He was beginning to feel like a fool for coming. There were thousands of people crowding the streets, and he could have walked right by Belinda and never seen her. He pushed on anyway, glad he had when another Indian tribe, this time in gold and green, came around a corner. He watched the crowd surge around them.

A small contingent of men dressed as skeletons loped by, shaking bones at pa.s.sing children. An old woman gathered up a wailing child and turned him so that he couldn't see, while three small boys, shaking sticks, took off after the skeletons. The children brushed past him, and one stumbled at Phillip's feet. Phillip lifted him off the ground, and the boy was off like a shot again.

"What'd you do to Percy?"

Phillip turned around to find a little girl glaring at him.

She slapped her hands on her hips. "I said what'd you do?"

The child was familiar, but it took Phillip a moment to place her. "He tripped over my foot. I just helped him up. You're Amy, aren't you? I'm Phillip, Belinda's friend."

The glare faded slowly.

"Hi, Amy." He put out his hand.

She took it with poise, then released it.

"Amy, have you seen Miss Belinda? I'm looking for her."

Amy shrugged. "Ain't seen her."

"Oh."

"She live over there now." Amy pointed to the block just past the one where they stood.

"Do you know which house?"

She shook back her braids. "'Course I do."

He tried again. "Will you tell me which one?"

"White one on the corner."

"Thanks. Maybe I'll find her there."

Amy took off after Percy, and Phillip took off after Belinda. He wound his way through family groups and friends. He interrupted a game of catch and skirted a large group of men playing cards. A vendor tried to sell him peanuts while two older boys in raggedy devil costumes jabbed forked spears at him. As he stepped into the road, an old lady in a flour-sack ap.r.o.n offered him the drumstick off a chicken she was expertly carving up.

The music got louder the closer he got to Belinda's. Someone had hooked up a hi-fi in an upstairs window, and rhythm and blues poured out of large speakers. In front of the house four particularly pretty teenaged girls with arms around each other's waists were dancing in step, moving back and forth along an invisible line, like Radio City Rockettes.

The house, white stucco and well cared for, sprawled over every allowable inch of s.p.a.ce on the lot. He estimated it had six bedrooms, at least, and a porch large enough to sleep a dozen. Right now the porch held a party in progress, but Belinda wasn't among the partiers.

On the porch he stopped a young woman and shouted Belinda's name questioningly, but she frowned and shook her head. The second woman he asked cupped her hand behind her ear to hear him better, but he wasn't sure she ever did. He made his way into the house, where the din was muted, and found two men in their early thirties loading up plates from a dining room table groaning with food. Three women carrying ca.s.seroles appeared and disappeared, leaving their bounty behind.

"Get you a plate," a broad-shouldered man in a madras shirt and Bermuda shorts said.

"I'm just here to find Belinda Beauclaire. Somebody told me she's living here now?"

"She is."

"Do you know where she is right now?"

"She's off seeing Zulu." The man seemed absolutely sure. As much as Phillip wanted the information, he would have been happier if the man was a little less sure of himself. And of Belinda.

"Do you have any idea how I might find her?"

"It's hard to tell where Zulu will be about now. Why don't you just eat and wait? She'll come back when she gets tired."

"I think I'll go look for her. I'll come back here later if I don't find her."

"Want me to tell her who was here?" The man gave Phillip the once-over with narrowing eyes. He didn't look as friendly as he had at the beginning of the conversation.

"That's okay. I'll be back."

"Try Jackson Avenue," the other man said. He waved a bottle of beer in the general direction.

Out on the street again, Phillip wound his way toward Jackson. He was halfway there, skirting a rugged-looking crowd of pirates, when he saw Belinda. She was coming toward him across the street on the neutral ground, dressed in stark white. A tight white skirt cupped her perfect bottom, and a gauzy blouse flowed over the curves of her torso. A white satin mask with two gracefully drooping feathers covered the top half of her face.

"Belinda!" There was nothing much in the way of traffic to dodge. He avoided pedestrians and made his way into the madness again.

She stopped and stood very still.

He lifted her mask and searched her eyes. She had never looked more beautiful or desirable to him. He wanted to kiss her, but one look told him what a bad idea that would be. She was a woman capable of great emotion, a woman who could melt with pa.s.sion and ignite a man in the process. But the Belinda staring back at him was a woman who had hidden her feelings well.

"I've had a h.e.l.l of a time finding you," he said.

"No one asked you to look."

"I wanted to." A crowd of shoving adolescents knocked him closer to her. He took her arm to steady them both. She didn't shake him off, but she looked as if she wanted to. "I was just at your new place. Why did you move?"

"I moved in with a friend."

He pictured the man in the madras shirt and the narrowing eyes. "Why didn't you tell me where you were?"

"How would I have done that?"

"You could have left a message with Nicky."

"Could have." She nodded.

"Why didn't you?"

She pulled her arm from his grasp and started across the street. He stopped her. "No, you don't. Don't go off like that. I want to talk this through, right here and now."

"You made your wishes known, Phillip. You always do. I didn't see any reason to leave you messages." She shook off his hand once more, and this time she made it across.

"Belinda." He took her arm gently this time. "We need to talk. Will you talk to me?"

"I've got nothing to say. I've got a new life now, and you've got the life you always had. The one you want."

"What do you mean, a new life?" When she didn't answer, he made his worst fears a guess. "I met a man at your house who seemed to know you pretty well. Is he part of that new life?"

Before she could answer, a woman came up beside them. "Belinda?"

For a moment, Phillip didn't recognize her, then he realized it was Debby, the teacher he'd met at Club Valentine on the last night he and Belinda were together. She wore a dress of leopard spots and a black half mask that turned her pert face into something feline and mysterious.

"What are you doing here, Phillip?" she asked.

"Just looking for Belinda." He dropped Belinda's arm. "And I guess I found what I was looking for."

"How'd you find her? She just moved in with us."

"Us?"

"Us. Vicki and me and my family."

"Vicki?"

"My baby. You haven't seen her yet? My brother's bringing her up to see Zulu. Jackson's on a float, but the parade's late. I'm going to see if I can find them." With a wave, she crossed the street and headed in the direction of her house.

"It's Debby you moved in with?"

Belinda didn't confirm or deny it.

Phillip had a list of questions a mile long, and he knew she wasn't going to answer them. He had hurt her, and she wasn't going to let herself be hurt again. He didn't understand why or how, not exactly, but she had left him as surely as she had left the house she loved.

"Belinda." He touched her cheek. Her expression didn't change. He dropped his hand. "Let's go see Zulu. Maybe we can talk along the way."

"I'm going home."

"May I walk with you?"

She started toward the house, and he fell in step beside her. He had just blocks to tell her what he was feeling, and he couldn't find the first word. In the midst of the biggest party he'd ever witnessed, he was dead sober, and mute besides.

He cast around for something to say. "I didn't know Debby had a daughter. How old is she?"

"Three."

"Is Jackson the father?"

"Plans to be."

"He's a good man." He reached down and took her hand. She didn't resist, but her hand was limp and unwelcoming. "You loved your house and your privacy, Belinda. I can't imagine you living in that house with all those people. They're not your family."

"They're good people."

"I'm sure they are. I just want to understand what's happening here."

"Why does it matter?"

He stopped and pulled her to a halt beside him. "It matters because you matter to me."

She studied his face. Clearly she didn't think his answer was enough. "I wanted to save money."

"If things were that tight you should have let me know."

"Why?" She started back down the sidewalk.

He tried to understand her responses. She wasn't hostile or disinterested, although with a different inflection, most of her answers might have sounded that way. Instead, she seemed merely intent on getting through this conversation, focused so completely on what she was saying that there was no room for emotion in her voice.

They came to a corner, and he heard a familiar chanting. "Come on this way." He pulled her off Claiborne and toward the sound.

"I have to get back."

"Come with me, Belinda. I've already seen two of the tribes this morning, and I'd like to see this one."

"What would you know about the Indians?"

"I don't know about them. I've just seen them for the first time today."

"Why are you interested?"

He detected skepticism. "I don't know." He honestly didn't. He was a journalist, not a sociologist, and he knew there wasn't a tremendous market for articles on the cultural life of black people.

"Do you think it's silly?"

"Silly? No." He pulled her along. The chanting was getting louder. "I think it's incredible. I don't understand it. Why do they dress that way?"

"They've been doing it for a long time. This is our Mardi Gras you're seeing. Not the white Mardi Gras everyone knows about. Indians and black people have a lot in common. The Indians hid slaves after they escaped, hid them in the swamps and protected them, because they knew what it was like to be hunted. Some people think that's how the Mardi Gras tribes began, as a mark of respect. But it doesn't even matter. Because this is us. This is who we are. This is that culture you don't understand and don't want to be a part of."

"You're angry at me."

"No."

"That night at the club, when I said this wasn't my home, I wasn't saying that I didn't want you."

She faced him and pulled her hand from his. Her eyes were unwavering. "You don't want me, Phillip. You want what you thought we had. You want me to be there waiting when you need a place to come back to for a while."

"I have to travel. I have to be where the news is. In fact, I've got to leave for Alabama the day after tomorrow, so I wanted to settle things with you before I left."

"This isn't about your job, and you know it."

"Then what is it about?"

"It's about being part of something. And you don't know how to do that. Maybe you never will."

"I thought you and I were part of something together." But even as he said the words, he realized it was the first time he'd ever said any like them.

She shook her head. "You stand off by yourself, and you watch. That's what you'll do in Alabama, too, whatever happens there. First time something starts to tug at you, you get on a bus or a plane. You do that too many times, you stop feeling anything. I think maybe that's already happened."