"Thank you," I replied.

"Can I give my soon-to-be stepdaughters a New Year's Eve kiss now?" Bruce asked.

"Sure," Gisselle said. He leaned over and kissed her quickly on the cheek. She had closed her eyes, expecting a kiss on the lips. He approached me, smiling, and put his hands on my shoulders.

"You are as beautiful as always," he said softly, and then leaned in to kiss me. I turned just in time to direct him from my lips to my cheek. He stared at me for a moment and then laughed.

"Happy new year, girls," he cried, then joined Daphne to leave for their gala affair.

"Good riddance," Gisselle muttered. "Let's have a drink alone before the others arrive," she said and wheeled herself to our bar. "What do you want, rum and coke?" She started to get up to make them.

"I'll pour my own drinks, thank you," I said, recalling how Gisselle tried to get me drunk before.

"Good. Make mine too then," she said, sitting down again. I did so and handed it to her. "Well, dear Sister, here's to a happier year than the one we just had. May it be filled with fun, fun, fun."

"For everyone we love," I added. She shrugged.

"Sure, for everyone we love." We drank and, a moment later, heard the doorbell.

"Here we go," Gisselle cried, wheeling herself toward the doorway. She was keeping herself in the wheelchair just so she could make her standing and walking look that much more dramatic later.

All of Gisselle's guests arrived a little early. Word about the party's prospects had spread quickly. By the time Beau appeared, everyone was there, and most of them had had more than one drink. The music was blaring, and some of the food had already been eaten.

"You're even more beautiful than I imagined you would be," Beau told me when I greeted him at the door. We kissed and then entered the party. Everyone was talking loudly; some had already had more to drink than they could tolerate and were acting silly.

"Looks like one of Gisselle's typical parties," Beau cried over the noise. We danced, ate something, and had our drinks along with everyone else.

At ten o'clock, as she had planned, Gisselle had the music turned down and announced her intention to dance for the first time since the accident. John stood by her as she pretended to struggle out of the chair. She fell into his arms, regained her composure, and took what she wanted everyone to think were her first dance steps. The party guests clapped and whistled as Gisselle and John moved over the dance floor. Not long afterward, Gisselle told one of the girls to turn the lights low and the real partying began. Everyone paired off.

"I don't care where you go in the house," Gisselle announced, "as long as it doesn't look like you've been there. The upstairs is off-limits, of course."

"Let's get away from all this," Beau said. When no one was looking, we slipped out. He paused, wondering where we should go. I pulled him forward and we scampered up the stairs and into my room.

"I don't want to spend my New Year's Eve with them anyway," I told Beau. "They're like strangers to me now."

"Me too," he said. We kissed and then both of us gazed at my bed. I sat down and Beau sat beside me.

"I can put on my radio," I said. I got up quickly and turned the dial, searching for a good station. I don't know why I was suddenly so nervous, but I was. My fingers trembled around the knob and I felt a tingling in my stomach. It was almost as if Beau and I were on our first date. I finally settled on a station that was broadcasting from the grand ballroom of one of the downtown hotels. We could hear the excitement of the people dancing as well as the music. The announcer came on to tell everyone how close we were to midnight.

"Why is New Year's Eve so special?" 1 asked.

Beau thought a moment.

"I suppose it gives people a chance to hope for better things." He laughed. "I used to have this toy, a magic slate. You wrote or drew on it and then, just by pulling up the plastic cover, everything you did disappeared and you could start new. Maybe everyone feels that on New Year's Eve: They can pull up the magic sheet and rewrite their lives."

"I wish I could. But I wish I could go back much further back than just one year."

He nodded, his eyes soft and sympathetic.

"Well-to-do young people like Gisselle and myself, like all those downstairs drinking too much, couldn't even begin to understand how hard your life has been, Ruby." He reached up and took my hand, his eyes still fixed on me. "You're like a wildflower. The rest of us have been cared for, nourished, given the best of everything, while you've had to struggle. But you know what, Ruby? The struggle has given you more strength and more beauty. Just like that wildflower, you've blossomed high and above the ordinary, the weeds. You're special. I always knew you were, right from the first moment I set eyes on you."

"Oh Beau, that's so sweet."

He pulled me toward him and I let myself fall against him, our lips meeting, his hands around my shoulders. Then, gently, gracefully, he turned himself and me so that we were side by side on my bed. He kissed my hair, my forehead, my eyes, the tip of my nose, before pressing his lips to mine again. When our tongues touched, I felt myself soften everywhere.

"You smell so good," he whispered. "I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a garden."

He dropped his hands below my shoulders and found the zipper on my dress. As he lowered it and the garment became loose around my bosom, I moaned and let my head fall back to the pillow. He brought his lips to my chin and then moved over my throat and down into the valley between my breasts.

"Beau, we're not being careful," I whispered, but I held him to me as if I wanted to disagree with myself and contradict everything I knew was right.

"I know," he said. "We will," he promised, but he started to slip my dress over my shoulders and down my arms. I let the bodice fall to my waist. Beau sat back and peeled off his sports jacket, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt while I stared up at him, his face now illuminated by the moonlight that came pouring through my window. He looked ghostlike, part of a dream, my wildest fantasy personified. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until I felt him over me, his shirt stripped off. He toyed with my bra until he had it unfastened and then his lips were against my naked breasts, kissing each of them softly, until I pulled him away and put my lips to his.

His hands were under my dress, groping for my panties. I should have stopped him then, but instead I let him slip my panties off, and then I heard him moan and whisper my name as he brought his hard manliness to me.

"Beau," I cried weakly.

"It's good, Ruby. It's beautiful. It's meant to be. Otherwise we wouldn't love each other as much as we do."

I didn't resist. I let him enter me and touch me even more deeply than he had touched me before. I rose and fell, imagining myself in a pirogue near the ocean where the water would ripple with waves. Each time I was lifted, I felt myself become lighter. I thought I would eventually float off like a balloon.

I don't know how many times Beau cried my name. I can't remember what I was saying, but this time our lovemaking was so intense, it brought tears to my eyes. For a few moments it was as though we had melted into each other. We were that hot. I embraced him so tightly, one would have thought I was afraid of being thrown out of my bed.

We reached our climaxes simultaneously, ravishing each other with kisses, moving our lips over one another's faces like two people starving for affection, for the touch of another human being, hungry for love. We smothered our cries against one another's neck and shoulders and wound ourselves down with deep gasps, our hearts pounding against one another's, both of us so surprised at our passion we could only laugh.

"Feel this," Beau said, placing my palm over his heart. "And you feel mine."

We lay beside each other, our heartbeats tapping against our hands, the rhythms traveling down our arms and back into our own hearts.

We lay side by side, silent for a long while. Then Beau sat up and leaned over me, gazing down at me.

"You're wonderful," he said. "I love you. I can't say it enough."

"Do you, Beau? And will you love me forever and ever?"

"I can't see why not or how I could stop," he said, and kissed me softly.

On the radio, the announcer, in a very excited voice, began a countdown. "Ten, nine, eight . . ."

Beau took my hand and we recited the rest of the numbers together.

"Five, four, three, two, one—HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

"Auld Lang Syne" began to play on the radio.

"Happy New Year, Ruby."

"Happy New Year, Beau."

We kissed again and held each other, and for a moment it did seem like nothing in this world was strong enough to tear us apart. I hadn't felt this happy and this contented for a long time. It was a good feeling. I had hungered for it more than I had realized.

We got dressed, fixed our hair, and straightened ourselves up so that we looked almost as prim and neat as we had at the beginning of the evening. Then we left to go downstairs to see what Gisselle and her friends were up to.

I wish we hadn't. It looked like two boys had rushed down the corridor to get to a bathroom and hadn't made it. They were vomiting and spitting over the same area, alternating their moaning with stupid laughter. The house reeked from the sickeningly sweet stench of wine and whiskey.

All of the party decorations had been pulled down in a mad frenzy at the midnight hour. Balloons had been popped and lay everywhere. The living room was a mess. What's more, it looked like—and we later found out this was so—there had been a food fight. Drinks had been spilled on the floor; there was cake and pieces of po'boy sandwiches on the furniture, mustard and mayonnaise smeared on the walls and over the tables; there was even some of it smeared on the windows.

Some of the party guests were sprawled on the floor, wrapped in each other's arms, laughing and giggling stupidly. Others, feeling their overindulgence, sat with their eyes closed, their hands on their stomachs. Two boys were still at the bar, challenging each other with drinks. Naturally, the music had been turned up until it was nearly deafening.

"Where's Gisselle?" I screamed. Some gazed at me indifferently. Antoinette broke out of the arms of the boy who was sleeping on her shoulder and walked over to us.

"Your sister left the party about an hour ago with John."

"Left the party? Where did they go?"

Antoinette shrugged.

"Did she leave the house?"

"I don't think so," Antoinette said, and laughed. "She wasn't feeling any pain. Oh. Happy New Year, Beau," she said, leaning over to kiss him.

"Happy New Year," he replied, kissing her quickly on the cheek. She backed up, disappointed, and returned to her drunken partner.

"She didn't go up to her room," I told Beau. "We would have heard her for sure. Daphne is going to be furious when she comes in and sees this. We'd better find Gisselle and have her order these people to clean up and leave."

"Doesn't look too promising," Beau said, gazing around. "But let's see if we can find her."

We went through most of the downstairs area, found a couple entwined in Daphne's office and shooed them out, but we didn't locate Gisselle. I ran upstairs to check the other bedrooms and came down to report no one there. We went through the kitchen and even looked down by Edgar's and Nina's rooms.

"Maybe she went out to the cabana," Beau suggested. We checked but found no one there or around the pool. "Where could she be? She must have left the house," Beau reasoned.

"There's only one place we haven't checked, Beau."

"Where?"

I took his hand and led him back into the house. We stepped over a boy sprawled across the hallway floor asleep and went down to my studio. As we approached the door, I heard Gisselle's giggling. I looked at Beau and thrust the door open. For a moment, neither of us believed what we were seeing.

John was naked on the sofa and Gisselle, dressed only in her bra and panties, was painting him. She had smeared red and green paint over his shoulders and chest and made long streaks of yellow down his legs, but at this moment she was dabbing black over his private parts. John was obviously too drunk to care. He laughed with her.

"Gisselle!" I screamed. "What are you doing?"

She turned and swayed for a moment as she tried to focus on us.