Hearts

by Stef Ann Holm

  “Yeah, I noticed that myself,” Lou added, unscrewing the lid to a jar of Hammerhead’s Body Definition Powder. “I also noticed you got tense about it, Bruiser.”

  August spun an Indian club with a flick of his wrist. He sat on the floor of the gym, legs out in front of him, a rubber tension band on one ankle as he worked out his calf. “Bruiser never gets tense about anything. He couldn’t care less if she doesn’t like him. And it’s plain to see she doesn’t.”

  “I have to agree on both counts,” Gig said, testing an oiling tonic. He rubbed in a wide circle on his forearm.

  Walfred nailed the coffin of verbal remarks closed with, “I hate to go with the crowd, Bruiser, but Miss Valentine definitely finds you resistible.”

  “Are you boys done?” Jake asked, sitting back on the leather preacher’s bench, giving the men an even glare. They’d been pulling his leg about Truvy all morning, hashing over the way she’d told him to dance with Lou again.

  “No.” Milton held up his jockstrap. “Are you sure these come only in one size fits all?”

  Jake’s arms were folded across his chest while he puffed on a fat cigar. He normally wouldn’t give Milt a shot, but he’d started the conversation and its subsequent commentaries, so Jake felt Milton was fair game. “Sorry, Milt, they don’t make a little-man size.”

  That set the four men off debating who had the biggest apparatus. The issue of jockstraps wouldn’t have come up if the Barbell Club hadn’t just returned from an early Monday shopping venture to Wolcott’s Sporting Goods. It hadn’t been Jake’s idea to buy jockstraps. That had been Gig’s. He’d said, and he’d been right, that they were cheaper by the dozen and that because the contestants were on budgets, it made sense to buy a box instead of one at a time. Along with the jockstraps, the boys had to stock up on bodybuilding accoutrements.

  Accoutrements. Jake had recently come across that particular word in the dictionary, and even though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure such a mouthful applied for bodybuilding accessories, he used it anyway because he liked the sound of its consonants and vowels together.

  The Barbell Club hadn’t been checking out their items for five minutes when Milton had started about Truvy, a subject that rubbed Jake the wrong way. Not that he didn’t like talking about her. But he kept the majority of his opinions about her to himself.

  He’d never had this problem before. He always talked about women he thought were pretty and shapely. But he wasn’t a man who was intimate one night and told about it the next day. Even so, he never minded conversations about what men liked in women. And about what women liked in men.

  The debate reached a fever pitch.

  Lou brought his fingers to his mouth and whistled, a method he used on occasion to announce the arrival of the four o’clock train. “Hold up and listen for a minute,” he called. “Who in Hades cares what kind of jockstraps we wear? Nobody’s going to see them. And besides, the cotton expands or constricts to accommodate whatever you’ve got.”

  Grumbles met his observation and Lou held up his hand to quiet them. “What’s going here is that we’re getting too carried away with how the dance instructor feels about Jake. Bruiser’s one hell of a guy—we all know it. The thing is,” he continued, turning toward Jake, “we’re all forgetting something. And that is, not even you can win this woman’s attention. It’s not because you’re lacking, Bruiser. In this case, Miss Valentine is just very particular.”

  “Particular against tall, well-built musclemen who know how to dance the waltz,” Milton observed, tossing his jockstrap onto the floor. The white lump landed on August’s foot; August kicked it off with irritation. “So this opens up the field for us. The trouble is”—Milt’s face fell—“me and Gig and Lou are already married. So that leaves Walfred and August free and clear. Neither of them are professional weightlifters. And they can’t dance the waltz worth beans.”

  Jake gazed at both men, his mouth closed tightly. He said nothing.

  Walfred spoke up, “I don’t want her—not that she’s not an attractive woman. But I’ve got my sights on Miss Gimble.”

  “And I’ve got my mind on this competition,” August put in. “Afterward, I could ask Miss Valentine to step out.”

  “You could take her to the restaurant,” Milt advised him. “Women like that sort of thing—a meal prepared for them instead of their preparing it. My wife tells me every Saturday evening it’s nice to go to Nannie’s Home-Style Restaurant for supper so she doesn’t have to start the stove.”

  Walfred lifted his head. “I’ve never seen you in the restaurant on a Saturday night, Milt.”

  “I never said I take her there. I said she tells me it would be nice to go. Do you think I’m made of money? I can’t be spending my hard-earned cash on an order of chicken and light-as-a-cloud biscuits when my Mary fixes the best in Harmony.”

  “I wonder if Miss Valentine can bake a light biscuit?” August mused.

  “What do you think, Bruiser?”

  He merely shrugged, even though he knew the answer. Hell no, not if her biscuits are as tasty as her coffee.

  Jake let them carry the topic of Miss Valentine, puffing on the end of his cigar and biting back words he might regret. If he played into their hands, he’d find himself talking about her cooking skills—among the other things he was privy to. Then before he knew it, he’d declare intentions to court her when he really had none at all.

  Blowing a series of smoke rings toward the ceiling, he thought, Not that taking Truvy Valentine out for an afternoon would be a hardship. He’d enjoy watching her ice skate again. Or escorting her to the Ladies Aid Snowflake Ball. Well, on second thought, maybe not. Only two evenings away, the ball was an event for couples in serious courtship or already married. He would, however, like listening to her talk over a dinner at the restaurant.

  He’d never once taken a woman there.

  Hell, his undivided attention had never been on any woman in town.

  “The way I see it”—Milt bent and picked up his athletic supporter—“is that Miss Valentine has made her feelings clear about Bruiser. I hate to admit it, but I wish I could be in his place.”

  A few brows lifted, then heads nodded as the rest of them grasped what Milton was getting at even before he provided clarification. “And you know why? Because I’d be up for the challenge of trying to win her over if I were available.”

  “You’re right.” Gig stuck the cork back in the bottle of oil.

  Walfred shrugged. “If we were you, Bruiser, we’d be wanting to change her mind.”

  “Yeah,” Lou said, continuing the thought, “I’d be wanting to get her to go to the restaurant for a supper.”

  From Walfred: “Of course, this is how we would feel, but it’s not going to happen. Not for us or for Bruiser.”

  “Nope.” August’s tone held certainty. “Not going to happen.”

  Milt snorted. “Let’s face it, Miss Valentine wouldn’t go to the restaurant with Bruiser any more than she’d go with any one of us.”

  “Right.” Lou nodded.

  Milt began, “Why, she wouldn’t go—”

  “Bet me.” Jake had spoken the words and couldn’t take them back. Deep in his mind, he cursed himself for falling to a gambling lure: the hope of gaining an advantage. But what he proposed wouldn’t be for monetary gain. The bet was harmless. Just another gentleman’s agreement between friends. Nobody had to win or lose. There would be no cash exchanged.

  “Bet you what, Bruiser?” Milton asked.

  “Let’s not bet,” Jake said, rephrasing. “Let’s say I could take Miss Valentine out for supper tonight at the restaurant if I wanted to. And I want to.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “We’ll wager on it that I can.” Jake rolled the ash off his cigar into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. “Nothing degrading to Miss Valentine, because what we’re talking about stays in the gymnasium. And anyone who takes it outside will take on me—outside. Am I clear?”

&nb
sp; Affirming nods met his question.

  “As for the ante, how about we say . . .”—Jake gazed at the Heinrich, a bottle he’d emptied last night and was using today as an ash receptacle—“. . . we’ll say six bottles of beer each. I win, you boys bring over some brews. I lose, I have the icebox stocked with six each of your favorites.”

  All eyes lit up.

  The bet was made.

  As Jake instructed the boys on how to use the items they’d just bought from Tom, his stomach twisted into knots. Second thoughts pounded at his temples. He shouldn’t have made such a stupid declaration. It was one thing to think about doing things with Truvy. It was another to actually fulfill them.

  And quite another to make a wager on the outcome.

  What in the hell had he been thinking?

  The day was sunny enough so that Truvy could leave the dance studio door open without being too cold. The temperatures were still freezing first thing in the morning, so she kept the corner heater stoked and burning fuel.

  With Dance Fundamentals in her grasp, she looked at the foot diagram while she practiced the steps for the cakewalk. My goodness, but there were a lot of symbols to memorize. X’s and O’s signified the moves, and the lines and boxes signified a variety of body parts and where they should be at any given beat in the music—shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, hips, knees, ankles, feet.

  Truvy was beginning to grasp the complicated maneuvers, but she had a hard time concentrating—namely, every time she glanced at her reflection in the row of mirrors and saw the old rose nun’s veiling dress. The too-short old rose nun’s veiling dress Mrs. Plunkett had bought for her.

  The very dress she now wore.

  Before she’d left for the studio, Truvy had stood in her room staring at the girl’s dress laid out with tender care over the back of her secretary chair. Her shoulders slumped with defeat, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to put the dress on. The whole pretense of being a person she wasn’t was ridiculous. Truvy wasn’t Hildegarde. She didn’t want to be Hildegarde. And she never would be Hildegarde. On that thought, Truvy had gone downstairs intending to put her foot down, intending on making Mrs. Plunkett realize she wasn’t her daughter.

  Truvy wore her own skirt and blouse. As she neared the vestibule, her steps became slower and slower the more clearly she saw the crestfallen expression on Mrs. Plunkett’s round face. It was then that Truvy knew she couldn’t speak what was really on her mind. Instead, she offered an excuse, saying she thought the pretty pink dress was just too nice to wear for dancing instruction.

  Five minutes later, Truvy came down the stairs again, this time wearing the pink concoction and hating every blessed minute of it. But what else could she do? Mrs. Plunkett had stood there, eyes tearing, lips quivering, as if Truvy had put a knife in her heart.

  So now Truvy was stuck in the girlish dress. In the studio. With a class coming for instruction in one hour. Thank goodness they weren’t the Barbell Club. Today’s students were this year’s graduating class from the Harmony Normal School, and they were here to learn how to march to John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Thankfully, that was an easy task for Truvy, as she’d taught her girls in basketball to dribble to that very tune.

  The previous Friday, Truvy had been ready to concede defeat to Edwina. They’d shared a long conversation after dinner and Truvy had voiced her displeasure over having been duped by the “B. Club.” Edwina claimed an honest error, a simple misunderstanding over an abbreviation.

  Although Edwina had soothed Truvy’s apprehensions and convinced her to carry on, she felt helpless about the whole idea of Jake Brewster in her class—and yet sentimentally giddy when he held her in his arms and danced with her. But that had quickly turned to a deflated feeling when he’d told her that he knew she didn’t know what she was doing.

  At least it was only twice a week that she had to teach the Barbell Club. Just thinking of having to go another round with Jake and his cronies made her palms sweat. He might have saved her from embarrassment over further botching the waltz, but he’d teased her afterward with that athletic comment.

  Truvy whirled around once more, book outstretched in her hand as she both read and moved her feet at the same time. She’d rolled the waistband of her petticoat so the bottom wouldn’t show beneath the high hem of the pink dress.

  During a quick right pivot, then a sharp step left, Dance Fundamentals flew from her grasp and sailed through the open rear door of the studio. She sucked in her breath, went to the door, and saw that the alleyway was empty. No book to be seen. It was then that she noticed that the rear door to the gymnasium was open—just like that of the studio. Within seconds, Jake filled its frame, her copy of Dance Fundamentals in his hand.

  She gazed at him with deliberate censure. He was a virile man—a fact he obviously knew—and it bothered her that he could be so at ease about his masculinity. He needed to use a razor and put some sleeves on his faded shirt, but she doubted he would take her advice if she were to offer it. In spite of the weather, he wore loose-legged boxing trunks that showed every inch of his powerful thighs and calves. She’d never thought a man’s calves could be attractive, but his were. With only a light amount of dark hair on them, his skin had a caramel color to it that hers never took on—even in the summer if she went without her hat. He was naturally dark. Naturally good-looking.

  “If you were trying to get my attention, it worked,” he said with a pull to the corner of his mouth.

  Naturally confident, too.

  “I was trying no such thing. That book slipped out of my hand.”

  “And you criticize my reading habits.” A thick lock of hair fell over his forehead as he leaned out the doorway. “You read as ineptly as you dance.”

  Truvy hid her ire. She refused to let him know he disturbed her. In a gamut of ways. “May I have my book back?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What’s that you’ve got on?”

  She instantly remembered what she was wearing. Mortified, she looked down at the exposed line of her risqué petticoat. The pretty embroidered hem with its white butterflies and ruby-red roses had slipped below that of the dress. A wave of humiliation warmed her. When she’d bought the suggestive underwear, she’d never intended anyone to see it. She viewed herself as she was sure Jake would: a twenty-five-year-old woman, grossly tall, apparently too clumsy to hold a book, and with a demimondaine petticoat contradicting a dress sewn for a much younger woman.

  She wanted to die.

  She wanted to cry.

  “A dress,” she woodenly replied.

  “What kind?”

  “Pink, obviously.”

  “Like the color of your petticoat and underwear.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I believe we have covered that topic.”

  “Well, it’s uncovered now, so I thought I’d bring it up again.”

  “That’s a good idea.” On that, she brought up the hem of her petticoat by rerolling the waistband, not easy to do through the piping and stitching that made her bodice rather thick at the waist. She felt Jake’s eyes on her every move, disconcerting her and making her feel even more inelegant than he could ever think. She felt every tight stay of her corset and she wished she could be free of it, free of Jake’s watchful gaze, free of the dress . . . of having to be polite and gracious to Mrs. Plunkett. It was a terrible thought, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Once she lined up her underwear into the proper position, she extended her hand. “My book, please.” Dignity laced her words and her chin lifted high with pride. She wouldn’t let him know how embarrassed she was. She just wouldn’t.

  He didn’t pass over Dance Fundamentals. Instead, he questioned her. “You aren’t going to wear that for a class, are you?”

  In a last-ditch effort to save what remained of her tattered dignity, she decided to fib. “I most certainly am. My next student is a . . . very eccentric man and I’ll be teaching him the . . . dance of the geisha. Yes, that’s what he
wants—to learn the steps of the Cherry Blossom Dance, and only I know how to teach it. In modern Japan, geisha wear dresses just like this one, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary about me. And since the Cherry Blossom Dance is very secretive, I don’t need that book you’re holding because only geisha teach other geisha and I had instruction when I was in . . . college. So . . . so that’s all I have to say. Good-bye.”

  Not waiting for him to comment, she turned and went back inside. To make sure Jake couldn’t follow, she twisted the lock on the door. She gulped in three long breaths. Calm yourself. More breaths. She felt her limbs grow relaxed, more at ease. She was in control once more.

  Satisfied, she proceeded with her tasks as if nothing had happened.

  Marching to Sousa didn’t require reading from Dance Fundamentals, and when her next class was over, she’d sic Tom Wolcott on Jake and get that book back. In the meantime, she’d have to close the curtains so he wouldn’t see that her mystery man was really a group of youths instead.

  She raised a hand to the curtains and swept them shut—just as the lock on the door clicked and the panel opened. Jake appeared in the alleyway door, a key in one hand and the book in the other.

  He explained, “Edwina gave me a key to the place so I could keep an eye on it when she wasn’t here.”

  Exasperated, Truvy could only stare as he pocketed the skeleton key in the breast pocket of his shabby shirt.

  “But I’m here, so you don’t have anything to check on,” she informed him.

  “Maybe I’m checking on you.” His voice was disarmingly low and filled with an implication that made her heartbeat speed.

  She couldn’t speak.

  “I’ll give the book back to you,” Jake went on, “because it says Edwina Huntington in the front. It’s hers.”