Iron Lace Read Online Free Page B

right down to work and had no time to stand on ceremony. He carried a tape recorder, and held it up as he entered, as if in question.
    “Yes,” she said. “I think that’s a good idea.”
    He seemed surprised that she hadn’t put up a fight. “I’m glad. It will make things easier for me. But I’ll still be taking notes.”
    “You can plug it in over here.”
    He crossed the room and began to set up the recorder. “I’ll give you the tapes when I’m all finished.”
    That wouldn’t be necessary, but she wasn’t going to explain that now. “I’ve asked Lily to bring us a pot of coffee and a plate of her calas. Have you had them before?”
    He was bent over the electrical outlet. “Don’t think so.”
    “They’re rice cakes. When I was a little girl they were sold in the Vieux Carré by women in bright tignons who carried them in woven willow baskets that they balanced on their heads. Sometimes I would shop at the French Market with our cook, and if I was particularly good, she would buy me one as a treat.”
    “It sounds like a real piece of old New Orleans.”
    “A piece I’m not really allowed to eat anymore, but sometimes Lily indulges me.”
    “Do you do that often?”
    “What?”
    “Break the rules that were made to protect you?”
    She laughed. “As often as I can. At my age, there’s very little to protect.” When he straightened and looked at her, she added, “May I call you Phillip? It seems easier. And I’d like you to call me Aurore. Almost no one does anymore. Most of my close friends are already dead, and the next generation is so afraid I’ll be offended without a title.”
    He didn’t answer, he just smiled, as if she had asked the impossible and he was too polite to say so.
    “Have you thought about how you’d like to start?” he asked.
    She had thought of little else. She still wasn’t sure. “Perhapswe can ease into it. Do you have questions you’d like to ask? Background? That sort of thing?”
    “I’m a man with a million questions.”
    “Good. I’ll try to be the woman with an answer or two.”
    Lily, dark-skinned, white-haired, and too thin to look as if she enjoyed her own cooking, arrived with a platter of golden brown calas dusted liberally with confectioner’s sugar. She set them on the table and returned in a moment with a coffee service featuring a tall enameled pot, which she set on the table. “One,” she told Aurore firmly. “And one cup of coffee. I’ll be counting.” She left with a swish of her white nylon uniform.
    “She means it,” Aurore said.
    “Who hired who?”
    “It’s a draw. We suit each other. I don’t listen to her, and she doesn’t listen to me.”
    “Sort of like Mammy in Gone with the Wind. ”
    “Nothing like it. She does her job well, and I pay her well. We have nothing but respect for each other.”
    “And at the end of the day, she probably goes home to a street without a white face on it.”
    “If that’s true, I suspect it’s a tremendous relief, after taking care of me all day.”
    He settled himself across the table from her. She poured him coffee. The stream wavered in rhythm to the tremor of her hands. “How do you take it?”
    “Black.”
    She smiled. “Segregation at the breakfast table, as well as everywhere else. I take mine white.”
    His smile was a reluctant ray of sunshine. “So, what do I know about you already?”
    “Have a cala.” She passed him a plate and a napkin, and edged the platter in his direction.
    He helped himself. “I suspect you have something to prove here. That as your life winds to a close, you want to make a statement about who you were. And the statement is as important as your life story.”
    “And the statement is?”
    “That you were different from others of your class. That for this time and this place, you were a liberal. Am I correct?”
    “Absolutely not.”
    He worked on the cala, watching her as he did. “All right. What do I really know? Facts, not