Strange things, Bad, Bad Lovers, strange things are happening in installment XXV. Maybe certain things you thought were finished up and done with…umm…aren’t. If you’re a recent arrival, you can take yourself all the way back to the Beginning Of It All by clicking right here.
Oh, and NB: Pay phones are a Thing in what follows. If you’ve never seen one before, ask your grandmother. And yes, I know a lily is not a gardenia, but I no longer live in the land of gardenias–gotta work with what you got.
~
The Scent of A Woman (is that gardenia?)
A firm hand was shaking her shoulder. Livia resisted; she was asleep, the hand was bothering her. She tried to brush it away, the Valium and the bourbon had a powerful pull, but the hand insisted.
“Miss…” More shaking. “Ma’am…” Livia was at the age when neither of the two respectful terms of address seemed entirely appropriate; the steward appeared to have settled on “Miss” as the more diplomatic choice. “We’re in New Orleans, Miss, wake up…”
Livia mumbled a thank you, and the shaking stopped. When she opened her eyes, the steward was already a good distance away, moving briskly up the aisle. She managed a slow stretch of her limbs while still seated. She would wait a few more minutes before removing the clumsy black canvas bag from the overhead compartment; a long line of passengers still had to pass her seat. She looked out the window, the tiny, ship-like porthole which separated the safe cocoon of the plane’s interior from her difficult weekend. From Danae and Bretton. From the laudanum. From Wanda’s package.
It was sunny. The men occupied in discharging the plane’s belly of its cargo wore tank tops. She would change into the black cotton trousers; Livia thought there might also be a black tank top in her bag.
As she waited, memories of the previous night, that morning, made her straighten her spine. The roses, the chocolate, the strange, lovely aromas in her apartment. Livia raised a cautious hand to the hollow at the base of her throat, where a kiss had connected another soul to hers. She waited for her fingertip to sizzle. But the skin was smooth and cool. She even had difficulty locating a pulse point. The Valium, theorized Livia.
The line was much shorter now. Livia stretched her long arms, prepared to open the overhead compartment and extract her bag. She must have stood up too quickly. Lightheaded, Livia steadied herself, breathed deeply. Then inhaled again, a much sharper intake of air than had been the first breath. Deliberate this time.
Yes, there it was. A faint but most definite scent of gardenias had reached Livia’s highly trained nose.
The back of the aircraft was empty; there was only the steward who had woken her some minutes earlier, collecting the compact, dark blue pillows used by some of her fellow passengers (midnight-blue, like the rice paper she wrapped around her chocolate tarts. Livia, perturbed, felt a vague but most definite throbbing in the shadowy hollow at the base of her throat). She waited, engaging her hands in the ostensible task of opening the overhead compartment until she caught sight of the front of the steward’s uniform. There was no gardenia.
She breathed in again as she extracted her bag from the compartment. Definitely gardenia. But she seemed to be the only person, besides the steward, left in the plane. She would dwell no further on the gardenias. Livia shouldered her bag and began to traverse the length of the aisle toward the front door of the aircraft. As she did so, the scent increased in intensity.
Some ten feet ahead, a woman walked in the direction of the exit. Her steps were short, decisive. Livia wondered how the woman had escaped her attention earlier. The front of an aircraft usually emptied before the back, and the woman was in front of Livia. She must, therefore, have been seated in the front of the aircraft throughout the flight, possibly in first class. Livia, though, was certain that she would have remembered seeing the woman as she entered the plane; she had an infallible memory for faces. The woman must have been the very last passenger to board, because she herself had been among the last.
The woman wore a well-made lilac suit, redolent of costliness. Both jacket and skirt hugged the generous but perfectly proportioned curves of the woman’s body snugly, like a glove tailor-made to fit a hand. The skirt had a discreet slit in the back and reached to just above the woman’s knees. Her collar-length hair was stylishly coiffed, dark, almost black, but with warm chestnut lights made warmer by the contrast with the lilac color of a small pillbox hat. The hat was tilted, Livia judged, somewhat forward; perhaps the front of the hat reached the base of its wearer’s hairline.
Livia’s steps were longer, freer, than the woman’s short ones. She overtook her and would have passed her, had it not been for the narrowness of the aisle. Livia’s nostrils quivered–the gardenias again. The woman must be wearing gardenias, maybe a corsage. How quaint, a corsage; it had been a long time since she had seen anyone wearing a corsage. She associated them with grandmas.
Livia and the woman had reached the exit. The woman murmured something, perhaps a thank-you, to the steward, and stopped a few feet further on. Livia saw her open a small, squarish handbag–patent leather–and extract a pair of white gloves from inside. Livia couldn’t see the woman’s face; it was bent over the open handbag, and she was wearing an overlarge pair of very black sunglasses. But she saw the gardenias, waxy and creamy, like whipped Chantilly against the secretive green leaves. The woman wore her gardenias pinned on the left lapel of her lilac suit.
The humid heat of the Louisiana afternoon invaded even the air-conditioned passageway that led into the terminal. Livia’s legs sweated inside the leather pants; she would definitely change. When she emerged from the restroom, she saw the woman in the lilac suit again. She was making a telephone call from one of the pay phones just to the side of the rental car desks. She still wore the sunglasses, and her face was turned toward the telephone, away from the noise and confusion of the airport; her conversation must be private. Livia noticed as she passed her, that the woman was quite short, despite her high heels. The heels were spiked. The toes were pointed, the cut of the pumps low. They were dyed lilac to match the suit.
It was strange, mused Livia, as she waited for the harassed car rental attendant’s attention, that there had been no luggage next to the woman’s lilac-shod feet; perhaps she hadn’t collected it yet. But the baggage collection area was near the place where they had exited the plane. Then Livia smiled to herself; she was perfectly aware of the game she played. While her brain was occupied with the eccentricities of the woman in the lilac suit, there would be no room for Danae, or the laudanum.
Which were a waste of mental energy anyway–Danae was beyond thoughts. The day of her fortieth birthday loomed less than twenty-four hours in the future. The contents of Wanda’s package represented the only force which might still bring something wonderful (or at least irrevocable) into Danae’s world before the midnight she had pinpointed as the end of the time during which she would wait for happiness to find her.
Livia smelled the gardenias for the first few of the frustrating minutes during which she made arrangements for a car. Halfway through the unnecessarily complicated process, she forgot about them. When she passed the pay phones on her way to the parking lot, the woman was gone.
~
More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.
Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…
Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.
