The bored expression hardened into appraisal. She later told me that she was trying to figure out if I was making a genuine professional advance or a personal one, if you know what I mean, and being of a sapphic bent herself, she was hoping for the latter. (She didn’t put much faith in white folks who wanted to sign her up as a model, which was perfectly fair, I guess.)
Anyway, I convinced her eventually that my offer was bona fide, no strings attached, and we proceeded with the usual formalities. But that look of appraisal was a warning, I thought. It was like that yellow colonial flag with the snake, Don’t Tread on Me. Miss Kingsley might allow me to manage her career—and champagne and oysters with a few celestial bodies at the Palmetto Club certainly fell under the standard definition of a professional outing, if a sensational one—but take one step across that line and Barbara called the shots.
Which all goes to explain how I wind up losing my bet, after all. We remain at the Palmetto for less than two hours, just long enough to drink a case of champagne and eat five dozen oysters, before we part company with our glittering entourage and head uptown to Barbara’s neck of the woods. Her cousin owns a club, she says, a joint where they play real live jazz, none of this watered-down midtown nonsense, and she’ll vouch for me. I say all right.
I thought she was kidding about vouching for me, but sure enough, the doorman stops us on the way in and respectfully asks Miss Barbara what the devil she thinks she’s doing.
“Aw, she’s all right, Linus,” Barbara says, and Linus sighs and waves us through. Barbara finds us a table right near the front. The orchestra’s on a break, it seems, so we get to talking while they bring us some drinks and peanuts.
Barbara watches me light a cigarette and cracks a wee smile. “Well, that was certainly fine work, Miss Ruth. I’ll bet they can see your halo shining all the way over in Brooklyn.”
“Can’t they, though. I call it two birds with one stone—flashbulbs popping for Miss Barbara Kingsley, the newest modeling sensation, and the Palmetto Club gets a lesson in human decency.”
“And you get to feel like everybody’s fairy godmother, handing out favors to black folk.”
“What’s wrong with that? So long as I use my fairy powers for good.”
“Just don’t let it get to your head, is all. God gives us all kind of ways to make others feel small.”
“Say.” I set down my drink. “That didn’t bother you, back there. Did it?”
“Of course it bothered me. Like the man said, I don’t want to be a member of any club that won’t have me. I did it for the publicity, is all. And now I like it better right here among my own kind, where I know folks can appreciate me.”
“You think I’m stuck on myself, don’t you?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know anything about you, Miss Macallister, except you’re the kind of woman who likes to have her own way.”
“Most men like to have their own way, and nobody faults them for it.”
Barbara laughs and says that’s true, sure enough, if by most men you meant all men, which is why she stays away from them generally. Speak of the devil. The orchestra then starts filing back to their instruments. Each man—they’re all men, of course—holds a drink in one hand, full enough to make you guess it isn’t his first. I jingle my ice and consider them as they tune and riff.
Barbara leans over. “Something on your mind? Besides that.”
What I mean to say is Nothing. What comes out is My sister.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” she says.
“I think she’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble? Man trouble? Baby trouble?”
“Both, I guess, but those are just the root cause of her main trouble. I don’t know for sure, though. I haven’t seen her in twelve years.”
“Twelve years!” Barbara chokes on her gin. “What kind of idiot child you be, Miss Macallister?”
“Now, that’s not fair. Maybe my sister’s the idiot.”
Barbara shakes her head. “Don’t matter. Blood is the only thing that counts in this world, boss lady. Don’t you know that? I don’t care what you done or what she done, you both need your heads knocked together. Ain’t nobody in the world understands you like your sister. Ain’t nobody ever will.”
At that point, the orchestra swings into action, thank God, swallowing up all the other noise in the room. I don’t want to continue that conversation and wish most fervently that I hadn’t started it to begin with.
The trouble is, you can drown out a conversation like that and even stop it entirely, but you can’t forget it. The words keep beating inside your head to the illicit syncopation of the music outside, until you’re half convinced you might go crazy with them.
A spring chicken I am no longer, and by two o’clock in the morning my jaw splits wide open with yawning. Barbara tells me to hand over the five bucks, and I actually ask her What five bucks?, because I’ve lost count of the lime rickeys I’ve drunk to drown out the syncopation of Barbara’s wise advice.
Our bet, she says, and Oh right, I answer.
I pay her the five bucks and pay the bill, too. Prepare to rise, and that’s when Barbara puts her hand on my elbow.
“I’m guessing he’s yours?” she says, nodding to a man sitting alone at a table in the corner.
I follow her gaze and squint. Big, wide-shouldered man, face too shadowed to properly see. But two things are perfectly clear, even to my addled eyes. Number one, he’s a white man, as fair-haired and pink-skinned as they come. And number two, he’s watching me.
“Hell’s bells,” I mutter.
Barbara offers to find me a ride home, call me a trustworthy taxi or something, but I figure I’m not going to start being a coward at this particular moment. I march right up to him and ask if he’s ready to leave now.
“Certainly,” Sumner Fox says politely.
He pays his bill—I have the feeling he left a large tip—and takes my elbow like a gentleman. I don’t look back, just sail between the last few tables and out into the lobby and then the open air of West 125th Street. Fox signals to a taxi waiting by the curb, a half block away. I waste an entire moment thinking I’ve been very stupid indeed.
But there’s nothing underhanded about the way he helps me into the taxi and gives the driver my address before he settles on the other side of the back seat, acres of cloth between us. As I settle against the seat and watch the buildings skim by, I experience this feeling of levitation, as if we’re actually flying instead of driving, but the sober part of my brain—if one can be said to still exist—knows this is only an illusion. I anchor myself to the pocketbook in my lap, which happens to contain Iris’s missives, both of them, postcard and letter. I don’t know why I carry them around with me like that. Maybe it’s a talisman—maybe my subconscious is trying to figure out what I should do with them and considers it’s best to keep the objects on hand in case of need.
The nice thing about two o’clock in the morning is you’re not subject to the aggravation of New York traffic. We skim down Fifth Avenue, pausing only when some light turns red before us. I don’t speak, and neither does Fox. Like me, he’s looking out the window, contemplating the blur of facades. Only they aren’t a blur to him, I’ll bet. Sumner Fox likely drank nothing stronger than ginger ale, certainly not while on duty. He probably sees each building as an individual edifice—notices all the fine architectural details—will remember them tomorrow.
“So why’d you quit football?” I hear myself ask.
“There was a war on.”
“Are those your real teeth?”
He laughs—actually laughs, for the first time—and turns to me. “Fellow named Greenwald knocked the two front ones out of me at the Dartmouth game.”
“Was he sorry?”
“He was sorry afterward. Offered to pay for the dental work.”
“I’ll bet you scored your goal anyway.”