Butterfly (14 page)

dreams are kept, where fantasies come to life.”

“Is that why it’s called Butterfly?”

“I don’t know why it’s called Butterfly.”

“Who are the people who run it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, Trudie,” Jessica said, slowly shaking her head. “It just sounds too dangerous.”

“And going home with a stranger from Peppy’s on a Saturday night isn’t?”

“I don’t do that. I have John.”

“No.
John
has
you.
There’s a difference.”

Jessica looked at her watch and reached for the check.

But Trudie got it first, saying, “This one’s on me. Jess, I just want you to think about

it, okay? If I were to turn your name in tomorrow, it would still be a couple of weeks

before you’d have your butterfly bracelet.”

“No,” Jessica said as she slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and pushed her

chair back. “It’s just not for me, True. You’re single. That’s different.”

They walked to the door together and paused to put on their jackets. It was getting

dark out now and cold. Rush hour had brought the traffic in the street to a standstill.

“One last thing,” Trudie said after they embraced and were about to go their separate

ways. “Butterfly has all kinds of rooms upstairs, not just private dining rooms. There are

bedrooms, elaborate bathrooms—” She turned her coat collar up to her cheeks. “And a

Western bar, complete with sawdust on the floor and Kenny Rogers on the jukebox.” She

looked at Jessica and smiled. “Just think about it, that’s all I ask.”

It was all Jessica could think about. Butterfly. And so she arrived at home in such a dis-

tracted frame of mind that she did not hear her husband call to her from the den. He

came out into the hall and removed his reading glasses. “Honey? Are you okay?”

She turned around. “What? Oh, yes.”

He came toward her, his arms open. “It must be cold out. Your face is bright red.”

Jessica liked it when John hugged her this way, warm and hard at the same time. The

house smelled good; the housekeeper was preparing dinner. Jessica decided to put that

silly Butterfly nonsense from her mind.

“How was your visit with Trudie?” he asked as they walked arm in arm into the den.

“It was fine. Just girl talk.” Jessica detached herself from him and picked up the mail.

The first envelope contained an invitation to a fund-raising party that was being held at

Beverly Highland’s house.

Jessica and John had been there before; Beverly Highland was always putting on func-

tions to raise money for various charities or to bring people’s attention to an important

issue.

This particular fund-raiser was for the TV evangelist who wanted to run for president.

“I think we should go to it, Jess,” John said when he saw what she was reading. “The

Reverend’s a good man. I would like to see him in the White House.”

BUTTERFLY

57

“Yes,” she said absently as she heard John sit down and turn on the television. She was

staring down at the invitation but not really looking at it. Beverly Highland was known

for her strict morals and fight for public decency. What, Jessica wondered, would she do

if she found out about the secret operation above Fanelli?

Butterfly…

Where you can act out your dreams.

“It’s expensive,” Trudie had said. “But you can afford it, Jess. It costs about the same as

joining an exclusive country club. Very classy, very discreet. You wear your bracelet in the

store and that’s how the special attendants spot you. You look the models over, decide

which one you would like to be with, write him down on a piece of paper and anything

special you might want—like wearing a crinoline or being wooed by Don Juan—and

they’ll come and get you when it’s all ready.”

Jessica shook her head and started to go through the rest of the mail when she heard a

newscaster on the television mention her name.

She turned around in time to see herself on the courtroom steps, surrounded by

reporters and spectators, boasting about her victory against Les Walker. By a curious trick

of the camera lens, Jessica actually looked tall. And one could see by her face that she was

high on victory. A stranger would look at her and declare that Jessica Franklin was the

very personification of self-assurance and self-confidence. And then a photograph was

flashed on the screen. Mickey Shannon kissing his attorney in the courtroom.

“Tonight,” the newscaster was saying, “Ms. Franklin is no doubt the envy of the mil-

lions of teenage girls who have made Mickey Shannon this year’s rock superstar—”

The TV was clicked into silence and John stood abruptly, throwing down the remote

control. He turned and looked at Jessica. She felt herself go cold. “I can’t believe you

allowed that to happen,” he said. “It is demeaning to both yourself and me.”

“John, I—”

He strode from the room.

Jessica went after him. “Wait. I couldn’t help it. Mickey took me by surprise. We were

just so pleased to have the court find in our favor—”

He turned and faced her. “I did not approve of your taking Shannon on as a client in

the first place. Against my strongest objections, Jessica, you continued to represent him.

You have exhibited a surprising lack of sound judgment.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Mickey.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, look at him. He’s a punk rocker, Jessica. And no doubt a drug

user.”

Mickey doesn’t use drugs,
she protested silently.
He even does antidrug commercials on TV.

“If you think this is going to generate business for you and Fred, Jessica, then you are

sadly mistaken. All it will do is bring unsavory types into your office, making you look

even more ludicrous than you already do.”

“Everyone is entitled to legal representation,” she said.

“Not by my wife, they aren’t. This whole issue has deeply distressed me, Jessica. If you

don’t mind, I’d rather have dinner alone tonight.”

As he started to turn away she caught his arm. “John! Please don’t be like this.”

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Kathryn Harvey

“How else do you expect me to be, when I come home to
that.”
He pointed to the

doorway of the den. “I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning, Jessica, and I

shall have the specter of my wife’s fiasco hanging over me.”

She tried to think of something to say, something to convince him that there was

nothing wrong in what happened in the courtroom that morning, that he was all wrong

about Mickey Shannon, about the kind of law she practiced. But Jessica couldn’t make

her voice work. Out of frustration, tears rose in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I

hadn’t meant for it to get out of hand. You’re right, I should have had better judgment in

this case. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.”

He gazed at her for a moment longer, then the rigidity went out of his body. “There’s

my girl,” he said. “Hey, I’ve been gone a week. Let’s not fight, okay?”

She felt a wash of relief, and she laughed.

John put his arms around her and drew her into the comfort of his embrace. “What a

silly bit of nonsense anyway,” he said as he held her. “Seven years ago Mickey Shannon

would have given anything to have his picture taken, and now he goes around smashing

photographers’ cameras. Arrogant little bastard.”

But everyone in the Industry knows what a bastard
Les Walker
is!
Jessica wanted to say.

How would you like to have someone hound you day and night and shoot a flash in your face

every time you turned around?

“I tell you what,” John said, lifting her face up to kiss her. “Why don’t we put dinner

on hold for a while and go up to the bedroom?”

It was the way their fights always ended, in bed, with John putting the whole incident

behind them—having sex was his way of letting her know he had forgiven her—and

Jessica lying in the darkness with a feeling that nothing had been resolved, that the prob-

lem still remained. And so, as she usually did at these times, Jessica solaced herself with

the comfort of her fantasy: the nameless cowboy in the bar.

And as she walked across that phantom sawdust-covered floor and approached her

smiling dream lover, a frightening new thought sprang into her mind:
It no longer has to

remain just a fantasy…

8

San Antonio, Texas: 1952

“You see?” said Carmelita, holding the paper up for Rachel to look at. “This is how

you make eight eights equal a thousand. It’s real simple. When you write the numbers

down like this, they don’t mean nothin’. But when you write them
this
way”—she pointed

with her short chewed-down pencil—“five eights in this column, then two, then one—

they add up to one thousand.”

Rachel stared at the piece of paper, torn out of a cheap dime-store pad, and smiled

weakly.

“Aw, you poor thing,” Carmelita said, laying aside her pencil and paper and putting an

arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry. He’ll be here this time. I just
know

it. Like, I had this dream last night?”

But Rachel stepped out from under the girl’s arm and went to the window. It was so

grimy she could barely see out. Just enough to make out the cars in the street below.

Looking for Danny’s Ford to come driving up…

She had done this four Tuesdays in a row. It had been that long since Danny had left

her in Hazel’s house.

“Why doesn’t he come, Carmelita? Why doesn’t he even phone? It’s like he’s forgotten

me!”

The Mexican girl regarded her roommate with sorrowful eyes. In the month that they

had shared a room, the two had become close friends. For one thing, they were the two

youngest in the house, Carmelita having just turned fifteen, and for another both lived in

the hope of being taken away by the men they loved.
She
hadn’t seen Manuel in four

months. But she knew he hadn’t forgotten her and that he was still in San Antonio. He

picked up her pay from Hazel, regularly.

“I don’ know,
amiga.
They get busy, men, you know? They got things they gotta do.

Hey, maybe he came by an’ you were with a customer. Hey? Rachel?”

The girl continued to stare forlornly out the window. She was too thin. If Hazel had

complained of skinniness four weeks ago, now the child looked as if she might soon dis-

appear. Not that it hurt business, however. Rachel had discovered that some men liked

girls this way. The scrawny arms and legs and the knobby knees made her look far

younger than fourteen. Which was why Hazel insisted Rachel wear her hair in two long

braids, and forbade lipstick.

If he doesn’t come to see me today,
she decided,
I’ll kill myself.

59

60

Kathryn Harvey

“Watch,” Carmelita said as she picked up the dime-store tablet and opened it to a

fresh piece of paper. “This one will really amaze you!”

Rachel stared down at the pad as her friend’s brown hand sketched more numbers on

the page. She knew what Carmelita was trying to do—distract her and get her mind off

Danny. Rachel knew that Carmelita understood the pain she was suffering; it was a pain

they shared. In a world that seemed to have no use for them, the two discarded girls found

ways of comforting themselves and each other.

For Carmelita, Rachel had discovered to her surprise that first day a month ago, it was

numbers.

Rachel had come down to the kitchen that first morning and found Carmelita sitting at

the table with several of the girls, in kimonos or just their underwear, standing around her.

Rachel had joined them to see what her new roommate was doing, and she had been

amazed, like the rest of them, to see Carmelita do magic tricks with numbers. “I guess I was

born with it, you know?” Carmelita had explained to Rachel later over hotcakes and

molasses. “My
tía,
my aunt that I lived with, said I played with numbers when other little

girls played with dolls. It’s something that’s in my head, you unnerstand? I see them inside

my mind, the numbers. I
feel
them. Like, I dunno, but I know numbers and what they do.”

“You should see her add a column of numbers?” said one of the other girls, talking the