by Suzanne Weyn
That was a dumb move, he chided himself, pulling open the door. He began to think of what he would say to persuade the hotel owner to wait.
But the man on the other side was not the hotel owner. He was tall and wore an overcoat. His expression was so dour that Bert instantly decided he was some sort of policeman.
“Robert Brody?” the man asked with a trace of an English accent.
Bert nodded.
“British Intelligence,” the man said, producing an ID card from his wallet. “Might I come in to speak to you for a moment?”
Lenny left Del’s dressing room and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Tonight, when he tried to put his arms around her, she’d managed to slip out of his grasp, giggling and making a joke of it yet again.
Once more, he was leaving her dressing room frustrated and angry. Rubbing his jaw thoughtfully, he considered the situation. How much longer was he going to put up with this evasiveness from her? He wasn’t sure.
What did she want from him? The girls were all crazy about him. And why shouldn’t they be? Not yet twenty-five, he was the youngest club owner in Paris. With cash backing from some men he’d known back in Chicago, he’d opened The Panther and turned it into one of the hottest spots in Paris. It was a good thing, too, because his partners in Chicago were not the kind of men he would want to make unhappy.
When Del had walked in with that crazy big cat on a leash, he’d even named the club for her pet. He’d made her a headliner, hadn’t he? He had bought the panther the emerald-studded collar, too. The jewels would have cost a fortune if his connections in Chicago hadn’t hooked him up with a man in Paris who got things like that for a good price. He had staked everything he had on his gut intuition that she had what it took.
The time had come for Del to show him some gratitude.
It wasn’t that he just wanted to be with her. There were plenty of chorus girls for that — flirty little Yvette, for one. She’d tumble for him in a second; she’d as much as told him so. Almost all the chorus girls would love to have him — but that wasn’t all he was after.
Delilah Jones was the real thing: a little brassy around the edges, maybe, but that could be polished. She was the whole package: talent, looks, style — funny and smart. And more than that, most important of all, she had star quality. When Delilah Jones walked into a room, everyone noticed.
He could mold her into the biggest star Paris had ever seen … but he wasn’t going to waste his time doing it if she kept brushing him off like she’d been doing. He wanted them to be a team in every way possible.
“Hello, Lenny.”
“Why are you still here, Yvette?” he asked, drawing on his cigarette.
“That reporter took me out to supper.”
“Who? Bert Brody?” he asked with a contemptuous laugh. “You’ll go out with anyone, won’t you?”
“He’s a nice boy, but he went home and I’m not tired. Maybe you will take me out to an after-hours club, yes?”
“Sure, why not?” he agreed, blowing out smoke.
The next day, Del hurried up the steep street leading to the Parthenon monument, one hand on the crochet hat that hugged her face and the other clutching her coat against the breeze.
She wanted this interview to go well but it was hard to keep her thoughts on it — not after what had happened last night. She had been home in her apartment cooking Baby’s midnight snack — liver, very raw with sautéed onions, the way Baby liked it — when a strange man had come to her door. He was from British Intelligence, or so he had claimed. He asked her to work for them.
It seemed that a group of scientists were completing plans for a rocket that could, in theory, be launched from as far away as Berlin and would be able to accurately fire a missile on a target in London.
“But Germany is not at war with England,” she’d pointed out.
“We have reason to think that could soon change,” he’d replied.
They believed that the Nazi officers had been lingering in Paris, waiting to pick up the plans for this rocket and to pay the scientists. “They come into your club,” he’d said. “We want you to circulate among them. Find out what you can learn.”
“How will I contact you?”
“We’ll contact you.”
The dome of the Parthenon came into view. She wasn’t sure why she’d selected it as a place to meet except that she’d always liked its roundness and columns. It seemed so stately and quiet, almost tomblike inside — so different from the boisterousness of the Left Bank, an oasis of calm. Some day she would like to see the original Parthenon in Greece. It had always appealed to her, was oddly homey. As she reached the top of the street leading into the traffic circle surrounding the Parthenon, she saw Bert Brody standing on the wide front steps in front of the monument.
He was the privileged American type she’d seen in magazines and sometimes glanced out at in an audience — college kids seeking a view of the seamier side of life before returning to the comfort of their own safe havens. She had never spoken to someone like him and she was eager to discover what he was like, as though he were some rare orchid she might never again have the opportunity to examine. If his attitude proved too condescending or superior, she had an exit strategy: She’d claim to be needed at the club. The important thing was not to lose her cool. He was writing an article about her act, after all. That gave him the final word.
From the far side of the traffic circle, she waved to him and he returned the gesture. Waiting for traffic to pass, she crossed to the Parthenon in the center. “Bonjour,” she greeted him brightly. Show time, she thought.
Together they re-crossed and she guided him to a small café she knew. Inside, they ordered and she began to fill him in on her background, the fictitious one that sprang to her mind — the nice Victorian home in Baltimore where she was raised by her proper aunts.
It was almost true.
She had lived in a nice home with her elderly grandmother until the woman had died when she was five. It was a dim memory and no doubt figured into her fantasy about the aunts. When she was eight, she’d walked out of the orphanage she was living in, preferring to take her chances on her own. No one had come looking for her.
“What did your aunts think about you joining the circus? Last night you said you had been in the circus,” he reminded her.
“Umm … my aunts were not in favor of my theatrical ambitions, and as an artist I needed to stretch beyond the restrictions of the church choir.”
“So you joined the circus?” he asked.
“Yes, but only on the weekends. During the week I had school and my operatic studies to attend to.”
Was he buying this story?
She couldn’t tell.
They talked through lunch and lingered long after she had insisted on paying the check. It surprised her that he had traveled on his own, working odd jobs and writing for newspapers and magazines to pay his way. He did not seem to possess the allowance from home that so many Americans abroad counted on. When she gently inquired about it, he told her that his father was stern and strong-minded. “If I wasn’t going into his business, I was on my own. So here I am, penniless and free.”
The assortment of odd jobs he’d worked almost equaled her list. He had even crewed on a sailing ship in Greece while writing a story for Traveling Abroad on the Grecian Parthenon. “Sailing is one of my great loves,” he said.
“I’ve never been,” she admitted. “Tell me more about Greece. How did you like it?”
He had loved it. She was intrigued by all he had to tell her. “Did you know that for a while instead of being the temple of Athena, the Greek Parthenon was dedicated to the Virgin Mary?” he told her.
“That’s so interesting,” she said sincerely. “They changed one strong, divine female figure for another. I wonder if throughout history, people just give different names to powers that are more or less the same.”
“I’ve often thought the same thing,” he said. “And we f
ight about differences which are really not so different if you scratch beneath the surface.”
“I think so, too. It seems so obvious but people will get seriously upset at you if you say such a thing.”
He sat back and studied Delilah as though he also was revising his idea of who she was. A waiter came by to light a candle in a votive on the table. Del covered it before the waiter reached the wick. “Please don’t,” she requested.
“Mademoiselle does not like the candle?” the waiter questioned.
“No, s’il vous plaît.”
The waiter nodded and moved on.
“I’m a little skittish around fire,” Del explained to Bert. “I never liked it, but when Baby was a cub, I had to run into a burning tent and pull her from her cage.” Throwing her head back, she laughed heartily. “I let all the big cats out. It was the only way I could save their lives. What a crazy scene that caused!”
He laughed, too. “It must have been wild!”
“Yes, but there was no choice: I couldn’t let them die in there.”
“I suppose that’s when you moved on to vaudeville,” he guessed.
“Yes,” she said, still laughing at the memory. “The circus owners were not so happy with me after that. But do you know the funny thing? After that incident, I wasn’t as afraid of fire anymore. All my life I had been terrified of it. I still don’t like it, but it no longer gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies like it once did.”
He pretended to write on his pad. “Delilah Jones has overcome her fear of fire by running into a burning building.”
Hearing him speak those words struck a deep chord within her. What he said was true. She’d known it but had never stopped to take in how much she’d really accomplished by running into that burning tent.
Standing, she went to the counter and took a box of matches from a bowl. When she returned to the table, she struck a match. “To completely overcoming our fears,” she said as she lit the candle.
“I’m all for it,” Bert said, smiling. “Good for you.”
“Thanks. It feels good.”
“You’re an interesting woman, Delilah,” he said. “You were once nervous around candles but not man-eating big cats.”
That made her chuckle. “Baby is a pussycat. I’m thinking of changing her name to something more theatrical like Cleopatra or Nefertiti but I’m worried it might confuse her.”
“Delilah Jones is a pretty theatrical name,” he remarked. “Is it your real name or a stage name?”
“I heard it in the Bible and liked it so I took it up when I joined the circus. I’ll tell you my real name if you swear to keep it secret. If you put it in the article, I’ll find you and murder you in your sleep.”
“I swear.”
“Louisa. Louisa Jones. My grandma, who had been a slave until after the Civil War, named me for an aunt of mine, her first child, who she never saw again after she was sold downriver. Later, someone told her that Louisa Jones had died fighting in the Civil War. She had pretended to be a man to enlist.”
“Wow! What a gutsy woman!” he said. “My great-uncle John was a Union soldier. My great-uncle survived the war although he died sort of young anyway; he was in his fifties. After the war, he opened up a little pottery business and did so well that it eventually became May’s Dishware.”
“That’s a giant huge business,” she said, impressed. “It must be worth a bundle. I thought all you idle rich folks inherited money. I didn’t know any of you actually earned it.”
“My father and I didn’t earn it. Great-uncle John earned the first money, and then the rest of the family inherited it,” Bert admitted with a wry laugh. “Great-uncle John divorced his wife and never remarried, so my father inherited the dishware factories. That’s the fate I’m trying to avoid right now.”
“By writing?” she asked.
“Yes. I write articles, but my big love is writing songs. My dream is to somehow make a living at it.”
“It’s not such an impossible dream. Can I see some of your songs?”
“Sure, but they’re in my hotel room. Want to come back there? I’ll show them to you.” Almost at the same moment the words came out of his mouth, he could feel the heat rising in his cheeks and cursed the fact that he blushed so easily. From the smile on her face, she had definitely noticed. “I know that just sounded like a cheap line,” he quickly stammered. “I promise I’ll behave.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she replied, still grinning.
“Well, now I have no choice. I have to behave.”
“Let’s go,” she replied, taking her coat from the back of the chair.
His room was on a shabby side street, but she felt at ease with him as they went up the steep, narrow stairs. Their lunch conversation had left her with the feeling that she knew him better than she actually did. “Occasionally you meet people you feel you’ve known all your life,” she commented when she stepped into his room. Papers, books, and notebooks sat in loose piles on chairs, dressers, and on the one table.
“I know what you mean,” he agreed.
“Is it happening now?” she dared to ask him.
He nodded slowly, gazing into her eyes. “I think so, yes,” he murmured, as if falling into a dream.
Sure he was going to kiss her, she prepared to kiss him back, but after lingering a moment longer, he turned away. “Let me find those songs.”
Her sting of disappointment gave way to admiration. No doubt he didn’t want her to think he was taking advantage of the situation. He had class. And he had promised to behave.
She picked a hardcover book off the table and read its cover. “Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse — what’s this about?”
“It’s about the life of Buddha and his path to enlightenment,” he replied, digging through the clutter of his papers. “It was written about fifteen years ago.”
“Are you interested in Buddhism?”
“I like Hesse’s writing and I’ve read some of his other books. But I don’t know about this one. It feels a little predictable. I can always guess what will happen next even though I don’t know much about Buddhism. It’s strange.”
He found his marble notebook of songs. “Here it is.” Though he had no piano, he sang the songs for her and she quickly picked up the tunes, singing along. They were smooth together, seamlessly flowing with each other so that it was impossible to tell who was leading and who was following. They were simply effortlessly together.
“My voice never sounded better.”
“My songs never sounded better.”
They spoke at the same time, their voices overlapping, and then they laughed at the collision of their words. As their laughter drifted off, they continued to look into each other’s eyes.
“These songs are great,” she said after another moment, meaning it. “Would you really let me sing one of them in my act?”
“All of them, if you like. I never dreamed they could sound so wonderful until I just heard you sing them.”
“They are wonderful,” she agreed. “I especially like this one about the lovers who have just met feeling that they’ve met before. Did you write it about someone special?”
He shook his head. “No, it just came to me one day. Funny … I could have written it just today because that feeling is so strong.” The red came into his cheeks again. “Not that we’re together, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed, though she now knew it was inevitable that they would be.
Another moment thick with possibility passed between them as they stood just a little too close together, neither one speaking. Longing to kiss him, she resolved not to make the first move forward.
“Could I come to the club tomorrow in the morning?” he asked, breaking the spell. “We could use the piano there to run through the songs.”
“That’s a swell idea,” she said jauntily. “Be there at ten in the morning. Wait — make it twelve. I sleep late.”
“Great. I’ll walk you home
.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No. I want to.”
“All right, then. I’m not going home, though. I have an appointment: It’s sort of a doctor I’ve been seeing, a psychoanalyst.”
“I’ve heard of Sigmund Freud. Like him?”
“Yeah.” She gazed up at him, suddenly worried. “Don’t mention that in your article. Promise?”
“Promise. Is something bothering you, if you don’t mind my asking? Is it the fire thing?”
She shook her head. “Someday when I know you better, I’ll tell you.”
“Okay.”
On the stairs, he held her arm to stop her descent to the first landing where the hotel owner was sweeping. “Wait ’til he goes, okay?” Bert whispered.
She smiled at him. “Can’t pay?”
He nodded, reddening a bit once again. “Not yet.”
“I know how it feels,” she assured him. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be famous soon. We both are.” Reaching into her purse, she took out some bills. “Want a down payment on your songs?”
“Thanks. I’ll wait,” he declined.
“For what?”
He smiled. “Pay me when you make your first recording of the songs.”
This was not fake; Delilah could tell he meant every word. “Do you really think I could make a record?” she asked.
“You’ve got the talent. Now you’ve got the songs. All you need is the right break,” he replied confidently. “It’ll come.”
The very idea of her own record made her sigh with longing. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
At three the next afternoon, Bert hurried up the steps to his hotel room sure of one thing: He was in love with Delilah Jones.
They’d worked together since noon down at the club. He played the piano while she sang each of his songs. If he’d ever believed the songs were good, now he was positive.
Her voice made every word take on a deeper meaning. He couldn’t imagine how such a young woman could breathe so much worldly suffering and poignancy into each phrase. The things she must have been through and seen to bring so much depth to her performance. It was a long way from Isis, the nicest on the Nile.