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He sighed. “I’m not sure you appreciate what I’m attempting here. I’m not sure you appreciate my work.”
Jilo bit her tongue, but she felt her expression harden, a layer of anger varnishing the exhaustion.
“There,” he said, “that’s better. Concentrate.”
He thought she didn’t appreciate his work. Hell, it was Guy who didn’t give a lick about all the work she did. She spent six days a week emptying bedpans, cleaning bedsores, and lifting patients who couldn’t manage to shift themselves. This man didn’t even understand the concept of real work. And he didn’t know what it meant to pay a bill either. It was her work that paid their rent for this rat-ridden hovel. It was her work that fed them. It was her work that paid for the damned paints and canvas he was using now.
There was a quick rap on the door, and it opened before either of them could respond. “It came. The letter came,” Guy’s friend Charles said, storming into the room, waving a white envelope around.
“Please,” Jilo said, straightening up and turning her back to the men.
“Come on, girl,” Guy said, “you don’t have anything Charles hasn’t seen before.”
“Maybe not, but he hasn’t seen it on me.” She unknotted the shawl and whipped it around her body. After grabbing her nurse’s uniform off the bed, she slipped behind the changing screen she had insisted on procuring, even though Guy had made fun of her modesty. Lately he found a lot of things about her worthy of contempt. “You still got too much girl in you,” he’d taken to saying, “not enough woman.” It was true that she wasn’t as experienced or worldly as he was. She hadn’t realized it at first, but Guy was a good decade older than her, and though that didn’t matter to her, lately it seemed to matter to him. Every time she spoke up—about anything, from the weather to where he’d spent the night—he would remind her of her immaturity.
Guy and Charles had been friends since the war. They’d met in the army, and it was Charles’s presence in Atlanta that had prompted Guy to come for an extended visit. A visit that had culminated in her leaving the Joneses’ boarding home going on a year ago and moving into this tenement with Guy. The building was filled with musicians and artists. And whores. Nobody cared that she and Guy weren’t married. The building’s owner didn’t ask too many questions as long as you didn’t get too far behind on the rent.
She had thought their love would be enough. In those first few months, she would press her body closer to his whenever she heard the rodents moving in the walls. Then came the nights when she’d come home from the hospital to find their room dark, when she would flip on the overhead light and stand in the doorway as the last of the cockroaches scurried for cover. Until then, she had never thought she could miss the Joneses’ house. But it wasn’t only the boarding house she missed. She missed the pastor and his wife as well. Yes, she missed them. She would like to go pay them a visit, but shame held her back. They’d ask too many questions that would require too many lies.
She flung the shawl up over the top of the screen.
“What
does it say?” Guy asked. She had no idea who this letter was from, but she could hear the tension in his voice. This was something that mattered to him. Really mattered to him.
“They want us,” Charles said. “They want both of us.” The word “both” was spoken with great emphasis.
She buttoned the uniform and stuck her head out around the screen. “Who wants you? For what?” she asked as she stepped up behind Guy, who was now holding the letter at arm’s length, looking at it like he couldn’t quite believe what was written there. Charles’s eyes rose as she spoke, but then passed over her. She glanced over her shoulder to realize he was focused on the shawl she’d been wearing. There was a sly smile on his lips. Evidently he knew who owned it. Jilo asked herself if she cared to learn that woman’s identity. No, she decided, but she did want to know what was in the letter Guy still held. She reached for it, but he snatched it back.
He held it to his chest, as jealously and as guiltily as if it were a love letter. She slid her hands down to her hips and tilted her head. “Who,” she said, angry and tired of his games, “wants you?”
He slipped the letter back into its envelope and handed it to Charles. “A gallery,” Guy said, squatting down and opening his arms like he expected her to come running into them. She held her place. “A real one where they appreciate real art. Not like the little crap holes in this town.”
“So,” she said, determined to draw the whole story out of him with as few equivocations as possible, “I take it this gallery is not in Atlanta.”
“No,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “It isn’t. It’s in New York.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Well, of course you’ll be going.”
A look of relief flooded his face. His shoulders relaxed, letting his arms fall to his sides. “This is big, Jilo. I’ve been working for this all my life.”
“I understand,” she said. “How long will you be up north?”
He focused on the floor by her feet. “If things go well, I won’t be coming back.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” she said, though the look on his face told her all she needed to know.
His head jerked as he cast a glance at the silent Charles. An embarrassed smile curved his lips when he looked back at her. “I can’t ask that of you, sweetheart. It’s a different world up there. You’re a small-town girl at heart, and New York, well, I’m afraid you won’t take to the big city. Besides, you have a job. Your whole life is here.”
Jilo flung her arms into the air and spun around. “Yes. How could I possibly give this up?” She noticed Charles slinking backward toward the door. “That’s right. You go on. You get the hell out of here.” He slipped through the door, and she rushed over and flung her full weight at it to make sure it slammed behind him.
She turned on Guy. “When?” she demanded. “When are you leaving me?”
He lowered his face, trying not to look at her. “Couple of days, I reckon.”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “You reckon.” She knelt by the side of the bed and tugged out her suitcase, the one she’d brought from Savannah to Atlanta, the one she’d carried from the Joneses’ boarding house here. She set it on the bed and undid its straps, pausing for only a moment after she opened it. “If I told you I was pregnant, would you stay?” She looked toward him, heavy tears brimming her eyes. “Would you take me with you?”
He turned his back toward her. “You wouldn’t lie to me just to hold on to me. You wouldn’t do that.”
