Joe-Joe reached across the table to her. “Care to dance?”
“In a moment, Joe-Joe.” She watched Val stand to lead a blue-gowned girl to the floor. “I don’t like this song.”
Lawrence returned then and leaned close to her ear. “It is done, ma’am,” he whispered. “And his name is Sam Delany.”
She nodded. Sam Delany had potential; he had a heart. The way he sang, it seemed he soaked up exactly what was in front of him and squeezed it out in the notes of his music. She guessed he wouldn’t be incapable of love like Frank was. She was willing to bet he sang about love because he had beheld it, embraced it, absorbed every ounce of it until he shone like a beacon. Soon it would shine on her.
“Good,” she whispered back. “Now, when the moment is right I want you to get a message to Val Jackson. Tell him when he’s done wading through the mud to come see me after church tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER 2
Val
Harlem, May 1947
Before Val Jackson had left for the Swan he’d sat in his office above his own club, the Diamond. The handsome walnut clock on the wall struck the half hour: nine thirty. He felt the bass throbbing in the floorboards under his feet. Half of Harlem danced beneath his good graces tonight but Val, pulling on his crisp white tuxedo shirt, thought only of Elizabeth Townsend, who was quietly situated at his aunt Rose’s Westchester estate. She would be getting ready for bed about now.
His aunt always insisted on dinner at six—ridiculously early. Then she and Elizabeth would walk in the rose garden. Auntie turned in well before nine and that’s when Elizabeth wandered the great house alone, sometimes reading in the library. Her husband called each night at nine, an annoying detail. Then she would dress in her nightclothes, a thin cotton gown—sleeveless, the maid Annie had said—and sit on the balcony outside her room and gaze up into the sky before going to bed. One night the housekeeper thought she heard Elizabeth praying out there.
Val fastened the silver cuff links at his wrists and recited Elizabeth’s routine to himself twice more as he finished dressing. He knew all the details, thanks to his man Sebastian’s unfailing ability to bribe just the right people in his aunt’s household. Elizabeth would be in bed by ten p.m. sharp; that’s what the latest report had said. He loved the potential of those two succulent hours between eight and ten. Just now, in May, they would be filled with air so thick with humidity no one’s mind would want the trouble of thinking straight. The end of a hot summer day was when a woman’s guard might be down just enough to entertain latent thoughts.
But that’s what he enjoyed about this particular conquest. Elizabeth Townsend didn’t have any latent, smoldering desires. He had watched her long enough to know this, seen her loving eyes trained on her straight-as-a-board husband and her arm looped through his. Val would change that. He knew he would be the one to light the match, and whatever thoughts burned in her from there would be entirely his own creation. For a few sweet moments he paused and allowed himself the pleasure of imagining Elizabeth in her bed, her bare skin sliding between the cotton of her nightgown and the famously soft sheets his aunt’s home was known for. The prospect made him ache with satisfaction.
A long, slow smile ignited from one corner of his mouth and spread to the other as he sat down behind his desk and leaned back in the enormous burgundy leather chair. Was this what Satchel Paige felt like, coming to the mound to meet a fresh opponent after so many years? Was he rolling in the life of it, so excited that there was still someone worth pursuing even after he had bedded and tasted the best? Elizabeth Townsend was so damn perfect—not one of these pants down, legs up women easily charmed by his name alone. He would savor Elizabeth Townsend when the time came—and it would be so fine the streets of Harlem would want to open up and swallow him, engulfing him in praise and awe.
“Sebastian.”
The butler answered so fast it was as though he’d come at Val’s very thought. Without a word, he took his employer’s left hand and, with a silver file, smoothed the nails and cleaned underneath them.
“Any news?” Val used his right hand to remove a Montecristo cigar from the mahogany humidor on his desk. Sebastian pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit it. The smoke encircled Val’s head like a gentle fog and the spicy wood aroma filled the office as Val settled into his feel-good body for the night.
“Miss Malveaux, they say, will be at the Swan, sir.”
Val drew on the cigar with a long, deep breath. Nice. He and his wayward love would play their game tonight. There was nothing better than when he and Mae got to perform before an audience.
Only one question remained—who would be their targets? Sebastian popped open a tin of Malveaux’s pomade and touched his fingers to the gel. He dabbed the sweet-smelling hair dressing onto the edges of Val’s dark curls. He brushed it through quickly, wiped his hands on a thick white towel, and then went to retrieve Val’s tuxedo coat from where it hung behind the office door.
Val stood and held out an arm. The finely tailored piece framed his physique, squaring off his broad shoulders and tapering down to his narrow waist. He approached the full-length mirror and stared. Sometimes Val pitied the world when he looked this good. He knew once he went out that door he could have anything he wanted and any difficulty could be solved with a ten-dollar bill. At thirty-five years old, he walked over Harlem like he walked on a fine Oriental rug.
He straightened the bow tie on his tuxedo.
“I’m ready,” he told Sebastian. “You can pack up my things and take them to the apartment. I won’t be coming back here.”
“Yes, sir. Do you want your room ready? Will you have company tonight?”
“If you’re talking about Miss Malveaux, I can’t rightly say but there’s always the chance. Keep the champagne on ice but if it’s anyone else don’t bother. Do the usual. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t bother with the car. I’ll walk to the Swan.”
OUTSIDE ON 7TH Avenue the glorious boulevard opened up before Val. He loved it because the street sang to him, home, home, home, in complex, syncopated beats. The smells of every place he passed reached out, inviting him to remember everything he’d ever been. Fish frying at Sally Mo’s put him back at his mama’s table, his mouth watering for one more piece of her perfect cod. At Ewell’s striped barbershop pole Val smelled soap and clove and walked again at his father’s side, listening as Daddy repeated his instruction on how he himself would never be accepted in New York because that’s just the way people felt about folks who moved up from down south. But because Val had been born in Harlem, life could be different for him. He would have money and birthright. “You will own these streets, son,” Daddy had said. “And you can do whatever you want with them.”
Val’s favorite scent, though, he picked up only on certain women on certain blocks, late in the evening when it was time for them to be out looking for takers of what they had to offer. It put him in mind of Ella Jenkins, who took him by the hand one sweet spring night and, for the price of two nights’ rent, made a man of him. After that his daddy could talk about money and birthright all he wanted. Val knew then he possessed a new power that crystallized every advantage he owned. And when he conquered Aletheia Collins he knew the power had turned him into a magnet so strong the world would always come to him.
When he was twenty-one no man could win the love of the black-haired siren who, rumor had it, left a well-to-do husband grieving for her in Pittsburgh because he didn’t have enough where it mattered to satisfy her. When she walked down the street, the men could only stare, their catcalls stuck in their throats because her beauty went that deep. Her tiny waist flowed down to hips that bloomed out so full they made every male over the age of twelve want to worship the moon. She smelled of strawberries and the scent lured men to follow her around because it brought them memories of jam and summer and the life flowing through their veins. Her sleepy brown eyes never seemed to
take in anything that pleased her, as though nothing would ever be new for her again. But Val wanted to be the man who would strike the match that would light up her face and make her berry-colored lips open for him.
So on the afternoon he saw her in a red cotton dress walking down 7th Avenue he knew how to take her. He stepped in front of her, looped an arm around her waist, and pulled her toward him. He felt her body tense, but instead of ducking like a man about to be slapped, he did nothing—no attempted kiss, no apology, no words at all. Instead he hummed, low, but loud enough for her to hear, “Stardust” and moved her around the sidewalk like it was no different from the polished wood floor of a dance hall. Val kept his gaze clamped on hers until he saw scale after scale fall from her eyes—first bewilderment, then rage, then challenge. But his stare showed that he knew full well who filled his arms and he understood and appreciated the gravity of her being. They bumped into shoppers bustling down the street with their packages until enough of them looked up and either stopped or shuffled toward the curb to give them space. The opening of this space, and the loose, unhurried motions of Val and Aletheia on the pavement drew people to windows and doors and the witnesses couldn’t stop looking. It seemed like something from a movie set, but Val figured a woman like Aletheia required a strong dose of fairy tale. For all he knew, that’s why she turned up her nose at the world. If a man wanted to take Aletheia Collins he had to be bigger than life. That’s what Val aimed to be when he placed both hands on her face, his long fingers framing the curve of her heart-shaped beauty, and laid his own lips full on hers.
Val felt the electricity charging him up into the height of a god. Taking Aletheia to bed that night was almost, almost, anticlimactic by comparison because from that moment, on the street, he owned the real victory and his prize was not Aletheia, but the fierce, undying respect of the men around him. Without raising a fist, a weapon, or even a five-dollar bill, Val proved himself a man to be reckoned with on the stage they grudgingly valued most. He did enjoy Aletheia. In fact she had been truly a delicacy, her body so primed and gorgeous that her love nearly sucked him out into her bottomless sea to drown. But every marveling glance around Val as he walked Harlem’s streets sustained him. And the strength of those looks made Val bold enough to do the thing that caused the boys at the bar to holler and suck in their teeth: he dropped Aletheia just a few weeks later with no more thought than he would have given a dirty hankie. For a man to be able to take pussy like that was one thing, but to leave it at will was something every single one of them, if they were being swear-on-the-Bible honest, knew they couldn’t do. They would be enslaved to the pleasures of a woman like Aletheia Collins until she moved on to someone else or died. But Val Jackson was the one who moved on, from one glorious conquest to the next with no fear of retribution. This new game made life for Val bright and urgent. He was a man—the man they wanted to be.
That night as the dusky musk smell lingered in the air Val felt like he was being born all over again.
In the Swan Val descended the stairs on the wave of a trombone crescendo and on the floor he saw Mae enveloped in the sound. Frank Washington twirled her and her feet touched on the two downbeats. Val loved this song too, loved how the trombone’s swagger made a woman’s hips sway, and the music seemed to hug her curves.
He paused and allowed his deep brown eyes to roam appreciatively over Mae’s form. It could only be a moment—a casual observer would think he had barely glanced her way. But she would know. And if he didn’t pay his split-second due now, Mae would settle accounts later.
The dance floor was polished to a high gloss. Across the room the bar took up an entire wall with four bartenders, each wearing a black shirt and white jacket, tending the length of it. Single young women, each one gowned and gorgeous, sat on cushioned seats at the bar and hoped one of the well-moneyed men in the room would invite her to sit at a table or, even better, to dance.
Val moved to the bar and an empty seat where he could comfortably scan the room. A line of pouty, lipstick-stained mouths turned in his direction. He ordered a gin and tonic, looked back across the room, and sighed.
The Swan was a playground to him most Saturday nights, but this night he could feel something prickly and impatient about himself. The sameness of the space and the people in it seemed to grate on his nerves, threatening to become unbearable. There was Hedley Wilson making a fool of himself, as usual, with his overcrowded table and seeking eyes, wanting to know who was watching him. Like anyone cared about his over-the-hill self. And the society molls, reveling in their red-boned glory, with their self-satisfied looks and understated diamonds, they turned their heads when Val looked in their direction, as though he wouldn’t know how hot they were between their legs underneath their gowns.
Val recognized the feeling: it was again the strange discomfort crawling along the edges of his mind. He had felt it coming on ever since the Robinson game last month—the one in which Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in baseball. One month had passed since Robinson had stepped out of the Dodgers’ dugout, dignified and silent. He’d taken up his spot at first base, hands on his knees, ready to play ball. But there had been no way to ignore the rush of noise sweeping the park—many cheers, yes, especially among Val and his friends—but Val could detect the jeers and the word “nigger” grating its nasty undercurrent through the sounds and he could see the tight white mouths of the Boston Braves and many even on Robinson’s own team.
Val had wanted to act then, to run through the stands, up and down each section, tossing greenbacks into the white crowd to distract them, to give them the only thing they cared about, to hopefully protect Robinson from the white hot glare of their anger. But there wasn’t enough money in the world to give these people what they really wanted—to have all these dark faces disappear so they wouldn’t have to be confronted so often with their fear, bigotry, or fake tolerance ever again.
So Val had tried to cheer louder, to scream into this void and say this man wasn’t going anywhere, that Robinson would show them. He’d clapped his hands over his head and stomped his feet.
Then Val had looked at Robinson again. He’d thought about all this extraordinary baseball player would soon do: the hits, the stolen bases glorifying his speed, showing them the game the way it was meant to be played. But then Robinson had stood up, lifted his cap, and, turning slowly, saluted all the people in the park. He’d gone back to his stance and Val had fallen silent. Somehow this gesture had been the right one. But even more than that, Val thought, it was important—not like money or social position. There was something about this man and the way he was that would matter more for his people—and it would matter long after he died. Val had wanted to shake off the feeling but he knew it seemed to be a piece that fit right into a puzzle that had troubled him more as he got older. This puzzle made him angry when he could change a look with a five-dollar bill or sit in places that once gave him satisfaction, such as the Swan, where he sat that night. These damn people were living out a stupid fantasy when the world was changing and there was so much more. . . .
Possibility.
That was the word, but Val didn’t allow himself to think it just then. He refused to give birth to it tonight. If he did, the Swan would fall down on him like a load of dirt and he would be buried in this place so empty of possibility.
Instead he turned his attention to the lovely young thing wrapped tight in blue satin and sitting a few seats from him down the bar. Val picked up his drink and moved toward her and within a few steps the scent of the gardenia in her black pinned-up hair reached him and relaxed him. He lifted her hand and kissed it. When her lips split into a relieved and grateful smile, he knew he wouldn’t have to introduce himself. He would learn her name, buy her a drink, and the night would proceed in the ordinary way with the end he knew so well. He relished the glances of envy he knew men were shooting his way because they knew they would have to buy many more drinks, work harder at being charming, and still have no cert
ainty of the result Val Jackson would enjoy that evening. His reputation brightened the moment and he loved how, in this way, he could be so above other men. For now this feeling would help him accept the deadening predictability of this place until he could find whatever it was that would draw back the shadows and recall him to life.
CHAPTER 3
Mae
Harlem, May 1947—Sunday Morning
Mae Malveaux had washed every inch of her body except for a small area between her breasts. At that sweet spot she detected the combined scent of herself and this new lover. It would serve as a welcome distraction in church when the sermon went on too long. She stood in front of the full-length mirror and surveyed her figure. The globes of her chest were still firm and high; her waist tapered down into perfect narrowness while her hips and rear blossomed just enough, but not too much. Mae sighed with pleasure. Any other woman would be concerned about just when these voluptuous features would lose their bloom and drift earthwards in their added years. But Mae was still of the mind she wasn’t like other women. In fact she knew no reason why some miracle couldn’t occur just for her and make her the one person to elude the crush of time’s wheel. Of course Mae was old enough to know better, to know such thinking was pure folly. And she was still young enough to believe if miracles would apply to anyone, it would be to her.
Unforgivable Love Page 4