The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,197
hotel?”
“Bless you, yes. Most don’t have any place to go back to. Others was afraid to go out; they’s awful stories going round about what’s going on out there. And I had friends turning up here ’cause they got nowhere to go. I had to put them in your friends’ rooms, but I still got yours.” She smiled. “I was sure you was gonna come back.”
“Can we stay here?”
“You still my guests. Of course you can.”
“Just one night.”
“Stay long as you want. Practically nothing left to eat, but me and my sisters gonna stay here long as it takes. On the radio today, they say the government worried ’bout Lake Pontchartrain. If it spills over, the center of New Orleans gonna be underwater too. They say it’s gonna take months to pump out the water and fix the levees. They talkin’ ’bout an evacuation, an official one, with soldiers going round to force people out of they houses.”
“We heard that too.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you, I’m gonna wait right here till they come, but I ain’t gonna leave my hotel a minute before that. This is our home and our living; I ain’t gonna walk off and let any bunch of savages set it on fire and burn up all we got.”
Amaia and Charbou glanced at one another.
A big smile broke across the hotel owner’s face. “But I’m such a fool! Here I am going on and on, while y’all must be exhausted. Let me take you upstairs.” She picked up a lit candle from the reception counter. “One little problem is you got to share the room. I don’t have another one.”
She accompanied them upstairs and showed them to the room. She lifted the candle high so they could see the inside. After sleeping at a shrimpers’ camp, in an abandoned house, and in the hallway at Charity Hospital, the room at the Dauphine was a dream of beautifully appointed tidiness. Looking back, Amaia was surprised to realize how quickly she had accepted and adapted to the misery of their circumstances over the past few days.
“Like I said, we ’bout out of food, so I can’t give you breakfast. They’s a candle and a little box of matches to relight it if you have to. But here’s something I think you gonna like.” She ushered them into the bathroom and held the candle overhead.
Amaia peeked over her shoulder and smiled as their hostess continued. “Before the hurricane got to us, Grace, my sister, had the good sense to fill all the bathtubs right to the top. Be careful with it, because it’s got to do for everything. Washing, drinking, you name it. It’s not warm, but you got clean towels.”
Peeling off the clothes she’d worn since Katrina’s arrival was like shedding an extra skin. Amaia placed the folded photograph she’d been carrying on the shelf alongside Jacob’s tiny orange dragon. She smiled and then inspected her nude body in the mirror. Her arms and neck were tanned. She rubbed her belly, grateful that Annabel’s antibiotics had purged her of the infection. A half-full bucket of water was enough to fill the stoppered sink. The cake of lilac soap delighted her with a fragrance she wouldn’t have even noticed in ordinary circumstances. Washing carefully, she discovered bruises and scrapes she hadn’t known she had. Another half bucket of water was enough to wash and rinse her hair. She didn’t dry herself because she wanted to preserve that delicious, cool cleanliness. It seemed an eternity since she’d felt this good. She put on clean panties and a T-shirt.
“Your turn!” she called and made way for Charbou.
He went into the bathroom and left the door slightly ajar, so flickering candlelight filtered into the bedroom.
She lay stretched out on the bed with the window wide open, listening to Charbou slosh water in the tub and sink. She had a vision of him sniffing the soap just as she’d done. A warm breeze came through the window, carrying the echo of a faraway saxophone. She smiled, delighted that someone in all this darkness was still making music. She got up and leaned on the windowsill to listen. Two kinds of folks never leave New Orleans: musicians and ghosts.
She turned her head and saw Charbou reflected in the mirror. His body was bare, shining wet, and redolent of lilac soap. He was as gorgeous as a classical statue. He met her gaze through the reflection. Amaia grasped the bottom of her T-shirt and pulled it over