THE DEVILS DIME (13 page)

“Aw, shucks, Mr. Pepper. It ain’t that. It’s just...” Tad looked at the paper Jess still held and began to scuff his toe into the lip of the step.

“You want more?”

Thaddeus Morton snapped his head around and leveled a look of shock on Jess. “No, sir! I mean, well, I’d like to keep it, sir, the paper, that is, if you don’t mind, that is.”

“Hm.” Now it was Jess’s turn to stifle a satisfied smile. “I don’t see how I’d mind that a whole lot. You’ve been kind enough to let me read it, so I don’t really need it all that much any more.”

Jess switched the paper to his right hand, and as he did so, he slid the silver dollar into a fold in the page. He stuffed the paper, coin and all, into the boy’s jacket pocket.

“I’m paying you what I promised, Tad, because I don’t pay you for the paper, I pay you for the
words.
You write more good stuff like that and I’d be honored to read it, y’ hear?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The boy patted his pocket and shook the hand Jess offered before he tore off down the step. He turned around and back-pedaled, his face full of excitement. “First thing tomorrow I’m going to buy me a box of those new yellow pencils!”

Jess laughed. “And do you know why they’re yellow?” Tad stopped and his brow wrinkled in curiosity as Jess had known it would. “It’s because the best pencil lead in the world comes from China, Tad. And in China, yellow is a royal color. So when you see a yellow pencil, you know it’s got the best lead in it. Good choice, Tad!”

“Wow, I didn’t know that!” Tad hollered as he scampered off.

Jess turned, still grinning, and offered Addie his elbow.

“Most fun I had in a month ’o Sundays, hm?” Addie quipped, greeting Jess with her own full grin. “How did you manage that?”

“What? That?” Jess held the swinging door open and they both caught a glimpse of Tad Morton skipping backwards down the street and waving back at them. “Got lucky, I guess. Kid was just bored enough to try something new.” He paused, looking down at Addie. “If that kid just happens to have the gift of words, like I think Tad does, the whole world will know it one day.”

Jess looked away, toward Tad’s bounding figure, and lost himself for a moment in following the boy’s progress down the street.

“Careful there, Mr. Jess Pepper,” Addie crooned, watching his satisfied look as they stepped out onto the walkway. “You’ll have me thinking you’re a soft touch.”

“Hmm. Well, now, that depends, Miss Magee, on whether or not that would stand me higher in your regard.” He took Addie’s violin from her and cradled the case in his right elbow as he slipped to her outside now that they had reached the street. “I would want to know if in your opinion this ‘soft touch’ you refer to would be a good thing...” he offered her his left elbow, “...or a bad thing.”

The play of words and sassy glances progressed spontaneously throughout the simple choreography of moving from the building and onto the street. And for the first time in her life, Addie played the coquette.

“That would depend...” she paused, casting a most indiscreet glance at him from beneath her lashes, “upon the circumstances, I should imagine.”

“Yes,” Jess agreed, and drew her elbow tighter to his side. “I do suppose it would.”

Jess and Addie strolled easily along the mile and a half walk to Gramercy Park. With each block, his arm and shoulder nudged Addie with casual familiarity, and Addie worked constantly to keep herself from leaning unabashedly into Jess as they walked.

By the time they’d passed into the residential area where wisteria baskets overpowered every stoop, the two had shared a great deal of themselves. Whatever cosmic attraction had drawn them to one another in the first place was beginning to fill in with the chinks and mortar of very real, very likeable human traits. The two passed easily through light-hearted subjects and moved with some small reservation to those more closely held.

“So, your mother never got to hear your graduation recital?”

Addie’s exhaling breath carried with it the unmistakable pang of regret. “No. I went right to the hospital the moment I left the stage, but she was gone.” Addie watched her feet as they walked and slowly shook her head. “She made me go. She promised me,
promised
me, that she’d hear all about it when I got back.” Addie sighed heavily. “I thought I’d never hurt so badly over anything again in my life.” She continued her silence as they rounded a corner.

“But?” Jess asked, having sensed there was more.

“Well. You were there. The afternoon I...the day I went to see my father and he...”

Addie’s hand grappled in front of her as she walked, as if her hand could communicate the sentiment her tongue was unable to find.

“Your
father
?” After the incident in the stairwell Jess had instantly connected the last names. But he’d suspected his upstairs neighbor was a crusty uncle, never her father.

“I hadn’t seen him for twenty years, and that afternoon I went to introduce myself and tell him I was living in New York City, and I ran into you...literally...and...well...let’s just say he was not interested in meeting his daughter.”

“That’s your
father
that lives upstairs from me?”

“Mm-hm. Ford Magee. Night watchman for the Burlington. Retired. And definitely not interested in knowing his daughter.”

“Maybe you just caught him off guard,” Jess offered, “no pun intended.”

“Oh, ho, ho, I don’t think so. There was very little doubt.”

Addie drew this phase of the conversation to a close with her change to a brighter tone as she spotted the gingerbread bandstand where her afternoon concert was to take place.

“Oh, look, I believe that’s where I’ll be playing. Just there, across the street.”

Jess and Addie crossed to the far side of the boulevard at Gramercy and found themselves on the edge of Gramercy Park. White walks laid of gravel crushed to the consistency of slivered egg shells crisscrossed the pristine green of the neighborhood park. Pockets of park benches were occupied by Sunday dreamers enjoying the shade of the oak canopy. In moments, Addie had checked in with the concert organizer and found a bench nearby for Jess.

“Will this do?” Addie indicated the bench, smiling.

Jess hooked his hands behind his back and studied the bench. He stepped forward as if to speak casually to Addie while examining the bench. “Actually, it’s farther away than I prefer,” he said in a hushed tone. He glanced at her and angled his step so that the next one began to take him past her, and he began to circle her slowly while he spoke. “Yes, a bit far to my liking. I’d prefer to stand close, like this, and feel those vibrations pelting out of you when you play. Feel the heat radiating from your shoulders and the rhythm tapping from your heel.”

Had his tone of voice echoed his words, Addie would have been done for. But his tantalizing words were delivered in a completely scholarly tone, like a stuffy old professor simply making a point.

Addie swallowed hard and felt the widest reaches of her smile begin to tremble. With much determination she pulled her mouth into what she hoped would suffice for her mockingly prim retort.

“Were you to stand even half that close, sir, I assure you that you’d be in constant danger of losing an eye.”

Jess stopped circling and fixed her with a resolute stare.

“That dangerous, you think?” He kept his face still.

“Put a violin bow in my hand and I’m absolutely not to be trusted, sir.” Addie dropped her eyes and slipped a half step back. The pull was becoming much too strong, and if she did not find some distance from this man immediately she was in great danger of abandoning her performance to sit here until half past Wednesday on his lap. In Gramercy Park. In front of God and Sunday society.

“Then I shall keep my distance, Miss Magee. You run along and play now. I’ll hold our shady spot here until you’re done...
fiddling
.” His eyes winked wickedly as he stressed the most demeaning word a virtuoso violinist could hear.

Addie flashed him a look of surprise that melted immediately into comprehension. He was playing with her as well, finding his own way to prepare for the distance the stage would place between them.

“And a fiddle-dee-dee to you, too, Mr. Pepper.”

Addie smoothly executed the prima donna’s exit, maintaining eye contact with Jess as she began to turn away, and at only the last moment gave a saucy toss of her curls and lifted her skirt slightly to step onto the path.

She felt his eyes on her back and was determined to give him a great deal more than he’d anticipated by drawing back her shoulders and allowing the bow atop her backside drape to bob slightly more than usual as she moved out of view behind the pavilion.

Addie reached the staging area behind the bandstand just as the concertmaster swept into an opening march. She sagged onto the first available chair.

“Get your mind around this, Adelaide Magee.”

She spoke out loud to herself, and concentrated harshly on the mechanics of opening her violin case and tuning her instrument. Her fingers trembled at first, then settled into their sure confidence of her pre-concert preparation.

While the small orchestra she was guesting with for the afternoon worked its way through an admirable set of Slavic dances, Addie paced the area in back of the gingerbread pavilion and fingered the pieces she would perform just moments from now. Three times she had to begin an awkward section over when she lost concentration going into it.

And each time, she had known exactly what...or rather, who...it was that had turned her mind to putty.

. . .

Jess watched Addie sweep confidently onto the stage and take her place near the concertmaster.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Mistress Adelaide Magee of New York City’s own
Avalon Strings!”

Addie nodded, then bowed with a winning smile at the polite applause coming from the park benches that were now nearly full. Jess was just filling his eyes with the sight of her when the orchestra struck a dramatic tremolo.

With a dancer’s grace, Addie tucked her violin beneath her chin, closed her eyes, and swept her bowing arm in a wide arc to hover an instant over the strings. The tension built for another half second, and then Addie lifted the tip of her instrument, almost as if taking a breath, and plunged into a mesmerizing cadenza.

Up and down it went, soaring higher and dipping back. Just as Jess felt she was going to surge into the climactic notes, she dipped again, added more fever to the ripening scales, and then dropped to a sustained note. Addie rocked the strings in a slow easy vibrato, and Jess found himself dreading the moment the sound would stop.

But when the moment came, she sent it on its way with a quickening of the vibrato that spun the cadenza’s final note out into the treetops. And with infinite delicacy, she tiptoed into the dancing dirge that was the meat of the piece.

If the cadenza was its gemstone, this dirge was its heart, and Addie’s eyes remained closed as she played. But her eyebrows danced their own expressive motif as she leaned and stretched her upper body through the haunting rigors of the piece.

It was impossible to just sit there like some Sunday passerby with a mere fleeting interest. Jess schooled his face, but he knew if anyone looked his way, they’d see his state of agitation.

But of course they wouldn’t look. How could they? Surely they were as bound up in her music as he was. Surely they felt the same energy he felt, drawing him out of himself and into a world he’d never suspected held half the charm he was experiencing.

He wanted to run to the foot of the stage like some little boy, to plant himself within that mesmerizing aura of energy she radiated. Jess searched madly for a diversion, forced himself to count the number of instrumentalists, the number of birds perched on the trellis, the number of feet tapping amid the orchestra, anything to ward off the sensual images that persisted each time he looked at her, or focused on the music she was making. He even pulled his pen and scratchbook from his pocket and tried to sketch the bandstand, but his hands trembled.

Somehow, though, he survived it, and when Addie’s three numbers and solo encore were finished and she stepped off the bandstand, Jess went to join her behind the ivy-covered trellis while the crowd roared and clapped and the orchestra sailed into its next number.