Merrick - Anne Rice [68]
“Good cigarettes, Mr. Talbot. Rothmans, aren’t they?” The right hand toyed with the little box which she had taken from my room. The woman’s voice continued, cold, utterly without feeling, and with a faint tone of mockery. “Matthew used to smoke Rothmans, Mr. Talbot. He went to the French Quarter to buy them. You don’t find them at the corner store. Smoked them right up until he died.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
Aaron said nothing. He relinquished command to me at this moment completely, but he stood his ground.
“Don’t be so hasty, Mr. Talbot,” came the hard-toned answer. “Ask me a few questions.” She gave more of her weight to the left elbow on the dressing table, and the petticoat gaped to reveal more of her full breasts.
Her eyes positively sparkled in the light of the dressing table lamps. It seemed her lids and eyebrows were governed exclusively by a new personality. She was not even Merrick’s twin.
“Cold Sandra?” I asked.
A burst of laughter came out of her that was ominous and shocking. She tossed her black hair and drew on the cigarette again.
“She never told you one word about me, did she?” she asked, and once again came that sneer, beautiful yet full of venom. “She was always jealous. I hated her from the day she was born.”
“Honey in the Sunshine,” I said calmly.
She nodded, grinning at me, letting go of the smoke.
“That’s a name that’s always been good enough for me. And there she goes, leaving me out of the story. Well, don’t you think I’ll settle for so little, Mr. Talbot. Or should I call you David? I think you look like a David, you know, righteous and clean living and all of that.” She crushed out the cigarette right into the tabletop. And with one hand now, she took another, and lighted it with the gold lighter which I had also left in my room.
She turned the lighter over now, the cigarette dangling from her lip, and through the little coil of smoke she read the inscription. “To David, my Savior, from Joshua.” Her eyes flashed on my face, and she smiled.
The words she’d read cut deep into me, but I would have none of it. I merely stared at her. This would take a little time.
“You’re damned right,” she said, “it’s going to take time. Don’t you think I want some of what she’s getting. But let’s talk about this here, Joshua, he was your lover, wasn’t he? You were lovers with him and he died.”
The pain I felt was exquisite, and for all my claim to enlightenment and self-knowledge, I was mortified that these words were spoken in Aaron’s presence. Joshua had been young, and one of us.
She laughed a low, carnal laugh. “Course you can do women, too, if they’re young enough, can’t you?” she asked viciously.
“Where do you come from, Honey in the Sunshine?” I demanded.
“Don’t call her by name,” Aaron whispered.
“Oh, that’s good advice, but it don’t matter. I’m staying right where I am. Now let’s talk about you and that boy, Joshua. Seems he was mighty young when you—.”
“Stop it,” I said sharply.
“Don’t talk to it, David,” said Aaron under his breath. “Don’t address it. Every time you talk to it, you give it strength.”
A high pealing laughter erupted from the little woman at the dressing table. She shook her head and turned her body to face us completely, the hem of the slip riding up on her naked thighs.
“I’d say he was eighteen maybe,” she said, looking at me with blazing eyes as she took the cigarette off her lip. “But you didn’t know for sure, did you, David? You just knew you had to have him.”
“Get out of Merrick,” I said. “You don’t belong in Merrick.”
“Merrick’s my sister!” she flashed. “I’ll do what I want with her. She drove me crazy from the cradle, always reading my mind, telling me what I thought, telling me I made my own trouble, always blaming everything on me!”
She scowled at