All for a Song (33 page)

She played on, ignoring the wave of homesickness washing over her, stronger than the nausea that had plagued her this morning. Only the cramping in her hands and the growing dryness of her throat bore witness to the passing of time. But she would not stop, even though she felt blisters forming on the tips of her fingers, even though she felt the corners of her lips clinging to each other with every syllable.

Until she knew she could sing just one more. Pulled from the depths came her own song once again, only now, for the first time, she sang in weakness, struggling for every note and lyric. The gathering grew silent, naturally, as none of them there
could have heard it before, unless they’d been there when she first picked up her guitar.

There was only her voice, cushioned by the crowd, the trees lifting it up and out of the city, and by the time she got to the end of it, she had nothing left. Her back ached from sitting on the concrete step; her arms burned. She was begging for release—from her sin, from her song, from the responsibility of making any more decisions in this life. She closed her eyes at the final note.

“Thank you, Jesus,” she whispered, her gratitude lifted up on the cloud of soft applause.

From the midst of this, one specific rhythm pierced through. Odd how she could be so familiar with a person to actually recognize the sound of his hands clapping, but she felt no surprise when she looked up to see Roland emerging from the crowd. He walked right to her and gently took the guitar from her aching arms, placing it as lovingly in its case as she herself would. He took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, her temples, and finally, gently, her lips.

“Sister Aimee’s a fool.” She knew his words didn’t carry any farther than the two of them, and, truthfully, given how close they were to each other, some part of her wondered if he’d actually said them at all.

“You found me,” she said, not sure if she felt relief or disappointment.

“Better than that.” He held one hand out to help her to her feet. When she was standing, he took his hat off to salute the crowd, saying, “This, people, is Miss Dorothy Lynn Dunbar. We hope you’ve had a blessing today.”

Shielding herself behind him, she arched her back, hoping to twist a more pleasant sensation into the base of her spine.
Still, she kept a pleasant smile until the last of the listeners had dispersed.

“That,” he said, once they were somewhat alone, “is what I call magic. People were talking about you up and down Fifth Street. I followed your voice all the way here. You never sounded like that before. I tell ya, if we could just get that on a stage—”

“I don’t want to be on a stage.”

“—or better yet, a record.” He snapped his fingers and began walking. “That’s the ticket there. We might be bringing the world to Sister Aimee, but you? Lay that voice on a gramophone recording, and we’ll send it all over the country.”

She listened, mute, as he wove a plan in the air between them, spun from nothing but his desire and her voice. He gestured as if he’d never touched her, gazed past her as if he’d never laid eyes on her softest, most hidden parts. His rapid-fire words skimmed just past her—nothing like the sweet syllables whispered against her skin. Had he forgotten? It wouldn’t be an impossible conclusion, because he seemed to have disregarded her presence, not noticing that she hadn’t followed him. In fact, she didn’t know if she would ever follow him again.

“I just want to go home,” she said. “Did you hear me, Mr. Lundi? I want to go home. This was a mistake. All of it.”

He turned and cocked his head, looking at her as if studying a not-quite-finished work of art.

“
Mr. Lundi?
Sweetheart, after all we’ve been through?” He took a few steps closer and lowered his voice. “After last night?”

One by one, the paving stones surrounding the fountain dissolved, leaving the ground she stood on perilously unstable. She crossed her arms in front of her, holding on to herself as there was nothing else to hold on to, while every memory of every sin she’d tried so hard to forget snaked through the
crumbling space between them and worked its way up to her unwilling mind.

She must have looked ill, because his expression changed to one of concern as he walked toward her.

“Don’t touch me,” she warned, backing away, willing to throw herself in the water if that’s what it would take to escape.

“Baby . . .”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your
baby
. You’re not my
daddy
. Whatever any of that even means.”

He stopped at a respectful, though reachable, distance. “Of course not.”

“I trusted you.”

“As well you should. Lucky for you I didn’t let you out of my sight, or you might have been one sad, lost little girl this morning.”

“You kissed me.”

“I could make the same accusation.”

She clenched her jaw as if to keep from ever repeating the mistake. “And you took me to bed.”

“Where I left you,” he said authoritatively, “comfortable and intact.”

“Not soon enough.”

“You’re still eligible to be the virginal bride by all biblical standards. As far as I know, at least.”

She slapped him, a satisfying, palm-stinging slap, like something right out of the movies. But in the movies, you’d never see the red shadow of a palm print on Rudy Valentino’s face.

“Careful, baby,” he said, once they both recovered from the shock of her action. “That’s your guitar-playing hand.”

She sat back down on the edge of the fountain and he followed suit, putting them side by side with her guitar between them.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, twirling his hat in his hands. “I should have known better than to give in to any of that kind of temptation. But I am a man, and you’re a beautiful girl.”

“I was drunk.” It was the first time she’d ever said such a thing, and the concept sounded completely foreign on her tongue.

“We both were.”

She wasn’t sure if Roland meant to bring them to an equal plane of victimization or blame, but even if theirs was a shared sin, nothing would bring him to her level of shame. In the clear light of day, facing him with her veil of innocence reduced to nothing more than the thinnest, palest gauze, she wrapped her arms around herself, more protective than she’d been the night before. “I hate myself.”

“Don’t.” He looked like he very much wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t. “If you’re going to hate anyone, hate me.”

“I can’t. You’re all I’ve got here.”

“Well, lucky me for that, I guess. But I need to talk to Bendemann about slipping the cheap stuff to the guests. If that was champagne, then so’s this.” He gestured with his thumb to the fountain water in an obvious attempt at lightening the mood. Despite it all, she felt a smile tugging at her lips.

“I think you’re lonely,” she said. “Otherwise why would you ever pay so much attention to me?”

“I happen to think you could be something great,” he said, but his bent posture, the hat twirling listlessly in his hand—all worked against his swagger.

“I’m all I ever want to be, Roland. I was before I came here, before I even met you. I just didn’t realize it. I don’t want a stage, or an audience, or a record. I just . . . I want to go home. I need to go home, because I never want to have another night like last night.”

“In that, at least, we are in total agreement. And you have my promise as a gentleman, if you’ll take it. But I am happy to report it was a worthwhile sacrifice of time and dignity.”

She looked sidelong at him only to find him grinning at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know how I told you I’d found something better? Well, I’ve been on the phone all morning, and I believe I’ve found your brother.”

He explained the chain of events on their walk back to the Alexandria. It
had
been the photograph, published prominently on the society page of that morning’s edition of the
Examiner
with the caption “Songbird Dorothy Lynn Dunbar cozies up to H. C. Bendemann in hopes of finding her long-lost brother.”

Dorothy Lynn might have objected to the inaccuracy of the term “cozies up,” but that exact phrase had spurred Mrs. Bendemann to action. Motivated by nothing less than to prove her husband’s fidelity, phone calls were made to the heads of every major studio, who in turn called their heads of accounting, and by noon Roland had a phone call informing him that one Donald Dunbar appeared on the payroll for Silverlight Studios.

“Just like that?” Dorothy Lynn said. They’d walked out of the park and were once again surrounded by concrete buildings as far and as high as the eye could see—and this was just one tiny block.

“Just like that,” he said. “This isn’t the Wild West anymore. Everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

He walked her straight to her room, and the pain in her head
resurfaced with half images of the night before. Stumbling steps, strong arms, slurred words in half-sung melodies. How she’d kissed him, full on his mouth, drawing him across the threshold when he opened the door.

And here they were again.

“Relax, sweetheart,” he said, taking the key from her hand. “If making a little tipsy love turns out to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, you’ll have live a charmed life.”

“It’s humiliating. And wrong. I don’t love you. Not like I love Brent. Not that Brent and I have ever . . .” A new wave of nausea threatened.

“Look at it this way,” Roland said, swinging her door open wide before taking one giant step away. “You’ve simply confirmed my assumption that I’m irresistible, which is far more comforting than the fear that I was merely delusional.”

She risked a smile, and he rewarded her with a kiss to her burning cheek.

“I had a telephone sent up to your room,” he said. “In case you want to call anyone.”

“Thank you.” She thought about the usual crowd gathered at Jessup’s for the Sunday afternoon calls. They must be cleared out by this hour, and she was suddenly seized with a longing for her mother’s voice.

“And an early supper? Say, six? I thought we’d try—”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather be on my own tonight. There’s so much to think about.”

“Of course.” She managed to catch a hint of disappointment before he donned a cool mask of understanding. “Well, you have the telephone. Ask the operator to connect you to the kitchen whenever you’re hungry and have something sent up.”

“But I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He tipped his hat in confirmation. “I have a few things to arrange before we get to this surprise reunion.”

“Like what?”

“Like surprises.”

She called out, “What surprises?” but he was already halfway down the hall and acknowledged her question only with a quick skip to his step. Just like that, he slipped from man to boy again, like some ageless being from a fairy tale.

Daddy.
The flappers had it right.

Inside her room, a narrow table had been set up next to the bureau. On it sat a candlestick telephone, a pad of hotel stationery, and three sharpened pencils. She dropped her guitar case on the bed along with her hat and the drawstring bag. The moment she kicked off her shoes, she regretted not dangling her feet in the fountain’s water or taking a few bare steps in the clipped green grass. Then again, it might be fitting that the next time she’d feel the earth beneath her feet would be at home. The city was a place for shoes.

She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face to chase away the lingering blush brought on by memories of the night before, knowing full well her mother—miles away though she may be—would hear the shame in her voice. Then to the telephone for the increasingly familiar routine: outside operator, long distance, Missouri, Heron’s Nest, number 005. The clock at the bedside gave the time as a little after two, so it would be after four at home—meaning the town would be deserted, with people still dozing after their Sunday naps, not yet roused again to make their way to church for the evening service.

Please be there,
she thought, in both prayer and silent plea. And then, an answer.

“Hello.” Jessup never answered the phone with a questioning tone, but with confidence that a task had been completed.

“Jessup? It’s Dorothy Lynn Dunbar.”

“Is it? Well, I must say it’s about time.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just that there’s someone been spendin’ most of this afternoon hopin’ for one of these phones to ring with your voice on the other end of the line.”

“Really?”
Brent?

She allowed herself just a moment to hope he’d had a change of heart. If he’d only taken her call last night, then nothing . . . She glanced over at the bed, swallowed bile, and looked away. He’d forgive her; he’d have to. If he could sacrifice his pride to wait for her voice, then surely she could sacrifice her own to confess.

“. . . and it’s been quite an honor to spend this time with her, waiting.”

Dorothy Lynn slumped in her chair.
Her.

“Oh, it’s my mother.”

“Indeed it is. Didn’t know if you’d be callin’ or not.”

Disappointment mingled with surprising relief. “I wasn’t so sure myself until a few minutes ago. Can you put her on, please?”