

I’ll just tack a note on his door
…

Dr. Gibbs was up in Jackson. Sim was likely camping deep in the woods, and Liz Keating probably hadn’t been able to inform him of Daphne’s decision to spend a year in Natchez. It would be perfectly reasonable to leave Sim a note. So why was she feeling like such a jerk driving out to Gibbs Hall?

The simple fact was Sim was still in the Natchez area. Why should she act like a martyr and deprive herself of his good company? Wasn’t it about time she learned to make decisions in her own interest, instead of worrying what Mama—or anybody else, for that matter—thought she should be doing?

Twenty minutes later, Daphne was still questioning the wisdom of her impulsive act when she discovered the closed gates at the end of the drive leading to Bailey Gibbs’s stately residence. She left the car running and investigated.

Bolted and impassable.

“Damn!” she exclaimed into the cool April air.

Before she allowed herself to think about how ridiculous she probably looked—or the fact that she was a blatant trespasser—she turned off the ignition and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. Then she locked the doors to her car and scrambled over the white wooden fence to the left of the gate. In the lengthening dusk, she walked along the gravel drive as ducks settled near the pond for the night and the wind rustled the graceful willow trees near the water’s edge. Gibbs Hall loomed on her right, a solitary veranda light illuminating its columned facade.

She set off across the back lawn toward the stand of oaks and the meadow dotted with a dozen birdhouses that lay beyond. Gingerly, she kept the beam of her flashlight a yard in advance of her feet, always mindful of snakes that hopefully, at night, were asleep in their underground lairs. The breeze ruffled the branches overhead, and Daphne could hear the call of a mockingbird and the scurrying of quail not far from the footpath.

When she emerged from the trees into the wide meadow, she could just make out the six-sided cottage sitting like a miniature pasha’s palace with its white wooden finial perched atop its onion dome of a roof, poking at the night sky.

Cautiously, Daphne crept onto the mini-veranda past the pair of empty rocking chairs, certain the place was deserted, yet still feeling like an interloper. She opened the screened door and knocked.

No response.

She cracked the second door a few inches and peered inside. Briefly, she wondered how a large man like Sim could feel comfortable in a place with the dimensions of a luxury dollhouse, and then nearly laughed out loud. For an adventurer who’d camped in igloos in Alaska, and huts along the Amazon River, this jewel of a structure must seem like a suite at the Ritz!

She found a matchbook next to a kerosene lantern and lit the wick. With a guilty thrill, she absorbed the sight of a neatly made daybed pushed against one wall. In a recessed area stood a Bunsen burner stovetop and a pint-size refrigerator powered by a cylinder of propane. Behind a muslin curtain she could just see a shower stall, a toilet, and an old-fashioned pedestal sink, probably salvaged from some outbuilding near the main house. A large-size khaki shirt was flung over the arm of a chair. On a side table next to the bed, Daphne was surprised to see a book about the origins of New Orleans-style jazz lying open and facedown. On a minuscule round table near the efficiency kitchen stood a portable CD player and a collection of disks of female blues vocalists and one of jazz harpist Deborah Henson-Conant.

Pleased that Sim obviously loved the same kind of music she did, Daphne dug into her purse, searching for a pen and paper. She had nearly finished her short note when she froze at the sound of footsteps on the porch.

“Daphne?”

Her breath caught and she whirled in place, but could see only a shadowy shape on the other side of the screen door.

“Wha—” she said with a startled gasp. Her heart was hammering in her chest like a timpanist on amphetamines.

“Don’t be scared… it’s me… Sim. What in the world are
you
doing here?” He opened the door, and suddenly the room shrank when the six-foot-two-inch figure, clad in muddy, hip-high rubber waders, took a step inside. She pointed to a puddle of water seeping onto the wooden floor. “Oh, God!” he said, retreating quickly to the porch. “I was so startled to see you, I just—”

“I’m so sorry,” she interrupted in a rush, embarrassment infusing her cheeks. “I-I… was just… leaving you a note to say—oh—can I help you with those?” she interrupted herself inanely.

Sim backed out onto the veranda where an enormous backpack and bedroll had been deposited on the bottom step.

“Thanks for offering, but I don’t want you to get all dirty,” he said as he sat on one of the wooden chairs and began extracting his left leg from his waders. He looked up and grinned. “It’s good to see you. Tell me why you’re
here
,” he reiterated.

Daphne leaned against the doorjamb and watched Sim kick off the second leg of the rubber waders. He was only wearing running shorts underneath, providing her a distracting view of his long, muscular legs.

“Well… I-I’ve decided to take a year off from New York… to learn more about blues and jazz from Willis and Althea. She’s agreed to come up to Natchez every weekend so we can really see what we can do as the Aphrodite Jazz Ensemble.”

Sim stood up and met her nervous glance.

“Why, that’s great!” He paused and asked in a mildly reproving tone, “Didn’t you get my email?”

“Yes. Did you get mine?”

“No. Well, I don’t know,” he amended. “As you can see, I’ve been nonelectronic for about a week, and I didn’t have a chance to check my laptop up at the main house the morning I set out.” He approached the door in his stocking feet, staring intently at her through the open screen. His face was unshaven and several days’ growth of black beard stubbled his cheeks and chin. He looked hot and tired and probably was dying to shower and then dive into bed and sleep for twelve hours.

Daphne pointed to the pair of porch rocking chairs. “Do you mind if we sit on the veranda for just a minute? Then, I’ll get out of here and let you get cleaned up.” Sim nodded and she sat down on the chair beside him. She inhaled deeply, wondering that she should feel so ill at ease if this was just a friendly visit.

“I didn’t answer your email right away because… because I would have had to explain about all the decisions I was in the process of making,” she began. Sim relaxed into his chair and gazed at her steadily. “The morning after our show at the Under-the-Hill Saloon, I realized that I absolutely
dreaded
going back to my life in Manhattan.”