First Lady (44 page)

This last medley was a pulsing carnal tour de force, showing off her skill and vocal range. She stood at the piano and pounded out Little Richard's “Good Golly Miss Molly,” then Jerry Lee Lewis's “Breathless,” then Aretha Franklin's “Respect,” and then from there ran forward to the footlights to join Janis Joplin's “Try” to her own erotic anthem “I Want You More” and to keep both songs going until waves of fans broke loose and began climbing onto the stage to touch her. Tonight someone ran up to her and draped her in an American flag. The Haver police locked arms with the sheriff's department to hold back the fans while Mavis leaned over their bodies to touch the crowd's outstretched hands. Finally she fell to her knees and flung her arms out wide. I don't know if it was staged. The movie cameras set up around the stage filmed it all.

In her cramped, messy dressing room, Mavis leaned back in the shabby rehearsal chair, stretched out the sore distended tendons in her forearms. “I have to be on a stage doing this again tomorrow tonight in Toyko.” She gave me a toast. “
Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin
.”

I raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

She said, “There's no place like home.”

“There's the truth,” I smiled. “Now from one drunken beetle to another, would you tell me another truth, Mavis? Would you tell me if you saw Tyler Norris at The Fifth Season that night?”

“Is he the fellow that killed the waitress?”

“Yes. After you went to the beach, he slipped into your bungalow and shot her. Did you hear the shot? Did you run back and see him?”

“You caught him, didn't you?” she asked.

I nodded. “After he killed five more people, we caught him. It's a high price to pay to avoid some inconvenience if you did see him.”

Slowly she shook her head. She said, “The sad problem with drinkin' the way I do, you black out from it. And well, Lieutenant, you don't remember a thing.”

I looked at her. She was too good an actress. I really didn't know if she was telling me the truth or repeating what lawyers had told her to say to avoid having to testify at the Norris trial.

She held up the bottle. “Come on now. A glass will do us no harm.”

But I shook my head. “It did me no good.
Slán agat, Mavis
. That's right, isn't it, when I'm the one leaving?”

She smiled that amazing seductive smile that made the world want to love her. “Right as a hard rain fallin', love of my heart.
A rún mo chroí
.”

“If I hadn't just heard you say those same words to fifty thousand people, I'd be a little more touched.” She laughed. “Take care of yourself, Mavis. And take some advice. You don't have to die young to be one of the greats. I know you think you do.” I pointed at the whiskey bottle.

She poured another glass. “So tell me one who didn't?”

“Eva Wilcox. Blind Eva's in her eighties. You played piano with her in Smoke's. She's there every Saturday night.”

“Ah, boyo, you are something, true enough. As for smokes, have you got one on your gorgeous self, bruised and bandaged as you are?”

I threw her the new pack of cigarettes I'd bought before the concert and the old lighter I'd carried around for years.

“Thanks.” She caught them perfectly, incapable of a graceless movement. The little flame leapt in her hand as she lit the lighter.

“Keep it,” I said. “A memento. Otherwise, I guess you won't remember a thing.”

She didn't argue with me. “And what can I give you to remember me by? Because I don't want you to forget.”

I smiled at her. “Your music.”

She held up the lighter. “Don't let your fire go out, Justin,” she said.

“I won't.” I turned in the doorway, waved, and left.

If I drove all night I could be in the mountains by morning. I could be in the mountains in time to kiss my wife Alice awake.

Michael Malone is the author of nine novels and two works of non-fiction. Educated at Carolina and at Harvard, he has taught at Yale, at the University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore. Among his prizes are the Edgar, the O.Henry, the Writers Guild Award, and the Emmy. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, Maureen Quilligan, chair of the English department at Duke University.