by Vanda Writer
She was about to swipe my plate out from under my fork when I grabbed her arm. “I’m not all that interested in food right now.”
“Oh?” She began to eat her own eggs at a feverish pace. “Al, things— things happen—there are reflexes—when one is, one is, in certain, certain conditions and . . . I can’t eat these.” She got up and tossed her eggs in the trash.
I stood and put an arm around her. “Jule. It’s okay.” She laid her head on my shoulder and I stroked her hair. “Shh, Jule, shh.”
“Oh, Al, what am I going to do?”
“We’ll figure something out. Together.”
Chapter Nineteen
I hurried toward Carnegie Studios. A messenger had arrived at the Haven on his bicycle with a note for me. He looked like Elvis Presley with his hair cut in that new style they were calling a DA. DA stands for duck’s ass, so I’m not sure why anyone would want their hair cut like that, except—I was kinda getting to like it myself, and even started picturing how it would look on me, which of course was one of my more ridiculous thoughts. Women couldn’t wear their hair that way. But I had seen a couple of women in the street with hair like that, the obvious gay girls. But I couldn’t walk around looking like that and expect to keep my job. Max thought kids like my messenger just needed a haircut.
My young messenger almost missed me. I was carrying out a large bag of laundry on my shoulders, some of it from my time in the mountains with Juliana earlier in the week. I always brought my laundry to the Haven so in between things, I could stop off at the self-service laundromat. I was never home long enough to do it there. Once the note from Jule landed in my hand, I dropped the laundry at the door with Giorgio and took off. How wonderful to be summoned by messenger to Juliana’s side. It meant she was clear to see me. All my chores, my laundry, my grocery shopping, everything could wait. Juliana beckoned. She said Studio 330. We’d never been in that studio before, but Jule had a flare for the mysterious.
It’d been hard leaving her Monday morning. But we had begun talking about using the cabin as our retreat on a regular basis. Maybe every couple of months or so we could go there. That was probably all we could hope for now, but in the future . . . Who knew? Juliana loved me. She said it out loud. And she didn’t take it back. She even told me she wasn’t seeing any other girls. I didn’t ask her; she told me on her own. She said she wasn’t going to see any other girls anymore. All was right with the world. I got through the next few days of running the Haven by replaying everything we’d done together in my mind. That was some day and a half! Especially that night. I’d close my eyes and bring back the scene and hear her crying out, “I love you, Al!” Just picturing it made vibrating thrills run up and down my body.
Earlier in the week, I’d gotten a call from the producer of the opera Juliana had auditioned for back in June. They loved her and wanted to hire her! The contracts were sent to Richard, of course, and he and Juliana signed them. But I was the one who had made all the arrangements. She would finish out the run of Heaven is Up There Somewhere and begin rehearsals for the opera soon after. It still didn’t have a title. Juliana must be ecstatic to be finally signed to an opera. She was pleasing her mother at last, plus it was her greatest love. I wondered if even I could compete with that. I thought she might call me as soon as she got the contract, but she hadn’t. That must be why she arranged for us to meet today.
The day was pleasantly cool, and it was before noon, so the sidewalks weren’t too crowded. I loved walking in the city on a day like this. I felt light and airy. Juliana lived deep inside me, and I could feel her breathing there. She loves me, she loves me, she loves me.
I bounced into the elevator at the Carnegie Studios and the elevator operator nodded. “Morning, ma’am.”
“Yes. Yes, it is a very good morning, indeed. What’s that music?
“Oh, they just started pumping it into the building recently. You know the way they do in the big department stores. It’s supposed to relax everybody, but the way I hear it, that music has secret messages in it to make you do stuff you don’t wanna do. I try not to listen.
“That sounds like a very good idea. Hi. My name’s Al.”
“Al?”
He got that scrunched up look that people get when I tell them my name without giving them the formal one. “Oh. Sorry. Alice. What’s yours?”
“Stephen, ma’am.” He was a slim young man and looked fit in his brown uniform.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Stephen.” I extended my hand.
He looked at my hand like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then he shrugged his shoulders in a “what the heck gesture” and took my fingers lightly in his. “Likewise, I’m sure, ma’am. Floor?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” I laughed. “You need to know that before you can take me there. Don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure do.” He laughed with me.
“Then onward to floor three, young Stephen.”
“Nonstop, ma’am.”
Just as we started to move an all-music version of Doris Day’s “Secret Love” played. I sang in my mind, Once I had a secret love that lived within the heart of me.
“Well here we are,” Stephen said, as he pushed against the stick that opened the door.
“You have yourself a wonderful day,” I said.
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to do that.” He said it like he was making a personal promise to me. Too bad I was never allowed to share with people how much in love I was. As I stepped out of the elevator I felt a pang of sadness like I was leaving a friend.
I found the door to room 330 and pushed through. It was a small room, smaller than Juliana ever used for rehearsal. It had a piano and some wooden folding chairs, but no stage. It was a rather dreary looking room. Just a few dirty windows over a dormant radiator.
“Al,” Juliana’s voice came from the doorway behind me. I jumped, not expecting she’d be there so soon. The elevator had just left.
“I was waiting in the hallway. I arrived a little early.”
“Oh.” She looked lovely in her red polka-dotted day dress with the white trim around the collar and the short sleeves. She wore a small round hat on her head and carried a red and white box purse. No gloves.
I rushed toward her, then stopped, remembering we couldn’t embrace, but aching to feel her in my arms. “Morning,” I said. I could feel the big goofy grin on my face.
“Good morning,” she returned, but her face did not have the brightness of morning.
Something was wrong.
“What is it?”
“Uh, well . . .” She walked fully into the room, closing the door behind her. “Uh…I don’t know how to . . .” She walked to the corner near the radiator and opened her handbag removing a package of filtered Lucky Strikes.
“What?” I said, the blood in my veins rushing to my head at panic speed. “What’s happened?”
She lit a Lucky and took a puff.
“Why are we here? What’s wrong?” I hammered at her.
“I — I wanted to meet with you where there was very little chance that anyone would question us being together. You know a rehearsal studio?” Her voice shook. “Let me try to say this without you interrupting me. I have to get it out quickly.”
I held my breath.
“Richard.” She took another puff of her cigarette. “He . . . Well, he . . . knows about us.”
“What?” Had my heart stopped?
“Please. Don’t say anything. This—this is hard. He suspected that I was having an affair with Max- wherever he got such a dumb idea I don’t know— and so when I planned to go away to Maine . . .” She paced, quickly putting the cigarette in her mouth and out again. "I’ve been there so many times without him. Why this time did he . . .? He had me followed. A private detective.” She stopped pacing and took a long puff from the cigarette.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“I, uh, can’t . . .we can’t . . . see . . . uh, see each other.” Sh
e sucked back a tear that was trying to get out.
“No! That’s wrong. We’ll go away somewhere. We can’t let him—”
“Where would we go? Talk sense, Al. Even if we both gave up our careers, how would we live? What place would receive people like us?”
“No! No!” This time I paced up and down, my hands over my ears.
“Al.” She held out a shaking hand toward me.
I hurried to her, taking her hand in mine.
“No.” She pulled her hand away. “We mustn’t. We must never . . .” She walked away, taking a few quick puffs from her cigarette. “Richard was so enraged, shocked. I’ve never seen him so upset. I thought he was going to hit me.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. But if I don’t stop seeing you, he’ll divorce me in a most public and humiliating manner. He’ll call you in as correspondent. There are pictures.”
“Pictures.”
“Both of our lives would be ruined.”
“I don’t care.”
“Oh, Al, you say that now, but . . . He would get his divorce and my house, and everything I own. I would have nothing.”
“I have money. We could, could . . .”
“Where would you work once this got out? Max would have to let you go or he’d lose everything too. What would that accomplish? Now is the time for you to think with your head, not with your heart, oh dear, sweet one. I have to go. Richard is downstairs waiting. He won’t wait long.” She moved toward the door.
“No!” I ran to block her exit. “You can’t let him do this to us, Jule. There’s a way. We just need to think and plan. I have a teaching degree! I can—”
“What school would let you near children once they knew about this?”
“Well, there’s another way. There’s got to be some way. There has to be! Please, Jule!”
“Al!” she yelled. “Stop it! Stop holding on to some impossible dream.” Tears now streamed from her eyes and she didn’t try to stop them. “I have to go.” She made a step to move past me, and I blocked her again.
My own tears poured. “Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. People accepted them. We’d be like them.”
She sighed, wiping her tears with a handkerchief. “That was Paris. In the 1920s. The world’s not there, anymore. Not even Paris.”
“You love me. I know you do. You know you do.”
“My feelings have . . . have nothing . . . to do with this.” She could barely get the words out. “Please don’t make this uglier than it already is. I have no choice. We have no choice.” She moved toward the elevator, and I ran into the hallway after her. She pushed the buzzer.
“Who the hell got you that opera? You know Richard didn’t do it. You know he could never do it. He didn’t do anything for your career. It was all me. I did it all. I got you your whole career.”
“I’ll have the elevator operator come up for you after I’m down.”
“Stephen! His name is Stephen! You promised no one would see us in those mountains.You promised, Jule.”
The elevator door opened. As she stepped inside, I yelled, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I’ll always hate you.” The door slid closed and Stephen took her away.
End of Book 4
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Acknowledgements
Some Very Important Thank Yous
Phillip Crawford, Jr., author of The Mafia and The Gays and Railroaded, two books I recommend, was my vitally important adviser and teacher about the workings of the mob. I am so very grateful for his help. Without him I would not have been able to achieve the accuracy I shoot for in all my books.
I am also very grateful to my Beta readers, Sallie Castillo and Eileen Howell, who read an earlier draft of Heaven is to Your Left and gave their honest feedback.
I also want to thank the readers on my newsletter list and my street team who offer their support and their ideas.
Notes
Chapter Eleven
1 In today’s money $40 is $417.84
Chapter Seventeen
1 Fifty dollars was equivalent to four hundred in today’s money.
About the Author
I was born and raised in Huntington Station, New York. This town shouldn’t be confused with Al’s home town of Huntington. They are two different towns, and it’s too long a story to explain the significance of that difference. Now, I live in New York City, and I have for quite some time. I’ve been a professor at Metropolitan College of New York for over fifteen years, but I don’t teach writing like many people guess. I teach psychology because my advanced training is in psychology, and I am a licensed psychologist.
I was a writer long before I was a psychologist. I wrote my very first novel in eighth grade with encouragement from my teacher, Mr. James Evers, who would meet me before school every week to discuss the latest pages I had penned. He wrote in my junior high yearbook, “My children will read your words.” Unfortunately, others were not quite so encouraging, and I wandered away from my writing. I spent a lot of years going from job to job because the work-a-day world could not satisfy a restlessness in my soul. Along the way, I found playwriting and was a playwright for about twenty years. The desire to tell the story of LGBT history with fictional characters who live through that history brought me back to my original form, the novel, but I learned a lot about dialogue from playwriting.
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