AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
SEVEN
April 1954
Jilo leaned across the table, her breasts exposed and hanging down over it. They had filled out some since Guy first started the portrait, but he hadn’t seemed to notice.
She wore a tatty shawl tied around her waist. It wasn’t hers, just one Guy had borrowed for the painting. From whom, she didn’t know. Guy was real good at talking women into—and out of—things. She didn’t look at him; he’d told her not to. It was easier not to. She kept her gaze fixed on the dark bands in the grain of the tabletop. In her peripheral vision, she could see the bottom of a vase Guy had filled with flowers. Not a gift, just part of the scenery.
She was tired—he wanted her tired, said the painting needed it. Her feet cramped, but he insisted that she balance on the balls of her feet for reasons of light and composition. Again, the painting needed it.
“Jilo,” he said, her name a rebuke on his lips. “Stop fidgeting.”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. She’d just come off of a twelve-hour shift at the hospital, where she worked in the colored wing. The Greelie Hospital was really a single building, but still most folk referred to it in the plural, as “the Greelies,” since the white and colored wings were separated by a corridor. She’d walked that corridor at least a hundred times in her shift, so her feet already felt like they’d been beaten with a board.
Mary had found Jilo the job at the Greelies, but Mary herself had been forced to return home to Missouri not more than a week after graduation. Her mother had suffered a heart attack that had rendered her incapable of seeing to herself and Mary’s younger brother. Jilo had been left on her own to catch up on the procedures and practices the hospital’s hiring manager already thought she knew. On parting, Mary and she had promised to stay in touch, but no more than a handful of letters had passed between them through the post. Mary, Jilo knew, had her hands full. Jilo, well, she didn’t have much she felt she could share without shame.
“I’m worn out, Guy. I just need to rest a bit,” she said. “Can’t we do this another time?”
