The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams

I cast my eyes about the room, which contains but the one double bed and no other person, inside bed or out of it, for we have come to a respectable house, the three of us, in which unmarried persons must sleep without the comfort of a nearby human body. Why, he and I parted company before we even climbed the staircase to the bedrooms upstairs, and I confess I made no protest at this separation. Did not even question the identity of the woman who led me to this chamber. Me, Ginger Kelly, who never did shy away from asking somebody a question or two, when she needed to know the answers! I guess I was plumb worn out, and so should you be, had you spent the past three days driving a Model T Ford south down the endless Dixie Highway, driving and driving, past pines and palmettos and salt marsh the color of chewing gum, to arrive at this house in the hour before dawn, to meet its astonished owners and collapse into its astonished spare bed. There is just about no question in the world that can’t wait, when you are so worn out as that.

      But you can’t help to dream, can you? A dream so real as that, so alive in every aspect, how can you possibly set it aside?

      And where is the fellow whose lifeless eyes terrified you most of all?

      The fellow is now gone. Nothing remains of him, not a single one of those details I have memorized over the course of the past days. Not a hollowed-out pillow, not clothes nor hat nor wristwatch wound up on the bedside table. Not a trace of warmth on the white linen sheets. Not the faint, familiar scent of his skin, weather and soap and perspiration and something else, sharp and medicinal, belonging to those bandages on his chest that I cleaned and changed by my own hands, twice every day. As if he’s been swallowed up and carried away during the night, and maybe that’s the reason for this dream of mine, when I have never set foot on such a ship as that, have never had a thing to do with rumrunners until I first met Oliver Anson Marshall in a Greenwich Village speakeasy two months ago.

      This light, quiet room, absent of any danger. This innocent bed. Is this the reason I dreamt of Anson’s death? Because he lies not here beside me, not safe inside my refuge, but elsewhere? Surely I am not so weak as that.

      After all, I don’t worry for my baby sister, Patsy, though she occupies some other bedroom nearby. Why, I figure she has probably charmed half of Florida while I lay asleep, so marvelous is her beauty and her sweetness.

      You see, Ginger? There is nothing more to fear.

       3

      WE HAVE brought no luggage to speak of, but a dressing gown hangs thoughtfully from a curving silver hook on the door. I wear neither nightgown nor pajamas, only the most ancient and serviceable of underthings, obtained from a dry goods in Virginia somewhere, last supplied in the previous century. My clothes—likewise ancient, likewise Virginian—lie slung over the back of a nearby chair. I can’t stand the sight of them. I drape myself in the dressing gown instead, which is made of some kind of expensive silk, as fine as gossamer, trimmed in satin piping and no lace whatsoever. I tidy my hair with the silver-backed brush lying on the dressing table, and as I do these elegant things, I consider that our hosts—whoever they are—are likely well-stocked in the lettuce drawer, if you know what I mean.

      And just as I’m giving this point the full weight of my concentration, some noise drifts in from the window, the screaming of happy children, and I lift the window sash and stick my head out into the hot afternoon sky. Underneath it, two girls and a boy tear apart the oncoming foam of a most blue ocean, supervised by a tanned, long-limbed, gravid woman wearing a shocking pink bathing costume that does nothing whatsoever to disguise the girth of her expectant belly. One of the girls in the surf is my Patsy, shrieking her head right off as a crestfallen wave swirls about her knees. The damn boy holds her hand solicitously. (As well he might.) The woman, perhaps hearing the slide of the window sash in its casing, cranes her head to meet mine. Waves. Calls out with cupped hand. Motions me down to the white, sunlit beach. Her head’s wrapped up in a matching pink scarf, and she’s so gorgeously happy, so free of every care, I want to fly right out through the window and into her arms, where my own sorrows might dissolve by the heat of her joy.

       4

      INSTEAD, I take the stairs, which lead downward to a series of bright rooms arranged around some kind of courtyard, smelling of lemon and eucalyptus, and go out through the front door and across the beaten lane to the beach on the other side. The woman awaits me patiently, wearing a calm, beatific smile beneath a pair of strict cheekbones, and a wary tilt to her dark, straight eyebrows. The Florida sun has washed her fair skin in shades of delicate apricot, which become her extremely. Under the cold sky of a New York City winter, she might be nothing more than handsome.

      “I hope you slept well, Miss Kelly,” she says, by way of greeting, in a voice that speaks of private schooling and a dignified upbringing. I want to reply, Sure looks that way, don’t it, by the late angle of that afternoon sun, but I can be civil when civility is called for. My own vowels were shaped by a cadre of disciplined nuns, you know, though they do have a tendency to revert to their original form when left unattended.

      “Very well, thank you,” I reply, in my best Bryn Mawr accent, though I did attend that fine institution but a single year. “I appreciate your taking us in like that, right in the middle of the night like a pair of thieves. I hope we didn’t scare you.”

      She laughs pleasantly. “Well, you gave us a shock, that’s for certain. But Ollie’s an old friend, a dear old friend, and he’s welcome in our house anytime. Even at three o’clock in the morning.”

      “I see Patsy’s making herself at home. I hope she hasn’t been any trouble.”

      “Oh, not at all! She’s a darling. She’s your sister, Ollie said?”

      “My baby sister. Five last year.” I shade my eyes and watch the small fry gambol about, soaking themselves in the kind of abandon we older, wiser ones have long since discarded. We haven’t yet told my baby sister that she is an orphan, that her daddy has joined our mama under the wet soil of River Junction, Maryland, and that the brother she adored—the brother who all but reared her up himself—now basks in the everlasting peace of the Lord Almighty. She imagines, I guess, we’ve taken her on a surprise vacation to a southern paradise, and as I watch her play, I have no desire to disabuse her of this illusion. The sun grows hot on my hair and my shoulders, the milky skin of my redhead’s neck. The salt air fills my chest. The pungent sky makes my heart race in recollection of my dream, and I clench my fist to quell the memory. “She must be over the moon. I don’t know that she’s ever seen the ocean beach before.”

      “She’s taking to it wonderfully. Sammy and Evelyn practically grew up in the water. They’ve been looking out for her.”

      “So I see. You have beautiful children, Mrs.—” I cut up short and turn to her. “Ah! I apologize. Ollie never did tell me your name, and I was about dead last night by the time—”

      “Oh, look at me. Chattering on like this, and I haven’t even introduced myself! Fitzwilliam. Virginia Fitzwilliam.” She holds out her hand. “And my husband, Simon, who’s gone off with your Ollie right now, I’m afraid.”

      I clasp her hot, firm hand and tilt my head back to the house. More like a villa, I perceive, the kind of Mediterranean building you see in pictures of Italy or the south of France, an impromptu eruption of yellow walls and red tiles and round arches. I consider the words your Ollie, carelessly uttered, and my stomach grows a pair of energetic hummingbirds. “In there?” I ask.

      “No, no. In town. To our offices. I understand they meant to talk business.” Her expression turns a little blank, enough to send an electric signal shimmering across the surface of my brain, which—as you perceive—is something of a suspicious organ to begin with.

      “Business?” I inquire.

      “Now, Miss Kelly. I imagine you can tell me far more about all this than I can tell you.”

      “But you’re too