Free The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert Page B

I said. “Why would they want to get rid of it?”
    â€œThey didn’t know what else to do with it.”
    â€œIsn’t it enough just to preserve it?”
    M. Guinee shrugged. “For who?”
    I thought of my mother’s stories about the long-lost island she would never get to see. For her, I wanted to say. And for everyone else who needed to believe that in this world such a place was still possible.
    I do not know what I expected in Mme Freeman. I had encountered few white people in my life, only the occasional reporter and a few ambassadors and visiting dignitaries at the Marcuses’ parties, interactions largely limited to the refreshing of drinks. In my experience, white men were always distant, regarding me—when they regarded me at all—with annoyed distraction. Their wives, on the contrary, tended to be anything but distant. Undernourished and overpainted, they clung to their husbands’ sides, twitching at every sudden sound and movement with the precautionary terror of rabbits. They would rarely hand over their wraps and purses when they arrived. Dinner became an excruciating ordeal, watching the women struggle to operate fork and knife without simultaneously spilling their belongings from their laps. Even before dessert was served, one inevitably saw them whispering into their husbands’ ears that it was time to go.
    M. Guinee found Mme Freeman in the club room, and as soon as we entered the room she rose from her seat with a smile.
    Mme Freeman was a slight woman in what I guessed to be her late forties. Her hair was blond, but it appeared to be in the early stages of turning something else, brown or gray or silver. It swept across her head in a bold, purposeful wave, curling at the bottom so that it cupped her pearl-studded ears. She wore a cream-colored skirt and a matching jacket, trimmed with black and closed with brass buttons.
    â€œI’m very pleased to meet you,” she said, stretching out her hand to greet me. Her perfume bore the faint, sweet trace of heliotrope and peach blossoms, but there were darker undertones, too, of something I could not quite identify.
    I do not recall what I said in return, or if I said anything at all. I was distracted just then by the realization that the table she had chosen, in the corner of the club room, was the very same table Senator Marcus and the minister of health had favored after their Wednesday tennis matches. It was more than just a coincidence, I decided; it was a sign, and it immediately caused me to wonder what on earth I was doing here. Was I really considering leaving Senator Marcus? If I had any conscience at all, I told myself, I would thank Mme Freeman for her kindness and then excuse myself and never again would I think of treating Senator Marcus so unjustly.
    â€œI’ve been looking forward to this,” Mme Freeman said, and before I could apologize and explain my own change of heart, she had pressed me into a chair. A waiter appeared at my elbow with a drink, which he set down in front of me with a disapproving frown he intended for only me to see. I wished M. Guinee would take a seat as well, but he continued to stand beside the table, concerned, no doubt, about being seen socializing with a guest.
    Mme Freeman had kind eyes, their lids lightly dusted a rosy peach, and the way they looked into mine, I could see she felt no discomfort. This to me seemed both odd and inappropriate, for there was nothing normal about our meeting like this. I could feel—and in some cases see—the reporters crammed into the surrounding tables watching Mme Freeman and M. Guinee and me. M. Guinee’s Erdrich jacket made it clear who he was. But who was I? As on the day they had seen me here with Senator Marcus, the reporters must have assumed I was someone significant—someone, perhaps, with inside information concerning the “constitutional crisis” they had come to cover. Perhaps they thought