In the taxi, on the way back to our hotel, Sophie argued with me: about whether I would marry a minor (I wouldn’t, but she wasn’t anymore), about my giving her father so much of the estate income (I had), about whether she could accompany me on the consecration pilgrimage Baron Samedi had laid on me (I couldn’t stop her), and, if she did, whether she might travel by freight train, riding the box cars the way we used to do.
She seemed astonished. “You’re more fun when we disagree!” she said in a voice of discovery.
“I’m glad you think so. I find it fatiguing.”
Immediately she was quiet. “I don’t want to be a bore.”
I lifted her hand from her lap. “I have missed contending with you, this past month.”
“Did you really?” Her eyes were huge. “You must never leave me again, Veek. You are very, very lucky I didn’t take the first plane back to finishing school, that night when you vanished.”
Would she really have left me? I swallowed. “So your father warned me.”
She gave a shout of laughter. “Has Papa been advising you how to control me? And he such an expert!”
“Don’t go back to school, Sophie,” I begged her. The night streets of Chicago flashed by the taxi windows.
She looked long at me. “Do you mean, don’t give up on you? I never did.”
“Then don’t threaten it. It—it makes my heart shrivel inside me.”
“I’ll make you a bargain,” she said, leaning toward me so that her young breasts bulged up out of her torn black lace.
My heart thumped. Henri had warned me about her bargains. “What?”
“You promise you will never disappear without telling me where you are going. If not before, then within a day.”
“And what do I get?”
“Then I will wait for you to come back, always.”
Henri had said, too, that she would never tell me what the bargain was. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had never asked her, or listened to her.
I reflected. “That doesn’t seem fair to you. You are bound to ‘always,’ while I only have to worry about the first twenty-four hours.”
She shook her head. “It’s not fair to you, because, whatever makes you disappear, it must be very urgent, and sometimes you may not have a choice. Even then, you must find a way to get me a message in so short a time, or risk losing me.”
I had to concede her point.
“Besides,” she said buoyantly, “Yoni is going to teach me to summon you when I need you. Only it will be better if I do not interrupt your business. So you will always tell me, yes?”
“Yes.” I bowed my head. “You have a very practical mind.”
“And you’re a dreamer. I love that about you.”
“Let’s go inside,” she said, as the taxi halted and she got out. “Wait, this isn’t the Four Seasons.”
I paid the taxi, and handed over her shoes, which she had discarded on the floor. “I thought we might try spending the night several miles away from your father.”
She smiled.
We went inside.
The Ambassador West was an older hotel, like the Hilton, full of old world elegances. The lobby was a cathedral, the elevator a gold-and-enamel jewel box, and the room I had chosen reminded me a little of home, with its crown moldings and subdued brocade draperies. I had ordered a pastry tray and some champagne and blackberries.
“So you knew I would find you at the wedding!” Sophie crowed. “You see? You already trust in me.”
“I knew you’d find me.” I turned to her. She looked as happy as I had ever seen her. She had no business trusting in me. It was her youth, her belief in her own immortality, like all young girls, that led her to promise too much, hope too much, trust too much, risk too much.
She was already dropping her purse inside the door, throwing her shoes over the bed, and biting a petit four in half. “Are your clothes off yet?”
“Sophie?”
“What?” she mumbled, wriggling out of her black dress.
Words died on my lips. I hadn’t turned on the lamps. Moonlight fell through the open drapes and lit her pale little womanly body, and the sight struck me dumb. I shook my head and tore off my own clothes.