East is East

Ruth gave him a serene smile. Turco and Abercorn. They were incompetents, clowns, and they had about as much chance of catching Hiro as Laurel and Hardy might have had. They would be one more diversion for her, one more wedge to drive between the colony and Jane Shine, one more vehicle on which Ruth could hitch a ride. They’d poke around for a few days and find nothing. Not a trace. And each night, while Sax was engaged elsewhere, she’d bat her eyes at Abercorn, the poor idiot, and console him and sympathize with him and stick her finger in her cheek and offer all sorts of helpful suggestions. Had he looked in Clara Kleinschmidt’s closet? The sheriff’s henhouse?

“You’re right,” she said finally, “I’m sure it will.” And then, as she floated away from him and started up the stairs, she paused a moment to glance over her shoulder. “Good hunting,” she said, and it was real struggle to keep a straight face, “—isn’t that what they say?”

Yes, she could feel it, things were looking up.

And then, suddenly and without warning, everything came crashing down again.

It was the night after Abercorn and Turco’s arrival, a night that followed a day on which the artists of Thanatopsis House barely advanced their various projects. They were restive, preoccupied, unable to focus or concentrate. An easterly breeze had held steady throughout the day and the whole island seemed newly created from the sea; breakfast had been giddy, lunch forever in coming, and cocktails—people wandered in early for cocktails. There was excitement in the air, the scent of possibility and romance, the sort of incorrigible hopefulness that accrues to the prospect of a good party.

The party—organized by Owen for the dual purpose of paying homage to Septima on her seventy-second birthday and bidding adieu to Peter Anserine, who was going back to Amherst to lecture for the fall term—would feature a Savannah caterer, a dance band and an open bar. Invitations had gone out to the haut monde of Savannah and Sea Island and to members of the immediate community, as well as to each of the colonists, and Sheriff Peagler and his brother Wellie—the island’s unofficial mayor—were expected to attend, along with a spate of lawyers, gallery owners, art collectors and blue-nosed widows from Tupelo Shores Estates and Darien. A photographer was coming down from Savannah to cover the event for the Star’s society page. And the Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, a onetime resident, was expected to phone. For Thanatopsis, it was the event of the year.

Ruth had been saving an outfit for the occasion, a calf-length black chiffon dress with a lace ruffle at the hip, and a pair of new black pumps. It was a little heavy for the season, maybe—she’d been planning to wear it in the fall—but it was late August, the breeze had cooled things down and she really didn’t have anything else—and it was

a Geoffrey Beene, though she’d gotten it for a song. She’d spent the afternoon quizzing Hiro on Japan—Was it true that steak cost thirty dollars a pound? did he feel awkward using a fork? did they really pay people to squeeze you onto the train?—and then she left him early. “I’ll be back in the morning,” she said. “Lie low. I’ll bring you some treats from the party.” And to his inevitable question, she replied: “Soon.”

She took a long soak, spent half an hour on her nails. Sax and Sandy were planning to wear tuxedos—the rest would make do with skinny ties and polyester. There would be champagne—good champagne, Bollinger and Perrier-Jouët. Caviar. Lobster. Oysters from Brittany. Ruth groomed herself as if she were preparing for battle, lingering over each detail, seeking the sort of perfection that would make her impervious, invincible—and all the while she was aware that on the other side of the wall, Jane Shine was doing the same. Twice Saxby came for her and twice she turned him away. She moussed her hair, brushed on hiliter and blusher, did her eyes. When Sax knocked the third time, she told him to go on ahead without her—she’d be ready when she was ready.

The party was an hour and a half old when Ruth made her entrance. She crossed the lawn to the strains of the band playing some sort of Brazilian music—a samba or a bossa nova or something—and the crash of excited voices rose up to engulf her. The tent they’d erected over the dance floor was pitched high and it was open on all sides to the breeze, and as she came up the walk, Ruth could see constellations of Japanese lanterns slowly revolving around the big aluminum stanchions that supported it. She stepped through a bower entwined with cut roses and a black man in black tie and white gloves offered her a glass of champagne from a tray bristling with them. Tara, she thought. The Old South. It was like something out of Gone With the Wind.

In the next moment, she saw how wrong she was.