The Game of Love and Death (18 page)

A
FTER
a day spent answering the door to receive visitors and their gifts of food, Flora stood alone in the kitchen, her hands deep in the suds of a dirty pan. She’d done her best to keep busy. Once she fixed her tires, she’d have to go to the airfield and explain her absence to Captain Girard, but he’d understand. Her ambition there felt so out of reach it almost didn’t matter, and even if she achieved the dream, Nana would never know.

The morning paper had carried a small bit about Amelia Earhart’s around-the-world trip. The aviatrix had flown from the mouth of the Amazon River to Dakar, Senegal, setting a record crossing the South Atlantic in thirteen hours and twenty-two minutes. Not so long ago, these exotic names and places, this world record, would have filled her with a competitive rush. Now, though, they were letters on a page, black ink on cheap paper that would yellow and dry out in a blink of time’s eye.

And what was the point? Flora still wanted what flight offered: solitude, good pay, a chance to see the world on her own terms. But she also wanted Henry. She could not have both things, be both things. The impossibility of it was paralyzing. But even if she did choose, she’d still someday end up like her grandmother. Everyone did.

She finished her coffee and pushed the troubling thoughts out of her mind. Except for the mantel clock, the house was entirely silent. The absence of sound would take some getting used to. Nana was always up and about. Cooking, shining the windows, polishing the woodwork, working on a quilt, listening to the wireless.

She thought about switching it on. But there was no music she could listen to without pain, and the thought of a radio drama or worse, a comedy … it just wouldn’t do. She walked into the parlor and picked up her grandmother’s last quilt, which she’d folded and set on the table. She breathed its scent and then spread it out on the floor, poring over every inch of it until she found it, stitched in red, in the final section her grandmother’s hands had completed. When everything else was gone, there it was, sewn into memory.

She folded the quilt and tried to muster the energy to handle the tires. Sherman was busy with the funeral arrangements, and then he was heading north for business, so he’d be gone for the day. But it would at least occupy the rest of the morning. She washed up and reached for a black dress. She heard Nana’s voice in her mind chiding her for wearing black. So she found a long polka-dot skirt and blouse instead. Then she donned a hat, shoes, and her mother’s gloves and walked back toward the Majestic.

As unbearable as the silence in her house had been, the clamor of life outside was worse. The sun overhead seemed like an affront, as did the barking dogs and rumbling cars. If the world made any sense at all, time would stop when someone died. Just for a moment, just to mark the loss. The sidewalk ahead blurred, and Flora blinked away her tears.

At the club, she set to work on the tires straightaway, glad to have something to occupy her. She had two spares, but she’d have to patch the others. Four flats at once. Flat tires happened often enough, but not when a car was parked. Someone had obviously been up to no good. Flora wished for whoever had done it to walk beneath the business end of a sick pigeon.

She found the jack in the trunk. She’d just lifted one side of the car when she heard someone pull up behind her. A door opened and slammed shut, and she knew who was there without even turning around.

“Hello, Flora.” Henry’s voice was gentle and warm. “Need help?”

“Don’t you have school?” She stood, feeling conscious of her hands, as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do with them.

He lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Nope. Not today.” His face told another story, though.

She wondered what he was missing. Final exams, maybe, given the time of year. She decided not to press it, surprisingly grateful for the company. She didn’t ask him how he’d known to come, because she already knew what his answer would be. He’d known she was there, just as she’d known he was on his way. It was as if they were playing a duet, but on a much bigger stage. “You any good at patching a tire?”

“I do it for Ethan all the time.”

They crouched side by side, and she couldn’t help but smell the lemon-and-spice scent of his skin all over again. She liked it, but for some reason, it made her deeply sad, more conscious than usual of inevitable loss.

“The patches are in the trunk.” She tried to sound as businesslike as possible. “Orange tin. I’m going to put the spares on, then we can fix the ones I’m taking off, all right?”

As they worked, she found herself humming, out of habit more than anything.

“What’s that song?” Henry said.

“Billie Holiday. ‘Easy Living.’ Ever heard it?”

“Nope. But I like it.”

She had a wild idea, one she hesitated to say out loud. “I can teach it to you afterward,” she said. “If you want. It can be the first number you learn.”

There was a long pause, and she wondered if she’d said something stupid.

“Yes, of course,” Henry said. “What’s the harm in that?”

After they’d repaired the tires and driven to the Domino, they made their way down the steps together.

“It’s different during the daytime,” Henry said, removing his hat.

At first Flora didn’t know what he meant by “it” — them? The way they interacted? The strange ease of the night of Nana’s death was gone.

She guessed he meant the club. “The crowds and music add a certain something.” She moved ahead of him to find the switch for the main room.

“I like it better this way, actually. There’s more of a sense of expectation.” He paused at the base of the stairs, and she turned back to look at him. “This is a place that wants to be filled.”

Flora was glad for the inadequate lighting. She set her gloves down on a table and climbed the staircase to the wings where Grady’s bass remained. Henry put his hat next to her gloves and followed her.

“I’ll get that.” He picked up the bass, carrying it with practiced arms across the stage.

“So the first few chords —” She breathed in, the way a person does before diving beneath the surface of a lake. “I’m not warmed up, but they go like this.” She sang the notes so that they’d correspond with where they fell in the melody. “A minor seventh, E diminished …”

Henry checked that the bass was in tune and started plucking along with her, as if he were getting the feel for things.

She sang carefully, quietly at first, taking her time to warm up, making sure he was following. He looked at her every so often, then returned his attention to the bass, sliding his left hand along the neck of it as he found the notes, coaxing sound out of it with his right.

“You’re holding back,” he said. “Why?”

“I’m warming up.”

“No, I mean in general. I think you could give more when you’re singing. Put your heart out there more.” He smiled, as if to let her know it wasn’t a judgment, more of an observation.

She held up a palm, as if to dismiss the notion. As they eased their way through the refrain, she gave in. Just to see. And then all the way, as she had once earlier at the Domino. It was different, singing without the full band. But Henry was good, so steady as he pulled sounds out of more than one string at a time. He was a natural. He knew how to connect. He improvised here and there, and for the first time since the day they’d met, she felt something inside herself open wide. The thing that surprised her most was that it was easier to sing this way when she was letting each note be what it wanted to be. She felt it in her chest, in her head, and finally everywhere.

As she came to the last line of the song, she heard footsteps. Someone was coming. More than one person, judging from the irregular tap of shoes on the treads. She cursed inwardly when she saw who it was: Mr. Potts and his crew. And they’d brought a police officer with them.

“I’m sorry, my uncle isn’t here yet,” she said. She rushed toward them, intending to usher them out before Henry realized who they were.

“We’re not here for your uncle.” Mr. Potts strode toward her.

They met in the middle of the room. The police officer moved forward and reached for the handcuffs dangling from his wide leather belt.

“We’re here for you,” Mr. Potts said. “On account of that bribe you offered us not too long ago. Turns out that sort of thing is against the law. You, my dear, are in a world of trouble.”

Flora felt all the blood leave her body. They’d trapped her. The club would have been shut down if she hadn’t paid a bribe. And now they were going to arrest her anyway for paying it. All while Henry watched.

“That isn’t fair,” she said, jerking her hands away from the police officer, realizing how stupid the words sounded. “Please.” She took a half step back and felt Henry behind her.

She looked the officer in the eye, and then glanced down at the name on his badge.
J
.
WALLACE
JR
. “Come on, Officer Wallace. This is a misunderstanding.”

Mr. Potts interrupted. “Miss Saudade. We are acting in the interests of the law, and you are a public menace.” He lunged for her.

“That’s ridiculous!” she said. She dodged Mr. Potts, and Henry stepped between them.

“Isn’t there something that can be done about this?” he said. “Please don’t cart her off. I know some people…” A look of uncertainty came over him.

“What are you saying, boy,” Mr. Potts said. “Are you offering us a bribe? Making a threat? Because believe you me, that is not going to turn out nicely.”

“No,” Henry said. “It wasn’t like that. I —” He reached for Flora’s hand. She squeezed his fingers.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Mr. Potts said. “A young man has needs and he sometimes finds ways to take care of those that society wouldn’t like. It’s not illegal in these parts, not yet, even if it is shameful. But you do not want to lose your head here. A colored whore like this one —”

Henry’s fist was a white flash. There was a crack, and Mr. Potts put his hands to his nose. Blood oozed through his fingers. “You broke my nose!” he said. “You done broke it!”

The men restrained Henry. Officer Wallace, who said not a word, was at least gentle as he fastened the cuffs on Flora’s wrists. Henry did not enjoy the same kind of treatment. By the time he was in the back of the police car next to her, he had a pair of black eyes and a split lip.

“Oh, Henry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Their aim was lousy. They missed my nose completely.”

She couldn’t bring herself to smile at his joke. The backseat was too wide for them to touch, but she wanted to hold ice to his swollen face. She wanted to clean the blood from his lip with a damp washcloth. She wanted to kiss his forehead and apologize for bringing him into her world this way, with the roughness and injustice and frequent humiliations. She turned her face to the window. Thick clouds had gathered. It was sure to rain again.

Henry hummed the first few bars of the song they had been playing. “We’ll do it again. I promise. Someday.”

Flora’s forehead burned. Overwhelmed with anger at being set up, wondering what her next move would be, she flexed her fingers and strained against the handcuffs. With a start, she remembered her mother’s gloves. She’d left them next to Henry’s hat.
Dammit.
Her hands felt naked without them. It wasn’t just that they covered her skin and made her fit to be seen in public. They represented so much more. She tried to tell herself that they were just a pair of gloves, not her mother, that her mother’s hands hadn’t been inside of them for ages, and that any bit of her that remained inside had surely been worn away. She willed herself to hold it together as she leaned against the seat.

“Sure,” she said. “Someday.”

When she looked over at Henry, she wished she’d been able to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Flora,” Henry said. “Have a little faith.”

They arrived at the police station. Officer Wallace guided Henry out of the car, then Flora. They walked past a group of hungry-looking children leaning against the side of the building.

“Run along,” Officer Wallace said.

The children scattered like dry leaves.

“I’d like my telephone call,” Henry said.

“All in good time.” Officer Wallace led Flora to her cell first. He clicked open the cuffs. The return of circulation made her hands ache. The door slammed behind her. The space was small and dark and dirty, equipped with something that was more a hole than a toilet, and a bed that barely deserved the name.

It occurred to her, as she lowered herself onto the thin mattress, that no one had offered her a telephone call. Not that it mattered. Nana was dead. Sherman was halfway across the state, picking up a supply of alcohol from his inexpensive source, and he wouldn’t be back for hours, and neither he nor anyone else in the band had a telephone, anyway. There was no one to come for her.

F
IRST
Nana. Now this. Flora wanted nothing more than to fall asleep, to temporarily shut out the sadness of the world, but she couldn’t. The cell was dank and smelly: the opposite of the sky. Somewhere in the gloom, a fly buzzed. She did not want to think about what it might be dining on. She tried to imagine herself in her plane, leaving all of this behind, but she couldn’t. She leaned against the rough, damp wall and willed herself not to feel anything at all.

And then she heard Henry’s voice. Singing. It hadn’t occurred to her before that he might be able to do this too. He sounded as if his voice had been shaped to fit her ears alone. She moved by the bars, so that she could hear better.

The song wasn’t one she knew, although it was the sort that immediately felt as familiar as her own skin.

You are the moon

And I am the sea

Wherever you are

You’ve got pull over me

The whole of the sky

Wants to keep us apart

The distance is wearing

A hole in my heart

Someday your moonlight

Will blanket my skin

Someday my waves

Will pull all of you in

Someday I promise

The moon and the sea

Will be together

Forever you and me.

Someday
. For as long as she could remember, Flora had linked thoughts of this word with the certainty of death: hers, and that of everyone she’d ever loved. Someday had always been a source of dread. But the sweetness of this song showed her a different way to look at it, a way that made it hurt less.

As she listened, her grief over Nana, her rage at her situation, her guilt over Henry faded. She could have listened to the song, been suspended in its magic, for ages. But it was not to be. Slow applause and the click of heels on the concrete broke the spell. Henry stopped mid-note.

“Don’t stop on my account,” a sharp voice said.

Flora peered through the bars. Her stomach clenched at the sight of the hard-looking girl who’d been with Henry at the Majestic. If she was the one he’d called when he needed rescuing, she must mean something to him. And it made sense. She was beautiful. She looked intelligent. She was the right color. She was everything he needed.

Flora understood this, and even though the match would provide a happy life for Henry, she envied the dark-haired girl for having what she could not have, for being who she could not be. Worse, the girl would know Henry’s humiliation was Flora’s fault. She’d look down on her, and rightfully so.

The girl stopped in front of Henry’s cell. “Congratulations. After bail, you have twelve cents to your name. It’s a good thing I was never interested in your money.”

Henry replied, too softly for Flora to hear.

“You must be joking,” the girl said.

More murmuring from Henry.

“You’re a lunatic.” The girl raised her voice. “You know what the Thornes are going to say, don’t you?”

“Helen, please. Don’t tell them why I’m here. I beg of you. And once you’ve finished, if you could please pick up Ethan at school, and take him to his car, then he can come back for me. He has the money, and he won’t mind that I took the Cadillac. Please … I need you to do this for me.”

Flora held her breath and wished she knew what they were talking about.

Helen shot back a reply. “It’s an awfully queer way to ask me for a favor, Henry. What do I care about her? I’m certainly not going to promise my silence. Not without anything from you in return.”

There was a long pause, and Flora still didn’t dare breathe. Then a whisper from Henry and Helen spoke again, her voice flip and uncaring.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s your funeral.”

Flora, no longer trying to mask her hate for Helen, wished a piano would fall from the sky and land on her. Death in the key of B-flat.

And then, just like that, the girl was in front of Flora, accompanied by a guard. “Don’t just stand there like a lump,” Helen said.

“Excuse me?” Flora tried to hide her contempt for Henry’s sake. “What’s happening?”

The guard jingled his keys, and Helen said, “Henry’s being a fool. He had only enough money to get one of you out, and because he’s a gentleman — a quality I truly admire — he’s chosen you. But if you’re comfortable here, I’d love to talk some sense into him.”

Flora felt like an animal on display. The disgust was palpable.

“Someone else will come for me,” Flora said.

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Helen said. “It’s now or never. Decide.”

Too tired to think everything through, Flora agreed. “I have money for Henry at my club. So if you can take me there, I’ll come back for him.”

“Your plans fascinate me,” Helen said. “Thank you for sharing.”

Death in the key of B-flat.
Her kingdom for a falling piano.

Henry’s cell was the last she passed on her way out. He rushed against the bars, but the officer elbowed her forward.

“I’ll be back for you,” she called over her shoulder. “I promise.”

But then that would be it. After that, it was good-bye. It didn’t matter what she felt about him, how tied to him she felt. Carrying on would only lead to ruin, if it hadn’t already.

As they left the building, Helen waved to the police officers as if this were a social call. “Catch you all later.”

The angle of the sun told Flora it was afternoon already. She’d missed her morning shift at the airfield. She didn’t feel herself when she wasn’t near a plane, even if Captain Girard had been understanding about her absence. What’s more, she hadn’t set up the Domino for that evening’s service, so she’d have to rush around in a lather. Things could not fall apart more.

“How much money do we need?” Flora asked.

Helen quoted a sum that made Flora blanch. That would clean out the safe, and explaining everything to Sherman … She dreaded the conversation more than anything.

“Short on funds?” Helen said.

Flora didn’t answer. “Where did you say you’d parked?”

“I didn’t. I also didn’t offer you a ride anywhere, but maybe, if you ask very nicely …” She gave Flora a wooden nickel of a smile.

“Please,” Flora said.

Helen looked back over her shoulder. “Follow me.”