O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [105]
“I’d feel better if you threw it at me.”
She obliged, along with a slap. “Pour me another glass,” she commanded, and this time drank it.
“I put myself on report for my disgusting behavior.”
“Grand! Will Uncle Ben have you flogged?”
“No.”
“Oh, too bad. So?”
“I guess the superintendent will hold a captain’s mast for me. I’ll probably be confined to quarters and docked some pay.”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You have all those rich ladies who will take care of your odds and ends.”
Zach held up his hands, helplessly.
“So, throw something at me,” he said.
“Lilly does not get that angry or that sad.”
“I take that as a well-earned insult,” he said.
No, she didn’t crack a smile. She was hurt.
“One cannot take a summer’s pleasuring that seriously,” she said.
“I want your forgiveness.”
“It is not forthcoming.”
“Shall I go?”
“No, kindly torture yourself for a while.”
“I lost it,” he bumbled again.
“I lost it once. I was thirteen, before I went to France. I held a large Ming vase over my head and smashed it on the floor. Papa made me glue it back together. It took nearly a year, but it established my boundaries for future tantrums.”
He pointed to the champagne, filled a flute for himself, and gulped it down.
“I believe the playwright has a direction in his script that says ‘a pregnant silence followed,’” she said.
“That wasn’t me at the casino,” Zach said.
“Oh yes, it was the real you exorcising a demon. And now I’ll show you the real Lilly. Notice, I speak calmly. I do not rant, nor do I double over with laughter. Have you not realized how perfect I am in everything, my walk, my dress, my ha-ha-ha quips, my kisses? I am studied perfection and always under control, unless suddenly hit by a wet fish.”
She wobbled from her chair, went to the French doors, flung them open, and let a sharp breeze find its way in. Her gown fluffed. She breathed in the sharp air. Zachary tried not to look at her bosom.
“The moment I saw you, Lilly, I knew I was going to need you to heal my wounds.”
“You wanted Mama!”
“Yes,” he croaked.
“Mama wanted sonny boy just as badly, Lieutenant. It’s a nasty sport, but you are one handy player.”
Lilly pushed the doors together and turned to him, opened and disheveled.
“Stop kicking yourself,” she said, tying her gown together. “The baroness chose to play with the soldier boy.”
“I wanted the summer to end with you returning to Paris holding a deep affection for me. I prayed for that,” he said.
“Ah, that must be the reason for all the candles lit in the family chapel,” she said.
“I think I’d better go.”
“I haven’t dismissed you,” she retorted.
Zachary helped himself to the Maison Villiard cognac, feeling it all the way down and up again.
Lilly fitted a cigarette into its holder and he held a flame beneath it. His hands were steady as she blew a long thin stream into his face. The smoke had a strange sweetness Zach had come to recognize. She relaxed, drifted, and rambled.
“I wasn’t exactly an innocent bystander,” she said, “but the rule of the game is never to go to the guillotine for a summer lover.”
“My behavior was shocking,” he said.
“Hmm,” Lilly mused, “have you ever been on a plantation filled with slaves?”
“No.”
“I was born on one,” Lilly said. “Thank God, on the right side. I’ve been on the other side of the field where the shacks are and people lived with death before death. And I said to myself, what a lucky girl am I. In payment for my good fortune I must master the art of being a woman. We all make some gesture of rebellion. I did mine with a Ming vase. Later, I adored being the Baroness Villiard. The one lesson I learned early as a woman is that you don’t go into the billiard room and whip the boys at the pool table.”
In the sad and wistful calm of the moment, she had another glass of the stuff and liberated her tongue for fair.
What came about in life were the compromises and understandings of the grand salon at work.
“Felix and I decided to remain a bombastic couple and once in a while he even gives me a decent performance. We are the epitome