“Keep it to yourself, child. I’m eighty, and I wouldn’t be able to resist him, either. Lord knows, I wouldn’t even want to, much less try.”
Allison wanted to get off that subject. “Hmm. He’ll be back here in a few minutes. I’d better put some clothes on. Any entertainment tonight?”
Frances stopped breading the catfish and stared at her niece. “Seems to me like you brought your entertainment with you. The band arrived this evening, but they’re just practicing tonight over at the art center. They get paid for Saturday and Sunday, and you believe me they won’t be blowing a single note till 12:01 tomorrow.”
When Jake returned—his pride evident in the two bass and one pike dangling from the fishing rod— Allison apologized for the lack of entertainment, explaining that the band wouldn’t play until Sunday afternoon. It struck her as odd that he seemed relieved, though that didn’t make sense. But on more than one occasion, she had thought his behavior that of a man leading a double life. Her lower lip dropped.
Quickly, she closed her mouth, for he was attuned to her every gesture. “I am not going to start thinking like that,” she said to herself. “I promised to report on what I see and hear during his working day, and not on what I surmise.”
Chapter 9
“This is the best catfish I ever ate,” Jake said at dinner, savoring his third helping. “This is the standard by which catfish should be judged.”
“Talk that way, and she’ll have you eating it till you pass out,” Allison told him, pleased that he enjoyed her aunt’s cooking.
“As long as there’s a bed nearby, I wouldn’t mind.” He stopped eating long enough to ask Frances, “How did you, a Southern woman, happen to settle here?”
A smile of sweet memory lit Frances’s face. “I sang with the big bands,” she said, her eyes sparkling with remembrances of her younger days. “There wasn’t a girl singer anywhere who could top Frances Wakefield.”
Allison’s head jerked up, and he realized she heard the gasp he hadn’t been able to stifle. The woman was legendary, but he couldn’t acknowledge knowing that without inviting questions from Allison, and maybe tipping her off about Mac Connelly.
“I’ll be doggoned,” he said. “You mean to tell me a celebrity can cook like this?”
“Honey, I haven’t been a celebrity since the end of the fifties, almost half a century ago. Back there in the thirties, forties, and fifties, Idlewild was ‘Black Eden.’ All the greats came here. Count Basie, the Duke, Cab, Earl Hines, Mr. B., everybody. Right here in this resort, you could go to see Billie Holiday, Ella, and Lionel Hampton the same night.
“In the days of segregation, very few places that weren’t black-owned booked black entertainers. They couldn’t work in the clubs of Las Vegas and Hollywood, but they were welcome here, and they came. All of them. And black professionals and businessmen came here to enjoy them and luxuriate on some of the finest beaches in the country.
“Let me tell you, from the twenties through the fifties this resort rocked with talent. And a lot of those professionals who came here for vacation bought property here. It was nothing to see Dr. Du Bois and people like that walking around here. Integration changed it all. Our entertainers could work most anyplace, and blacks with money could stay where they liked.
“They all left Idlewild in droves and headed for Las Vegas, New York, and Hollywood. My husband and I had made our home here, so we stayed.” With a faraway look in her eyes, she said, “We’re bouncing back. Wait till tomorrow. You’ll see.”
Jake plowed his fingers through his hair. “I can’t imagine anybody preferring Las Vegas to this place. It’s peaceful, and such natural beauty. First time I came here, I was awed.”
“Well, a lot of ’em left, all right. You two want to play a couple of hands of pinochle? Haven’t had a good game of cutthroat in ages.”
After about an hour of losing to Frances, boredom crept in, a state with which he had no tolerance. “Now that you’ve beaten me to your satisfaction, Frances, I’d better start figuring out what I’ll include in that one-hour lecture I’m giving Monday night in San Antonio.”
He had to find out what time Saturday or Sunday the chief wanted to debrief him on his activities aboard the Saint Marie, and he needed time to prepare for that.
“You go right ahead, Jake. I’ll have some hot chocolate on the stove for you, or you can open the fridge and get a beer or some white wine if you like. Make yourself at home.”
“And don’t forget to tell me good night,” Allison called to him as he headed up the stairs.
He stopped, turned around, and asked her, “Are you suggesting I’m not rowing with both oars? How could I forget something so pleasant?” He placed his right hand over his heart. “Sweetheart, you wound me.”
“He can talk when he wants to, all right,” Frances said, enjoying the exchange. “He sure can. You go on do your work, honey. If you fall asleep, it won’t kill her not to hear good night.”
He thought she snickered, and a grin spread over his own face.
“I’ll have breakfast and coffee ready by seven-thirty. And don’t worry; the smell of those biscuits will get you out of that bed.”
He teased for a few minutes, assured himself that he hadn’t displeased Allison, went into his room, and began working on his report to the chief.
Satisfied with what he’d accomplished, he knocked on Allison’s door at a quarter of ten, knowing she wouldn’t be asleep. “I’m here for my good-night kiss,” he told her when she opened the door, and was rewarded with an open-arm invitation.
“Don’t pour it on too thick, baby,” he said. “We’re circumspect here, remember?”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you. I’ll be down for breakfast at seven-thirty. Would you walk to the beach with me after we eat? I like it out there early mornings.”
The back of her left hand grazed softly over his cheek. “If you promise to wear clothes, yes.”
He stepped back, giving the impression of one deeply offended. “You don’t like my G-string?”
“Trust me. I’m not going there.”
He hated to leave her because he adored her most when she was in one of her playful, laughing moods, when her softness overrode everything else about her.
“Kiss me, love. See you in the morning?”
When he turned to leave, she pulled the hem of his T-shirt. “What kind of guy deserts a woman at her bedroom door?” She intrigued him when she mugged, as she did then.
“The kind who’s been warned to be circumspect,” he answered, kissed her, and went to his room. He had played with fire in his lifetime, and often, but only when he had the means of extinguishing it. If he had stayed with her five minutes longer, he’d have said, “Circumspection be damned.”
* * *
After a hearty Southern-style breakfast the next morning, Saturday, Allison and Jake strolled along the beach at Idlewild Lake, warm in their sweaters and their feelings for each other.
“I’m sorry you have to leave shortly,” she told him, “but it means a lot to me that you came.”
“Yeah,” he said, shortening his steps to match her shorter ones as they strolled hand in hand. “We’ve done some serious bonding here. From now on, this will be our place. Let’s plan to come back here, this winter, maybe when the small lake freezes. It does freeze, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I think so.”
“Do you ice-skate?” She nodded. “Good, then we’ll do that.”
Allison neither agreed nor disagreed, and she neither disputed him nor allowed his certainty to raise her hopes. Instead, she replied, “Inshallah—God willing, as the Muslims always say.”
She pretended not to have read his quizzical expression,
only placed an arm around his waist and turned toward Frances Upshaw’s house.
* * *
“If you get into Washington by six-thirty,” the chief told Jake when he called him two hours later at the airport in Reed City, “come straight here.” Fearing that their conversations could be intercepted, Jake and the chief did not identify themselves or the chief’s location when speaking by phone, a precaution that Jake occasionally found restraining, as he did then. It would have been easier for Jake if they could have met closer to the home of either one.
“I’d as soon not come to work tomorrow, and you’re leaving Monday morning,” the chief went on. “I’ll wait here for you.”
“That suits me, too, sir.”
Twenty-five minutes after the plane landed in Washington, Jake knocked on the chief’s office door.
“Sorry, we don’t yet know precisely what Ring’s role in this is, but I’d swear he’s involved, and more than casually,” the chief said. “His former lover works at the consulate there, and we suspect the two of them are doing a lucrative business.”
“Did you pick him up?”
“Not yet. The agency is tracking both Ring and his contact at the consulate. We want to get the leader; a guy like Ring is a gofer. Someone’s behind him. You did a fine job, Jacob.”
“Thank you, sir.” Having learned that his efforts were useless, Jake had stopped reminding the chief that he preferred to be called Jake.
“Going to Blues Alley tonight?”
“I had planned to. Why?”
“In that case, we’ll have a couple of men there. Your Rockefeller Center nemesis—Mr. Harasser, we call him—went back twice, didn’t see you, and hasn’t been there lately. But his kind doesn’t give up. Be careful.”
“You mean they released him?” Jake didn’t bother to disguise his feelings about the ridiculousness of letting the man go.
The chief rubbed his jaw, already a mass of stubble at seven in the evening. “No grounds for keeping him. So watch it.”
At home, Jake checked his house, found nothing amiss, and prepared to go to Blues Alley. He donned a pair of brown pants, his well-worn tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, put on his old felt hat with the brim turned up in the back—a style he borrowed from the great jazz saxophonist Lester Young—got his guitar, and headed for the club. A block before reaching it, he put on his dark glasses.
“Man, did we miss you!” Buddy Dee said when Jake walked through the back door. “We had a guitarist here last night, but man, you wouldn’t believe how poor the guy was. Take your seat. We’ve got just a couple of minutes before going on.”
When the lights went up, Jake sent his gaze slowly over the patrons, looking for the one he considered his enemy. He didn’t see the man, but this was one night in which he didn’t plan to lose himself in his music.
Applause, stomping, whistles, and yells of “all right, Mac” greeted him before he or the band played a note. He expressed his thanks by bowing his head and touching the brim of his hat, got Buddy’s downbeat, and sent his fingers flying over the strings in a hot rendition of “Honeysuckle Rose.”
The more he played, the more the patrons demanded of him, but with his attention mainly on a man who might want to kill him, he couldn’t lose himself in playing as he usually did, and therefore, because he couldn’t let go and enjoy it, he soon tired. Finally, to let them know that they had exhausted him, he nodded to Buddy and played “Back Home in Indiana,” his signature, and always his last song. He tipped his hat, looked over the audience once more, and waited for the lights to go down.
* * *
“This isn’t working,” Jake told the chief later that night, irritated at receiving a call after midnight. He wondered whether the man ever slept.
“Sorry. This just got to me, and I know it’s a bad time, but we need you to testify at a closed Senate committee hearing. Just that one day is all I’m asking.”
Jake raised himself up in bed and balanced his weight on his right elbow. “Yeah. You always make it sound as if the inconvenience you’re proposing is the last unreasonable request I’ll get. I’m scheduled to be in Texas.”
“I know that. Cancel the last two days, will you? Authors do that all the time.”
“Some of ’em. What about my reputation? The word will go out that I’m a no-show.” And what about his relationship with Allison?
“We’ll fix that.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jake said, though he didn’t mean it charitably. “I’m sure you’ll let me know the details.”
He hung up and fought for hours to get back to sleep. He’d be willing to bet that Allison already had a dozen questions about his odd schedule changes and even more about his peculiar behavior on that cruise. And according to their agreement, she was entitled to put it in print. If only he could be sure he meant more to her than a sizzling story and a promotion.
* * *
Allison arrived at the Delta counter that morning dressed in a yellow handkerchief-weight linen pantsuit. Her Balmacaan raincoat lay folded atop her suitcase. As his loose, almost lazy gait brought him toward her, she fought back a premonition, unusual for her because she didn’t worry about imagined unpleasantness.
“Hi,” he said, not stopping until his lips touched her. “Got your ticket?”
Taken aback by his boldness, she could only nod. As had become his habit, he placed her bag atop his, grabbed the handle of his own suitcase, and started with her to the gate.
“What is it?” she asked, noticing his expression of concern.
“Just remembered something.”
He stopped, took out his cell phone, and pushed a couple of buttons.
“Hi,” he said to the person he called. “I’m at the airport. Yeah. Just getting to the gate. No, but if you need anything while I’m away, you know where to reach me.” He appeared to listen carefully. “No, I didn’t. I’d recognize him anywhere. You take care. Love you, Mom.”
Relief flooded her, though she didn’t think him so callous that he would telephone and speak with another woman while standing less than two feet from her. After they boarded the plane, she reflected on Jake’s conversation with his mother and wondered at the lack of warmth in his voice.
“Would you believe my phone rang at midnight last night?” he asked her. “I almost never got back to sleep.”
“Lay your head on my shoulder,” she said after his third or fourth yawn, and patted the shoulder closest to him.
“Thanks.” In a few minutes he was asleep, and didn’t awaken until she checked to see whether his seat belt was fastened for landing.
“Feel better?”
His grin, sheepish and embarrassed, endeared him more to her. “Yes and no. I couldn’t have kept my eyes open, but it would have been heaven if I could have stretched out. Where are we?”
“A few minutes from landing.”
He checked the papers that he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket. “A car should be waiting for us at the airport. The lecture is at six, so we ought to be able to get dinner around seven-thirty.”
They checked in at the Hyatt Regency, and as the elevator took them up to their floors, he said, “Be sure and look out the window first thing. You’ll get a nice surprise. I’m in room 940. Can we meet in the lobby for lunch in, say, forty-five minutes?”
She looked at her room key. “I’m in 740. Lunch sounds great.” The elevator stopped and she was about to step out, when he put his foot at the door, leaned to her, and kissed her, flicking his tongue around the seams of her lips. “See you,” he whispered before she could recover and welcome his tongue into her body.
“I owe you one,” she said, “and it won’t help you to mention the word circumspect, either.”
A couple of doors down the spacious corridor she found her room, went ins
ide, and walked straight to the window. What a place for lovers! She stepped out on her balcony and gazed down at the strollers along the Paseo del Rio, the famous cobblestones River Walk that snaked its way beside the winding San Antonio River, adorned on either side with trees, shrubs, ferns, flowers, hotels, restaurants, and assorted other buildings. She didn’t think she had ever seen anything so idyllic as when a Yanaguana Cruiser—a flat boat—ambled past with a group of sightseers as its joyful burden.
She had phoned Sydney the night before, but got no answer, so she decided to use a part of her forty-five minutes talking with him.
“Wakefield,” his deep and, to her amazement, officious voice said when he answered the phone—an attitude that she assumed was a part of his professional demeanor.
“Hi, Sydney. I’m down in San Antonio. How are you?”
“Me? I’m great. How’s Jake?”
“Upstairs asleep, I guess. He slept all the way down from Washington.”
“Hey! Go easy on the guy. If he needs to sleep, let him.”
“I am. We just got here.”
“Yeah? How’s the romance shaping up? If he sat beside you and went to sleep, he must feel pretty comfortable with you.”
“Maybe. Something’s been bothering me. Jake breaks the tour with no excuse, except to tell me that something came up, and twice on the cruise he disappeared. In Martinique, he rushed us back to the boat an hour early, and we were the first passengers to return. All of a sudden after watching the passengers file in, he grabbed my hand and jumped the line. Then, he told me to go on to my stateroom and he’d see me later. The only explanation he gave was the hint of urgency in his voice.”
“You’re looking for something that isn’t there. The man’s a writer, and writers are always focused on that next book. How is he when the two of you are alone?”
“He’s...uh, affectionate and loving. I couldn’t believe he kissed me right in front of Aunt Frances.”
His chuckles reached her through the wire. “What did she say about that?”
“Auntie? You know how laid-back she is. She didn’t bat an eyelash. They liked each other. Spoken to Mom or Dad?”
Last Chance at Love Page 19