The Last Dance

by Nan Ryan

  She didn’t want to know the future.

  She was afraid to learn what might happen to her.

  Lucy started to turn away.

  The door slowly opened and the mountainous Lady Strange stood framed in the opening, smiling. Lucy blinked at the obese woman who was grandly garbed in a loose, long, flowing robe of shimmering cream brocade, shot through threads of gold. Her thick, mahogany hair, which Lucy had only seen elaborately dressed atop her head, was brushed out straight, flowing around her shoulders and down her back to her waist. The dark, lustrous locks were held back off her plump, youthful-looking face with combs of gold studded with precious jewels.

  “Don’t leave, Lucy,” Lady Strange gently entreated. “Come in, please. I’ve waited for you. I’ve been looking forward to this visit.” Her blue eyes were warm and friendly. “All is ready.”

  Nodding nervously, wondering how Lady Strange had known she was coming—that she was standing outside the door—Lucy, half reluctantly, stepped inside.

  From the marble floored entry, the rotund, little woman led Lucy into a spacious drawing room. Lucy’s eyes widened as she glanced around at the elegant and comfortable room. Silken wall coverings of deep, rich, beige complimented the down-filled sofas of pristine white. Priceless antiques filled the large, lovely parlor where the centerpiece of the room was a gilt framed picture of a young, beautiful Lady Strange with Britain’s Queen Victoria.

  “The opening of the Crystal Palace,” Lady Strange commented, “It was quite a celebration.”

  Nodding, Lucy detected the faint aroma of freshly brewed tea.

  Lady Strange waddled toward an overstuffed easy chair that looked out of place in such lavish surroundings. It was somewhat wider than a normal chair and although it was upholstered in a handsome navy blue silk, the cushions were lumpy, loose threads abounded, and a couple of tears in the fabric looked as if it had been slashed with a razor sharp knife.

  Lucy soon saw the reason.

  “You get down this minute!” Lady Strange shook a short finger at the huge black Persian presently making himself at home on the soft, lumpy seat cushion of the oversized chair.

  Stretching, yawning, rolling over on his back and exposing his belly, Precious, who wore a gold collar studded with semi-precious jewels, clearly wanted to be petted. Demanded to be petted.

  Lady Strange affectionately stroked him, admitting to Lucy, “He’s a little spoiled, I suppose, but what’s the harm?” She smiled and said, “Watch this.”

  The one hundred-ninety-five pound Lady Strange turned about and backed up to the chair. She lifted the long shimmering skirts of her brocade robe with one hand, braced the other on a chair arm, and began laboriously lowering her great girth down into the chair.

  Precious hissed loudly, made a loud screeching sound, flipped over onto his belly, leapt up onto the chair back, and shot to the floor as if he’d been fired from a cannon.

  Lady Strange giggled with delight and said, “He’s smart enough to know it would be catastrophic if he failed to move quickly enough.” She exhaled heavily, settled herself in the chair, tried to put her dimpled knees together beneath the flowing brocade robe. And failed.

  She indicated the long white sofa across from her. “Sit there, Lucy.” Lucy sat. Lady Strange immediately asked, “Shall we see what your future holds?”

  A tight smile. “Yes, why not.”

  On a low table between them rested a porcelain teapot, one fragile teacup, and an empty bowl. No sugar, no lemon, no cream. This tea was not for drinking.

  Lady Strange instructed, “Pour tea into the cup, dear.”

  Lucy nodded, did as she was told. She noticed, as she poured, that the tea had not been strained. Tea leaves spilled from the spout with the hot dark liquid. The cup brim full, she set the teapot down and looked to Lady Strange.

  “Now,” said the fat fortune-teller, “wait a moment or two and very slowly pour the tea from the cup into the bowl.”

  Lucy nodded.

  When that was done, Lady Strange said, “Are there tea leaves clinging to the sides of the cup?”

  “Yes. Yes, the leaves are clumped together and…”

  “Hand the cup to me, please.”

  Lucy complied. Then she sat back down and waited while Lady Strange carefully studied the tea leaves sticking to the sides and bottom of the cup. Long minutes passed. A clock ticked loudly in the silence. Lady Strange said not a word; continued to stare unblinkingly at the tea leaves in the china cup.

  At last her round face lifted. Lady Strange looked directly at Lucy for a second, then back at the tealeaves. Finally she began to speak.

  She said in an unfamiliarly low, soft voice, “You came here to Atlantic City alone and you will leave alone.”

  Lucy nodded, shrugged slender shoulders. This was no news. She had never expected Blackie to go with her.

  “But,” Lady Strange continued, “when you leave this place, you will be very different. You will be a changed woman.” She paused dramatically for several seconds, then continued, speaking so softly Lucy straightened and leaned a little forward on the white sofa, straining to hear. “When you have been back home for several weeks you will learn of yet another change that occurred while you were here.” Her eyes slowly lifted, met Lucy’s. “And this change will forever alter your life.”

  “How? What do you mean? How will it change my life? Please,” Lucy pleaded, “tell me more.”

  Lady Strange shook her head, setting her unbound hair to dancing about her rounded, brocade draped shoulders.

  “No more.” She set the teacup on the side table near her dimpled elbow. “I can say no more.”

  Disappointed, Lucy sighed, started to rise.

  Lady Strange quickly lifted a plump hand to stop her. “Don’t go just yet.” Diamonds on her short, fat fingers flashing, her round cheeks dimpling deeply in a smile, she said, “I can tell you a great deal about Blackie.”

  Consumed with curiosity, Lucy’s well-arched eyebrows lifted. “You know a lot about Blackie?”

  “I do.” Lady Strange bobbed her head. “Will you promise never to repeat what I tell you?”

  “Oh, yes, I would never…I promise.”

  “Very well then.” She sat back, placed her hands on the chair’s armrests, and reached into the past.

  She began; “There was a time when Blackie LaDuke’s parents moved in the same social circles as Lord William Strange and I…”

  Lady Strange told the attentive Lucy that Blackie was sent away to boarding school at the tender age of seven. He rarely saw his mother or father, and he received very little demonstrated affection during his formative years. Lonely and rebellious, he was a little boy in trouble all the time.

  “The pattern continued when Blackie grew up,” confided Lady Strange. “Seeking attention, he got it the only way he know how; by causing mischief. You see, when he behaved nobody noticed him. No matter how hard he tried to please his distant parents, he was constantly told what a terrible disappointment he was, unlike his two older brothers.”

  Lucy listened silently, not daring to interrupt, longing to learn all she could about Blackie.

  “Since nothing Blackie did pleased his parents, he went out of his way to annoy them. As a young man he was sent home from Princeton. ‘Blotted his copybook’ as the British say. He was taken into the family real estate firm, but got into some sort of trouble and within months of joining the firm he found himself cast out and cut off from the sizable LaDuke fortune.”

  Lady Strange continued to tell Lucy about Blackie, her tone of voice and the expression in her eyes revealing the affection she had held for him since he was a child.

  “Blackie LaDuke is not without a heart,” she concluded at last, looking Lucy squarely in the eye, “but when he was a boy, his was such a tender, aching heart that I’m afraid he locked it safely away forever.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The long sunny days and sultry summer nights continued to pass swiftly by in a s
weet haze of contentment. Lucy and Blackie were together every waking minute. They took long strolls down the busy Boardwalk, or glided along the wooden walkway in one of the swan-necked wicker rolling chairs.

  They looked through the Boardwalk’s coin operated viewing telescopes pointing out to sea. They rode on the merry-go-round, and Blackie even persuaded Lucy to give the Ferris wheel another try. They went barefoot on the beach. They watched the sand artists create all manner of sculptures.

  They went to numerous band concerts. They roller-skated at the Seaview. They went to vaudeville shows and dances. They sampled pickles on the Heintz pier. They bought scads of one-cent view cards at Hubin’s Big Post Card store.

  Then never mailed a single one.

  They took long walks in the moonlight, holding hands, harmonizing on the their favorite popular songs. Blackie liked The Band Played On, while Lucy’s choice was After the Ball.

  From the bustling Boardwalk stalls, Blackie bought nonsensical trinkets for Lucy. Over her laughing objections, he bought her a pair of beaded leather moccasins which both knew would never be worn. He bought her a Kewpie doll. Some Swiss woodcarvings. Pearl shells with landscapes painted on them. A tinsel brooch. And a dozen other sentimental, totally useless little items.

  They stuffed themselves on deviled crabs and lemonade and soda pop and tutti-frutti and Fralinger’s Salt Water Taffy and Gage’s ice cream and Smith’s cream java coffee. They crammed as much living as possible into the fast fleeting days of the century’s last summer.

  They were good friends who laughed and had great fun together. But affectionate goodnight pecks on the cheek had swiftly changed to long, heated kisses on the lips, which now occurred in broad daylight as well as at night. Lucy’s slumbering passions had been awakened, and from the way she kissed him, looked at him, Blackie knew she was his for the taking.

  But as far as he had fallen, something—some imperishable last glimmer of his once better self—had survived. He cared for Lucy too much to take any pleasure in the knowledge and did not seduce her. Not that he didn’t want her. He did. He couldn’t remember when he had desired a woman more.

  But he knew Lucy Hart deserved more than a few meaningless nights of passion with a no-good guy like him. Lucy wasn’t like all the others. She wasn’t like any of the others. She was a fine, trusting woman of sterling character and high morals. She needed love and marriage while he wanted only sex and freedom.

  Sunset.

  August 30, 1899.

  It was hot and muggy on the Jersey Shore as that long lazy Wednesday came to its close. Blackie and Lucy had spent the entire afternoon at the beach. Even now with the sun going down, they lingered. Most of the bathers had long since gone inside. A few stragglers, like the two of them, were scattered up and down the long stretch of sand. Reluctant to leave.

  Unwilling to let go of the day.

  In and out of the water throughout the steamy afternoon, Lucy now waited for him on shore as Blackie took one last swim. Sighing, feeling incredibly peaceful and happy, Lucy sat on her heels on their spread blanket and watched Blackie. She picked up a towel and languidly dried her curly chestnut hair while her eyes continued to cling to the dark man slicing skillfully through the incoming, white-capped waves of the Atlantic.

  She loved to watch Blackie swim. He was an excellent swimmer, graceful and lithe and strong. And his physique, which was quite magnificent, was almost indecently exhibited in his snug fitting bathing costume of ebony knit. The shirt pulled taut across his wide chest. The knee-length trunks hugged his lean thighs like a second skin.

  The black knit suit revealed the masculine beauty of his body, a body more perfect than any she had ever seen.

  He was more beautifully formed than any of the muscular men who made up Atlantic City’s Beach Patrol. Lucy only wished she was half as finely built a woman as Blackie was a man.

  Her gaze momentarily shifted from Blackie.

  She looked down at herself and smiled recalling that first occasion—less than a week ago—when she had timidly come out of Jackson’s bathhouse in this new, never before worn, bathing costume. Fashioned of light-brown linen, it had tiny puff sleeves, a white sailor suit collar, and a daringly short skirt under which she wore the conventional long black stockings.

  The walk from the bathhouse to the water’s edge was excruciatingly long and she had felt like every person at the beach was staring at her, noticing all her imperfections, talking about how silly she looked. Anxiously she had rushed into the water to eagerly sink down in the depths and hide herself.

  But it was when she came out of the surf that she’d almost died of embarrassment.

  To her horror the new linen suit, once it had gotten wet, was plastered to her body, accentuating every curve and hollow of her slender form. She was mortified. She felt naked and ashamed. She wanted to bury herself in the sand.

  Now as Lucy’s eyes slowly lifted to once again target Blackie, she felt reasonably comfortable in her damp bathing costume. She had seen no aversion in Blackie’s dark eyes that first day when he’d closely examined her. Just the opposite. She had detected a spark of new interest in the depths of his beautiful black eyes when he looked at her. And he had assured her that she was stylish and pretty in the linen bathing suit. The way he had said it, the firm conviction in his deep baritone voice, had made her feel pretty.

  She felt pretty now. Confident. Attractive. Feminine.

  And it was splendid.

  At this late hour there were no lifeguards on duty. There was no one within fifty yards of Lucy. No one would be coming close. Except Blackie. Shaking her damp, curly hair about, she dropped the towel and rose to her feet.

  And in an act that was decidedly daring for an old maid postmistress from Colonias, New York, she calmly peeled off her soggy, black stockings, brazenly exposing her long, pale legs. She had noticed several young women do so in the past few days. Some of the pluckier ones had abandoned the stockings all together; appearing bare legged on the beach in broad daylight.

  Feeling bold and liberated and naughty all at the same time, Lucy rolled the damp, black stockings into a ball and carelessly dropped them to the blanket. She laughed into the rising ocean breezes, inhaled deeply of the heavy salt air, and saw Blackie swimming back to shore.

  Back to her.

  Suddenly weak-kneed, Lucy sagged down to the blanket, knelt there for a second, then sat back on her bare heels and waited expectantly, her heart beating fast beneath the damp beige fabric clinging to her bosom.

  Blackie emerged from the pounding surf like some sensual god of the sea. He came running toward her, the last rays of the dying sun striking him full in the face. Awed, Lucy watched him approach. Black hair, black eyes, black suit; all were wet and gleaming in the late lilac dusk. He raced across the sand with the grace and agility of an athlete, power and beauty in motion.

  With a shout he skidded to a sand flinging stop directly before Lucy, lifted his tanned hands, and pushed his thick wet hair straight back off his handsome, smiling face. Lucy raised a towel up toward him.

  Before he took it, Blackie’s hands went to the sides of his black knit shirt. He yanked the tail of the soggy garment free of his swim trunks and shoved it up his chest. And in a purely masculine gesture, he reached up behind him, grabbed hold of the wet, bunched-up shirt, pulled it impatiently over his head and off, tossing it carelessly aside.

  Shocked, Lucy worriedly looked around and warned, “Blackie, you know it’s against the law to be bare chested on this beach!”

  He grinned impishly. “After sunset we make our own laws.”

  He took the offered towel and haphazardly dried himself. Then he dropped to his knees, sat down flat on the blanket, and turned about so that he was facing away from Lucy. Then he quickly scooted up close and leaned back against her, taking her by surprise.

  Her breasts were flattened against the wet, smooth flesh of his back and Lucy felt her nipples instantly harden and tingle from the contact. Her breat
h short, she laid a loving hand on his glistening shoulder and bent her head forward a little. His thick, wet hair ruffling against her chin, Blackie sighed and made himself comfortable, wiggling, stretching his long legs out before him, crossing one bare ankle over the other.

  Smiling, loving this new kind of closeness, Lucy allowed her hand to slip over his shoulder and inch down across his chest. Her palm opening against the hard muscle and bone, she dipped the tips of her fingers into the crisp wet hair covering his broad chest.

  She closed her eyes and sighed.

  Blackie sighed too.

  And he reached for her free hand, drew it down under his arm and around his ribs, guiding it to his water-beaded stomach.

  Lucy’s eyes came open and she winced at such unfamiliar intimacy; automatically she started to move her hand. But Blackie’s lean fingers captured hers, kept her hand where it was, pressed against his wet, washboard stomach. He turned his dark head outward, kissed the inside of her pale arm, and said, “God, your skin’s so soft and fair.”

  “Mmmm,” she murmured, staring, entranced as he was at their arms folded together over his taut middle. His was so dark and muscular. Hers so slim and white. “I’m so light,” she mused aloud, “and you’re so dark.”

  “Know why?” he asked, coolly maneuvering her spread hand a little lower down on his drum tight belly.

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s gospel, but it’s always been whispered that Granny was raped by a wild Apache chief when she took a trip out west as a young woman. All the LaDuke men have black hair, dark skin, and high cheekbones. I suppose these distinguishing features are the result of our Indian blood.”

  “Blackie LaDuke,” she was highly skeptical, “are you lying to me?”

  Blackie laughed, tapped his fingertips against his open lips and give a war whoop. Lucy pinched him.