“We gave it our best shot,” he said quietly. “But we missed it. I’ll lose more money today than either of you, and—”
“That’s shit,” said Billy. “You guys take a free ride on our money, and keep the override too.”
“I don’t get carried,” Waters said, his palms tingling with potential violence. “I keep the major interest in every well. If it’s a duster, I take it right in the wallet. So if you guys don’t want to do anything but whine about what you lost, your partner needs to un-ass that chair and you go back to the car and drown your sorrows in scotch.”
Billy looked like he wanted to knife Waters in the gut. Cole was staring at his partner as if he’d just watched a transformation of supernatural proportions. Rather than retaliate against Waters, Billy grabbed Cole’s arm and growled, “This ain’t over, Smith. Bet your ass on that. Now get out there and drive us back to town!”
Billy stomped down the steps of the truck, followed by his stone-faced companion, but Cole stayed behind.
“Been a long time since I seen you do something like that, Rock,” he said. “I enjoyed it, but … Well, no use talking now.”
Waters looked curiously at his old friend, but there was no time to delve into the morass of Cole’s private life. He held out his hand, and Cole shook it with the iron grip he’d always had.
“We’ll hit the next one,” Waters said with confidence. “That’s how it always goes, isn’t it?”
Cole tried to smile, but the effect was more like a grimace. And though he hadn’t spoken, Waters was almost sure he’d heard a thought passing through Cole’s mind: I hope there is a next one …
“I gotta drive those assholes back,” Cole said softly. “What a ride that’ll be.”
“You’ve handled worse.”
Cole seemed to weigh this idea in his mind. Then he laughed darkly, shook hands with the engineer, and climbed down the steps into the night. Waters picked up the log and reread the tale of his failure.
“Those guys really bugged me,” said the engineer, speaking at last.
“Me too, Pete.” Waters sensed that the Schlumberger man wanted to say more. He looked up and waited.
“I think Cole was scared when he left,” Pete said, sounding genuinely concerned.
“Fear is an emotion Cole Smith never had to deal with,” Waters said with a forced smile.
Pete looked relieved.
But as Waters looked back at the log, he thought, I think he was scared too. After a few minutes, he got up and went to the door, then looked back and gave his final order.
“Rig down.”
By the time Waters saw Eve Sumner again, he had nearly convinced himself that the strangeness of their initial encounter had been a distortion of his imagination. Their second meeting was as unexpected as the first, the occasion a party for a duke and duchess of the Mardi Gras krewe to which Waters and Lily belonged. Like New Orleans, Natchez had celebrated Fat Tuesday in the nineteenth century, and the tradition had been revived in the second half of the twentieth. Mardi Gras parties were not of a scale comparable to those of Natchez’s greatest tradition, the Spring Pilgrimage, but they compensated for this by being less staid and generally more fun. Waters and Lily attended only two or three a year, and this accounted for Waters not knowing Eve Sumner was a member.
The party was held at Dunleith, the premier mansion of the city. If any single building personified the antebellum South as it existed in the minds of Yankees, Dunleith did. Standing majestically on forty landscaped acres and flanked by outbuildings styled after Gothic castles, this colossal Greek Revival mansion took away the breath of travelers who’d circled the globe to study architecture. At night its massive white columns were lit by fluorescent beams, and as Waters and Lily pulled up the private driveway in Lily’s Acura, he saw a line of cars awaiting valets at the broad front steps.
“I hear Mike’s done a fantastic job of restoration,” Lily said, referring to Dunleith’s new owner, a co-owner in Waters’s largest oil field. “He’s adding on to the B and B in back. I can’t wait to see it.”
Waters nodded but said nothing. The days following a dry hole were always long ones, filled with useless paperwork, regretful phone calls to investors, and consoling visits from colleagues. This time he felt more subdued than usual, but his partner had become almost manic in his desire to put together a new deal. That morning, Cole had pressed Waters to show him whatever prospects he was working on, claiming he was in the mood to sell some interest. “Can’t let people think we’re down,” he said in his promoter’s voice, but his eyes held something other than enthusiasm.
A valet knocked lightly on the Acura’s window. Waters opened his door, got out, and went around for Lily. She wore a knee-length black dress that flattered her figure, but she carried a glittering gold handbag he had always thought gaudy. He had mentioned it once, but she kept carrying the bag, so he dropped the issue. He didn’t know much about fashion, only what he liked.
“There’s … what’s his name?” said Lily. “That actor who bought Devereux.”
Waters glanced up at a gray-haired man on the front gallery. The man looked familiar, but Waters couldn’t place him. Natchez always collected a few celebrities. They arrived and departed in approximate five-year cycles, it seemed to Waters, and he never paid much attention. “I don’t remember,” he said. As he turned away, he saw a form-fitting red cocktail dress and a gleaming mane of dark hair float through the massive front door of the mansion. A spark of recognition went through him, but when he tried to focus, all he saw clearly was a well-turned ankle as it vanished through the door. Still, he was almost sure he had just seen Eve Sumner.
When Lily paused on the gallery to speak to the wife of a local physician, Waters was surprised by his impatience to enter the house. When she finally broke away, and they passed into the wide central hallway, he saw no sign of the woman in the red dress.
Tonight’s party was larger than most Mardi Gras court affairs. About forty couples milled through the rooms on the ground floor, with more in the large courtyard in back. Two bars had been set up on the rear gallery, and a long wine table bookended by six-liter imperials of Silver Oak waited at the back of the courtyard. A black Dixieland band played exuberant jazz a few yards from the wine table, their brass instruments shining under the gaslights. Waters recognized every guest he saw. Many he had known since he was a boy, although quite a few new people had moved to town in the past few years, despite its flagging economy.
He left Lily engrossed in conversation with a tennis friend and got himself a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. He and Lily had an understanding about parties: they mingled separately, but every ten or fifteen minutes they would contrive to bump into each other, in case one was ready to make a quick exit. Waters was usually the first to make this request.
Tonight he spoke to everyone who greeted him, and he stopped to discuss the Jackson Point well with a couple of local oilmen. But though he eventually moved through every room of the house, he saw no sign of the tight red dress. Seeing Lily trapped with a talkative garden club matron, he delivered her a Chardonnay to ease the pain. He was making his way back to the bar to refresh his gin and tonic when his eyes swept up to the rear gallery and froze.
Eve Sumner stood twenty feet away, looking down at him over a man’s shoulder, her eyes burning with hypnotic intensity. She must be tall, he thought, or else wearing very high heels for her face to be visible over her companion’s shoulder. The man was talking