Forged Under Blue Fire: Indigo Knights Book VIII

by A. J. Downey

  That’s when I spotted him bringing up the rear – the city prosecutor who always seemed somehow bigger when his picture was in the newspaper. He raised his eyebrows and smiled and said, “I’m Yale, I’ll be your chauffer this afternoon.”

  “Hi, Yale, I’m sorry,” I said and he laughed and shook his head.

  “Absolutely think nothing of it.” His dark eyes sparkled with good humor and I smiled back.

  “Help yourself to the couch – um, sorry I don’t have T.V.,” I called as the girls herded me up the hallway and back into my room. Everleigh sat me on the edge of my bed and Aly immediately went to my closet whisking things along the rod. Dawnie tapped and swung her cane getting the lay of the land and dropped down next to me on the bed.

  She leaned over into me and said, “Not to sound all rapey, but with these two? It’s better if you just sit back and let it happen.”

  “That sounds exceedingly rapey when you put it that way,” I said.

  She shrugged and said, “I gotta work on my delivery, I know this about myself.”

  I laughed and watched as Everleigh and Aly went through my closet wrinkling their noses at this or that and contemplating the other. Finally, they reached the far back, the dregs of my dresses that weren’t really things that I could or would wear on the regular and Aly lit up, mouth dropping open and pulled whatever it was out so Everleigh could see it.

  The quiet woman gave an excited peal of laughter and they both turned with the bright turquoise retro 40s dress in their hands. A consignment shop find that I wore for a June Cleaver Halloween costume a couple of years ago. The dress had fit like a dream! Hugging my upper body, the skirt flaring at the hips with the help of a light petticoat, and I had hated to part with it, but at the same time, I had never had occasion to wear it again. At least, apparently, until now.

  “I think this, with some victory rolls and nix the apron because wrong era,” she tossed the frilly white 1950s apron into the bottom of my closet, “ and finish the look off with a bold red lip and Oz’ll be tripping over his own tongue,” Aly declared. Everleigh nodded happily and enthusiastically beside her, looking at me with a sparkle of excitement in her green eyes.

  “Should I be intimidated?” I asked, leaning slightly into Dawnie perched beside me.

  “Are they looking at you like you’re a snack?”

  “Little bit,” I confessed.

  “Run.”

  “Dawnie!” Aly cried.

  “Don’t you Dawnie me! I wasn’t born blind, bitch. I remember that look.”

  I smiled and chuckled as Everleigh came over to me with the dress holding it out to me. I took it and asked, “You want me to dig out the stockings that go with this? I think I have them in a drawer here somewhere.”

  “They got the line in the back?” Aly asked.

  “Yeah, I think so, if I remember right.”

  “Ooo, yaaaas.”

  Everleigh and Aly set to work on me. I dressed in the pinup style dress and smoothed the skirt, slipping my feet into the sling backed peep-toe pumps that my sister and I had found with the dress.

  Everleigh brought a chair in from the dining room and she and Aly set to work on my hair and makeup in a flurry of activity that left me blushing, unused to being taken care of like that.

  I felt like my hair had been bobby pinned to within an inch of its life, but there was no denying, I looked really damn good when I looked in my bedroom mirror.

  “Oh, my God, you guys, I think I’m gonna cry,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare!” Dawnie cried. “They just did your makeup.”

  “Right?” Aly asked, wrinkling her nose, but she looked well-pleased.

  Everleigh raised her eyebrows, looking amused and took up her macramé shoulder bag straight out of the nineteen-seventies and tugged on the shoulder of Aly’s shirt.

  “Right, our turn. Bathroom?”

  “Across the hall,” I said turning this way and that in front of my mirrored, sliding closet doors. “Mind the paintings!” I warned.

  Aly and Everleigh trouped across the hall and a minute later Aly called, “Um, Elka?”

  My heart sank, worried what I was about to walk into, a knocked over canvas, a solvent spill? What I hadn’t expected was to walk in and see Everleigh standing in front of the painting I had finished up over the week from the cabin trip, her hands over her mouth and her eyes glistening.

  She turned to me, eyes wide and brought her trembling hands from her mouth and pointed at me and then pointed to the painting. I was surprised when she asked me, “Is this how you see me?” I couldn’t recall her ever having spoken to me before.

  “Well, um, yeah. I mean, that’s what I saw, how I saw it in the moment… I maybe took a few creative liberties.”

  “Can I have it?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said with a faint smile. “I didn’t exactly have any other plans for it. Consider it a thank you for getting me out of the city when I needed it most.”

  She rushed me and wrapped me up in a great big hug and I laughed and hugged her back.

  “It should be dry, let me check it while you all do your thing and let me get back across the hall. I don’t want to leave Dawnie alone.

  “Dawnie is just fine!” she called from my bedroom and I smiled.

  Everleigh joined Aly in the bathroom where Aly had already plugged in her wand and was starting in on her hair.

  Thirty minutes later, they were ready, and I had my French easel loaded with a new canvas, a satchel with some drawing pencils, pigments, and the out-of-era apron shoved in the top to protect my dress.

  Yale had made himself at home on my couch and stood, turning, a smile lighting up his eyes when he looked at Aly who looked beautiful in her sunflower spangled sundress. Dawnie looked like a hippy chick in her light and airy patchwork skirt and airy evergreen silk peasant blouse. And then there was Everleigh in her strappy leather sandals and white, ankle length country-perfect sundress.

  We were each uniquely different but no less beautiful in our own styles, even if mine felt borrowed.

  “Wow, you ladies look incredible. Shall we?” Yale held out his arm for Aly who took it.

  “Yes, we shall,” she said with an impish smile.

  The love that radiated from them both was enough to warm the coldest of hearts and I think, even the blind woman knew. Could hear it in their voices, feel it like warmth from a hearth. I brought up the rear, Everleigh clutching the sides of her painting, holding it out from herself carefully as if it was still wet, which a few places weren’t quite set, but the paint layer was definitely stable nonetheless.

  Yale led us to a big black Escalade parked down the row and chirped the locks. They disengaged with a slight thump, and he opened up the rear cargo area for me which was pristine and empty.

  I stowed my gear inside and he hit a button on his remote, the tailgate smoothly coming down and closing.

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  “You’re welcome.”

  The ride to Little Havana was full of chatter between Aly, Dawnie, and Yale. The latter trading good-natured barbs back and forth that had me and Everleigh howling in delighted laughter. Both were master social chess players, equally quick-witted and equally hilarious.

  He parked as close as he could get to the closed-off street, which was still several blocks away. When we got out of the Escalade, he looked down at my heels and frowned. I smiled as I retrieved my satchel and easel with its freshly mounted canvas. A larger one than I had dared take to the cabin on the back of a motorcycle.

  “It’s a bit of a walk,” he said. “You sure you’re going to be okay in those?”

  “What?” I looked down at my shoes. “Oh, yeah. I think Mia and I inherited the same genes when it comes to heels, they’ve never bothered either of us much. Stilettos or sneakers, it’s all the same to us… or was for her.”

  He raised his eyebrows and shut the back hatch, eyes still fixed on my pumps.

  “I’ll take your word
for it,” he said and Dawnie smirked from the curb, her hand in the crook of Aly’s elbow.

  “Adding a shoe fetish to your repertoire, prosecutor?” she asked, amused.

  “Hey, you watch yourself,” he said sharply and though he smiled his eyes held worry.

  “Duh, blind chick, and sorry about that,” she said.

  “It’s fine.”

  I went over by Aly and Everleigh and made a face like ‘eek’ and Aly smiled, mouthing ‘later’ at me.

  “Nothing needs to be said later,” Yale declared behind me. “I just very much so like to keep my private life private and you all know that. You never know who might be listening out here.”

  I thought it a little paranoid, but then again, I would absolutely die of embarrassment if any of my colleagues discovered what I’d gotten up to at the cabin. We all had our kinks, I guess, and they really were nobody’s business but our own.

  I dismissed it out of hand as we traversed one block then the next. Music and delicious smells swept along by the summer breeze enveloped us the nearer we drew to the celebration. There were those police saw horse looking barricades up across the road at the next block, freshly painted a navy blue with reflective tape on the legs and to either side of ‘Indigo City PD’ that was stenciled across the crossbar in silver.

  An opening had been left between the stations and an Indigo Knight stood next to it with an off-duty, but still in uniform, Indigo City police volunteer. As we got closer, we recognized the Knight as Backdraft.

  “Hey, Backdraft!” Aly called for Dawnie’s benefit. Dawnie’s chin rose slightly and a faint smile graced her lips.

  “Batting for the other team today, huh?” she asked him and the cop beside him snorted.

  “Hey, I liked playing ‘cops and robbers’ when I was a kid, it’s nice to revisit every once in a while.” He stepped aside so we could pass, and we slipped beyond the barriers.

  “Have fun,” he said to me with a wink, eying my easel and satchel.

  “Thanks, I will. Have you seen Oz?” I asked.

  “His shift just ended, I think he went to go change to actually join the party.”

  “Privileges of putting the security for this shindig together, huh?” Yale asked, grinning.

  “Yeah, he took first shift, but can’t say I blame him. This is his jam, after all.”

  “He’s actually taking two,” I said, feeling the need to defend him. “He doesn’t get to drink – he’s closing things down at the end, too.”

  “My bad,” Backdraft said, holding up his hands in gentle surrender. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I nodded and looked down the block. The street was lined to either side with classic cars, their rich paint jobs sparkling in the sun. Each one from the nineteen-fifties, beautifully restored in fabulous colors. People wandered up and down the aisle between them that must have spanned an entire block of the three-block length of Ninth Avenue they had closed down. At the far end was the stage, a live band playing Salsa music, a dance floor in front of it with figures on it, barely discernable through the thick crowd on the street.

  Past the line of classic cars, they had the next side street blocked off in either direction with rows of portable bathrooms. Portable round sinks connected to garden hoses were perched in front of the restrooms, step on a lever at ground level and the water would turn on. Big trash cans on wheels were filling quickly with the rough paper towels provided, and volunteers would regularly take the trash bin past the portable bathrooms down Oak Street to the waiting garbage truck to empty.

  It was a clever system, and I smiled and nodded at one of the teens wearing a juvenile detention center work vest who was refilling the paper towels. He smiled back and gave me a nod and seemed somehow grateful for the small recognition. It was a good way to work off some of his community service hours and no doubt, it was Oz’s doing that the teens were here with trash bags in hand and those grabber stick things, intermittently picking up litter.

  Non-food vendors were next, a whole block of them, selling all kinds of wares. Dolls and baskets, hand-painted hand-fans, traditional clothing, jewelry, baskets, paintings, photography, you name it, it was there. I paused at the booth with the paintings and prints and the gentleman who was running it came over my way.

  “Ahhhh, a fellow artist, I see!” he smiled and I smiled back shyly, biting my bottom lip.

  “I dabble,” I confessed, and Everleigh stepped in front of me holding out her painting. She looked back at me over her shoulder and rolled her eyes dramatically. I laughed.

  “You did this?” the booth owner asked, eyebrows going up in surprise.

  “Um, yeah, I have a degree in fine arts. Work at the museum up town doing restoration work.”

  “Noooo waayyy, really?”

  “Yeah,” I grinned, and he looked over the painting with a practiced eye. He handed it back to Everleigh who beamed at me.

  “Hey, Ev! There’s Narcos,” Aly called.

  Yale asked me, “You good?”

  “Yeah! I’ll catch up.”

  They wandered on without me and the vendor introduced himself, “I’m Silverio Pérez.” He held out his hand.

  I took it and said, “Elka Köhler, it’s nice to meet you, Silverio.”

  “Likewise, likewise! Always nice to meet a fellow aficionado of the brush.”

  “These are really beautiful,” I said looking over the paintings he had on display. “When were you last in Cuba?”

  He smiled faintly and said, “My parents put me on a raft when I was two. I’m a first-generation refugee.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought…”

  “Nah, my paintings are mostly from photos and imagination.”

  “Well, I would have never guessed,” I told him honestly.

  “That does my heart good to hear you say it,” he said tipping his straw panama hat in my direction. He was handsome, in a distinguished sort of way, with silver just beginning to grace his temples, a little heavier in his goatee that offset his angular jawline.

  He wore a Cuban style guayabera shirt in a light peach over khaki pants and a pair of loafers with no socks. In fact, that seemed to be the almost uniform dress code for the Cuban men wandering by over the age of thirty or so. It was an attractive look.

  We chatted a bit more and with a polite farewell, I took myself deeper into the festival’s fray, alone this time – though I didn’t feel unsafe at all, not in the slightest. There was a good turnout of uniformed officers and Indigo Knights alike. I just couldn’t seem to spot Oz among the crowd.

  “Hey, Elka! Is that you!?”

  I turned to the nearest food truck and grinned. “Enrique, hi!”

  He had a brisk business going so he couldn’t stop what he was doing, but he held out his hands almost beseeching and put them both over the center of his chest as though he’d been struck by Cupid’s arrow.

  “You look great!” he called out and I laughed.

  “Why, thank you!”

  “Come see me later!” he called.

  “Better watch it, now!” Oz’s familiar voice came from just over my left shoulder. I jumped as his hands settled on my hips and he called out to Enrique, “Might get the idea you be hittin’ on my woman!”

  “Oh, man! I been tryin’ to! She’s loyal though! You got a good one, there!”

  Oz laughed and waved him off and Enrique got back to work.

  “Wait, he has?” I asked, confused.

  “Probably,” Oz agreed.

  “I had no idea,” I said, mystified.

  Oz laughed and turned me around in his grasp and looked me over giving a low appreciative whistle.

  “I think you found yourself a signature style,” he said. “You look damn good.”

  I blushed faintly and mumbled, “I wore it for Halloween a couple of years ago when I went as June Cleaver. It was Mia’s idea. Aly found it in the back of my closet.”

  “Well Aly’s on to something, you look beautiful, babe.”

&nbs
p; “Thank you.” I took him in.

  “You look amazing yourself.”

  He did, too. A navy-blue ribbed tank top with a short-sleeved white shirt with tiny navy-blue dots. He wore the short-sleeved shirt open over the tank which was neatly tucked in to a pair of matching navy chinos. The cuff of which had been rolled up slightly over grey suede loafers with no socks.

  A white trilby with a navy band around it and gray accents in the weave of the cloth completed the look, and the overall effect curled my toes.

  “I was about to go have a cigar with some of the boys from work,” he said.

  “Okay, lead the way.”

  He took my hand and we crossed the street to an area roped off in front of a narrow Spanish-colonial style apartment building. Oz took a seat midway up the steps of the front stoop and pulled a cigar tube from the front pocket of his shirt.

  I pulled the easel off my back and set it up, right in front of him, struck with inspiration.

  “Hold that thought!” I declared and he blinked.

  “What?”

  “I want to paint you, so don’t do anything yet.”

  Conveniently, one of those green power boxes was located in the planter strip between the sidewalk and the curb, just off to one side a little further than I initially would have liked, but it could make for a unique composition.

  I got set up, tied on my apron, poised my pencil over the canvas and said, “Okay, action!”

  He shook his head smiling and pulled his cigar out, did whatever it was you did with cigars, pulled a lighter out of his pocket and putting the cylinder of tobacco to his lips, lit up.

  It was perfect, I sketched furiously; roughing out the image I wanted to paint on the canvas before loading my pallet with paints.

  “What have we got going on here?” Skids called, joining Oz on the stoop with a cigar of his own.

  Coco stopped beside me, and I looked up and smiled. She raised her eyebrows and looked over what I had on the canvas with a nod. I went back to loading the canvas with paint, easing into my happy place, listening to the music playing from the stage, the light summer breeze rustling the leaves of the sycamore tree providing me shade from the punishing summer sun.

  “Hey, babe, can I move yet?” Oz called after a while and I called back, “Yeah, go ahead!”