She smiled at the memory. She’d never broken up with a boyfriend before. Never. She’d always been on the receiving end of the kiss-off. I met someone else, John Billings told her senior year, right before the Sadie Hawkins Dance. That someone else was Ann Larkin. The slut. Was there anything worse than the person you care about the most telling you he’d found someone better? That you weren’t good enough? Not smart enough, not sexy enough, and not interesting enough. At least she didn’t do that to King. She just drove away, as if possessed by the devil. That was better, she decided. He would never be able to forgive her for leaving him by the side of the road like that. No chance he’d still be in the apartment when she returned to Mammoth. He’d pack up and go sleep at the radio station if he had to. Male pride was a strange thing, but you could figure it out.
The first breakup she’d been through had been the hardest. She still thought about it, still dreamed about it. He didn’t tell her he liked someone else. He just stopped talking to her, stopped standing near her, stopped looking at her. They were thirteen years old, eighth-grade sweethearts. She knew it shouldn’t still bother her—they were children!—but you can’t tell the heart something like that. It acts independent of the brain. It does what it does, feels what it feels. She hated her heart.
Janice turned the key, killing the engine, and climbed out. She needed a drink. She deserved a drink. If the world was going to hell, she didn’t want to be sober for it. She straightened out her skirt and looked up: The Argonaut, the art deco sign said. It hung from the building’s façade like a wedding garter, high up and inviting. By the look of it, this had to be the most expensive hotel in town. Tonight, she only wanted the most expensive. Who would save money on their last night on earth, right? She strode inside, located the bar, and headed straight for it.
The room was long and dark, but the bartender was easy to spot. “Hey,” she said to him. “You heard the news today? We at war?”
The man cocked an eyebrow, smiled. He was about fifty, but he still had a full head of silvery hair and was clearly proud of it. “You a woman’s libber, hon?”
Janice, surprised, laughed.
Encouraged, the bartender leaned forward, resting his elbows on the top of the counter. “There’s no war here. Only the sweet song of love in this place.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
The barman shrugged, winked. “I got you. Your husband comes in, I’ll tell him you haven’t been hitting on me.”
Janice looked around. There had to be an evening paper lying around. This was a bar.
The bartender straightened up, rubbed his hands together. “What can I get you?” he asked.
Janice sighed, ordered a whiskey, and walked to a corner booth that offered a good view of the rest of the room. She sat and tried to reorder her thinking. Forget about the paper, she told herself. Let’s think about the here and now. She felt giddy and anxious, like anything could happen. Anything she wanted. After all, she was free. She was on her own, truly on her own, for the first time in years. The first time ever. She searched the faces around the room, trying to give off the vibe, certain she could do better than an old bartender.
A man in a business suit slid off a stool and headed her way. He was also a little on the old side, about the barman’s age, but he was good-looking, trim. Smile lines cut deep into his cheeks, giving him a rugged, Western hero look. Janice ducked her head coquettishly and let a smile take over her mouth. She looked up from under her brows just in time to watch the man stride past her without a look or a pause. Her eyes turned to follow him. The toilet. The look on his face hadn’t been sexual interest, it had been a full bladder. Janice pulled out her compact and checked her makeup. There was the problem. God, she was ugly, she thought. All these freckles. Her flat nose and squinty eyes. She looked Japanese, but without the exoticism. Shit, how had she ever gotten King?
She blew air out of her cheeks. Her ugliness shouldn’t be a problem, she thought. It obviously was a problem in the larger scheme of things, but not tonight. Men in bars weren’t picky. Especially men in bars in Stockton, California. She unhooked a button on her blouse, held the mirror at arm’s length. Screw it. She unhooked another button. One more and she’d get arrested for flashing. She looked around. No one was watching her. One more button might be necessary.
A man in a yellow sport coat and black slacks appeared at the entrance. For a terrible moment Janice thought it was King. King had a yellow sport coat. But this guy didn’t look anything like him. This man had a big, brown helmet of hair and a nose that was too small for his face. He looked like a pilot, which would be exciting. The man’s eyes roamed the room, paused at Janice—she threw her shoulders back—continued their survey and finally settled on an empty stool at the far end of the bar. He made a beeline for it, sat, called over the bartender. Janice waited for the bartender to glance her way, thinking the pilot might send her a drink—he had definitely seen her—but there was no glance. The bartender retreated to his spigots, filled a stein. Janice put her compact away. Reaching for her glass, she began to ponder the possibility of sleeping alone tonight.
“You’re down to the dregs.”
Janice looked up at a man’s crotch. The tight pants showcased the outline of what appeared to be Asia. She dipped her head back. An expensive corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches. It was almost as impressive as the man’s tater. He wore a thin blue pullover under the jacket. She could sense the muscle, the power, behind it. Up to the face: a good face, round and full, with large, sleepy eyes. A thick forehead gave way to short, black, kinky hair. He was a Negro—a black man had decided it was okay to hit on her. Still, she would not describe him as the dregs. “Excuse me?” she said.
“Your drink. Nothing but ice left.”
“Yeah. I’m a lush.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He rested a hand on the table, next to the glass. The fingers were long and elegant. “I meant, can I buy you another one?”
Janice let herself smile at him. She had to admire his courage. To come up to her in a nice bar in a conservative town like Stockton. She wondered if hotel security would be along in a moment.
“Sure. I’ll have another drink.”
He returned with two glasses filled with golden-brown liquid, put one in front of her and slid into the opposite side of the booth. “Cheers,” he said, holding his glass aloft. “So, what’s your name?”
Janice licked her lips to savor the warm, musky fluid. “Janice,” she said.
He grinned at her, satisfied with the answer.
“And you are . . .?”
“Jackson. Jackson Dupre.”
“Jackson Dupre,” Janice said, admiring the name even more now that she’d said it herself. “Where are you from? New York?”
He rumbled out a laugh. “New York? That’s three thousand miles away.”
“I don’t know,” Janice said. “Jackson Dupre sounds like a New York name. Sounds cosmopolitan.”
“Oh, I’m cosmopolitan, baby. I was in Germany during my stint in the Army. Looked across the Wall at all those poor saps over there in East Berlin.”
“Wow. What was that like?”
“Strange, I must say. They’d look back, the ones who lived in the upper floors of the buildings right there. They’d look at you with . . . I don’t know . . . anger or longing or something. Can you imagine putting up a huge wall to keep your people from leaving?”
Janice drained her glass for the second time. “I can imagine it,” she said. “We all got walls blocking our way. You can’t always see them.”
“Wow, yourself,” he said. “Is it the whiskey or are you always this heavy?”
Janice couldn’t tell if he was mocking her. She leaned against the booth’s wooden backing. She felt the point of her spine jab at it and a little tingle of pain roll toward her stomach. She wondered how old Jackson Dupre wa
s. If he’d ever been married. If he was married right now. She felt herself slipping down, her buttocks sliding, and she put her feet out to steady herself. The right one landed on one of Jackson’s. She left it there. “I’m not heavy at all, Jackie,” she said. “I’m as light as air. If I wasn’t holding on to the table, I’d lift off and float away.”
“I hear you. And it’s Jackson.”
“What was it like, being in the Army? Hard work?”
Jackson was looking right at her, right into her. His eyes twinkled. Janice blushed. Her hand felt around for the undone buttons on her shirt. She felt naked.
“It wasn’t nothing,” he said. “Easy as pie once you get through Basic.”
“You didn’t have to shoot anybody?”
Jackson chuckled. “Why would I do that?”
“You know, Vietnam.”
Jackson gazed at her with his sleepy eyes. He seemed to know what he was doing to her. That smile sat on his face like a toy, waiting for her to reach for it. “I learned how to defuse bombs,” he said. “I can make them, too. You know you can make a rather powerful bomb from common household materials?”
“Really? Like what?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Janice put an elbow on the table and leaned on it, trying to match his sexy, sleepy gaze. “Don’t do that. I’d like to finish my drink.”
Jackson snorted in mirth. “Sometimes I think I should have stayed in the Army, you know? Not a bad life, an Army career.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, I thought I had things to do. I thought I had ambition. I thought things were changing.”
“You don’t have ambition? You look like a successful man.”
He liked that, she could tell. A successful man. She rolled her foot off of his and tapped it.
“What about you, Janice? What brings you to the Vogue Lounge on a Wednesday evening?” He took a drink, swished it in his mouth and swallowed. “You work in the hotel?”
Janice looked at her hands, at the chipped nail polish on her fingernails. The first wrong note in the conversation. He thought she was a lousy hotel clerk, sitting in the bar at the end of her shift. She tried not to let her disappointment show. It’s okay, she told herself. A hotel clerk’s not so bad. That’s better than him thinking she was a bored Stockton housewife looking for excitement.
“I’m from Mammoth View,” she said. “You know where that is?”
A look crossed his eyes, as if he were holding in gas, but he made eye contact again, smiled. “No.”
“A little town up in the mountains. A ski resort. There’s something going on up there—I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, ‘something going on’?”
“An emergency. There was an earthquake this morning. I don’t know. Roads were blocked off. They shut down the office where I work, and I just decided to get out of town for the day, let things settle down. It was nuts. You haven’t heard anything?”
Jackson shook his head.
“Well, anyway. It’s a nice little town. Quaint. Real pretty during the holidays, with the lights and everything, and the snow. Like a picture postcard. It’s out of the way, though. Living there, you sometimes feel like nowhere else exists.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s different from what I’m used to. I’m from San Diego originally.”
“That right?” His smile widened. “This here is fate. I grew up in Valencia Park.”
Janice nodded. The black part of town. “I’m from La Mesa,” she said. Nowhere near Valencia Park. Another world. She leaned forward. “You want to get out of here, Jackson? It’s kind of hot in here.”
Jackson stood, put a couple bills on the table, and held his hand out for her. Touched, Janice took the hand, let him pull her up. His skin felt different, she noted. Heavier. Was his black skin thicker? She couldn’t even guess. But it was smooth. It felt nice. God, could she really do it with a Negro? She grimaced to herself. Afro-American—that’s what they were called now. She chastised herself for her thoughts. She was as liberal as the next person. If she lived in Los Angeles, wouldn’t she vote for Tom Bradley? Now that was a good-looking man. Yes, she could do it with a Neg—an Afro-American.
They reached the lobby, her hand still in his. She watched people’s faces, trying to identify what they were thinking when they saw her holding this man’s hand. Were they scandalized by this happy interracial couple? Were they pretending they didn’t notice? A tingling sensation rippled through her extremities. A feeling of power burbled up in her, of righteousness. Or maybe it was hormones. Horniness.
Shit. She realized she hadn’t gotten a room yet. What if they were booked up? Where would they go? How much would it kill the mood, the dealing with the clerk, explaining the lack of luggage, putting money down? She stopped herself. He probably had a room. Why else would he be in the bar? He didn’t seem like the kind of man who trawled hotel bars. He looked like he had no problem getting women, at least black women.
“Would you like to take a walk?” he asked.
She cocked her head. He had surprised her for a second time, first by having the stones to approach her in the bar, and now, when it was obvious she would sleep with him, by offering to extend the courtship, as if he really wanted to woo her. As if he really liked her.
“Okay,” she said, and with that, he guided her out the door and into the night. The entrance to the lobby shone like a movie premiere, but the road beyond quickly disappeared. Gooseflesh rolled along her arms. It felt good. The night was warm, but you could tell that coolness was coming. The air had an edge to it, a warning. Another hour and she’d need a jacket. Jackson walked her around the side of the building to fancy pebbled steps that dropped languidly. She squinted down to the bottom, where a path led to the waterfront. Janice blanched. She hadn’t realized Stockton was on the water. The walkway—kind of like a boardwalk, but with concrete and brick instead of boards—stretched into a blackness made gauzy by periodic streetlamps. As they came down the steps she could see that this wasn’t the ocean. The waterway looked manmade, shaped and molded to fit the town. But she sensed the ocean out there, close by, breathing quietly. Jackson squeezed her hand, pulled her along. She could make out a few other couples, all snuggling or strolling, all of them right up against the water. This obviously was the place for lovers in Stockton.
“You cold?” he asked.
“No, it’s perfect.”
Jackson let her hand drop, slipped his arm around her waist and pressed her to him. He reached across himself with a long arm and grasped her hand again, pressed it against her stomach. He would trap her like this when they were making love, Janice thought. In an hour. Half an hour. Her stomach rolled. She felt wonderful. She couldn’t believe this man she’d just met—this black man—was making her insides do loop-de-loops.
She listened to the water slap softly against the quay. She peeked out at it from under Jackson’s arm, wondering how far it was to the Pacific, how long they’d have to walk to reach the beach. She salivated at the thought of it. She’d spent every summer of her life on the beach, until she followed King inland. She missed the hot sand, the heat dazzle: the sense that the ocean went on forever, that escape really was possible—you just had to swim out there to the horizon.
Images suddenly crowded her brain, and she found herself talking about the first time she’d tried on a bikini, at her friend Kim’s house when she was thirteen, about watching the sun quietly falling behind the ocean every night, and then about her first serious crush, on a ratty-haired surfer and high school dropout who was ten years older than her. Jackson squeezed her, pressing her against his ribs, nodding at everything she said. God, she felt like she could tell this man anything.
Her hand was damp from holding his, but she didn’t want to let go. She wanted his perspiration. She pict
ured it leaking into her pores, dispersing into her bloodstream. She wanted to become a part of him, like the setting sun melting into the earth. This man she barely knew!
Janice sometimes wondered if she should steer clear of relationships altogether. She’d wondered it for years. Her whole family was bad at love. Her mom was on her third marriage, and Janice felt confident this latest one wasn’t going to last either. Her father had also recently married for a third time—mom had been number two. Her dad had cheated on her mother with a lady named Candice, who owned a flower shop in the business district. He probably cheated on his new wife with Candy as well. Janice’s older sister, Laurie, only dated scumbags. One of them—Scott, the law student—had hit on Janice when she was still in high school. He had insisted that he and Laurie had an open relationship, which was news to Laurie when Janice mentioned it. And then there was Janice herself. Who left home at barely eighteen and threw away a chance to go to college. All for Oscar Alphonse Desario, who her mother had pegged as a loser after listening to his show for all of fifteen minutes. Were the Littlepaughs simply destined to live in misery with those they professed to love? Janice gripped Jackson’s hand harder. Maybe it would take someone totally out of left field to break the family curse. Maybe the problem was that the Littlepaughs only got down and dirty with people just like them: pig-headed, selfish people who thought relentlessly of themselves. Jackson didn’t seem to be that way at all.
Watching her feet moving in perfect sync with Jackson’s, she wondered if this feeling in the pit of her stomach qualified as love at first sight. She’d thought the same thing when she met King, but that was different. She knew him from the radio. For months his husky voice had been the last thing she heard before she went to sleep. He’d confided secrets to her and told her tales out of school, long before they ever met. But this man—Jackson Dupre—hadn’t existed until an hour ago. If she’d seen him on the street, she’d never have given him a second look. Worse, she would have pretended she didn’t see him at all. Their meeting was a fluke, an aberration. And it might just change her life. She felt like it already had.
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