“Now then,” Clara says, when the last of the room service dinner is cleared away and Evelyn’s bathed and put to bed. “Where shall we go tonight?”
“Go?”
“Yes. Go. Go out, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, because you can’t tell me you’re actually in mourning for my brother, God rest his villainous soul.”
“No, of course not. But—”
She wags a finger. “But nothing! Of course, the winter season’s long over, so there’s not nearly so much going on. But the casino will be open, and I know a dashing little place up the coast—”
“You must be joking. Who’s going to look after Evelyn?”
“Evelyn?” She looks to the connecting door.
“Yes. My daughter. We can’t just go running off like that and leave her alone.”
“But why not? She’s sleeping, isn’t she?” Clara’s delicate face is a picture of puzzlement. Brows all bent, lips all parted.
“She might wake up, and then what?”
“Can’t we just—well, lock the door?”
“If there’s a fire?”
“Oh, for God’s sake. There won’t be a fire. Even if there is, look at all this marvelous water! They’ll have it out in a flash.”
I laugh, a little weary, and sink onto the settee. “Clara. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can see you’re not a mother.”
“Well, if I were, I shouldn’t be so frightfully dull about it as you are. Children need to learn a little independence, don’t they?”
“She’s not yet three years old.”
“Well!” Clara sits, too, in a ripple of accordion-like pleats, atop the armchair before the desk. Or rather she perches, right on the edge, like a bird about to take flight, and I think again how unexpectedly young she looks, though she must be in her late thirties. I can’t remember exactly how old. Her skin is so fresh and unlined, her hair so dark, her brows so crisp. She doesn’t wear any cosmetics, except for a bit of lipstick, now smudged, as if she doesn’t know how to blot. Maybe it’s a cream she uses, or maybe it’s a trait she’s inherited from some fortunate ancestor. Maybe it’s her good spirits. I’ve heard good spirits make all the difference.
“Yes. Well.”
“What a nuisance. I suppose we’ll have to stay in, then. I don’t suppose your scruples will allow us to roam so far as the hotel restaurant?”
“No.”
“The tea garden?”
“Even worse. It’s outside.”
“The lobby?”
“Maybe for a minute or two, to collect messages or leave instructions.”
“My goodness. How reckless. Well, then.” She springs back to her feet and dusts off her hands. Her dress floats around her narrow little figure. “You leave me no choice.”
“You’re not going out alone, are you?”
“I might, if I were here by myself. In fact, I rather believe I would.” She pauses. Bites her lower lip. Gazes upon me with remorseful huge eyes. “Oh, rats! Look at you. I can’t lie. Very well. To be perfectly honest, I’ve already done so, on frequent occasion.”
“Here? In Miami Beach?” I glance out the nearby window at the yacht basin below, where perhaps a dozen golden-lit pleasure craft bob like apples in a barrel. Our suite occupies the seventh floor, at least a hundred and fifty feet from the nearest boat, and still I can hear the trails of mad, giddy laughter, the drunken song rising upward to drift through the crack in the window. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Of course it’s not wise. Goodness me, no. But you never have any fun if you’re wise. You never get the chance to live, and why did we go through all the trouble of surviving that awful war and everything else, if we don’t mean to live?”
How my throat fills with bitter words. I can taste them at the back of my mouth, flavored with experience. Because the opposite of wisdom is folly. Because when you’re foolish, you get hurt. When you abandon your good common sense for the sake of your impulses, you find yourself in trouble.
But Clara doesn’t wait for me to answer her question. Her face has gone aglow, like the lights strung along the decks of those yachts in the harbor below. As she turns for the door, she continues in her confident, modern voice. “But this time I’m here with you, dearest, and I’d never abandon a sister to an evening of stultifying boredom, just for the sake of my own amusement. No, no. As the saying goes, If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain . . .”
“What are you doing?”
Clara pauses before the door, tilting her chin in a martyred pose. “I’m off to collect a mountain for you, my darling. Or at least a bottle of champagne, which is just as difficult in this strange Puritanical teetotal nation of yours.”
Being Clara, she returns bearing not just champagne but dessert, pushed through the doorway on a mirrored serving trolley by a waiter who’s paid to ignore the distinctive round-bellied bottles dangling from each of Clara’s slender hands. “I couldn’t decide,” she says, setting down each one, “so I had him bring them all.”
I can’t tell her that I hate champagne, the taste and the smell and the zing of bubbles against my nose, which brings such painful memories rushing against my skull, I sometimes hold my breath on those rare occasions when champagne must be endured. Clara’s so triumphant, so full of joy at her successful mission—God only knows where she found these bottles, and what she had to do to obtain them for us—I just keep quiet. Wince at the shhh-pop of the first cork. Take my glass and sip as small as I can: a toothful of bubbling wine.
Clara drains half a pint or so and reaches for the strawberries. “That’s better. Now where were we?”
“We weren’t anywhere.”
“Do have one of these chocolates. The pastry chef makes them himself. One by one. I watched him once. Mesmerizing.”
I took a chocolate.
“And for heaven’s sake, drink your fizz. You’ve no idea what promises I made to obtain it. No, no. Not another miserable little sip. Properly. Like this.” She tipped back her head and finished off the glass and poured herself another.
“I can see you’re an expert.”
“You don’t need to be an expert to enjoy champagne.” She made a little leap and plopped herself on one of the beds. “How I do adore this hotel! We stayed here when we first came to Miami Beach, Samuel and I. That was March, after we’d been to identify poor Simon’s body. I couldn’t stand to stay in that dreary little town, so we came here to recover. Just like you! That’s why I thought of this place, when you said Miami.”
I lower myself to the edge of the other bed. “That wasn’t necessary.”