Twisted River

by Kelsey Gietl

  “Oh, don’t be so green about it, Lu,” Phoebe giggled. She adjusted wrist-length gloves the same shade as her peach dress. “We can smell your jealousy from here, and it stinks.”

  Rosalea stretched her arms wide. “My man truly is the best. You should all be jealous.” Flipping onto her side, she laced Reuben with a sly smile. “Say, Mr. Radford, are you escorting our Hazel? You just know she’ll find it—”

  “Fascinatin’!” All three girls finished, breaking into a round of hysterical giggles.

  “You all leave me be,” Hazel frowned. With a gentle sway of her hips, she sashayed down the hall, calling over her shoulder, “I saved you dinner, Reuben. Mama’s meatloaf and potatoes with special gravy.”

  Unable to ignore the rumble of his stomach, Reuben followed her, a silent grin the only bit of amusement he had felt that entire day. Hazel’s friends’ rendition of her favorite exclamation had actually been pretty spot-on, and their vocal impression eerily accurate, but their propensity to tease was not something he typically shared. Hazel’s excessive use of her favorite adjective may have initially motivated him to purchase the thesaurus he accidentally left beside her typewriter, but it wasn’t long before her little quirk became more than a repetitious word.

  Not once in the last four days had Reuben eaten dinner with the Vines as his schedule never reflected theirs; however, that hadn’t hindered Hazel from attending to his evening meals. Her petite elbows propped up on the table, she would ask for gossip from the newsroom. Her pretty little lips curled around her speech like silk, and Reuben learned how fascinating one simple word could be.

  “Louisiana steamboat ran aground, caught on a sandbar.”

  “Fascinatin’.”

  “Samuel Jefferson keeled over Tuesday night. They’re having an estate sale on Monday after the funeral.”

  “Fascinatin’.”

  “Double homicide on Cherokee Street. Twelve gunshots delivered.”

  “Fascinatin’.”

  Usually her interest with morbidity intrigued him, but not tonight.

  Reuben exhaled, dropping his satchel to the kitchen floor and himself into a chair at the table. Tonight his brain was wrapped in more knots than a sailor could set. If any part of his brain was functioning, it pictured Maggie’s round abdomen, wondering if he was responsible and spinning the statistical probability that it legitimately was Hugo’s.

  Bending low into the icebox, Hazel retrieved a made up dinner plate, spinning in a whirl of pale green skirts and burnished locks. Her heavily blackened lashes fluttered above lined lids, aging her eighteen years by many more than seemed appropriate. “My, I cannot wait to dance tonight,” she breathed, her skirt swaying on the way back to the table. “Papa’s never allowed me at Cave Hall before.” A blithe little grin tugged at her lips. “’Course that was before I had my very own handsome escort.”

  “I’m not going.” His grit startled Hazel into dropping the dinner plate the last inch onto the table. It landed with a sharp clatter, and a few peas rolled onto the wooden surface.

  Hazel quickly returned them to the plate and slid it towards him. She lowered herself into the opposite chair. “Luella said there was a shooting. Did the story not go well?”

  Reuben scooped a helping of peas into his mouth, talking around his fork. “Mmm, hmm. It was fine. Although, I think from now on I’ll keep my hands out of Mr. Leonard’s territory.” He raised another bite to his lips, not exactly tasting anything.

  Her lip jutted out, glazed with pale pink rouge. “You mad at me then? That why you don’t want to go?”

  “No, I—” He met her eyes and sighed at the disappointment there. “Forgive me, Miss Vine. I’m not quite myself tonight.”

  Hazel traced her finger along the wood grain, inching it closer to his own. “We all have our times. You come out with me tonight, and I’ll make it all better.”

  Reuben shoveled more food into his mouth. He would need to be blind not to notice how she hung on his every word or how the cut of her gorgeous gown left him heated. He would be smart to just chuck caution to the wind and do as Stanley suggested, making this attraction between them official. Get lost in her attention for a night, a week, forever. But, blimey, if he couldn’t push Maggie’s last words from his mind.

  This baby could have been yours.

  His baby ... was it really, though?

  He had been but one in a line of Maggie’s suitors. Her child could as easily be anyone else’s.

  Chewing the final bite of his meal, Reuben swallowed hard. “I’m a terrible dancer.”

  “That don’t matter.” Hazel’s fingertips brushed the edge of his hand and her lashes fluttered. “I’m not.”

  He stood without response, rinsing his plate in record time, so quickly they should have enrolled it as an Olympic sport. He pressed his palms against the edge of the sink, lost in thought.

  A few months ago—before sailing on the Höllenfeuer, before Maggie’s betrayal, before Charles died—he would have wallowed in his room, drawn the curtains and lain in his bed wondering why the blows kept coming and nothing was fair. His crazy delusions would appear in the guise of his departed sister, probably perched on top of the dresser, swinging her feet with a wicked smile.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself, brother?” Mira would smirk. “Well, you should. You had Maggie in the palm of your hand and you walked away. And not even a week later, she’s married anyway. Married and stuffed full with some child. Like a kick to the groin. Like a knife, she drove it in and twisted. Like a—”

  “Enough! I get it,” Reuben would yell back. “But it wasn’t right, she and I. Even if we do have a baby, even if I married her, what then? Married bliss for twelve hours then the same carousel of bickering we’ve bandied about a million times before? I need someone who wants the same life as me. I don’t even know what she wants.”

  With a toss of her hair, Mira would hop from the dresser. “Clearly not you.”

  Reuben stared into the etched glass of the Vines’ kitchen window, analyzing his weary reflection. Mira wasn’t there. She never had been. She was in his dreams, his memories, and he still missed the innocent girl who lived a life of laughter and music. His sister had loved to dance. So did Tena. He remembered when she swept Charles, Maggie, and him away to Southampton on May Day last year. Reuben danced with Tena for hours and never once did she complain how often he pinched her toes or asked her to lead. How he missed her now. And Emil. Karl and Elsa and Winnie. Even Fred.

  Not the least of, he missed Charles. Always Charles. His best mate with the uncanny ability to dispense advice Reuben never wanted to hear and hardly ever followed. Yet he always listened. Halfway to death after falling in icy waters off the Höllenfeuer, Charles offered him a choice. To stay with the family Reuben lost or return to a life with the Kischs—a family he should be proud to call his own. So he went back because his friend asked him too. Because Charles couldn’t.

  In the sky outside, hovering directly above their neighbor’s twin chimneys, the moon’s glowing orb hung low. Sometimes, Charles, Reuben thought, I wonder why you bothered to ask. The moon didn’t answer, but he could almost imagine the man there winking slyly.

  “That’s not an answer,” Reuben grumbled.

  “Reuben?” The soft voice at his elbow brought him away back to sweet dimples tucked beneath bright eyes and loose burnished curls. “I’m sorry I mentioned dancing,” she said. “You’re tired, and I should have thought first. We can stay home tonight.”

  This wasn’t his home. It wasn’t even close. Home was somewhere far removed from here, a place tucked deep inside a heart he emptied when he walked away from the Kischs. Except that lately the emptiness ached, longing for something fresh to replace everyone he removed from his heart.

  Sweet, classy, and a touch naive, Hazel was of a different cut than everyone else in his cluttered past. At the newspaper, her fingers flew across the typewriter, eyes rising to greet him through fluttering lashes as he returned from an assig
nment and never indicating aloud her desire for more than friendship. In her father’s house, she never once crossed any boundaries, and her parents thought Reuben the highest of gentlemen. With her glossy copper hair and eyes the same shade as her name, she had one important attribute no other woman in his life did, and it made all the difference.

  “You fancy me, don’t you, Miss Vine?” he asked gently.

  Hazel’s eyes flitted to his, her soft breath hitching. “Oh, yes, Reuben. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”

  “Brilliant.” With a tease of his fingers across her jawline, he softly brushed his lips across hers.

  Her eyes widened and she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Reuben,” she giggled, “Does this mean you’ll finally call me Hazel?”

  Reuben laughed, thinking how unusual her response was. When he kissed Maggie for the first time, she recoiled as if he struck her. Well, Maggie had been correct about one thing. He had held onto who he was for too long.

  He drew Hazel close for another solid kiss. “Yes, Miss Vine. I’ll most definitely call you Hazel.”

  Let his heart’s emptiness be filled. Hazel Vine reminded him of no one else.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Good grief,” Earhart griped. “Why do girls always need to primp and prod? We’ve only just arrived.”

  Jonathan Earhart and Jonathan Tyler—respectively known by their surnames within their circle—stood with Reuben outside Cave Hall’s ladies’ lounge waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for their dancing partners so they could make their way into the main dance hall. Still filled with apprehension over the prior events of that evening, Reuben needed Hazel to emerge so he could claim security from her hand in his. If the giggles floating through the lounge door were any indication, he would have to wait a while longer.

  Tyler unbuttoned and reclasped his suit jacket. “Phoebe’s a fine dame, but fellas, in near about a minute, I’m apt to head into the hall for another.”

  Earhart flipped the watch from his jacket pocket, swinging the chain once around his finger before he opened it. “Ten o’clock. If they take much longer, we may as well.”

  “Good glory, Jon, put away your watch, else you’ll find an engagement ring on your porch come morning.” Rosalea tossed him a flirtatious smile as she and Luella approached from the lounge.

  Luella pulled her gloves back on one finger at a time. “We had to freshen our faces.”

  “What could you possibly have to freshen before you’ve even danced?” Earhart scoffed.

  Rosalea hooked the last tiny button on her glove with a shrug. “Your motorcar blew our hair all up and dust in our faces.”

  “You did insist on driving with the top open, Rosie dear.”

  “Well, we needed everyone to know it was us.”

  “With all the hootin’ and hollerin’ you were doing, dearheart, how could anyone miss ya?”

  Rosalea pinched his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “No more than you were doing, sweetie.”

  Sidling away from the group, Reuben passed Phoebe and caught Hazel as she exited the lounge. He clasped her elbow and led her to the entry stairwell where the lighting was so dim as to be perfect. Two couples passed before he stole her against him. “There’s my girl,” he murmured. “How does it feel to be out tonight?”

  “When you kiss me?” She raised her lips and he obliged, kissing her in a way even her “progressive” father might not approve of in public. Hazel grinned. “Utterly divine.”

  “I knew it!”

  Reuben lifted his face at Stanley’s boisterous shout. He bounded up the stairs from street level with a grin as smug as his usual crude humor. “I knew it,” he repeated. He threw an arm around his friend’s shoulders and yanked him closer to whisper, “All you needed was to get over that dame and you’d have Miss Vine in your dainty obit writing fingers.” Stanley stepped back, flinging his coattails behind him with a flourish. “Who do you need to thank for that, I wonder?”

  “Finished your column and ready to meddle in my business again? Smithson needs to work you harder.” Reuben extended his arm to Hazel whose face still burned like the devil’s fire. “Come on, Lee. A little bird told me Luella’s already claimed you for her partner tonight.”

  Stanley licked his lips and followed Reuben and Hazel back through the entry hall. “And I don’t mind claiming her right back. In fact, I might do well with seconds of that blonde-haired beauty.”

  “My sympathies to Luella.” Laughing, Reuben spun Hazel into the main ballroom before Stanley could frame a proper rebuttal.

  Located above a row of Olive Street shops, Cave Hall’s wood-planked dance floor and extended ceiling encompassed most of the building’s top two floors. From the raised stage at its farthest end, a mixed band led hundreds of couples to the rhythms of a fresh ragtime beat. Up above, a narrow balcony allowed space to observe the dancing or spend more intimate time in its dark corners. But it was on the hall’s edges that the boisterous gaiety was at its most extreme. A nearby gentleman raised a hand and an excited shout towards a young couple entering. Trussed up ladies and their beaus shuffled together in merry conversation, often discussing nothing of more consequence than the latest twenty-minute nickelodeon film. They were out on the town; talk of employment and politics were serious topics for parlors and dining tables, not rebellious dance halls.

  With the electricity in the lamps and in the air, Reuben felt an unfamiliar twitch spark the hairs on his neck. They didn’t have dance halls in Fontaine, at least none like this. Parties back home were hosted by wealthy families in private ballrooms, all very regulated and posh. Here they were quite literally dancing like wild animals.

  Hands bared high like claws, feet moved past faster than any dance Reuben would have dared. Joining them beside the dance floor, Earhart flung his arms wide. “Radford, I offer your British sensitivities Exhibit A of American Ragtime—the Grizzly Bear.”

  “Not to be bested by the Turkey Trot.” Tyler spun Phoebe out then back into his arms. “All the rage and all the bother for our parents.”

  “Don’t forget that uptight morality squad,” Rosalea fussed. “I declare the fear of them is like having another Daddy.”

  “Well then, down with the morality squad!” shouted Earhart.

  That comment sent up a rousing chorus of “Hear hear!” from their group and everyone in the vicinity.

  “What’s the morality squad?” Reuben asked as their group merged farther into the room. Hazel held tight to his arm, her eyes taking in the excitement and her flushed cheeks acknowledging how much she adored being out on her own.

  “Who,” Stanley corrected, Luella now safely situated on his arm. “The morality squad is a group of officers who charge into places like this—saloons, dance halls, and so forth—in an attempt to dismantle them. They believe dancing leads to impurity and alcohol is the devil’s brew.”

  “A bunch of poppycock, of course,” said Earhart, “because Cave Hall’s always been one step ahead. With all those temperance crackpots on the loose, the owners, Cornelius Ahern and Herman Albers, just did the easy thing and don’t serve spirits here. No alcohol, no worries.”

  “But what would you bet,” Tyler chortled, “that every Monday night when the place is closed ole Ahern and Albers are sipping the ale like the rest of us corrupt youth?”

  “Bless his soul! Bless his soul!” shouted the ladies.

  “Down with the morality squad!” returned the men.

  “Hear! Hear!”

  The band threw up another lively tune, a violin and banjo joining the tinkling piano keys. These people were barking mad compared to what he left back in Fontaine; however, he was starting to enjoy it. Just so long as he didn’t need to join in.

  Hazel tugged him towards the enormous dance floor. “Come along, my British beau. Dance with me.”

  Reuben dug his heels in while Hazel continued to pull on his arm in vain. “Hazel, please. I am a frightful dancer. Any English lady would vouch for this.”
>
  “That’s but your silly little nerves, Reuben,” Hazel giggled. “All these dances are brand new. Why do ya think they offer lessons twice a week?”

  “I thought this was your first time here? How have you had lessons?”

  “Who says I have?” A teasing little smile crossed her face. “But in a place like this? You don’t need to know nothin’ to dance here.”

  With the touch of her lips to his, he finally relented. By this point, the floor was crowded with swaying bodies, moving to an unfamiliar song. They turned around the north side of the floor past a long line of windows now featuring the darkened city sky.

  Reuben focused on Hazel’s pleasant smile rather than the pinch of his toes upon hers. He joined in with her laughter and admired how her eyes sparkled right before she tripped and fell into his arms. She peered up at him like he was a summer’s day she couldn’t get enough of. In fact, his focus was so well placed, he didn’t notice the other figure drawing near until Emil’s tall frame knocked them from the dance floor.

  “Oi,” Emil fussed. “Did you not see me off yonder jigging like the bloomin’ Irish the last five minutes? That is a bit of a disappointment. My jig is quite a sight to behold.”

  “Emil!” Reuben grinned. “Aren’t you a sight to behold? Also a tad youthful to be in a place like this.”

  “You’re only young if you look it. Luckily I appear twenty while my fick of a brother looks less than, and you blimey well know that fact doesn’t get old.”

  “Fred’s here too?”

  “Hardly. I want to actually have an enjoyable time tonight.”

  Continuing this conversation went against Reuben’s new rule to steer clear of the Kischs for a while, but it was only Emil. How much harm could the little jester cause? Ushering them over to the bar, he held up two fingers to the attendant and sighed when Emil’s sly gaze observed Hazel firmly attached to Reuben’s arm. Time to get the mocking over and done with and quickly.