you can. We’ll talk tomorrow on the burner phones.”
She reaches up to wipe mascara from her eyes but succeeds only in smearing it.
“Wait, let me do that. Crouch down.”
Jet kneels on the carpet. Pulling out my shirttail, I carefully wipe the mascara from the orbits of her eyes. “There. That’s the best I can do. Now, get back up to that roof. I’ll be five minutes behind you.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, resetting her nerves. “I love you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I lost my shit.”
“You’re allowed. I love you, too. Now go.”
This time her smile has life in it. She turns and walks swiftly back to the service elevator that leads to the penthouse. As I watch her disappear into it, I hear something shift in the lobby below. Whirling to the rail, I look back over the great dark room. I see no one. If there was anyone down there, I missed them.
When I step back onto the Aurora’s roof, I half expect to find Paul Matheson waiting for me. All I see is drunk revelers thrashing like penitents on the floor of a Pentecostal church while Jerry Lee Lewis bashes his grand piano into joyous submission on the little rooftop stage. Lewis may be over eighty, but he’s in constant motion, his slicked-back, dyed-black hair glinting under a makeshift spotlight while women who saw him when he was a wild-haired blond of twenty heave and gasp before the stage. As “Mean Woman Blues” rings out into the night over Bienville, I scan the churning bodies for Nadine. I see no sign of her.
“Looking for somebody?” Lauren Bacall asks in my ear.
I turn to find Nadine looking quite pleased with herself at having fooled me for even a second. “You promised you’d be quick,” she scolds. “That was not quick.”
“Jet’s drunk.”
“I noticed. Did she get what she wanted from you?”
“She just wanted to tell me some things.”
“I see that.” Nadine is looking down at my waist, where a fold of my shirttail hangs over my belt. The black stains on it are obviously mascara. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”
“That’s not what you think. I’ll explain later. Let’s dance.”
Nadine hesitates a moment, but then she takes my proffered arm and twirls us both into the whirl of flesh and flying jewelry. Around us people are jitterbugging or doing what my mother always called the “dirty bop.” Just as we find sufficient space to dance, however, “Mean Woman Blues” crashes to an end, and Lewis starts into “That Lucky Old Sun,” an elegiac number about nature being oblivious to the travails of the workingman.
“Are you up for a slow song?” I ask.
Nadine looks uncertain once more, but there’s a defiant glint in her eye. Just as I think she’s about to lead me off the dance floor, she slips into my arms like she’s done it a thousand times before. Most nearby couples are gently swaying to the piano, while a few move gracefully through the rest of us, doing dance steps I can’t name, with a fluidity that suggests they’ve either been together for many decades or have the genes of mating serpents. A few feet behind us, maybe twenty couples turn slowly in the empty swimming pool. The joined bodies silhouetted against the bright blue walls have the look of a surrealist art exhibit. Thanks to my height, I can see Jerry Lee a lot better than Nadine can. The old legend looks utterly absorbed in his performance and sings every word with conviction. As I watch him, I realize Jet is dancing with Paul only three feet from the stage. She’s looking right at me.
Her eyes are those of a trapped animal.
Breaking eye contact, I murmur, “He does that song better than anybody ever did. Even Ray Charles. There’s a lot of suffering in that voice.”
Nadine nods against my shoulder. “Did you read Rick Bragg’s biography of him?”
“I haven’t.”
“Lewis lost a two-year-old son, exactly the way you did. The boy drowned in a swimming pool near Ferriday, just downriver from here.”
A strange numbness comes over me, and I pull back, looking into Nadine’s eyes. “Really?”
She looks worried that she might have crossed a line. Seeing that she didn’t, she says, “He also lost a brother when he was young.”
This coincidence stops my feet altogether. “The brother didn’t drown, too?”
She shakes her head. “Run over by a drunk in broad daylight.”