“Hell, if I know,” Will replies. “We were talking about your talent one minute, then he turned to look at me and…pow! I took a hard-left hook straight to the beezer.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t even know he had that move in him.”
She shakes her head as well—as if my actions are beyond a civilized person’s understanding, then frowns at the blood still trickling from Will’s nose. “Dang it, this is not stopping. Let me get the styptic stick.”
She straightens, but Will’s hand snakes out to grip her wrist. “If you think I’m letting you shove a styptic stick up my already abused nose, you’ve got another think comin’.”
“It will help stop the bleeding.”
“It’s made for small bleeds, so yeah, maybe it will. Then again, maybe it won’t. What it is guaranteed to do is burn like the fires of hell.”
She makes a rude noise. “You’re such an infant.”
“Says the baby vamp who wailed like a banshee when I put mercurochrome on her skinned knee. It’s the only time I have ever heard you hit a note that high.”
“Hey, I lost several layers of skin from that knee! And what the heck is a banshee, anyway?”
“Damned if I know. But I do know they’re supposed to wail to beat the band.”
“Hey, Mistah Jameson.”
Caught up in listening to their conversation, I jerk in surprise at the nasal voice, then glance over to see Sally coming down the hall with a bowl of ice and a couple of wash cloths. Shooting a skittish look in my direction, she gives me a wide berth as she approaches the dressing room door.
Swell. Apparently, decking a man everyone assumes is a customer has dented my reputation some. “Hey, Sally.”
Lena’s head snaps up and turns my way. Seeing me, she gives Will’s hand a gentle pat, then rises and stalks over. Reaching for the bowl of ice and washcloths, she gives the cigarette girl a smile. “Thanks, Sally. You’re a peach.”
“Yer welcome, doll. I gotta get back on the floor but I hope your friend feels better real soon.” She shoots me another who-the-hell-are-you look, spins on her heel and heads back to the lounge. The minute she’s out of sight, I turn to Lena.
“Eavesdropping now?” She gives me a look disgust. “Who are you, Booker?” she demands before I can utter a syllable, unerringly mimicking the exact words I’d assigned Sally’s unspoken disapproval. “You’ve changed so much I don’t even recognize you anymore. And, trust me, not for the better.”
I open my mouth to respond…but don’t really know what to say. Because, going over in my mind what I’ve just seen of her interaction with Will, I realize what she told me three nights ago is more than likely the God’s honest truth: she doesn’t have romantic feelings for my old friend. Clearly, I only gave lip service to believing her up until this moment. But looking at it realistically—something I have failed to do up until now—the two them could have been married and had a passel of kids in the near-decade since I’ve seen them. I’m still ...well, not jealous.
But maybe I am a little irate they’d forgotten me so easily.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what I might have said. Lena cuts short any possibility of having a conversation when she slams the door in my face.
6
susan andersen
Shave and a haircut, two bits!
LENA
“What on earth happened to the old Booker?” I cross to Will and peel away the washcloth I’d wrapped around Sally’s crushed ice. Looking at the bruises starting to bloom on my best friend’s face, I wince, gently balance the makeshift ice pack back over the bridge of Will’s nose. Then I raise my gaze to meet his. “He used to be fun. We were all friends—a trio. Now he tries to break your nose for no good reason?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s not the man I cried buckets over.” Barely able to acknowledge the years of tears to myself, I am darned if I’ll admit to Will it’s possible I’m pining still for the young bold-hearted man I used to know.
And if I am, it’s only the tiniest bit, darn it! Because I have moved on.
I shake off the niggle in my conscience over keeping certain thoughts from my best friend. Say briskly, “Until I met him, I never knew so many things could make me laugh. But Booker used to be funny.”
And smart. And oh, my. So amazingly…something. “Are you comfortable? Is it too hot in here for you?” Something...I don’t know ...magnetic. When Booker is near it’s all I can do to hold my ground against the persistent compulsion my body feels to move closer. Flapping the sides of the wrapper I’d slipped on over my costume, I try without success to circulate a bit of air across my overheated skin.
“Lena.” Will has that don’t-even-try-to-kid-a-kidder look he’s perfected over the years. And right this minute he’s training it on me. The man is sporting rolled gauze stuffed up his nostrils, which makes his voice nasal and not at all like him. But the look—
Well, that is amazingly effective. “A blind man can see he’s knee-crawling jealous,” he says, and even delivered in that nasally, stuffy-nose voice, Will’s tone is flat and authoritative.
Which is also effective. Until the words sink in.
“What?” My head snaps back as though he smacked me. “No, he isn’t!”
“Hell yes, he is.” Will nods sagely. “Booker is damn near beside himself with jealousy. He thinks you and I are an item.”
I stop, startled into silence.
The thought of Booker believing Will and I might be more than simply the great friends we are—and being bothered by it?
Oh, dear. I’m loath to admit this, since it doesn’t speak kindly of my Christian charity. But the idea of Mr. Heartbreaker Jameson feeling jealous ignites a spark of heat deep down in a part of me I haven’t acknowledged in a long time.
Which is not smart, so I shove it away. Then speak the absolute truth. “That is crazy talk. I told him you and I were just friends.” At least I’m pretty sure I did.
No. I straighten. I did precisely that.
“You know and I know we’re not lovers.” Will lifts the icepack from his nose and gingerly removes the gauze. After disposing of the soiled bandaging material, he pulls a clean handkerchief from his pocket and dabs gently at his nostrils. When its pristine surface comes away unblemished by blood, he slowly straightens in his chair. “I’m damn sure Booker thinks otherwise, though.”
“Now, that just makes me mad. I could be having petting-parties with every man in town, and it wouldn’t be any business of Booker’s.” I slather Pond’s cream on my face and reach for the tissues to wipe off my stage makeup. “And why the heck would he care? He dumped me without a second thought. When I think of all the letters I wrote—” I shake my head. “Lord, what a fool I was. Oh, and get this.” I pace a few steps away, then whirl to face Will again, a harsh laugh evading my attempts to keep it inside. “He claims he wrote me several times a week while he was gone, then had the gall to act all wild eyed because I didn’t respond to his supposed correspondence.”
Booker’s claim simultaneously infuriates me and ignites a stupid spark of hopefulness.
Will stills. “He says he wrote as well?”
“Yep.” I stand taller, refusing to fall into the trap Booker’s claim represents. My mother left me on the steps of the Blood of Christ Foundling Home when I was not quite two years old. Not that I have any real memory of it. Still, it doesn’t take that genius fella who won the Nobel Prize in Physics a few years back to track my on and off feelings of abandonment to its original source.
Dear old Mum was merely the first to teach me that people don’t stick around for the long haul. People leave. Always. It’s just a fact of life.
During my sixteen years in the Blood of Christ, the older girls sometimes befriended me. For a while life would feel pretty darn special. Yet, predictably, those sweet relationships always ended the same way. With me left behind as my new friend went into service or married a townie or was just plain turned out when she hit eighteen, to make her own way
as the State rules dictated.
Well, I’m nothing if not a fast learner. Okay, maybe not all that fast, considering it took me several crushing disappointments at being left behind—again—before I wised up and stopped trying to get close to people.
Yet the evening I met Booker all my savvy flew out the window. He was like no one I had ever known and I simply had no choice but to take a chance on him. He’s twenty-two months older than me, and I knew from the first he would be leaving for college in a few brief months. Yet we spent every moment we could steal from our day-to-day routines in order to be with each other.
I fell head-over-heels in love with him, juggling emotions I had never even dreamed existed.
“There is something mighty damn fishy about all these missing letters,” Will says, hauling me out of my memories.
I drag myself back into the now—only to find myself gawking stupidly as his words sort themselves out in my brain. “You believe him?”
“The Booker I knew was no liar, Lena. Neither are you. So maybe someone else had a hand in keeping your correspondence from the two of you.”
“Oh, please. Who would do such a thing? And why?” But I take a step in his direction. And concede, “I did wonder at one time if Matron might have.” I feel a glimmer of hope I truly don’t want to entertain for fear it will blow up in my face. But I have to admit, “I can honestly say she wouldn’t have hesitated, because she was just downright cold and judgmental about everything. She had so many rules and restrictions it’s a wonder a body could find a reason to smile at all. Not that she didn’t have her moments,” I add guiltily, because every now and then Matron Davidson would do something almost...nice. Warm, even. “But, Lord, she took it personally if anyone had a better time than she. And face it, darn-near everyone did.”
“What did you do about your suspicions?”
I shrug. “I decided to take my letters directly to the post office.”
“When the hell did all this happen?” And why didn’t you ever mention a damn word about it? Will didn’t need to actually say the words to broadcast the question loud and clear. He never did have much of a poker face.
I ignore the look but answer the question. “It was about a month before the war ended. The same day I saw Booker’s mother in the post office and overheard her telling the postmaster Booker was thinking of staying in Paris instead of coming home.” I shrug as if it hadn’t crushed the still-clinging-to-hope portion of my heart into one big greasy, grimy pile of broken dreams. Despite everything, I had clung long and fiercely to the notion that, once the war finally ended, he would come home to me. That he would have a good explanation for why he’d never written.
I thrust my chin out. “Clearly he didn’t give a hoot about telling me. So, I saved myself sixteen cents by not buying one of the new airmail stamps for the letter I’d come to mail. And that was the last one I wrote.”
The Brasher sisters’ familiar rap of Shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits! sounds on my door then, and I jump as if someone goosed me. Looking at the clock on the wall, I’m surprised to see how much time has passed. Enough for the band to have played a set of dance tunes and the sisters to finish their final two dances of the night.
I turn away to open the door and Clara and Dot tumble into the room, demanding the skinny on the rumor flying around that Booker punched some fella right in the kisser. Seeing Will himself sitting there, they look flustered for all of ten seconds. Then they ply him with rapid-fire intrusive questions, strutting, flirting and teasing him all the while.
Will, of course, fields their demands with his usual low-key ease, and even gives every appearance of being highly cooperative. I’m apparently the only one to notice not once does he give either sister a straight answer.
I hide my smile. Because, that’s my friend in a nutshell. So outwardly easy-going some people make the mistake of thinking he’s a pushover. But Will is no one’s patsy. The man is rock solid to the core.
And he always speaks from the place his conscience dictates.
7
susan andersen
Open the damn door, Jameson!
BOOKER
I have only been home maybe ten minutes and am trying to ice my knuckles while simultaneously disrobing when some idiot pounds on my door. “Oh, for Cri’s sake, now what?” Who the hell comes calling at three o’clock in the morning? Isn’t it enough the night has already crept along like a moonshine-soaked turtle, while displaying damn near every shade of balled up known to man? Now company comes knocking at my door at o’dark hundred?
I throw back the three fingers of Canadian Club sipping whiskey I poured but have yet had opportunity to actually sip. I was a little busy getting ice for my hand, then detaching my stiff, high wingtip collar and removing my shirt studs and one cufflink with my left hand while burying my right one in the bowl I’d dumped the ice in. Pulling the latter from the frigid cubes, I gingerly pat it dry against the bedspread I’m sitting on. Setting the now-empty glass on the night table next to my bed, I climb to my feet then stalk down the hall to the door, trailing the shirt I’ve shrugged out of from my left wrist. I’m wrestling the final cuff link free as I reach the tiny entry.
Someone hammers yet again, shaking the door in its jamb.
“Knock it off!” I roar. “Who the hell are you, anyhow?”
“Open the goddamn door, Jameson!”
My heart performs a weird hurl-itself-at-my-ribcage maneuver. “Will?” I can honestly say he is the last person I expected to arrive on my doorstep. Not after tonight’s sideshow. Curiosity alone is enough to have me reaching for the knob.
I open the door.
My former best friend strides past me, his wide shoulder catching me in the collarbone and sending me staggering back. Okay, fair enough. Rubbing the spot he slammed, I follow him into the living room.
“Long time, no see,” I say with a bite of sarcasm layered atop the manners I was raised on. Then, watching him drop into a chair in my living room, the sarcasm grows deeper. “Please. Sit your ass down. Make yourself at home.”
“Done that. Thanks.” He looks up at me. “Interesting look.”
I glance down and shrug. I have yet to change out of my dress slacks, and my bowtie is still neatly tied. Having finally rid myself of my shirt on the entry floor, however, from the waist up I’m dressed only in the tux tie and my undershirt.
Well, too damn bad. “My house. Dead of night. If you want sensibly dressed, come back at a reasonable hour.”
He shrugs right back at me. “Got any hooch?” The words no sooner leave his mouth than he barks out a laugh. “Of course you do. You own a damn juice joint.”
I study him. Is he my rival now for Lena’s love? My thoughts on the latter have been all over the map tonight. One minute I’m thinking yes. The next, no way in hell. My bottom line at the moment is: what does she see in him, exactly?
Sure, Will has always had an easiness in his own skin I envied. Before I discovered it for myself, I had to spend fifteen months in European trenches and woods, then more than five years forging my way through the clubs of Paris, learning everything I needed to know to eventually run my own business. My one-time friend is a little battered right now because of me, but I suppose he’s nice enough looking with his tall, rangy build, dark eyes and sun-streaked brown hair. Shit, how would I know? Men don’t consider that sort of thing about each other.
Clara and Dot sure as hell couldn’t stop talking about him, though, when they left Lena’s dressing room for a quick drink at the bar before heading home. Truth be told, I was relieved when the dancers finally left.
I look down at my clenched fists, and slowly straighten my fingers until I’m no longer sporting bloodless white knuckles. I remind myself Will has never approached anything close to movie idol handsome. And his money likely isn’t the attraction. He was never dirt poor like Lena back when we all lived in Walla Walla. But he had been a lot closer to her income bracket than my father’s. And from what I overheard out
side her dressing room earlier, he’s taken those drawings he was always working on and turned them into a career as an illustrator. I’m guessing it’s probably a decent living, but I doubt it has him rolling in dough. So what is it, exactly, all the women see in him?
What does Lena see?
Of course, the details people like my father would consider drawbacks never seemed to matter as much to the ladies. And Lena wouldn’t give a damn if Will was rich as Croesus. She sure hadn’t given two shakes about my wealth or lack of it. She would appreciate Will’s creative mind, though. Women almost universally found him interesting. So my money is on Will’s easygoing confidence being his biggest drawing card.
Yeah. I can easily envision Lena liking a confident man.
Will follows me to the dining room where I cross to the bar I’ve established on the sideboard. Snatching up another highball glass, I splash a couple fingers of the rye whiskey into it. I start to turn away, then appropriate another glass and pour some for myself.
I hand Will his and carry mine back to the living room, where Will sits down again in his easy chair. Dropping onto the couch across the small, low table from him, I shoot him a level look. “So, what are you doing here at—” I glance at my watch “—three-goddamn-twenty-three in the morning? If you’re wanting an apology—well I guess I might owe you one.”
“You think?”
His lack of expression riles me. “Look, what did you expect to happen when you came waltzing into my club? Could I have handled my goodbyes better back then? Yes. And I should have talked about going to war with Lena first. But I did try to call her at the foundling home and I sure as hell kept my promise to write to her. She’s the one who couldn’t be bothered to respond. So, I concentrated on two things: staying alive and being a good soldier.
It Had to be You Page 5