Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

Finally, Marsilius had dragged him to an AA meeting. Dave never even knew his uncle drank, let alone had a problem, but evidently it was a Creasy family affliction. Marsilius had been lucky enough to get some help early on or else he would have been right there in the gutter alongside Dave, he’d said.

With his uncle’s support, Dave had been sober for eight months now, and before his last lapse, he’d had two years of sobriety. Most days lately he felt stronger and steadier than he had in a long time, but tonight, with the scent of magnolias heavy in the air and the echo of a trumpet drifting on the breeze, he knew he was heading into rough waters.

The temperature dropped in the early evening and the French doors in the ballroom at the Hotel Monteleone were thrown open to allow the crowd to spill out into the courtyard. The well-heeled throng that had assembled to help reelect the Orleans Parish district attorney was an incestuous mix of New Orleans royalty, old-time politicos and a greedy new breed of power brokers that had swarmed into the city after the flood.

A zydeco band played from a dais at one end of the ballroom as white-coated waiters moved through the glittering crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’ oeuvres. It was a semiformal event. Most of the men wore suits and ties, but some were more casual, and Dave blended in well enough in the sports coat and pants he’d brought to change into.

The party was not his kind of thing, but some of the faces looked familiar. He’d lived in New Orleans for most of his life and he recognized the local politicians and some of the old-guard movers and shakers that had been brokering backroom deals for decades. Louisiana politics was serious business, always had been, and the passion cut across all social and economic boundaries. Dave could remember the way his old man would lay out drunk for weeks at a time, but come election day, he always managed to sober up long enough to drag his ass to the polls. He’d cast his ballot for the incumbent because, like so many other Louisianans, he didn’t much cotton to change.

The mood of the crowd tonight was clearly jubilant. With the band playing a rousing rendition of “Poor Man’s Two-Step” and a banner overhead proclaiming Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler, no one seemed particularly concerned about past corruption or the tenuous future of a city that could very well be poised on the brink of another disaster. Tonight was a time to celebrate. A new star from one of the oldest political families in New Orleans was on the rise, and the crowd had come to bask in the glow of his charisma. Lee Elliot was the complete package—charming, handsome, and with enough money backing him that he didn’t have to grovel for handouts. The contributions just kept pouring in.

What Dave couldn’t figure out was where Angelette fit into the picture. He couldn’t see a man with Elliot’s aspirations getting seriously involved with a woman who had the kind of baggage Angelette did. Her mother had died when Angelette was ten, and she’d been raised by an aunt who made her living as a prostitute. Dave always wondered if that’s why Angelette had such a cavalier attitude about accepting payoffs and bribes. You did somebody a favor, you got a little something under the table in return. It was the American way, she always said. Or at least, it was the way things were done in New Orleans.

Dave searched the room for her now. He’d been watching the crowd for nearly an hour and hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her dark hair. One more pass around the room and then he’d head for home, he decided.

As he turned to leave, the crowd shifted and Dave’s breath stalled in his chest. For a moment, the room went completely still, and the thought crossed his mind that he might be having some sort of hallucination—the kind he used to get as he lay semiconscious on the bathroom floor, when he thought from time to time that he could hear his now-dead mother calling him in to supper. Or when he’d wake up with the shakes in the middle of the night, his body covered in sweat and the need for alcohol like a raging fever in his bloodstream, and he’d see Ruby’s face floating over his bed. Would even think her teardrops were falling onto his cheeks, before he realized they were his own….

Dave knew only too well what a terrible longing could conjure. But this was no vision. It was her. It was Claire.

The passage of time and ravages of grief had taken a toll. Not that she wasn’t still beautiful. No woman in the room could hold a candle to her as far as Dave was concerned, but Ruby’s disappearance had etched a permanent sadness in features that had once radiated a quiet joy. The strength and dignity that he’d always admired were still there, though, in the set of her shoulders, in the way she held her head. She came from a modest background; they both did. But Claire had always had more class and grace than any woman he’d ever known.

She wore a simple black dress with her grandmother’s pearl brooch pinned to the left shoulder, and her hair was long and gleaming, falling about her shoulders just the way he’d always loved it. She’d cut it after Ruby came along because she hadn’t wanted to fuss with it, and now Dave wondered if she’d grown it back out for her husband. Her second husband.

Dave braced himself, waiting for the moment when Alex Girard would appear at her elbow. Angelette had told him last Wednesday that Claire and Alex were divorcing, but considering the source, Dave didn’t know whether to believe it or not. He tried to convince himself he didn’t care one way or the other, but the thought of her with another man had always killed him.

There had always been something special about Claire. Everyone she met felt it, from the little old ladies who came over to quilt with her grandmother, to the kid who cut the neighbors’ grass in the sweltering heat, and the grocer whose day was always made when Claire stopped in. Everyone loved her, the young and the old. She was one of those people who made you want to be near her, if only for a moment.

Dave remembered how, when they were driving home from a party once, he’d put his arm around her, pulled her up against him. “You know what everyone says about us, don’t you? How’d a nice girl like Claire Doucett end up with a raging asshole like Dave Creasy?”

Claire had laughed and snuggled closer. “They don’t see your sweet side like I do.”

“I’ve got a sweet side? And here I thought I was a real Louisiana badass.”

“You just think you are,” she said, running her hand lightly across the top of his thigh.

As soon as they got home, they’d undressed and slipped into bed without talking. Dave could still see her like that, eyes drowsy, blond hair spilling across the pillow. She’d lifted her hand to his face, whispered how much she loved him, and the weight of his love for her had come crashing down on him. That was all it was. Just a touch, a whisper, a moment in time that slipped away unnoticed until it came back years later to haunt him on hot, sleepless nights.

Dave turned away and walked over to the bar. He ordered a Coke with bourbon and carried it out to the courtyard to a quiet corner where he could fade into the shadows. The crowd was smaller out here, and people tended to speak in hushed tones, as if afraid their voices might carry on the night air. The banana and palm trees rustled in the breeze and the scent from the gardenias floating in the fountain was heady and sweet.

Dave held the glass in his hand for the longest time. When he moved, the tinkle of ice against crystal was a little like the distant toll of a bell.

He wasn’t going to drink it. He knew that. Not that he wasn’t above chucking an eight-month stretch of abstinence, but it wasn’t going to be tonight. Maybe he just needed to prove to himself that he was still in control, that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion he would lapse back to his old ways after seeing Claire. Or that he would readily give up his sobriety the way he had thrown away every other good thing in his life.