When You Dance With The Devil

by Gwynne Forster

  “I will. I’m glad you did that, Jolene, and I’m glad we’re going to be friends.”

  If the course of Jolene’s life had begun to run more smoothly—thanks to her determination to mend her ways, to give to others, and to be less concerned for what she received—Richard was about to fall from his newly-found paradise and out of his state of grace. He answered his cellular phone shortly before noon that Saturday, and the sound of Francine’s voice soothed his ears and warmed his heart.

  “How’d you like to go to a showing of paintings by African-American artists? It’s in a gallery in Ocean Pines, and the three-ninety-five entry fee is on me.”

  Laughter rumbled out of him, and he fell across his bed, relaxed and happy. “We’ll fight about who pays later. What time?” She told him. “Okay. Meet you downstairs in twenty minutes.”

  He could barely control his feet. Maybe he would fly. In his life, he had never before had that sense of completeness, of total well-being, had never felt so suffused with joy as when he walked out of Thank the Lord Boarding House that morning with Francine’s hand wrapped in his. And for the first time, he knew that what he felt was mutual. He was in love, and he had a woman who cared for him—not for his status and looks—and wanted him to know it. Not even the crisp Albemarle breeze could chill him, warmed as he was by her loving presence. He smiled down at her.

  A tall, elegant woman jumped out of a white Mercedes sedan and rushed up the walk toward them. “Richard,” she called, suddenly running to him as if he were alone. “Darling, I’ve spent the past two years trying to find you. I know I said it was just a momentary weakness of mine, but after what we shared, I could never sleep with my husband again.” The woman stopped talking and looked at Francine. He tried to remember who she was, what, if anything, had happened between them, and where he had known her. Francine’s hand slid out of his, and he had a sudden sensation of drowning.

  “I’m sorry, madam, but I don’t recall meeting you.”

  “Please,” she begged. “I’ve given up everything for you. Everything.”

  “But I don’t know who you are, and I’m sorry that you came here . . . for nothing. I have never deliberately seduced a woman, so if anything did happen between us, you engineered it with no strings attached.”

  He stepped back from her when she grabbed his sleeve. “I know, but I fell in love with you. It was at that conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Don’t you remember?”

  He remembered the conference, but he couldn’t recall ever having seen her before. “I’m sorry, Fran . . .” He looked around, but Francine was nowhere to be seen.

  “What are you trying to do to me?” he asked the woman. “Do you want to ruin my life?”

  Her face crumpled into a palette of despair, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “That’s what you did to mine. I . . . I know I asked for it, but . . . C . . . can’t we talk?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed and upset, but I’d appreciate it if you would leave. Right now.”

  She persisted. “I can’t. Not after all the time, energy and money I’ve spent looking for you. Not after I left my husband for you. The Jamaican ambassador gave me my first clue as to where you were. Please, can’t we talk?”

  He was probably guilty, because he didn’t remember most of the women he’d taken to bed. He did know, though, that he hadn’t given her a reason to expect anything of him, for he’d never tricked a woman; that hadn’t been necessary.

  He forced himself to speak gently. “I have bedded more women than the average man will meet, but I have never seduced one or given one a reason to believe she was more to me than a moment mutually shared. I’m in love with that woman who was with me, and you’ve probably screwed that up. So, we’re even. Good-bye.” She didn’t move. “Lady, please don’t force me to have you arrested for harassment.”

  He watched as she turned, walked to the car with wooden steps and got in the backseat. We’ve probably been cursed with the same disease: she with the idea that her money could buy anything she wanted, including me; and me with the notion that my status and physical attributes could get me whatever and whoever I wanted. We’ve both had our day of reckoning. He shook his head. But for me, it’s the second time around.

  The rising wind gathered leaves, sticks and other debris and flung them around his ankles, while the cold air seeped into his body, replacing the warmth that—minutes earlier—had suffused and uplifted him. He went to his room, closed the door and fell across the bed. From heaven to hell in less than a minute. He put his cell phone on the little table beside his bed with no intention of using it to call Francine. When she left him, judging him without giving him a hearing, she told him what he needed to know. And what could he say? He’d never given a moment’s thought to the effect that his practiced, precision lovemaking had on a woman beyond her multiple orgasms that made him feel like a giant of a man. He had thought losing Estelle was his punishment. But if he lost Francine . . .

  At one o’clock that afternoon, two and a half hours later, Richard forced himself to get up and go to the dining room. He hurt as he’d never hurt before, but he could not allow himself to sink into the bowels of despair as he had done when he read of Estelle’s marriage.

  “What you so somber about?” Judd asked Richard when he joined his friend at the table for lunch. “First, Francine flew past me looking like somebody had just stolen her birthright. Never saw a woman so angry. And now you mope in here like you’re about to face the executioner. What is—”

  “Knock it off, Judd. I’m . . . Look, I’m sorry. Just when I had the world by the tail . . . Oh, hell! What’s the use?”

  Judd’s boney arm rested on his shoulders in what he recognized as a gesture of comfort. “Can you talk about it, son?”

  Judd cared deeply for him and wanted the best for him, but he didn’t want . . . A long breath swept out of him. “Judd, I thought I’d paid for my days as a player, but it looks as if I’ve just begun.” He told Judd about the woman whose uninvited passion drove Francine from him. “I don’t remember the woman, but I’ve had so many that I can’t say she lied. Now, Francine will walk. She will, and I’m in love with her.”

  “Talk to her.”

  “How? She walked off without asking me whether what the woman said was true and whether she was justified in tracking me down. What kind of loyalty is that?”

  “Slow down. You’ve got no reason to be self-righteous. If you want her, you gotta work for her. No woman wants another one to claim her man.” Judd rubbed his chin and let a grin flash across his whiskered face. “I hope that woman wasn’t too good-looking.”

  Richard smothered a whistle. “Man, she was a knockout!”

  “That’s a pity.”

  “I was gonna give you a crab salad for lunch,” Marilyn said to Richard, as she stood at the table smiling at her own cleverness. “But I noticed you looked the picture of gloom when you walked in here, so I made you a crab soufflé. Everybody else gets salad.”

  He was too far down in the dumps to reject her kindness. “Do I have to share it with Judd?”

  She patted the back of her hair and lowered her lashes. “His is in the oven.”

  “Well, thank you for remembering that I’m alive,” Judd said.

  She swished off, patting the old man’s shoulder as she went. “Don’t worry. I know there’re still red coals in your bones, Judd. I just don’t know how much trouble it would be to fan the flames.”

  Richard’s eyebrows shot up above widened eyes, but Judd let out an enormous belly laugh. “I hate to let her know I think she’s funny,” Judd said. “Before long, she’ll be clowning on cue.”

  Fannie joined them and stared at Richard’s plate. “ I thought we were having crab salad for lunch today. Before you know it, I’ll be working for Marilyn. That woman does as she pleases.”

  Richard placed a hand lightly on Fannie’s arm. “Please don’t give her hell about this. She was being fresh as usual, but this stuff is so
good that I’m glad to suffer her foolishness . . . for now, that is.”

  He looked up as Marilyn placed an individual dish of crab soufflé before Judd and glanced at Fannie for her reaction. “I thought I planned crab salad for lunch,” Fannie said.

  “They didn’t look like they wanted salad,” Marilyn said. “Your salad is coming right up.”

  “Would you like some of my soufflé?” Judd asked Fannie after Marilyn left the table.

  Fannie’s pursed lips and puffed cheeks were answer enough, but she looked at her tablemates, frowned and said, “I wouldn’t taste it to save her life. By the way, Richard, one of the town councilmen told me he wants to put your name up for mayor of Pike Hill.” Richard stopped eating and stared at her, but she held up her right hand, palm out. “Hear me out. He said you’d done more for this town in the short while you’ve been here than anybody has in the last quarter of a century. He said that, because of your example, people are volunteering to do things that used to cost Pike Hill plenty. He couldn’t believe you’ve got kids sitting still to learn the computer at five o’clock in the afternoon. You think about what he wants you to do.”

  He didn’t want to hear it. In his present mood, he had a mind to leave Pike Hill. But where would he go? Pike Hill was home, the place where he’d finally found himself. “I don’t know, Fannie. I’ve always stayed clear of partisan politics.”

  “Nothing but Democrats here,” Judd said, “so you’ll still be clear of it.”

  “I am not going to walk around this town begging people to vote for me. I think this habit of adults kissing babies and leaving their germs on them is scandalous, and I refuse to say a thing merely because it’s politically correct.”

  Judd scraped the soufflé dish for the last morsel of crab soufflé and locked his gaze on Richard. “It hasn’t been that long since you were an ambassador. I thought all you fellows did was lie with a straight face and drink martini cocktails.”

  Richard leaned back and looked Fannie in the eye. “That’s behind me. I might consider it, if it’s a part-time job. I’m not giving up our tutoring classes, and after Christmas, I want to start a career-guidance workshop for high school juniors and seniors. It would be good if we could get visiting experts in different fields to talk with them. I’ve been working on that, and—”

  Fannie interrupted him. “And you’d make the perfect mayor.”

  The booted footsteps of Percy Lucas entering the dining room drew their attention to the man they had thought was somewhere around Charleston, South Carolina, en route home. “I thought you were due in tonight or tomorrow morning,” Fannie said.

  “I was, but we’re supposed to get a bad hurricane, and they say it will tear up things from Florida to Maine, so I put my foot on that pedal and hightailed it back here as fast as I could. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours. Any lunch?”

  “I’ll get you something,” Fannie said and went to the kitchen.

  “It will do you good to have a steady job,” Judd told Richard.

  “I know. That’s why I’m considering it, but damned if I want to come home tired every night.”

  “Pshaw. You wouldn’t get tired if you spent the day visiting every citizen in this town. Ever been in a hurricane?” Richard shook his head. “Well I have, and being this close to the ocean during one can make you pray.”

  He answered his cell phone. “Hello. Peterson speaking. What?” He stood up. “What a surprise! This is wonderful.” He walked out of the dining room to the hallway and leaned against the wall beside the house telephone. “You’ll love it here. No, it won’t be any problem. I have a very large room facing the ocean, and I’ll ask my landlady to put a single bed in there for you. It’s been a long while since we spent any time together. Me? Something’s different about me? What do you mean? Right. We can talk about it when you get here.” He hung up, went back into the dining room and took his seat.

  “That sounded like good news, so I don’t suppose it was one of your faceless lovers on her way here to finish off your relationship with Francine. Was it?”

  “Hate to disappoint you, friend, but that was my dad.”

  He hadn’t spent any quality time with his father over the last twelve or thirteen years, mostly because he hadn’t valued the minutes they had together. As he’d bathed in his status and his rising fame, he’d forgotten that, while he floundered in his teenage years, his father had propped him up, constantly sacrificing his own well-being for his son’s goals.

  He recalled those days to Judd, adding, “He deserves better than I’ve given him.”

  Judd patted Richard’s hand. “I suspect most of us could have said that at one time or another. You gonna introduce him to Francine?”

  “If she’ll let me. I’ll speak to Fannie about a bed for him. See you at supper.” He trudged up the stairs and knocked on Francine’s door.

  Jolene raced out of her room and barely missed plowing into Richard as she rounded the corner to speed down the stairs. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Which one of them are you going to meet?” he asked in a teasing tone.

  “Harper. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I think Gregory is out of my system. I have a feeling that what he did straightened me out.”

  “He was never in your system, Jolene. He’s an attractive prospect for a woman, so he might have been in your head but, from what you’ve told me, he was never in your heart. Have a good time.”

  She skipped on down the stairs and, as her feet touched the bottom step, the doorbell rang. Fannie reached the door first and opened it.

  “Good afternoon. Is Miss Tilman here?”

  “Uh . . . why . . . yes. Come in. Who should I say is calling for her?”

  Jolene rushed to them. “Hi, Harper. This is my landlady, Mrs. Fannie Johnson. Fannie, this is Harper Masterson.”

  Harper stared from one to the other. “How do you do, ma’am? I’m glad to meet you.”

  “And I sure am glad to meet you,” Fannie said. “Jolene, you bring him to supper one night, you hear?” She looked at Harper. “We’ve got the best kitchen anywhere around here, so you come see us.”

  “I will, if he’ll come,” said Jolene.

  Harper eased an arm around Jolene’s waist and half turned toward the door. “I hope to see you again soon, ma’am.”

  Jolene looked up at the big man beside her and thought that she had never been so happy. He wore a brown tweed overcoat, brown leather gloves, and a green paisley scarf, and she could see that he wore a tie. However, it surprised her that what he wore didn’t matter, that she would have been happy with him if he’d worn a leather jacket and a baseball cap.

  “Anything special you want to see?” he asked her.

  “You pick something. I don’t really care what we see.”

  He stopped in the process of opening the passenger’s door for her. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I just want us to be together.”

  He grabbed both of her shoulders and stared into her face. “Are you handing me a line? Don’t mess with me, Jolene. I was getting the impression that you were different from what you were when you used to ride my bus, that you were a tender, caring woman, and that you had stopped being manipulative.”

  Stunned, and aware that he was capable of walking off and leaving her right there, she opted for the truth. “I’ve been on high all day waiting for you to ring that doorbell. I hardly slept last night. I don’t want to manipulate you, Harper. I just want to be with you. If you don’t believe me, I’m going back in the house.”

  His cold lips bruised hers, but his groan warmed her heart and she opened to him and pulled his tongue into her mouth. As quickly as he started it, he stopped. “That’s the first time I ever kissed a woman in public, but I’d have done it if we’d been standing on the White House steps. Have you seen Swept Away?” She shook her head. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  During the movie, they held hands, and from time to time, he squeezed her fingers. She wished
the frames of their seats didn’t separate them, and that she could be closer to him. “Maybe I’d better ask Richard and Judd about this,” she said to herself, for her feelings seemed to be getting ahead of her mind.

  They left the theater holding hands, and it seemed to her so natural, but how good a judge of character, of men was she? “Would you like to have supper with me at the boardinghouse tomorrow night, or we could do it Monday. But I work Monday, and I’ll hardly have time to wash my hands after I get home.”

  “Tomorrow, if you like. What does she charge?”

  Why was he asking her that, and how much proof did he need? “I pay my room and board bill monthly, and as my guest, you pay nothing. It’s on me.”

  “But—”

  “You coming or not? You can’t pay to eat in my home. Harper, what do I have to do to prove to you that I learned my lesson, that I am no longer struggling under the yoke of my mother’s prejudices?”

  He took his time answering. They walked nearly half a block before he said, “I don’t believe anybody can understand how hurt I was that night. I’d never been in love before, and I knew I loved you, but all I could see was that you were the wrong woman for me. I made love to you for the hell of it and . . . almost lost my mind. You were so perfect for me; I had never touched a woman who made me feel as you did. Can you blame me for being wary, for feeling that this second chance with you is too good to be true?”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she expelled a long breath. “No, I can’t blame you, and I don’t. I’d give anything if I’d been different. It took your accident to shake me up. Then, Francine and Richard opened my eyes, talking to me about life and how people relate, telling me things I should have known when I was sixteen. Judd taught me about friendship, and he did it just by the way he acts. I’m glad I found that place, ’cause only the Lord knows what kind of person I’d be now if I hadn’t.”