Speak Easy, Speak Love

by McKelle George

  “That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? That I’m not even capable of real love. Well, I am! I really love him, Pedro Morello. I hope he does ask me to marry him because I’d say yes!”

  Maggie took her cue, before the pair of them started throwing things. She knocked on the door. “Heyo,” she called casually, as if she hadn’t heard a thing. “Can I come in? Messenger boy stopped by . . .”

  Hero stormed past Maggie two points of bright color on her cheeks. “Good luck,” she snarled. “He’s acting completely impossible.”

  Prince sat on the edge of his bed, lacing up his shoes. He didn’t look up as Maggie came in.

  “Telegram,” she said, and handed it over.

  “Thanks.” Prince read it. Maggie watched him expectantly—but was disappointed when Prince said nothing. A forbidding gleam entered his eyes.

  “You okay?” Maggie asked. “You know that’s just Hero checking in, making sure you’re still with her. She’s anxious about her party, even if she won’t say it.”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere, have I?” Prince finished with the laces, and his foot hit the ground with a hard thud. He stood and tucked the telegram into his back pocket. “I’m glad for you, Mags. About the Cotton Club, I mean. That’s big-time.”

  Maggie had told them to give them time to find a replacement. As she’d predicted, nobody was anything but happy for her.

  Then Prince was gone, and maybe it was nothing, but the feeling in her deepest gut said different. After that fight with Hero, he was walking reckless.

  Finally she shook her head and marched downstairs to the drawing room. She gave the operator John’s number and waited what seemed like half a century before a breathy voice came on the other line. “Pronto?”

  A woman’s voice.

  “Hello?” Maggie said.

  “Hello?” the voice answered.

  “Um, Mrs. Morello?” Maggie guessed.

  “I am not Morello!” the woman shrieked. “Who are you? How did you find me?”

  “I’m sorry, please, I need to speak to John. Is he there?”

  “John has that bastard’s blood in him. He’s the bastard, not my Pedro, not my prince—”

  “Give the phone to John, please. It’s very important.”

  “John is not here.” Abruptly the voice sounded calm and lucid, and then the line disconnected. Slowly Maggie replaced the receiver in the cradle. Now what?

  You know damn well what, Margaret.

  She just didn’t like it.

  She ran back up the stairs to get her good shoes. She was hoofing it to town. From there she could get a telegram to John and then maybe catch Father Francis at the church. He’d give her a ride to Hewlett Harbor without asking too many questions. She hoped.

  Once she was ready, she jogged back downstairs—just in time to watch Hero fling open the front door and launch herself into a waiting Claude’s arms with an embrace that might turn a weaker mortal to a diamond.

  “Hello,” he said, laughing.

  “I missed you!” she said into his shoulder.

  “Well! It was only a long weekend, and now I’m yours again forever.” Despite his la-di-da tone, he was clearly pleased as pie at her reaction, his ears bright pink. “Miss Hughes! How are you?” He pulled away from Hero as Maggie stepped behind them.

  “Just dandy. Say, I don’t suppose it’d be any trouble for you to drop me near the station before you go? Only a few minutes out of your way.”

  “Why, sure,” Claude said. He turned and waved at a car in the drive, which held three of his friends, all of whom stared at Hey Nonny Nonny and Maggie with fascination and delight. They waved back with gloved hands and the conviction that they were engaging in something scandalous.

  “I’ll be,” said Maggie.

  She climbed in the back with Hero and Claude and a pretty redhead. “Boys, you’ve met Hero,” Claude said. “This is Margaret Hughes. She sings at the speakeasy. Miss Hughes, this is Trent Douglas, Skipper Mellon, and Lucille York.”

  “How do you do, Miss Hughes?” Lucille leaned over. “Do you know, I attended a charity banquet with my parents last year, and William Du Bois gave a speech.” Lucille nodded, and Maggie got the impression she expected to be congratulated on her forward thinking. When Maggie said nothing, Lucille added, nervously, “Do you—have you met Mr. Du Bois, Miss Hughes?”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I can’t say that I have.”

  Lucille stared at her. “Oh,” she said after a long, uncomfortable beat. “Of course.”

  Skipper, the boy in the passenger seat, was pretending Maggie wasn’t there. Hero wasn’t paying the slightest attention, her hand on Claude’s arm. “Which way to the station?” the driver, Trent Douglas, asked, with bright waspish charm. As they pulled out, he launched into a conversation about football with Skipper, while Lucille pretended to care.

  Maggie slumped back in her seat. Some days, you couldn’t make it off Hey Nonny Nonny’s porch without being reminded about the world outside its doors. How much longer could she stay sheltered? How long could any of them?

  Maggie glanced over at Hero and Claude and tried to picture them married, and truth be told, Hero Stahr, who could pretend with the best of them when it came to boys, didn’t seem to be pretending this time. “How were the Hamptons?” Hero murmured, stroking his flawless golden jaw. “You seem worried.”

  “Do I? Oh, well, there’s just a fuss about college in the fall and how I ought to be out meeting the right people—as if that matters, next to you.”

  “Claude, sweetheart, of course it matters. I’m just some dame you met at a swanky bar, and you have a nice, golden, shining future. The kind that requires a college education.”

  “I don’t want any kind of future that doesn’t have you in it, Hero. That’s the kind of shining future for me.”

  Brother, Maggie thought, but there was no Prince, no Ben to share a knowing look with. Only Lucille, who was still leaning over the seat determined to be interested in football.

  Hero poked Claude. “I’m going to find a crack in your perfect knight’s armor, buddy boy—you wait. No one is this wonderful.”

  He laughed and turned his face, his nose in her hair. His lips brushed her skin. “Tell it to my mother.”

  “Who’s that? The queen of England?”

  He laughed.

  They dropped Maggie off right in front of the telegraph office, and she wondered if all of them at Hey Nonny Nonny weren’t one step away from the next thing, with the past already dying under their feet.

  CHAPTER 21

  ALL HEARTS IN LOVE USE THEIR OWN TONGUES

  Beatrice knelt on her floor and set aside her chemistry book. That was her best subject by far. Actually biology was, but how many sciences did the regents’ exam cover?

  Her grammar was all right, but her spelling occasionally drifted toward phonetic rather than correct. Oh, and Latin! How could she forget Latin? That book was moving to the top of the pile.

  Beatrice straightened, hands on her hips, surveying the wide arc of books and papers she’d laid out, the remains of her school days, both official and otherwise. She stiffened. Where was her history textbook?

  Would she have to know her capitals? Recite the Preamble to the Constitution? “‘We the people of the United States,’” she murmured, “‘in order to form a more perfect Union . . .’”

  There was a knock at the door, followed by an amused “Miss Clark?”

  “Yes?”

  The door opened, and Benedick poked his head in. “Were you reciting the Preamble to the Constitution?”

  “You’ve heard of it?” She smiled. She was happy to see him. (There, she admitted it.)

  He stepped inside. He wore a suit. Not the nicest one he’d ever put on in his life, she was sure, but it was tailored to his whip-like frame so exactly that he looked sort of . . . dashing.

  He glanced over her books. “I thought you said you could pass this exam unconscious? What are you doing study
ing already?”

  “It relaxes me.”

  “Well, if you think the medical world at large can spare you, I could use that big brain of yours tonight.” He clasped his hands behind his back and examined the knickknacks in her room. He picked up the skull replica off her dresser and turned it over in his hand with fascinated horror. “It’s like the lair of a mad scientist in here. . . .”

  “What do you need my brain for?” She climbed to her feet, dusting her skirt off.

  He turned and set the skull down. “You know those pheasant hunters staying in the second-floor rooms?”

  “Mr. Hansen and Mr. Smith, yes.”

  “I caught them snooping around outside this morning, almost like they were looking for something. I told them about a bar down in Queens, and I thought about heading there tonight, just to see if they show up or if they were only fishing.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  He waited, watching her. After an extended beat of silence, his eyes crinkled. “So you’ll come?”

  “Oh! Well, yes. I can come if you like, though I don’t think the evening will require any great mental exertion.”

  “Wonderful,” he deadpanned, again seeming amused. He stepped closer. “There is a minor stipulation, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right?”

  “It’s just I’d rather they not notice me, and I’m afraid I’ll draw attention to myself, young buck out on the lam, no pals with him, so I was hoping we might act as if we were out together, you know, boy and girl.”

  He didn’t have to look so intense about it. Or get so close to make his point, did he? She leaned ever so slightly back. She didn’t want him to know his proximity unnerved her, but really. “Oh, well, just pretend?”

  “Only pretend, but still convincing, if you get my drift.”

  “Okay.” She agreed cautiously.

  “Good! Get dressed, why don’t you? It’ll take about an hour to drive, and I want to get there early.”

  “You mean, dressed in something else?” She glanced down at herself dismayed. Hero had left for that brunch whatever and had not yet returned to help her navigate her apparel.

  When she looked back at Benedick, he was pensive, and she, an open target. In this, she wouldn’t even blame him. Go on, she thought with a sigh, let’s have it.

  She even had a good comeback.

  I only offered my brain for the evening, sir; the package in which it comes is nonnegotiable.

  Ha.

  But he didn’t take the opportunity. “You look fine, obviously as you,” he said. “Not a thing wrong with it except that you look too much like Beatrice Clark, and we are meant to be incognito.”

  Confused, she frowned. That was a rather generous way to address the issue, considering.

  “Come on, Hero won’t mind if we pick through a few of her things. Nothing flashy, just a bit of a disguise, what do you say?”

  Why was he being so nice?

  He—

  Oh, yes. He loved her, was in love with her.

  Or was he?

  She sent him a sidelong look as he ushered her toward Hero’s bedroom. Only a pretend date, was it? It was the worst moment to recall this key detail about their dynamic, right before he was holding skirts up to her waist and setting this and that on her shoulder, his fingers on her hair before deciding, “A hat, I’m afraid, is the only surefire way to disguise that,” in his dashing little suit and smelling faintly of sandalwood cologne when he got close.

  Her whole body was prickly and warm by the time the affair was over. Scientifically speaking, she was unclear whether the sensation was pleasant or unpleasant.

  She’d never even held hands with a boy, and this had never bothered her. Her mind, she’d reasoned, was so occupied with complex theories and thoughts that it left little room for that titillating nervousness that seemed to overcome other girls when a pair of broad shoulders sauntered too close to the senses.

  Thank goodness, she had congratulated herself, you will never have to deal with that distraction.

  She found a peach cotton skirt that worked well enough and dressed it up with one of Hero’s brooches pinned to her own blouse. Benedick led her outside and opened the driver’s side of the Lambda for her. “You’re the better driver,” he said.

  The evening wind swept over her flushed skin and cleared out her head nicely.

  Also—hot damn!

  She’d driven only beat-up trucks before. Now she understood Hero’s hell-for-leather driving approach. She accelerated into a curve and was pleased by the responding roar of the engine.

  There were eleven miles of curved pavement between Hey Nonny Nonny and where they were going. Benedick only slid closer as they got into Queens. He put an arm around the back of her seat, and directed her to a lit-up street in the busier part of town. If this was a pretend date, he was awfully close considering there wasn’t a soul around to see them yet.

  They parked, and after Benedick helped readjust and pin her hat in place, he held out his arm. “I’m not worried about you,” he said, “but for appearances’ sake?”

  She slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. He led her to a shabby tenement building, with a stairway that led to a discreet well. A vertical neon sign above this dip read: BERNIE’S WATCHES.

  The shop was tiny and square on the inside, framed by waist-high cases of pocket watches and ticking clocks. An old man behind the cash register pushed grimy glasses up his nose. “What can I do for you kids? Looking for anything specific?”

  Benedick surveyed the glass cases, examining the array of choices one by one. He stretched a hand down and lifted a silver pocket watch. The chain was rusty red, and the back was engraved with a rose design. “I’d like this one, but with a new chain,” he said. “Put it in a pine case. Velvet lining.”

  A hard smile creased the old man’s face. He coughed and punched three keys on his register. Behind him the wall caught and slid open. The strains of a piano and disorderly laughter filtered back.

  “Much obliged,” Benedick said, setting the watch down.

  Beatrice held on to him a bit tighter as they entered a hallway that might have belonged to any tenement building on just about any street in New York. Somebody showed them down a flight of stairs, which showcased a variety of displeasing smells, and opened an unpromising door at the end.

  Then they were there, right inside a wallop of music and smoke and gin. Rack 20 was not like Hey Nonny Nonny. The ceiling was low, and the space minimal, the whole room warm and humid with bodies. Summer-worn men with skinny girls on their laps sat at the bar, nursing tumblers of bronze-colored liquids and chewing the ends of cigars. There was only a piano in the corner; a small audience urged a girl on top of it to take off her stockings, and she did, after some halfhearted protest, and played with her toes.

  Benedick tugged Beatrice into a far corner booth, blocked off in shadow except for a dim hanging lamp. She sat down, and he leaned over her. “Don’t get handsy,” he said. “This booth has a reputation.”

  All that cooling wind in the car, for nothing. Her blood was back up to scorching in an instant, making her skin pink.

  “Be right back,” he said.

  She touched her hat, surveying the room. Now she understood why he hadn’t worn his best suit and why they’d decided on a simple cotton skirt and sheer black stockings for her. This wasn’t a fancy crowd.

  Benedick returned with two lowball glasses. She drew hers close after he set it down, with both hands, to prove she wasn’t afraid of it. The wood of the table was tacky, as if someone had spilled a few drinks. She tipped the amber liquid toward what light she could find, sniffing. On the basis of the smell, it could very well be embalming fluid.

  Unbuttoning his jacket, Benedick slid in next to her. “I asked for the nonbiting variety, not to worry.”

  “I wasn’t. How is it you know about this place?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Oh, we serious thinkers are wont to gather in dank little holes such
as this, brooding over claret and brandishing our old copies of the Liberator at each other.” He swallowed half his drink in one go with nary a flinch.

  She lifted her own glass and sipped. Her tongue recoiled in shock, then tingled, as if it might be going numb. “There.” She set the glass down. “Not so bad, if you remember not to breathe—” And then she promptly erupted in a fit of coughing.

  He grinned. “Look at you, our little teetotaler all grown up.”

  “I’m not a teetotaler.” She tried not to wheeze. Another cough, and she had it all out. She wiped the corners of her eyes. “Do you know, when I was in school, there was a nationwide competition run by the Boston Herald to invent a word for someone who drinks illegally. The winning student got a cash prize, and guess who it was?” She tapped her chest.

  Benedick’s face slackened. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did! I thought you’d be impressed, Mr. Writer.”

  “You can’t have.”

  “I’m telling you I did. One hundred dollars. The prize was supposed to be two hundred, but there was a boy who came up with the exact same word, separately, so we split the money.”

  He leaned his cheek onto his fist, and then she understood.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Scofflaw,” he said. “I thought I was so clever. Someone who scoffs at the law.”

  “It is clever, I think.”

  He smiled. “I always thought it was nuts that two different people, on their own, could think of the exact same . . .” He trailed off, straightening suddenly. “There they are.”

  Mr. Hansen and Mr. Smith. Dressed in suits. And no beard on Mr. Hansen. There was, however, a jar of pickles at his hip.

  Benedick pressed closer to her. He turned his face into her ear, as if he were whispering a sweet nothing, but what he actually said was “What’s with the pickles?”

  Mr. Hansen approached the bar. “How about a drink?” he called jovially, putting the jar of pickles on the stool next to him like his best lady friend. He was trying to look silly; that was Beatrice’s guess. Not unlike his ruse at Hey Nonny Nonny.

  “The bartender’s tough,” Benedick whispered. “He doesn’t sell to anybody he doesn’t know. That’s why I chose this joint.” Behind the counter half a dozen framed photos and newspaper clippings hung on the wall beneath a sign: DO NOT SERVE!