Reincarnation (20 page)

Delilah chuckled and looked away for a second and then up at him. "I made her up. I wrote

that song."

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"You did?" He could feel himself reddening again. He would have been more tactful if he'd realized the song was her own creation. "How did you ever come up with it?"

She shrugged. "The song just came to me. So did the story about the fat lady and the

alligator. Things just pop into my head. I really did sing in vaudeville, though, after the

circus."

"I can tell that you're an experienced performer," he conceded.

"You bet I am! And don't tell me the audience didn't love the song -- because they did," she insisted.

"Yes, they did," he admitted. "The song is funny and you have a spectacular voice. You wowed 'em, as Lenny there said."

"Oh, yeah, Lenny -- don't remind me," she said dismissively. "He hired me to be the next toast of Paris, the next Josephine Baker. He was just opening the club and he needed

somebody fast. I talked my way into the job because I swore to him I could do it, but

between us, I'm not so sure."

"You can do it," Bert said, suddenly certain this was true. "If you sing
my
songs, it will definitely happen. If you keep on with only the comic material, you'll always be a novelty

act."

He braced himself for another eruption of derisive laughter. But this time she only looked

up at him thoughtfully, so he dared to continue. "I've written some love songs, real

sophisticated stuff. It would give you some class."

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"Hey, I already have class! What makes you think you know so much, College Boy?" she

asked defensively.

"I've been to Broadway and to the London theater."

She nodded, considering his words. "I bet you've been to the ballet and the opera, too."

He nodded. "Can you dance?" he asked.

"I can, but I have a trick ankle that lands me flat on the ground sometimes," she confessed.

"I don't want to risk that happening on stage."

"Did you hurt it in the circus ?"

"No, I was born with it. It's just one of those weird things."

A chorus girl with a full mane of wild red curls, dressed in yellow tap pants and a short top,

came toward them. "Del, Lenny is wanting you," she reported in heavily accented English.

"I'll be right there." Delilah looked up at Bert at an angle that suddenly made her seem very young to him. He realized she was still in her teens, which he hadn't thought before that

moment. "See you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed as she hurried back toward her dressing room.

He noticed that the chorus girl who had come for Del was idling nearby, looking him up and

down. "Want to buy a girl a late supper?" she asked flirtatiously.

He didn't really want to buy anyone anything until his check for this article came in, but she

was cute and he was

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tired of eating alone. "Will you be wearing that outfit?" he asked her.

"If you like, I will."

"Sure, but you'll need a coat."

They went to a cafe he liked to frequent when he was in the Montmartre section of the city.

It was simple but the food was great.

Her name was Yvette. It was easy to talk to her because she did most of the talking. She told

him how she worked as a maid in a hotel until she had met Lenny there one day and he

offered her a job at his club.

"How did he know you could dance?" Bert asked.

"I couldn't. I think he just liked me. It's better than being a maid." She continued talking, telling him about her life while also asking him about his. He got the feeling that she

was trying to tease out the precise status of his finances and it was confusing her. "So your family is rich but you are not? How can that be?" she asked.

"Because I don't want to run my dad's dishware factory," he explained. "It seems like a form of slavery to me."

"It's not slavery when you are the son of the boss," she pointed out.

"It's not about the money," he disagreed.

"Everything is about money," she said offhandedly, picking at her escargot shell with a small fork. He blanched slightly, watching her; he could never get used to eating snails.

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"I could sing her part, you know," Yvette said, drawing the snail from its shell with her fork.

"You should interview me. Forget her."

"You don't like Miss Jones?" he asked.

"She's ... how can I say it ... stuck on herself. She is not so much. I can be like an Egyptian girl, too. I have the feel for it. But not with that big black cat. No."

"Well, when you have an act going, I'll come and interview you. Can you sing?"

"I can do anything," she said, wiping her mouth. "If they pay me, I can do it."

Three men entered the cafe. They wore the uniform of the Nazi Party. He had seen them

while on a trip to Berlin and had instantly decided they were not for him. He despised their

arrogance and had heard stories of terrible brutality. He had been handed pamphlets in the

street and the anti-Jewish slander they contained had repulsed him.

They took a table nearby. When they ordered, they spoke in voices he found overly loud.

They continued their conversation in German, which he didn't understand.

"Let's go," he told Yvette before she was quite finished. He was suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue and wanted nothing more than to sleep in the small furnished room he was renting.

He left Yvette at the theater and caught a cab back to his room. Once he was away from her

and no longer listening to the Germans, his fatigue lifted a bit. He was even

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inspired to work on a new song idea. It was about a woman who walked a panther on a

leash.

Someone knocked on his door and he grunted, annoyed at being disturbed from his song.

It was probably the hotel owner looking for the weekly rent, which he now no longer had in

its entirety because he'd treated Yvette to supper.

That was a dumb move,
he chided himself, pulling open the door. He began to think of what he would say to persuade the hotel owner to wait.

But the man on the other side was not the hotel owner. He was tall and wore an overcoat.

His expression was so dour that Bert instantly decided he was some sort of policeman.

"Robert Brody?" the man asked with a trace of an English accent.

Bert nodded.

"British Intelligence," the man said, producing an ID card from his wallet. "Might I come in to speak to you for a moment?"

Lenny left Dels dressing room and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Tonight,

when he tried to put his arms around her, she'd managed to slip out of his grasp, giggling

and making a joke of it yet again.

Once more, he was leaving her dressing room frustrated and angry. Rubbing his jaw

thoughtfully, he considered the situation. How much longer was he going to put up with

this evasiveness from her? He wasn't sure.

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What did she want from him? The girls were all crazy about him. And why shouldn't they

be? Not yet twenty-five, he was the youngest club owner in Paris. With cash backing from

some men he'd known back in Chicago, he'd opened The Panther and turned it into one of

the hottest spots in Paris. It was a good thing, too, because his partners in Chicago were not

the kind of men he would want to make unhappy.

When Del had walked in with that crazy big cat on a leash, he'd even named the club for her

pet. He'd made her a headliner, hadn't he? He had bought the panther the emerald-studded

collar, too. The jewels would have cost a fortune if his connections in Chicago hadn't

hooked him up with a man in Paris who got things like that for a good price. He had staked

everything he had on his gut intuition that she had what it took.

The time had come for Del to show him some gratitude.

It wasn't that he just wanted to be with her. There were plenty of chorus girls for that -- flirty little Yvette, for one. She'd tumble for him in a second; she'd as much as told him so. Almost

all the chorus girls would love to have him -- but that wasn't all he was after.

Delilah Jones was the real thing: a little brassy around the edges, maybe, but that could be

polished. She was the whole package: talent, looks, style -- funny and smart. And more than

that, most important of all, she had star quality. When Delilah Jones walked into a room,

everyone noticed.

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He could mold her into the biggest star Paris had ever seen ... but he wasn't going to waste

his time doing it if she kept brushing him off like she'd been doing. He wanted them to be a

team in every way possible.

"Hello, Lenny."

"Why are you still here, Yvette?" he asked, drawing on his cigarette.

"That reporter took me out to supper."

"Who? Bert Brody?" he asked with a contemptuous laugh. "You'll go out with anyone, won't you?"

"He's a nice boy, but he went home and I'm not tired. Maybe you will take me out to an

after-hours club, yes ? "

"Sure, why not?" he agreed, blowing out smoke.

The next day, Del hurried up the steep street leading to the Parthenon monument, one hand

on the crochet hat that hugged her face and the other clutching her coat against the breeze.

She wanted this interview to go well but it was hard to keep her thoughts on it -- not after

what had happened last night. She had been home in her apartment cooking Baby's

midnight snack -- liver, very raw with sautéed onions, the way Baby liked it -- when a

strange man had come to her door. He was from British Intelligence, or so he had claimed.

He asked her to work for them.

It seemed that a group of scientists were completing plans for a rocket that could, in theory,

be launched from

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as far away as Berlin and would be able to accurately fire a missile on a target in London.

"But Germany is not at war with England," she'd pointed out.

"We have reason to think that could soon change," he'd replied.

They believed that the Nazi officers had been lingering in Paris, waiting to pick up the plans

for this rocket and to pay the scientists. "They come into your club," he'd said. "We want you to circulate among them. Find out what you can learn."

"How will I contact you?"

"We'll contact you."

The dome of the Parthenon came into view. She wasn't sure why she'd selected it as a place

to meet except that she'd always liked its roundness and columns. It seemed so stately and

quiet, almost tomblike inside -- so different from the boisterousness of the Left Bank, an

oasis of calm. Some day she would like to see the original Parthenon in Greece. It had

always appealed to her, was oddly homey. As she reached the top of the street leading into

the traffic circle surrounding the Parthenon, she saw Bert Brody standing on the wide front

steps in front of the monument.

He was the privileged American type she'd seen in magazines and sometimes glanced out

at in an audience -- college kids seeking a view of the seamier side of life before returning

to the comfort of their own safe havens. She had

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never spoken to someone like him and she was eager to discover what he was like, as

though he were some rare orchid she might never again have the opportunity to examine. If

his attitude proved too condescending or superior, she had an exit strategy: She'd claim to

be needed at the club. The important thing was not to lose her cool. He was writing an

article about her act, after all. That gave him the final word.

From the far side of the traffic circle, she waved to him and he returned the gesture. Waiting

for traffic to pass, she crossed to the Parthenon in the center.
"Bonjour,"
she greeted him brightly.
Show time,
she thought.

Together they re-crossed and she guided him to a small cafe she knew. Inside, they ordered

and she began to fill him in on her background, the fictitious one that sprang to her mind --

the nice Victorian home in Baltimore where she was raised by her proper

aunts.

It was almost true.

She
had
lived in a nice home with her elderly grandmother until the woman had died when

she was five. It was a dim memory and no doubt figured into her fantasy about the aunts.

When she was eight, she'd walked out of the orphanage she was living in, preferring to take

her chances on her own. No one had come looking for her.

"What did your aunts think about you joining the circus? Last night you said you had been

in the circus," he reminded her.

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"Umm ... my aunts were not in favor of my theatrical ambitions, and as an artist I needed to

stretch beyond the restrictions of the church choir."

"So you joined the circus?" he asked.

"Yes, but only on the weekends. During the week I had school and my operatic studies to

attend to."

Was he buying this story?

She couldn't tell.

They talked through lunch and lingered long after she had insisted on paying the check. It

surprised her that he had traveled on his own, working odd jobs and writing for newspapers

and magazines to pay his way. He did not seem to possess the allowance from home that so

many Americans abroad counted on. When she gently inquired about it, he told her that his

father was stern and strong-minded. "If I wasn't going into his business, I was on my own.

So here I am, penniless and free."

The assortment of odd jobs he'd worked almost equaled her list. He had even crewed on a

sailing ship in Greece while writing a story for
Traveling Abroad
on the Grecian Parthenon.