know.' Her voice was raw, and her lips gave a little bitter twist of a smile. 'I suppose I'm the only one who could get everything going like that.' She looked at me slowly, with the same languid rise of the eyelashes. 'Send for the plane, get them to load your stuff, get you onto the plane.' I tapped the ash from the cigarette. 'They didn't know you were gone till three o'clock this morning. You were checked out to me.
I was gone. Nobody could find you. I left with a man on the plane. Who was the man? I had sent for your luggage. It took them a few hours to figure it all out. Then they started calling hotels all over New Orleans. And they found us a little before six. You may or may not remember the call.' 'I remember,' I said. And that said that I remembered everything else, including telling her again that I loved her. I looked at her. She was really on thin ice. She wasn't trembling so it could be seen. But I could see it. She stared at the food like it was something slightly horrifying to her. But she was staring at the table in the same way, and the vines twisting around the wrought iron posts holding the ceiling of the porch above us. 'Why did you do it?' I asked. She didn't answer. She went very rigid, staring off to the right, past me. And then without the slightest movement or sound from her, her eyes moistened and glazed over. 'I wanted to,' she said. Her lower lip started quivering. She took the napkin from the table and folded it and touched it to her nose. She was crying. 'I just wanted to,' she said again. I felt like somebody had hit me in the stomach. I mean watching her break up and start to cry was awful. And it was so damned sudden. One moment her rigid face and the next moment the tears just spilling down her cheeks and her lips quivering, and her expression completely crumpled. 'Come on,' I said. 'Let's go back to the hotel where we can be alone.' I signalled the waiter for the bill. 'No, no. Wait a minute,' she said. She blew her nose hard and buried the napkin in her lap. I waited. I felt like I should touch her, reach over and hug her, or something, and yet I didn't because we were in the damned public place. I felt really stupid. 'I want you to understand a few things,' she said. 'I don't want to,' I said.
'I don't care.' But that was not true at all. I just didn't want her to cry like this. She was all broken up now, though she wasn't making a sound. She looked hurt, positively hurt. All I wanted to do was hold her right now. Probably everybody who'd been looking at us before was thinking what's that bastard done to make her cry? She blew her nose again and wiped it and sat quiet for a moment. She was having a terrible time of it. Then she said: 'Everything's okay as far as you're concerned. They know I tricked you. I led you to believe it was something we did. I told them that. And I'll make double sure they know when I talk to them again. They're pretty damned persistent. I expect they're calling the hotel now. But the main point is, they know I took you, that you were the victim of the whole thing, it was my idea. I kidnapped you.' I couldn't help but smile at that. 'And what do they want you to do?' I asked. 'What are the consequences?' 'Well, they want me to bring you back, naturally. I broke the rules. I violated your contract.' The tears welled up again, but she swallowed and made her face very calm deliberately as she looked away from me. 'I mean this is a pretty terrible thing to do, you know.' She looked at me for a second and then away as if I was going to say something terrible and accusatory to her. I had no such intentions. In fact, the idea was perfectly ludicrous. 'They want me back at work,' she said. 'There're all kinds of problems cropping up. We bounced a teeny bopper night before last and it seems it wasn't the fault of the trainer who sent her. She'd switched with her