Jezebel (21 page)

“
What about me?”
she asked, suddenly scattered.

“
How was your day?”
he prompted.

“
I landed a gig.”

His expression brightened
and he smiled, melting her heart by the second. “So you plan on
sticking around?”

Celeste
shrugged off the feelings bubbling just beneath the surface. “For
the time being,” she barely managed to choke out. “And
as long as I have work.”

“
You
love being on stage?”

“
I live to perform.
There’s no better high than the audience’s applause.”
And she meant it. No amount of gin could amount to an adoring
public. “It’s probably a lot like when you’re in
the ring.”

“
If they love, you
it’s great. If they don’t, it’s murder.”
Shane glanced at his sketch and rubbed his hand through it.

Sensing something was off,
Celeste asked, “Why do you fight?”

“
It pays the bills.”
She heard a ragged laugh as he shook his head. Street lights bounced
off his averted profile, illuminating his perfect features. Unable to
help herself, she openly stared at him. “And it’s better
than standing in some soup line.”

Celeste silently agreed.
Any kind of work would be better than no work at all. “Have you
always wanted to be a prizefighter?”

“
No,” he said,
without supplying anything else.

“
Well…”
Celeste prompted.

Shane shook his head.

Celeste reached out and
punched his arm.

“
Ouch.” He
winced in mock pain.

Celeste punched him again
for good measure.

“
Okay…okay…I
used to have dreams of sailing to Italy and becoming an artist.”

Stunned by his confession,
Celeste sat forward. “An artist?”

“
Like Da Vinci.”
He looked down at his hands as if embarrassed. “I love to
paint. My baby sister used to get so mad at me when I would run
through the chalk that came with her chalkboard.”

“
So why didn’t
you pursue it?”

“
I almost did.”
His smile faded. “I told my father I was going to study art
full time, but he called me a foolish backwoods hillbilly that would
never amount to nothing least of all an artist.”

Angered
by his father’s words, Celeste balled her fists. “The
next day I set out on my own. And ever since, I’ve tried
proving him wrong.”

Shane’s gaze met hers
and she sensed a kindred spirit. Filled with empathy, she reached
for him.

“
Hotel Theresa!”
the cab driver called out.

Celeste froze. She still
didn’t move when the hotel’s doorman, a colored man
wearing a wine colored suit with gold epaulets, opened her door.

“
How are you tonight,
Miss?” If he was surprised to see her, he hid it behind a
toothy grin.

“
Fine,
thank you,” Celeste murmured as she allowed him–albeit
reluctantly–to help her out of the hired cab.

“
It’s a
beautiful night for a night on the town,” he ambled on. “I
hope you...”

Celeste
watched the doorman’s expression turn cold. His eyes fixed on
Shane and then her and then back again.

The doorman tipped his hat
at Shane. “Good evening, sir,” he said with much less
warmth than he’d greeted her.

“
It is a good evening
isn’t it?” Shane said, entwining his arm with hers.
Oblivious to the cold reception, he swept them inside.

***

Baring his soul had made
Shane hungry as a horse. With a one track mind, he took Celeste’s
arm and guided them through the lobby, past the front desk and into
the hotel’s restaurant. A well-trained maître d,
resplendent in starch whites, rounded the podium.

“
May
I help you?” he asked.

“
Yes, I want your
finest table.”

“
Unfortunately, that
isn’t possible, sir. We’re totally booked.”

Shane looked past the maître
d’. The dining area was busy, but nowhere near full capacity.
In fact, he spotted a table just inside the entrance.

“
What about that one?”
Shane nodded at a nearby empty table.

Without turning around, the
maître d’ clasped his hands behind his back. “It’s
taken.”

Shane scanned the room
again. “What about that table near the windows?”

“
Also, taken.”

Not one to throw in the
towel, Shane inquired after several more, but he came up empty
handed. Thinking this was a ploy to fleece him, Shane reached inside
his breast pocket and withdrew his money clip. “I’ll pay
top money for any table.”

The older gentleman eyed the
wad of money and even licked his lips, but he ultimately declined.
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t break hotel policy.”

“
Hotel policy?”

“
We serve an
exclusive clientele.” The maître d’ glanced at
Celeste and sniffed.

Even though it took a
second to register, the man’s words hit Shane like a punch
below the belt. And his gut reaction was to respond with a counter
punch square in the guy’s mug. Before he acted like an animal,
Shane swallowed his pride. Stuffing the bills back into his breast
pocket, he turned on his heels hauling Celeste with him.

“
Do
you like Chinese?” He asked, keeping his gaze averted. “The
Bamboo Inn has excellent chow mein and its right around the corner.”
Shane stopped in mid-sentence. Celeste wore such a forlorn look, he
wanted to go back to the restaurant and smash the maître d’s
face in. “They have the same policy?”

Celeste nodded.

Feeling his temperature
rise, Shane stuck his finger in his starch collar and pulled. “On
the Hudson,” he offered after racking his brain for an
alternative.

Celeste shook her head.

“
The Clam House….”

“
Frank’s….”

Shane
named several popular nightspots, but Celeste negated every single
one. Furious, he grabbed her hand and steered her over to a chair
near the public telephones.

“
Wait right here,”
he said. “If anyone bothers you, they’ll answer to me.”

With one
last reassuring squeeze of her hand, Shane stalked off in search of
the hotel manager.

***

Celeste wallowed in guilt.
She’d known the moment the taxi pulled in front of Hotel
Theresa that this would happen. The “Waldorf Astoria of
Harlem” prided itself on its rigid segregation policy. Of
course, she’d heard rumors of certain exceptions to the rules,
but only for the rich and famous. And even then, the colored
glitterati were prohibited in common areas and required to remain in
their rooms.

In all honesty, she’d
kept silent to see how the prizefighter would react to the same
discrimination she faced day in and day out. And he’d passed
with flying colors. Well, sort of. The run in with the maître
d’ had been touch and go with her fearing Shane was going to
plant his fist in the man’s face. Still, she smiled to herself
because she was sure he’d acted against his basic instinct and
championed her without using his fists.

“
Let’s go.”
Gaze averted, Shane held out his arm. Despite his deep tan, she could
see a red flush staining his cheeks. And there was no mistaking the
lines of tension around his mouth. “The manager said they could
accommodate us.”

Celeste took his arm and
allowed him to lead her back through the hotel lobby.

But instead of heading to
the elevators, Shane marched them toward the exit.

“
Aren’t
we going in the wrong direction?” Celeste panted, while keeping
up with his break-neck pace.

“
No!” Shane
barked. “He can only accommodate us if we go around the block,
enter through the delivery entrance and take the service elevator
up.”

Celeste didn’t blanch.
Every single nightclub she’d ever performed in she had to enter
through the back. And not a one would have allowed her to be a
patron.

Thankfully, Shane slowed
down for the hotel’s revolving door. Once outside, he avoided
the taxicab stand and walked aimlessly up Seventh Avenue. At the
corner of W. 125th, he hesitated.

Celeste
waited while he processed everything. She wasn’t going to prod
him or coax it out of him. What he’d just witnessed had to be
an eye-opening and demoralizing experience. In the ensuing silence,
she could feel the anger rolling off him and wedging itself between
them. He even stepped away, slipping his arm from under hers.

At
length, he broke his silence with a muffled curse, followed by a
litany of angry mutterings. Not at her, but himself. It was almost
as if he’d forgotten she was even there as he started pacing,
his eyes never meeting hers.

“
I thought since the
hotel was in Harlem, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he
said finally coming up for air.

“
Easy mistake.”
Celeste smiled and he returned it. “You know I don’t have
a problem eating in a private suite,” she offered.

Shane shoved his hands in
pockets and turned about in a wide sweep. “I’ll be damned
if I give anyone my hard fought money to those bigots so they can
treat me like a second class citizen,” he spat. “Like I’m
nothing.”

Celeste
deliberated. What could she say to that? In her world, this kind of
treatment was commonplace, the norm. It wasn’t fair, but
things weren’t going to change anytime soon.

Shane
shoved his sleeve back and glanced at his watch. Before she could
note the time, he dropped his arm. “Less than two hours before
the show,” he growled.

Quick on her feet, Celeste
thought of an alternative.

“
How about you fly
with me for a change?” She held her hand out, but he didn’t
take it. “There’s a great restaurant right around the
corner from here.”

“
They can accommodate
both of us?”

Celeste
nodded.
“We
can walk right through the front door.”

Shane
started pacing again. “I’d rather go back in there and
beat the living daylights out of the manager,” Shane sniffed.

“
It’s only a ten
minute walk from here.” Celeste started walking without him.
“They have the best Manhattan clam chowder and the apple pie à
la mode is to die for.”

Half way up the block, Shane
caught up with her. As he walked beside her, he kept his hands in
his pockets. “Do they heat up the pie first then top it with
vanilla ice cream?”

“
If you ask nicely,
I’m sure they’ll oblige you.”

A short ten minute walk
later, the two of them stood outside Aunt Sweets.

“
This is a dive,”
Shane grumbled.

“
Come on it isn’t
that bad.”

While he dug in his heels,
Celeste reached for the door handle. He swatted her hand away with a
growl. “Four star hotel or greasy spoon diner, I’m still
the man.”

Alien to such gruffness, yet
liking it Celeste stepped to the side as he opened the door for her.
Several patrons sat perched on chrome and red upholstered stools at a
narrow counter. A radio hummed in the background, competing with the
low murmur of conversations. A black woman of indeterminate age
flitted back and forth behind the counter. Spotting them, she
stopped and smiled. “Well don’t you two look mighty fine
tonight. Take any seat you like. I’ll be right with you.”

Reluctantly, Shane followed
Celeste to a booth near the front window.

“
Stop worrying,”
she implored as he checked his watch again. “We have enough
time to eat and make the show.”

Resigned, yet sporting a
frown, he flipped open a menu. Celeste didn’t follow his lead,
she always ordered the clam chowder with a side of cold milk and a
handful of crackers.

Celeste wondered what was
going through his head. He perused the menu in silence, except for a
few grunts peppered here and there. About half way through, he gave
up, slamming the menu back into the pronged place holder. Not
surprisingly, he kept his gaze averted, his attention either fixed on
his place setting or the other diners.

With each passing second,
Celeste could feel him pulling away, detaching himself.

She should know.

She’d
done it to people hundreds of times. She was notoriously transient,
noncommittal with people, places and things. She had millions of
friends, yet none of them close. She’d been engaged and ruined
it by sleeping with a crooner. And the only reason she had a roof
over her head was because her father supposedly put a bullet in his
head.

Unfortunately, her past sins
didn’t lessen the sting of rejection. What was wrong with her?
Any other man, she would’ve simply turned around and kicked up
her heels with someone else. A weekend bender, she liked to call it,
with a red, hot lover and a couple or four bottles of aged bourbon.