Free Bay of Souls by Robert Stone Page A

good."
    "Married."
    "So?" Ambushed, she flubbed and fluttered. "That's nothing to me, I assure you."
    "I knew that," Norman said. "I assure you." He made her endure his leer. "Gee," he said, "you're actually blushing."
    "To ask about a colleague..."
    "Sure, sure," Norman said. "When I say he's married I'm not kidding. He's ruled by a strong woman. His life is circumscribed. Really," Norman said, "she's good for him. He's a lucky man." He looked thoughtful. "She truly is a great woman. Damned attractive too."
    Lara shrugged to express her conditional acceptance of the possibility. He was plainly Kristin's admirer, which did not necessarily make him her friend.
    "You know," Norman said, "they're giving a party next week. They're supposed to anyway—it's their turn to buy the booze. Not that Kristin wants to. But this time I think she has to play hostess."
    "Going?"
    He nodded without looking at her. Nearby, the Lions Club was having lunch. A little banner was in the middle of the table. It reminded her, absurdly, of the island. And it reminded her also that St. Trinity was a place as alien to her—more alien—than the forest around them now. In her St. Trin, Lions Clubs were significant. A former president had once drowned most of the membership off a principal tourist beach.
    "If one of Kristin's compulsory parties is your idea of a good time," Norman said, "you can go as my date."
    She thought about it for a moment. How amusing it would be. "Dear Norman," she said. "I should be delighted."
    As it turned out, things were really not so bad. A woman named Arabella sang and played Schubert on the household piano, whereupon her husband recited Sonnet 128: "How oft when thou, my music, music play'st..."A sad, red-faced man named Mahoney drank alone. A young couple in exile from Manhattan talked to Norman about American policy in the Caribbean. Lara waited for the part about how George Bush the First had planned to sabotage the Panama Canal Treaty, but that had been dropped from the routine.
    In Lara's eyes, Michael shone. He was drily funny and rather quiet, though he drank almost as much as the roseate Mahoney. His drinking surprised her. It was also being observed with disapproval by Kristin Ahearn.
    She was tall and slim, with jet-black hair flecked with gray and eyes of a dramatic shade, the color of faded blue flannel. Her lips were pale, thin and unadorned. Big-boned was a suitable term for her; her bones were everywhere in evidence, like the yoke of collarbone that swelled beneath the ivory skin of her décolletage above the low-cut academic-gypsy velvet blouse. Her long lissome lower quarters were sheathed by a beige skirt in the same
volkisch
style: suede, wide-belted, tight at the hips, flaring around the knees and high enough to show her tough laced boots. A lofty, steel-eyed bitch, and she did not think much of the company, Lara included.
    One thing was puzzling. Her social energy that night was concentrated on the nervous overseeing of her handsome husband. From that accusatory focus, all that seemed to distract her was the close presence of Norman Cevic. When he was near, it seemed to Lara, this tower of ivory was prey to little tremors and fidgets. A hand to the midnight-black hair, a cocking of the pelvis that shifted her contrapuntal stance. Even a little wiggle. And although it was probably Lara's imagining, it seemed to her that as Kristin leaned into Norman's space to hang upon his words, she could just possibly be angling a few soft inches of substantial, velvet braless bod where he might find them.
    Did she know she was doing it? How much did she know? Lara had discovered a beautiful young boy hiding near the back stairs to spy on the party. His mother's long face and inky hair, his father's long-lashed eyes.
Un mignon,
their boy.
    An elderly professor sang "The Watch on the Rhine" in German. Lara spotted Michael on his own, making drinks in the kitchen. She went over to him.
    "You shouldn't drink so much,"