Jilo (19 page)

But that son of a bitch had betrayed her, and not just by making her a link in what she now guessed was a career-long chain of girls. He had manipulated her into thinking he believed in her. In her dreams. In her capabilities.

When she arrived home, Jilo eased the door open and closed it quietly behind her. Not wanting to talk to anyone, she did her best to creep past the pastor and his wife, who were deep in a discussion about the house’s finances, and flitted past the archway that opened onto the sitting room. She found the stairs and mounted them, carefully avoiding the steps that squeaked.

As she made her escape, it occurred to her that she wasn’t taking these precautions because she wasn’t in the mood to see a single living person. The truth, it pained her to realize, was that she felt ashamed. After years of hard work, all her dreams had been dashed in a single afternoon. And she felt like it was her own fault. If she hadn’t let Lionel touch her, if she hadn’t given into her own need to believe he saw her as special, would he have respected her more? Would he have viewed her as being a serious enough woman to become a lady doctor? Had giving in to him cheapened her in his eyes?

Hot tears began to flow down her cheeks, but they stopped cold when she opened the door to her room and caught sight of Mary sitting at her desk. Mary, who turned to face her with a smile on her lips and a look of excitement in her eyes. Both of which faded as soon as Mary’s eyes took in Jilo’s face. “Why, Jilo,” she said, “what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“What,” Jilo began, her voice breaking, “is wrong?” She swallowed hard to force the frog down. “You lying, conniving Judas Iscariot.”

Mary pushed back from her desk, rising and drawing near Jilo, her arms held wide for an embrace.

“Don’t you”—Jilo held up a hand in warning—“don’t you dare come near me.”

Mary froze as tears of her own began to brim in her eyes. “I don’t understand. Why are you angry? What have I done?”

“You knew. You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

Jilo didn’t expect Mary to out-and-out lie; Mary was not a liar. But she did expect her at least to feign ignorance of what she meant. Instead, Mary tilted her head, looking more confused than guilty. “But the dean told me not to say a thing till he could talk to you. He said they were going to look out for you, keep you from making a big mistake, and they needed my help.” For a moment her smile threatened to return. “I get to help catch you up on all the practical things you missed out on. Dressing wounds, rolling bandages . . .”

“I do not want your blessed help,” Jilo cut her off. “You knew this isn’t what I wanted. My sister is a nurse. I know what it is to be a nurse, and it was never my dream.” She clenched her fists in frustration. “You know that. I can do more. I can do better.”

Mary stumbled back a step, her shoulders slumping forward like Jilo had just knocked the wind clean out of her. She raised her wide-open eyes to meet Jilo’s gaze. “Well I am sorry,” she said, straightening as she did. “I am sorry if nursing isn’t good enough for you. If it isn’t your dream. ’Cause it
is
my dream. It always has been, since I was a little girl. And it was my mama’s dream for me, too. She saved every penny she could after feeding my brother and me to make it possible for me to come here. After daddy died in the war, she started working nights and weekends, scrubbing floors and taking in laundry. And you know what? After I finished my schoolwork, I would be right there with her, down on my knees, scrubbing at her side. So I am sorry, Miss Jilo Wills, who has plenty of money in her pockets and all the pretty dresses in the world, if my dream isn’t good enough for you . . .”

“Now, Mary,” Jilo found herself shift to the defensive, “you know I didn’t mean it quite like that.”

“Oh, yes, you did mean it.
Quite
like that.” Mary raised her chin and pulled her arms up around herself. “And fool that I am, I was happy to have the opportunity to help out my best friend. When I learned what the dean intended, I marched right out and got you a job. With me. At a fine hospital right here in Atlanta. The Greelies.” Mary said the name of the hospital with such obvious pride, and despite Jilo’s bitter disappointment over this turn of events, she felt like an absolute ass. Jilo took a step forward, but it was Mary’s turn to pull away. “I went to the hiring supervisor at the Greelies. Told him that if he thought I was good enough to bring on, he would be over the moon to have you on duty there.”

Her forehead bunched up into angry folds, and her eyes narrowed the way they always did when she remonstrated with Jilo. “I told him that, even though I knew I’d be the one who would need to catch you up and cover for you until you actually learned how to handle a patient.” Her features smoothed, but her lower lip pushed forward. “I was so looking forward to telling you.” And with those words, the tears started in earnest. “I thought the two of us could stay on here at the pastor’s. Together.”

“Well,” Jilo said, daring to draw near, “I don’t see why we can’t do just that.” She slipped an arm over Mary’s shoulders and pulled her into an embrace.

SIX

June 1953

It was a busy night at the Kingfisher Club. The music was fine, and everywhere around Jilo couples danced.

Classes were over. Jilo had her diploma in hand, a hell of a lot of good it looked like it was going to do her. Still, she wanted to celebrate. Kick up her heels a bit. She’d even managed to coax Mary out to the club by loaning her an orchid-colored rayon-satin dress Mary had been admiring for two years. The two had arrived together, but they were barely across the threshold before the men descended on sweet, demure Mary like ants on a church picnic.

Jilo sat alone nursing a bourbon.

Every so often, Jilo caught sight of her friend. Each time Mary flitted by, she seemed to be in the arms of another fellow. Jilo was glad Mary was enjoying herself, but
damn
.

Wasn’t she pretty enough? Jilo cast an eye around the teeming room. She wasn’t vain, but she knew she looked as good as many, if not most, of the other women in the club. Mary had done a fine job on the McCall’s pattern dress Jilo had paid her to sew. Ice-blue chiffon, a respectable scoop V-neck with beaded lining, the shape echoed by the darting around her tiny waist. She’d done spins before the mirror, loving how the skirt flared up. She wanted to take it out on the floor and show it off. But here she sat without a single taker.

Dammit, she felt pretty, but she couldn’t get more than a smile and a nod from any of the passing men. The next time Mary swung by with her umpteenth gentleman, Jilo couldn’t help but feel a little bitter.

A tall fellow in a well-cut suit drew close to Jilo’s table. She raised her chin and pulled back her shoulders. She smiled at him and—God help her—batted her eyelashes. For a moment it seemed he would say hello, but then he froze in his tracks, gave her a quick nod, and turned sharply away. Her eyes fixed on his shoulders as he bounded off like some kind of scared jackrabbit.

“Oh, you’re a pretty one all right,” a man said from behind her, seeming to read her thoughts. His voice was deep and rich. The speed with which the other fellow had taken off suggested this newcomer might be a bit dangerous. “That isn’t the problem. I’d even say you’re beautiful when you aren’t scowling at the whole damned room.” The way he spoke, slow, the vowels a bit too long, gave his words an exotic flavor. A picture of the speaker rose in her mind’s eye, a picture that unleashed a swarm of butterflies in her stomach, and equally ticklish sensations in lower regions.

She kept her eyes on the receding back of the last man to reject her. She wanted to turn and look at her new companion, but she feared that her Cupid would be the Kingfisher Club’s equivalent of a winged serpent. She felt a little ashamed of herself. She’d been sitting here for an hour hoping and praying a man would approach her. Maybe she was being shallow? No, she realized, she wanted a taste of magic, just once in her life, and she knew it was pretty damn unlikely that the man speaking to her was some kind of prince. She just wanted to stretch the mystery out for as long as she could.

“No, the problem is that you scare half these fellows to death. That’s why you aren’t dancing.” She sensed his approach. A finger traced along her forearm, sending a tingling sensation through her.

She felt her heart thud in her chest, and in spite of herself, she turned to face him. The image she had held in her mind was put to shame.

Smiling down at her was the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on. His hair was trimmed close to his skull, not all slicked back like most of the men here wore theirs. The light in the club was dim, so she couldn’t quite make out the color of his eyes, but she thought they were a clear brown, maybe hazel. His nose was straight. His lips full, the lower one a tad more so than the upper one that curled a bit beneath a well-defined philtrum. His chin strong and with a cleft. “And the other half?” she asked, though her mouth had gone dry.

His nose crinkled up, followed by a raise of his eyebrows. “They just know they’re not man enough to handle a woman like you.”

Feeling herself flush, Jilo lowered her eyes and took a sip of her sour mash, her lips puckering at the taste. She only looked up after she had set the glass back on the table. “So who the hell are you?” she asked.

His eyes lit up, and he leaned in like he was about to confess the darkest of secrets. “I’m the man who’s going to ask you to dance.” He pulled back and lowered his eyelids. “When I’m good and ready to, that is.” He placed his hand on the chair she’d been saving for Mary. “May I?” he asked. But he pulled the seat out and joined her before she could say no.

As if she would say no.

“Aren’t you scared of me, too?” she asked, looking directly into his eyes.

“A little, but I kind of like that.” He slid his hand over toward hers, the space between them not even wide enough to accommodate a sheet of parchment.

Jilo burst out laughing. At him. At herself. “Shit.” She swiped up her whiskey and downed what was left.

“That’s no way for a lady to speak,” he said.

Jilo returned the glass to the table and cast an eye over her shoulder in each direction. “I don’t see any ladies here.”

His hand shot out and caught hers. “I do. Right here.” He turned her hand over, tracing his finger along her palm like he was some kind of sideshow fortune-teller. “You can try to pretend otherwise, but you’re a good girl.” He released her and leaned back, eyeing her like he was surveying her. “I might even go so far as to say ‘respectable’ if you weren’t sitting here by yourself sucking on that swill.”

“I’m not as respectable as you might think.” Her mind flashed to how it had felt to have Lionel on top of her, inside her, rutting for his pleasure alone. The way sex with him had always left her feeling disconnected from her own body. On the outside, watching from a corner of the room. An unloved convenience. A hole where he could spill his seed. The thought of Lionel cut through this new man’s glamour. “Did you borrow that tie?” she asked, the devil in her trying to drive this man away before he could drive her out of herself, too. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place. Pushing away from the table, she reached out for her purse.

“Stay,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset you, but that wasn’t my intention.” If he’d so much as blinked, she would have given in to the urge to flee, but he sat perfectly still, watching as she decided. She let her bag slip back down to the table.

He waited for her to relax in her chair before he spoke. “Maybe it wasn’t something I’ve done. Maybe it’s what the fellow before me did.” He raised his eyebrows. “Hmmm? You should tell me, ’cause I’d hate to chase you off before I get that dance.”

“Then you better get to asking,” she said, but her urge to flee had already dissipated.

The band wrapped up the fast swing it had been playing, and began another, a sentimental one that drew the couples closer. He stood and held out his hand to her. “I was only waiting for a slow dance.” A naughty smile curled his lips, and she felt a matching expression form on her own face.

The band played “The Very Thought of You,” though their version featured a few improvisations she’d never heard on the radio. The handsome stranger held her close and swayed to the music.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said, nearly ready to kick herself for ruining the moment.

He leaned in. His breath felt warm on the sensitive skin on her neck. He whispered into her ear. “Guy,” he answered, though the way he said the name, it rhymed with “bee.”

“Guy,” she said, leaning back. “What the hell kind of name is Guy?”

At that very moment Mary swung by them with another beau. At least this one was a repeat. “Jilo,” Mary called out while passing, “this place is wonderful.” She laughed. “And I don’t even know how to dance!”

Guy and Jilo came to a dead stop on the dance floor. “What the hell kind of name is Jilo?” he demanded, though she could see a spark of laughter in his eyes.

“Oh, shut up,” she said and laughed, expecting him to start dancing again. But he didn’t. No. He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, and her knees gave way beneath her. It didn’t matter though, he held her tight. She closed her eyes, and reached up to link her fingers behind his neck. Fire passed down her spine, returning the strength to her legs. Then she felt his body begin to sway again, her own slipping easily into his rhythm.