I doubt this Booker would have the same problem.
Which, I suppose goes without saying, seeing as we’re standing in his obviously successful speakeasy.
I am suddenly glad I didn’t lead with my resignation as I originally intended. My heart is trying to pound its way out of my chest at the thought of what I’d dodged. Angry about it and the shiver racing down my spine, leaving a crop of goose-bumps in its wake, I call on every muscle in my body to stiffen my spine. It helps me grow the tiniest bit tiny bit taller, my backbone more rigid than the Smith Tower.
And I might have thrust my chin up a bit. “Why do you feel the need to tell me this, Booker? Have I mentioned the word quit?”
“It’s always a good plan to get the more likely possibilities out on the table. I know you, Lena—or at least I used to. You were one of the most focused people on the planet. You knew you wanted out of Walla Walla and had concrete ideas how you might achieve that.” He gives me a puzzled look, then shakes his head. “Singing was nowhere in the plan back then, but clearly when you decided it was your ticket out of town, you worked to make it happen.”
Booker drops the pen and slaps his hands down on the desk, half rising to lean across it. Suddenly he seems far too close, and it takes everything I have not to startle back in my chair.
“But while you had drive and were results oriented,” he says in a low voice, “you were also impulsive, particularly when your dander was up.” One muscular shoulder rises and drops as he looks me in the eye with deadly earnestness. “So, now you know where I stand on the seriousness of a contract.”
“Yes, goody, goody, gumdrops.” I say it with a bite of sarcasm. And yet…
He isn’t wrong—and darned if it doesn’t make me a little weak in the knees to realize he does remember things about me, even if they aren’t my more flattering traits. I do allow my temper to take me places it shouldn’t at times. And I have always found it difficult to back down from a confrontation.
“Glad we’re on the same page.” Apparently choosing to disregard my tone of voice, Booker surges to his feet in a single fluid movement. “Now that’s settled, let’s put this other business to bed. Where do you get this shit I never wrote you?” He gives me a hard stare. “I wrote you three or four letters a week.”
“I never received a single one from you! I can understand one going astray. But all of them?” I shake my head in disgust. “Please.”
Still, a tiny part of me wonders why Booker insists so hard he wrote me. If he didn’t, it seems he would just shrug and tell me to get over it. Say It is what it is.
“Well, I wrote ‘em. Right up until my mother told me you had left town with my former best friend.”
“Oh, some best friend you were!” Okay, getting all worked up again isn’t going to help. I pour real effort into shoving my indignation into the darkest cupboard in the dustiest corner of my mind. Usually the Midnight File isn’t this difficult to access at a moment’s notice. I finally unearth it, however, and as I shove as much of my anger into as I can I promise myself I will display some self-control. “You called him when you joined the Army.” I manage to say the words calmly. Still, I wish I hadn’t emphasized him. I sure as heck don’t want Booker thinking a heartbroken girl still lurks somewhere inside of me, moaning, Not me—you didn’t call me.
But frustrated, on the other hand? Too right I’m frustrated. I know darn well if Booker Jameson had truly wanted to get hold of me back then, he would have. I do not give a good God dam—er, darn—that the Blood of Christ’s party line was located in Matron’s office and used exclusively for business. If he had truly cared about me the way he said he did, he would have found a way to contact me.
I give myself a stern mental shake and mutter on an exasperated exhale, “Stay on track.” I draw in a deep breath, let it out, then face him again, my expression arranged in as composed a mask as I can arrange it. “You called and Will headed straight to Seattle to join the Army with you. So, don’t tell me you didn’t know how devastated he was when influenza swept through his boot camp. Will was only partly recovered when they shipped him home, Booker, and he darn near died. It did kill any chance he had of joining the war. But did you even once write him?”
Guilt flashes across Booker’s face, but I refuse to relent. “He was the one who finally got me an address to write to you, you know. He went and asked your father for it.” I stared Booker in the eye. “Did you know his mother got sick and Will gave up his college scholarship to care for her?”
“No, I didn’t.” A muscle jumps in his jaw. “When did you two get so pals-sy?”
“When we ran into each other at the opening of the new courthouse and got to talking. We discovered we had heaps in common.” I give Booker a look making it clear his abandoning both of us was chief among my commonality with Will. And, indeed, it may have started that way. But our initial chance meeting soon evolved into a dearly cherished friendship with Will. Our chance meeting became one of the biggest blessings in my life.
Recalling myself to the present, I finally use the brain God gave me. Booker, this man whom I no longer trust and who did not live up to his promises, is now my boss. And he’s right, I did sign a contract for the next twelve weeks, so I am well and truly stuck.
Squaring my shoulders, I adjust my attitude on a quiet exhale. “You are right,” I admit quietly. “I haven’t been professional. So, I apologize. I will try very hard to be more so from now on. But that means no personal questions or comments. My life is my business, yours life is your business, and I propose we each stay the heck out of the other’s.” I pin him with the diluted version of my May you die stare. “And that kiss was a onetime experiment. There will be no more kissing.” Stepping closer to his desk, I thrust out my hand. “Deal?”
He just stares at it for what feels like several drawn-out seconds, then reaches across the desk and grips it. He looks as if he’s about to argue.
Apparently, I’m mistaken, however, for he abruptly gives me a terse nod. “Deal.”
His hand is hot and calloused, and I wonder when the latter happened. Young Booker was always incredibly hot-skinned; I can’t believe I’d actually forgotten that. But his hands, while hot, also used to be much softer. And smaller, I’m pretty sure, because I sure don’t remember them swallowing up my own the way the one holding it now is doing.
Shaking off the thought when it begins to feel as if Booker might hang onto my hand a bit longer, I pull my fingers free, and step back. “Good talk,” I say briskly.
And get the heck out of there.
5
susan andersen
Who the hell are you?
BOOKER
“Oh, hell no!” I surge to my feet. Damned if Lena gets to dictate terms and just waltz away. I catch up with her in the hallway where she’s in full hip-swinging locomotion down the corridor, the beaded fringe on her short dress rocking briskly. Reaching out, I wrap my hand around her upper arm, swinging her toward me and bringing her to a halt. “Wait a damn minute.”
Those beads whip around to wrap her left side, rebound to swipe at the right, then fall to sway with a gentle shimmy, clicking and clacking with the sudden cessation of her body’s motion. Her arm feels firm and smooth and plump beneath my fingers, my palm. And considerably more smooth-skinned than I remember.
Which I suppose shouldn’t be a big surprise, considering the way Matron Davidson at the Blood of Christ worked the kids living at the foundling home.
Her gaze hones in on the spot where I’m holding her in place. Then she raises those dark-rimmed blue eyes to level me with the look again. The one that makes me question damn near everything I have ever known to be true.
Even as it makes me pretty damn sure she has a good idea where to hide the body, should the need arise.
I drop her arm. Rub the too-familiar Lena feel off against my slacks. And look her in the eye.
“Look. I’m not going to ask again why you insist I didn’t write letters I know I did. B
oth of us seem to believe we’re in the right here, and I doubt that’s going to change any time soon.” I narrow my eyes at her. “But I do want to know about your relationship with Will.”
She narrows hers right back. “What part did you fail to understand?” But then her eyebrows furrow in what appears to be genuine befuddlement as she looks up at me. “I told you, he’s my friend.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“No.” She laughs, that full-bodied, don’t-give-a-damn-who’s-listening laugh that neither years nor distance were able to erase from my memory. “Much better than that. He’s my best friend.”
It catches me by surprise how relieved I am to hear it. I’m also a bit annoyed with the much better than that comment. But what the hell, I was once her boyfriend. In a time gone by, it’s true, distanced by years and war and the lack of communication we have agreed to stop disputing. Or at least I think we have, when it comes to the latter.
She tugs against my grip. “So, if that’s all, I’ll be off.”
“Yeah, sure.” I turn her loose. “But just so we’re on the same page, we are agreed, yes?” My voice hardens. “We are going to act professionally and get along.”
“That’s what we said. Professional.” Lena gives me a cool look. “And nothing more.” She turns on her heel and strides off again, the beaded fringe promptly reactivated by the hypnotic motion of her hips.
It doesn’t escape me she didn’t actually agree to anything. I watch her go and think about her parting shot. Then shake my head as I start back to my office.
Because I didn’t agree to everything, either. So, yeah.
We will just have to see about that nothing more part.
Three nights later I’m standing at the back of the club watching Lena belt out her last song of the evening, and congratulating myself over the way this getting along business has been working out pretty well—all things considered—when a man stops next to me.
“She’s great, isn’t she,” he says in a voice low enough not to disrupt my customers’ listening pleasure.
Since it’s more statement than a question, I don’t take my eyes off her. “Yes.” She definitely is. Lena has an ineffable something special when she sings.
I’m not sure why that surprises me. The night I met her in my folk’s kitchen where I had escaped to avoid Father’s relentless expectations, she’d all but knocked me off my feet. She was so interesting and full of life. Filled with dreams, fired with determination and full of intention. And here I am years later, watching and listening to the results of all that focused purpose—even though the dreams had changed in a direction I had no idea about back then. In the short time she’s been here, word of her talent has already gotten around. The club is more packed every night—and we were bringing in good-sized crowds long before her advent. People no longer talk over her introduction. Instead, they applaud wildly. And profits are definitely up.
So, no, I don’t want to talk to a stranger about her talent. I just want to listen to her. And watch. Because that’s a treat all by itself—and I don’t mean only her face or supple body. No, she has a way of wearing every emotion she wrings from the songs she sings like a beating heart on her sleeve. It sucks people in. Makes them care.
The fella next to me, however, clearly isn’t in the no talking zone. “I love the way her phrasing incorporates the blue notes, sudden swoops, dives and surprising leaps of the great colored singers.”
Okay, what he says rings true, resonating right down to my bones. And I find myself replying, “Yet she never sounds like a white singer mimicking Bessie Smith.”
And when I turn, it’s to look straight into my old friend Will’s dark eyes. His love of jazz and blues back in high school, along with my own, was instrumental in introducing Lena to it. Before that, she had only heard and sung hymns through her participation in the Blood of Christ choir. But one song played on my Victrola, and she was hooked. A fan for life.
And looking at Will, a surge of happiness at seeing him again bolts through me.
Only to be promptly supplanted with thoughts and, worse, mental images of Will, not as he was when I knew him well. But rather, as he appears now. An adult Will who has been with Lena during all the years I have been gone. Who has been by her side to watch and presumably give his support when she decided to give singing on a professional level a try. The fella who was there when she broke into the music industry and during her burgeoning rise.
Will, who ran off with my girl while I was fighting a fucking war that did its best to crush me. While I wrote all those damn letters and missed her beyond bearing at times. Will, who has maybe kissed her. Who maybe has even…done more?
A tidal wave of...something...rises up in me. And the next thing I know the punch I’ve thrown is knocking Will sideways along the wall, before dumping him on his ass on the plush Twilight Room carpet.
Chaos erupts. People at a nearby table scramble to their feet, knocking drinks over. More than one woman screams, bringing more people to their feet at adjacent tables.
Will presses the back of his hand to the underside of his nose. Pulling it back, he looks at the blood adorning it generously. His nostrils are gushing pretty good.
Then he looks up at me with murder in his eyes. “You want a fight, you faithless piece of shit?” he says in a low voice, climbing to his feet. He advances on me, his right arm drawing back. His hand makes a much more sizeable fist than I recall from back in our high school days.
Then he shoots a glance past me. Before I can turn to see what he’s looking at, someone shoves me aside. And Lena is suddenly in my face.
“What is the matter with you?” she demands, but doesn’t wait for an answer before turning away. She brushes past me, pausing at the table around which people are still ineffectually milling about. She sweeps up a clean, folded linen napkin, dips it into a glass of champagne on the table and presses it to the bottom of Will’s nose. “Here, keep this pressed there to staunch the flow.” Her voice is a universe gentler than the one she used to address me. Twining her arm around Will’s, she hugs his biceps against the side of her breast. Strokes the back of his hand with gentle fingertips. “C’mon. Let’s go get you fixed up.”
Without sparing me another glance, they walk away, heading toward her dressing room, I imagine. The thought of the two of them back there by themselves gets my feet in gear and I follow—stopping only long enough to instruct Millie to put new linens on the jostled table and replace their drinks on the house.
Before Lena and Will reach the only indoor access to the backstage hallways not involving the use of the stairs on either end of the of the stage, Sally rushes up to them, her breasts and cigarette tray bouncing. “What can I do to help?” I hear her ask.
Lena, still clutching Will to her side, barely slows her stride. “Could you bring some ice to my dressing room?”
“You got it, sweetie.”
“Thanks, Sally. You are one fine woman.”
“Awww!” My cigarette girl laughs and veers off toward the bar.
I vacillate for a moment or two. I should probably circulate among my guests and make sure they’ve all settled back into the club’s normal routine in the wake of my outburst. But my urge to find out what the story is with Lena and Will is stronger than my desire to placate the paying guests.
Which is kind of a first for me. But, fuck it. With an impatient shrug, I head to Lena’s dressing room.
I can hear her and Will talking as I approach the room a minute or three later. Lena hasn’t bothered closing the door behind her and as I reach it I hear her say, “…and I thought you weren’t getting home for a couple of days yet.”
“Nor did I. But I finished my interviews early.”
Will’s voice is a deeper rumble than I remember. But then a lot of things have changed since the last time I saw him. I step to the side of the open door and look in.
My ex-closest friend sits in a chair placed crossways to the doorway. His head is tipped back, eye
s closed, while Lena tenderly wipes blood off his face.
She frowns down at him. “Since you’re here and have probably been on one train or another for a good four days, maybe you didn’t get the telegram I sent. I can’t remember exactly when I sent it.” She shrugs. “It just said the venue for the gig I thought was such a grand opportunity turned out to be owned by Booker.”
I wince a bit at the way she spits out my name with such venom.
Will cracks an eye open. “The desk clerk actually gave it to me as I was checking out of the hotel.” He grimaces. “That was a surprise.”
“No bananas,” she says drily. “But let’s not talk about him. How did the interviews go?”
“Life isn’t interested, but I knew that was a long shot. College magazine expressed some interest and so did Collier, so I’m hoping to hear from them. The ad agency interview went great. I signed a contract to do an illustration for a Winx Waterproof eyelash darkener ad. Isn’t that the one you use—Winx the magic lash darkener, makes your lashes something, something?”
“Long and shadowy. And, yes! Oh, Will, that’s so exciting. You’re going to be illustrating for a New York ad agency!”
“In a national campaign in newspapers across the country, they tell me. They also said if they like my work on this one there will be more like it. So. You wanna be my model? It pays eighteen dollars and they loved the idea of a blonde.”
“Hmmm, let me think. Do I want to see my face in a national campaign? Ab-so-toot-ly!” Her laughter fades, however, as she looks down at his now mostly cleaned up face. “This is still bleeding. That damn bully. Why the devil would he hit you?”
Shit. You know Lena’s mad if she swears. All those years in the Blood of Christ Foundling home left her with a lasting belief one does not curse. Well, she never seemed to mind if Will or I did. But she only swears herself when she’s furious.
It Had to be You Page 4