Mai at the Predators' Ball (5 page)

she
’s around you know, oh yes here as always, that chauffeur who drives Caroline’s black car, oh no if even once Adrien got in it with her — of course Daniel didn’t share these thoughts with his daughter — Charly, he mused, with that fake childlike innocence of hers, no Adrien definitely should not be left alone out here, because there she’d be, as glib and seductive as ever, with few words but well chosen ones, saying come on, I’ll be your driver, I can see you’re not the same since your wife passed away, surely I can be of some help, remember how at dusk like this Caroline couldn’t do a thing without me, you remember me don’t you, Charly, and from the moment she felt her mature flesh was affected, corruptible, Suzanne’s decision was already made, she would write to her daughter and son, remember that drawing on blue letter paper,
Daleth,
it’s Hebrew, opening to the light, the blue lotus represents Chinese Buddhism, so she decided her own fate and left you on your own Adrien, and when Daniel and Adrien were out here on the golf course together, Adrien said once isn’t there someone driving my car, somebody, a young woman who’s waiting for me in my own car, what mirage was Adrien seeing, Charly of course in her chauffeur’s uniform coming toward them over that green carpet with hand outstretched to the elderly man, saying come, come, Caroline never had a single complaint, I was always the model employee, I’ll just take you home to rest and put a carafe of cool water by your bedside, I’ll never leave you, Caroline had no complaints at all, did she, Daniel of course reassured Adrien, saying that was no ghost coming toward them over the sun-brilliant green, really nothing, no one at all he said, though he’d feared it might be true that Charly was nearby and coming closer in the chauffeur uniform she’d been wearing lately for her new employers, Daniel wondered how she’d been able to worm her way into those rich peoples’ villas in such a short time, and who exactly were they, rich reclusive ladies no one ever saw in town, no, Mai’s dad reiterated, no way our friend Adrien’s coming out on this golf course alone now Suzanne’s gone, but he couldn’t finish his sentence because Mai interrupted him, saying Papa, why don’t you just admit she wasn’t just taking a trip to Switzerland or anything like that, just say it Papa, she’d written to her daughters on blue lotus paper long ago to say she was weak and faltering and no longer could embrace her life, go on and say it, just say it, Robbie did tell Petites Cendres, I don’t know which wig to wear tonight, the blonde or the redhead, Cobra often steals the pink one topped with feathers right out from under me and then tears off down the stairs to be first in the street, and only Yinn gets to wear those boots someone brought him from New York, you know the ones with leather laces that come up around your thighs and high, tapered heels like blades, I don’t know how he can walk in those all night without taking a tumble, always his nose in the air somewhere above us, and when he rubs his face against you, you get a brush from those curled eyelashes, then in his raw, guttural voice, he says don’t be late Robbie, when I’m in Los Angeles you get to replace me, and not too much playing around with those rubber sex toys, okay Robbie, they’re dumping carloads of college kids on us, so use a bit of restraint okay Robbie, yeah he talks to me like that, scolding like, then Yinn works me over with those capable hands of his and those erotic eyes, he adjusts my fake boobs, just air bubbles, that’s all they are, I can tell he likes all flesh, and not even women leave him cold, that’s why everyone gets that comforting lingering touch, so many lonely lives he seems to think to himself, it’s his look, I can’t let it go, and whether he’s wearing a new dress, say one he designed himself and spent all night making, so it’s light and airy with butterfly wings and Japanese motifs that move with his body, his hips, and the skirt is slit up to the thighs on both sides to show off his legs, women’s legs, though in a boy’s outfit they’d look too thin, still, curved and perfect between the stripes of this winged dress, the legs of a slightly scrawny kid, everything for Yinn being part of the art of illusion, the stuff of dreams, he exults in the knowledge of all this as he walks along the street, outlined and detached with the pale rays of the full moon on his face, deigning to belong to all and sundry without yielding, come on in he says to passersby, the girls are waiting for you, come on in, Robbie, Cobra, we’re all here in the cabaret, he despises crowds and the stain on his soul on the verge of blossoming forth, yet here he is, bored and intact, were he that divinely superb woman perched on glass heels, he’d spit on the ground just like when he was small Robbie said, but no he had to stand straight and still, when he went back inside the bar he’d slip in next to Jason for a moment, as though in complete abandonment, he’d hike up the narrow black strip of a slip over his almost hollow stomach, the girls are ready I suppose, he’d ask Jason, this G-string’s killing me, Christ will this night never end, why can’t we just go and lie down on a beach the two of us, sweetheart, okay if everything’s ready, let’s start the show, boy what a crowd, what do you think of my dress Jason, I got the idea from my mother’s dresses, you ever notice how elegant she always looks, no sulking, she’s tough on you but she does love you, it’s imprisonment that’s all, it’s the idea of marriage being a life sentence that bothers her, not you, my father wasn’t faithful like you my love, and gently Yinn laid his head on Jason’s shoulder, you sang so beautifully tonight my sweet, domestic life with Jason had a calming effect, if he’d just do the dishes Yinn’s mother would like him a lot more, but he is a musician and such jobs aren’t for him, true though, Yinn’s mother would really like her son-in-law to do his share around the house, at least tidy up a bit, it’s like living in a submarine and it was true, Robbie agreed, without Yinn’s sense of order and cleanliness plus her mother’s, this team would have sunk below the waves long ago, and all the girls would have gone down with the ship, the girls and their wigs plumped on the chairs, their pets, Cobra pushing her little dogs in a baby carriage, Yinn’s place had a passageway to the cabaret that earned them all a living, well barely, some nights it depended, and Yinn’s mother wasn’t putting up with any tricks, how on earth are we going to eat she’d ask him, if those students keep sneaking up the emergency stairs in back without paying, son, we have to eat, don’t we, all she ever made was oriental food but her kids were always well fed, we never go without she said, yup tonight it’ll be the blonde wig Robbie said, there’s a frail thirty-year-old little woman I keep my eye on, fragile as a little girl, her and that frizzy little dog she carries, the first time she came here I thought she was eight and we wanted to turn her away, I’m going to sit her on my knee and let her kiss me and play with my hair said Robbie, she often has this giant of a friend with her, the colossus and the tiny kid, I know it takes all kinds to make a world and maybe even understand it too, I mean if life is a horror story I just weave my way through it like a bunch of elves, as though it’s all nothing but pleasant and tolerant and peaceful where they are, and it’s all just comfy like the blanket that dog’s sitting on in the little girl’s arms and here I am faced with the innocence of these two guileless creatures, no ostentatiously sexual gesticulation, when it’s my turn to dance and sing, it’s just me, Robbie, they admire, and Yinn making himself up in the mirror, eyebrows arching and tapering, lashes expanding, I’m a kabuki actor says Yinn, it’s the strange visage being drawn little by little in the mirror they admire, no longer concerned themselves about being too huge or too little, no blame for their sizes, tonight or tomorrow you’re gonna have to eat says Yinn’s mom, and some smart-ass student has already made it across the passageway, so be on your guard, yup the blonde wig is for tonight Robbie says to Petites Cendres, who replies my how virginal you look, no matter how low you’ve sunk nothing’s beaten and bled you like it has me, you keep your fluttering virginity fresh under those back combed curls, you actually are crisp you know Robbie, blessed in that unabashed virginity of yours and still inexperienced in the sadistic ways of humanity, it turns us all off, the disgusting abuse they pour on us, you don’t even love yourself Robbie, said Petites Cendres, so tell me where we’re going, will you Papa, Mai insisted, all the way to the archipelago he replied, do you want to see Fawn Park and the tiny females we were able to save from the last hurricane, but it’s too foggy for that said Mai, we won’t be able to see a thing, the mothers and fawns were nearly wiped out said Daniel, whatever damage man starts nature finishes, too much fog on the road Papa, Mai said again and I want to go dancing tonight, my friends are waiting for me, then all of a sudden there they were and her father stopped the car, all of them outside the fence and all over the road, lost fawns staring at them through the curtain of fog which outlined them in snowy white, too visible somehow to be without their mothers she thought, motionless and hypnotized on spindly legs, with cars moving round them yet unafraid, and her father said I promised you a surprise didn’t I, there aren’t a lot of them in the woods around our place anymore, Mai said they’re lost but they’re free, but they weren’t he pointed out, see they’re sheltered, they’re too easy to see she answered with spots of light bouncing off their reddish backs like when we’re too easy to see, then she fell silent because after all maybe her father was right that there would be a new herd tomorrow, which means that foxes will follow, and he, Daniel, would protect the wildlife, he could assure her of that but her father’s faith in the future, she thought, was a bit naïve or else hard-nosed, maybe he was just a gullible intellectual, confirmed ecologist and all that, rocking himself to sleep with theories of this utterly corrupted and exploited earth, this park somehow struggling back to life, we made it ourselves you know, her father went on, look at this, animals running free and drinking from the lagoons, and maybe it was true after all that under his protection it was all beauty and proportion, the reserves, the parks, and he would always have that effect wherever he went, balance and cohesion, whereas in
Mai’s world all was too much out in the open, vulnerable and unprotected, too easy to spot, right down to the last animal bareness of fawns along a railway track looking for the first shoots of wheat under the frozen puddles of snow-covered fields, nothing there for them but perhaps the candid offering of their bareness to all, ready to be cut down at the instant their hunger left them defenceless, alone or even in a herd it did not matter, go on living or just surrender as Suzanne did, thought Mai, and Pet
ites Cendres saw them once more lined up in the street against the front of the bar whose doors and windows never closed, Yinn, Cobra, Robbie, Santa Fe, all awaiting the last show of the night as if their flowered and feathered selves were for rent for a few hours, decked out for the secret fairy-tale wedding, a melding of sexes and colours, fusing for one memorable moment in the stage glow, soon forgotten like a rented movie, Yinn, Cobra, Robbie, Santa Fe, if these girls lined up in the street were only this one instant of mixed entertainment, thought Petites Cendres, just this and their ephemeral eclectic jumble, so easy to spot with the makeup still fresh under their eyes and so explicitly vulnerable that a contrary old man stumbling in his lofty drunkenness walked across the street toward Robbie saying, huh you’re all just treacherous bitches, treacherous, what the hell are you doing there anyway said the old man, always impeccably dressed, you liar Robbie answered him, cynical as ever though still joking thought Petites Cendres, who recognized the man at once, just waiting for my taxi to take me back to the archipelago and my alligators, my dogs, my wife, and my five kids, ’cause underneath those sick padded bras of yours there’s nothing but treason, all of you have betrayed me the man said, and as for you Robbie, you want to turn me inside out, but I go to church every Sunday and I’m faithful to my woman, I told you that already, I love her and you ain’t gonna change that, so get lost you traitorous bitches, all of you, even Yinn waltzing from the Porte du Baiser to Decadent Fridays, sublime betrayer, yup her too, lucky I only come see you on Sundays, you trash says Robbie, liar with a secret hidden life, your poor wife, I feel sorry for her Robbie said again, you pin those wet eyes of yours on me and just me, don’t you, but for her your heart’s like ice, oh no the man shot back, I love her as much as anything you’ve got, that’s just the way life is, but when you wear that gypsy scarf round your head and over your forehead I could just nibble you, bitch that you are, the hell with coy prudishness, I choose the betrayer Robbie and his bed of luxury, damn that taxi got away from me, ah life’s a string of betrayals, traitors all, that sophisticated drunk can talk all the crap he likes Robbie told Petites Cendres, those are the phantasms he spends his nights with, not with me anyway, at dawn I practically always walk home alone to the house we all share, and the other girls will be hanging out in the kitchen still practically in shock from the night’s onstage high, chatting and nibbling cookies, watching Cobra’s Yorkies as we laugh at our petals falling out and our faces getting whiter in the dawning day that sends chills right down our spines, I mean how are you supposed to march down the same dark, deathly hallway as Fatalité, we all can’t help thinking about her, and I dream that she’s still alive, and I think I even know where she is now Robbie says, I see myself buying her dresses and even houses, and she says to me would you hold on to this white coat for me, I’m just going out for a minute, I’ll be right back, so I hold the collar between my fingers and I wait but she never returns, her cigarettes are there in the pocket and she’d never go for long without them I’m thinking, so I wait some more, this is a house with its own inside lake and I figure Fatalité will be back to take a swim with me, the house is sort of on neutral ground, uninhabited and uninhabitable, but here I am waiting on the shore of the lake with her coat on my knees, and I wait so long I wind up smoking all her cigarettes, just a long, blah, desperate day, and I don’t know where I am or even where she lives, and when I shake myself out of it, there’s Yinn sitting next to me, okay sleep now he says, just sleep, it’s all right, you can, and I see the pencilled eyebrows on his bare face staring at me with irritation yet he cares just the same, he’s tired, very tired of shows and street parades, tired of the girls, everything, that’s what he seems to be saying without actually saying anything at all, I can’t do this alone, it’s too hard, well get used to it, Fatalité’s not coming back he finally does say, you’re wearing me out with Fatalité, I don’t know where she is any more than you do, just be still now and sleep he says before leaving, I close my eyes as if I’m still holding the coat, a coat for February nights, the last coat Robbie says to Petites Cendres, Fatalité is history now and tonight I’m singing he goes on, a dark, low-cut dress and a cute hat tilted at an angle, that’ll be my look, I mean Yinn’ll come and fix the folds in it and use one of her jewellery pins for my corsage, the red hibiscus over my left breast, it’ll be just great, it’ll be our present, yours and mine, the wave will carry us far from the here and now, shores we’ve shed so many tears on and one of us is never coming back from, Fatalité, the prostitute’s girl and a hooker too that Yinn bailed out of prison, got sorted out and transformed into the great Fatalité we all know, no longer a junkie condemned to die with a police record for porn and juvenile prostitution, oh yes Yinn saw that spark in her, a spark of life bursting into the illumination of a princess no one else knew was there, and he dressed her as what she’d become right there in the street and in the cabaret, a sparkling gem too tarnished to notice, and there they were now, all of them, only too visible, a bright, noisy, outrageous splash of them with their men’s voices thought Petites Cendres, touching his pimply cheek with his fingertips, the one raked with spots that Yinn would kiss absently, saying my what a day and where are you off to Petites Cendres, why don’t you stay and hang out with us tonight, Yinn’s penetrating stare crashing into his averted gaze, as Yinn was saying to Fatalité just yesterday, why waste your time with people who don’t respect you, you don’t really have to live under a cloud do you Petites Cendres, those customers just tear the life out of you more and more every day, though nothing was actually said, Petites Cendres just touched his pimply cheek and Yinn’s kiss brushed his cheek, oh this was balm for his night’s wandering, a slave to his needs, Petites Cendres figured he had no choice but to follow his customers from one hotel to the next, still secretly hoping that Yinn’s kiss would stave off his drop over the edge for just a few hours more, maybe loved, even saved by Yinn’s fierce spell just the way Fatalité had been, and as the fog rolled in around them in the remote park, Mai now knew she was under her father’s affectionate dominance and he had the hidden intention of reading her secrets, charmer that he was, he made it difficult for her to articulate what was almost an inner quake for her when he harked back to what he shouldn’t have, the episode with Manuel and the Mercedes when she was eleven, that whole clandestine world she thought he really wasn’t entitled to bring up, and sinking deeper into the morass of words and explanations he suddenly said I really didn’t know a thing about your going to the doctor with your mother and grandmother, if your grandmother can know why not me, I mean I am your father aren’t I, Mai flashed back to the fathers riding shotgun on their daughters’ virtue at banquets in the abstinence and purity clubs, what a laugh — her father was acting just like that, reassuring to the point of suffocating her as though he were there in the hall with them, dancing with their daughters, lulling them into torpor with their sedative presence and suppressing any and all reaching out to freedom from this rigid marriage to Daddy, and was it futureless but for his own egotism, Mai’s dad was benign though, he only wanted to understand her, not counter her, she thought to herself, her grandmother, Mélanie’s mother were women allies and had perhaps never told Daniel about her painful visit to the doctor, a day of arbitration and judgement when Mélanie would be consoled to hear her daughter, herself a child, was not pregnant, what a relief for both of them that neither would receive a guilty verdict, Grandmother Esther would no longer be able to walk in a few months and the trembling in her right hand would spread, sending out danger signals to her heart, the danger of being consigned to approaching nothingness, Mère had told Mélanie dear daughter don’t let that doctor get you down, he’s probably not all that competent anyway, I feel fine, just great, and anyway we’ve all got to live with the thought that anything alive on this earth is condemned to die, haven’t we, Mai nodded her approval though her grandmother now walked with a cane as Jean-Mathieu and Caroline had once done, and Mai, often accompanied by the governess Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint who now had less time for her and was gradually being shunted aside, the Haitian woman didn’t really like her anyway, in fact she couldn’t stand her compared to Vincent, who was her favourite, even if he was off studying medicine and no longer lived at home, Marie-Sylvie could never say his name without love and deference, Vincent her baby, this Mai though was no longer any concern of hers, always running wild and coming home late or not at all, Marie-Sylvie had less demeaning things to do than watch out for this one, what if it’s true thought Mai, her grandmother in faltering health was still so feisty and brave that Mai could never quite make out what the old lady was really feeling, jollier than she’d been for quite some time, and Mai thought I do love her, she’s here by me and she’ll stay that way, nothing’s changed, and I’m not having a baby as Mama was afraid I would, and now here was her father sitting and waiting for some sort of admission when she didn’t want to say a thing, boy this didn’t feel right sitting here with him in the car like this or out walking in the foggy park as the reddish-backed fawns retreated to their enclosures, suddenly afraid of the approaching footsteps, Mai and her father were now invaders of the animals’ harmonious existence, Mai thinking about the visit to the doctor’s with her mother and grandmother and about the moment of judgement so full of imponderables, Mai flashed back to the girls in handcuffs with a sort of guardian tugging them toward her till they tripped over one another, Marie-Sylvie was something like that with Mai, and after the medical exam their judgement and trial would come too, bunched up against one another with their long hair tangled together, waiting for the disgrace to end, you may think these are innocent children standing before you the guard seemed to say, but be very careful, for when we caught them they were armed and in possession of drugs too, saying nothing more, Mai in between her mother and grandmother had nothing to say either, irritable and nasty just like Marie-Sylvie thought Mai, and whatever was going to happen to them, the girls in handcuffs and Mai, who was only able to calm down when she felt Mélanie’s hand on hers, it’s okay honey, everything’ll be all right Mélanie had said, really, though it had to be one of the most devastating days of Mélanie’s life to learn what was happening to her mother, the one person she loved most in this world thought Mai, still it was nothing, really nothing, and where would the girls in handcuffs spend the night, in what disgusting dining hall would they have breakfast in the morning, always squeezed in next to their guard, not able to go anywhere, just go, the summary medical exam would tell all, and they were hemmed in for good, nowhere to go, nowhere at all to get away from all this, never, and that was the moment Mai saw the June bride behind the line of little girls once more, there on the beach, the tall fiancée with blackened teeth seated at the table with her men on the wharf, yes Mai remembered full well that walk along the beach with her dogs when the men laughingly stroked her, a lingering hand touching her hip, hey sweetheart where ya going they all yelled amid wild laughter, and the tall drunk June bride in her white dress and soiled bouquet of roses did too, saying yes, one day Mai would wind up right there with them on that same beach, the same docks, just like her with globs of dirt on her legs, no, no she wouldn’t, a child in her own right just waiting for her father’s car, a writer and speaker, allowing time for her to finish running her dogs along the beach, so special and so distinguished, ah the old Mai would be no more, none of those white jeans and tops washed by a household servant for her to wear at supper with Grandmother, boy when was he going to honk that horn for her, Mai saw them, every one of them, seated at the table under the pine trees pouring wine, filthy every one, dimly anchored in groups or clans, go tell them all yelled the June bride, that I’m not marrying the man my parents picked for me, you go tell them that right now, ’cause you’re gonna be here with no enamel left on your teeth just like me, crazy for one drug or another and getting raped right here under the pines day and night, and Mai remembered that when she drove by these same beaches and docks with her father, the groupings, families, and clans seemed to have multiplied with the overflow of those evicted from their homes, now camping out everywhere, often in cars with their cats and dogs, in tents by the side of the highway, in public parks, the June bride had malevolently predicted a succession of these massive squats while the rare few who were burying them like Mai all had homes, although there was nothing wrong in being loved by one’s father and walking through parks perfumed with pine and acacia, Mai hugged her father in a moment of unexpected gratitude, and though Daniel still frowning looked just as displeased with himself, certainly because he wanted to know all about this visit to the doctor when Mai was accompanied by Mother and Grandmother, sure everything about this child was no longer his child, what had gone on there, dare he even ask, and why this complicit silence from your grandmother Esther, now Mai tell me the truth, but he saw her face as she shut down still more with beads of sweat forming on her brow, better not get home too late with all this fog beginning to show on the road. Come on up to my dressing room said Yinn, the space backstage behind the red curtains, usually closed but now open, Petites Cendres wondered as he followed Robbie how each of them would look, first undressed, then made up with their hair dried and all of them in a small room fixed up backstage, it wasn’t just hot and well lit in there, the atmosphere was jumpy too with all those bodies uncomfortably close together and