Fat Tuesday(104)

"Why in hell would you want to go back?" he asked, angry in his own right."He's got you locked into a relationship that's goddamn medieval.

I didn't know such a thing existed in the free world. Why in God's name do you stay with the son of a bitch?"

"Don't you think I've tried to leave?" she cried."I did. Once. I saved enough money to buy a bus ticket that's right, Mr. Basile. I don't have any money of my own. I get an allowance. Spending money.

I can afford to buy oranges in the market, but not much more than that.

"It took me months to scrape together enough to buy that ticket, and I did so by stealing money from Pinkie's wallet a few dollars at a time so he wouldn't notice. My bodyguard at the time was a man named Lute Duskie. I slipped away from him inside Maison Blanche.

"I got all the way to Galveston, Texas, where I got a job watering plants in a nursery. I found an inexpensive boarding house that rented rooms by the week. I took long walks on the beach, relishing my freedom and making plans on how I would send for Flarra and we'd start a new life. I was on my own for four whole days.

"On the fifth day, I glanced up to see Pinkie walking toward me down the aisle of the greenhouse where I was watering flats of begonias.

I'll never forget the expression on his face. He was smiling. He congratulated me on my cleverness. It wasn't often that someone put something over on him, he said. I should feel very proud of myself.

"Naturally, I was flabbergasted. I expected him to be furious.

Instead, he said if I no longer wished to be married to him, he had no intention of holding me. If I'd only asked, he would have let me go with no hard feelings. If I wanted my freedom, I could have it."

"There was a catch."

"Yes. There was a catch," she said, her voice hoarse with emotion.

"He asked me to walk back to the car with him. I only had to look beyond the tinted windows in the backseat of the limousine to know the price I must pay for my freedom. Flarra.

"He'd brought her with him. She was about the age I was when my mother's johns began to notice me. I was free to go my own way, Pinkie said, but Flarra would remain with him." Finding his eyes with hers, she said, "You talk of choices, Mr. Basile. Tell me, what choice did I have?"

He expelled an expletive."She would replace you."

"That's the best I could hope for her."

"The best?"

"From the day Pinkie became my guardian, he coddled me because, in his mind, he loves me. He has no such feeling for Flarra. He's generous and kind to her. But his kindness is extended only to pacify me and has nothing to do with an emotional attachment to her.

"Pinkie knows I love my sister more than anything in the world. If I ever left him, he would use her to punish me. And I'm afraid that for getting myself kidnapped, that's what he'll do.

"Oh, one more thing. On our return trip home from Galveston, we stopped for something to eat. Pinkie took Flarra inside the cafe, but asked that I remain behind and lend a hand to Errol, Lute Duskie's replacement.

What Errol did was take several heavy plastic bags from the trunk of the limo and throw them into a Dumpster behind the restaurant I never saw or heard of Mr. Duskie again." She paused and looked at him insistently. "I think, Mr. Basile, that the best you can hope for is to die quickly."

This was a night for firsts. She began to cry. Throughout the ordeal, if she hadn't shed a single tear. He'd seen tears well up in her eyes, but she'd never actually wept.

He almost touched her, caught himself just in time, and withdrew his hand. But then he saw tears leaking from the outside corners of her eyes and rolling down her temples into her hairline. He moved his hand nearer, until his knuckles barely touched the side of her face and brushed the tears away. She didn't recoil, so he wiped the tears from the other side of her face as well.

"I can't let Flarra be damaged on my account" she said in an urgent whisper."I love her. From the day she was born I've loved her and tried to protect her. She's all that is mine on this earth. Even my baby was taken from me."

Burke suddenly understood that, when he'd seen her in the gazebo, what he'd mistaken for a display of her sensuality had actually been an expression of unbearable loss. She repeated the gesture now, splaying her left hand over her lower abdomen.

Reacting impulsively, not stopping to think about it first, he covered her hand with his. Stunned by the intimacy, she stopped crying instantly. Burke was rather astonished himself. He stared at their stacked hands to confirm that what he was feeling was real.

A stillness settled over them. Each was aware of the other's suspended breath, of heartbeats, chaotic but oddly in sync, of spreading heat beneath their skin, of the pressure of his hand covering hers.

He raised his head and looked at her. The darkness was split by their searching gazes, eager to connect.

"Did you love your wife?"

Her whisper was so faint, he could barely hear it above his pounding heart."Barbara?"

"Did you love her?"

Barbara had made more of an impact on him than any woman he'd met up to that point. She had excited and stimulated him. He had felt better when with her than without. But through courtship and years of togetherness, all the times they'd had sex before and after marriage, through every bitter quarrel as well as the good times, he had never felt what he was feeling now. It was a total, complete, saturating, all-encompassing passion for another human being.