Club Storyville (28 page)

“She said not to be afraid of love,” I told him, and it hardly seemed like a fair trade.

“Sounds like good advice,” he quietly replied, and, looking up at him, I tried to gaze beyond the bruises and swelling to see if he had any fear at all.

“How do you live with it?” I asked him. “People hating you? Not even you,” it occurred to me with a shake of my head as I tried to imagine anyone hating Desmond if they actually took the time to know him. “Just the idea of you.”

“Well, I can’t exactly hide,” he gave a small laugh.

“You wouldn’t,” I said.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because,” I responded, lowering the bandana when I was certain my nose bore no more threat. “You take chances now you don’t have to take.”

“Yeah, well...” Desmond uttered. “I’m not exactly the average person. Money talks in every color.” Tilting his head back toward his nice house with its extravagant furnishings, he didn’t seem particularly happy about it. “Who knows what I’d do differently if I didn’t know I could buy my way out of trouble?”

I hadn’t even considered that, his money, or that it was why Desmond didn’t worry as Buddy worried about driving his own car with a white woman in the front seat, or why he was already home when Ronald and Marcus hadn’t made it back to the boarding house.

“Do you love her?” I heard Desmond say, and it seemed an odd question until I looked up and realized he wasn’t asking about Nan, but about Ariel. Feeling the heat at my cheeks, I wondered if it was that obvious from one dance.

Despite having admitted it to myself, exactly what my feelings were and what they meant, it was instinct to lie, to protect my secrets and myself from scrutiny and danger. Trying not to turn back to look for Ariel, I wished I knew where she was, if she could somehow tell what we were talking about.

Considering I may well regret the truth once it was out, I knew I would regret not telling the truth more. Saying I didn’t love her would feel like denying her, like I was letting Ariel be less to me than she was, which, it occurred to me in a flash of terrified wonder, had become everything. So, pushing the fear of judgment aside, I gave Desmond a chance to prove he really was my friend by nodding.

“Well…” When he didn’t seem at all surprised, I knew it had been that obvious. “I don’t know how things will go. And I don’t know how you’ll get by. What I do know,” he glanced toward the street, and I was sure he could see Ariel where I couldn’t, “is that is not the kind of woman you let go.”

Laughing nervously at his words of advice, I knew it was the same advice he might have given Edward, or might give Scott, because Desmond didn’t seem to even notice there was a more profound reason Ariel and I couldn’t be together beyond a few days in New Orleans. Rushing into him, I trusted he would catch me, feeling somewhat less alone in the world as he did.

“You know,” he said, his chin resting against my hair as he hugged me again. “In another life, we might have been cousins.”

Pushing back reluctantly from him, knowing I couldn’t stay there all day letting him be my crutch, I felt like it was something I had truly missed out on. “That would have been nice,” I said.

“Keep in touch, Elizabeth,” Desmond returned. “I mean it. But right now, you should get going. I think your girl was serious about that train.”

It hurt a little, the casual way he said it, as if it could just be that simple, and, turning to find Ariel where she stood next to the open door of the car, I could see he was right. We did have to go, because time moved more rapidly when we were trying to beat death to Nan’s door.

As Desmond and Ariel waved another goodbye, I rushed back down the walkway, climbing into the backseat as Ariel slid in beside me.

“Why didn’t you come back up with me?” I asked, when we’d made part of the drive and Ariel had found no cause to say a word to me.

“It wasn’t about me,” she responded, completely unaware she was as wrong as it was possible to be.

It was about nothing but her.

“Nan said she loves you,” I told her to let her know.

Usually so sure of what to say, Ariel didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. Staring at the back of the driver’s seat, she thought her own private thoughts for a moment, turning away from me at last to watch the last of New Orleans go by through the glass.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A
fter tasting such rich flavors of freedom, I knew I wasn’t ready to go back, but I never could have imagined the dread I would feel as I stepped aboard the train bound for Richmond. Those first long hours in New Orleans, each step I had taken, I had taken with the knowledge they would eventually carry me home. The moment I showed my ticket to the crewman was supposed to be one of relief, not disenchantment.

Beside me the entire way, Ariel said nothing as we finished our ride to the train station, picked up lunch in the café, or stored our luggage, and only just enough to get us through the afternoon as we read and waited in our cabin, before evening fell and we could at last go to the dining car for dinner.

Staring across the table at her after our food had been brought, picked over, and taken away again, I thought about what Nan had written, about what Desmond had said. He was right, I knew. Ariel was the kind of woman one held onto if she could, but all day it felt as if Ariel was trying to float away from me, and I had never had a particularly strong grip.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” I finally got up the nerve to ask as Ariel sipped her amber liquor, and I wished I could better stomach the drinks she and Nan favored just for the boost in courage.

Her jaw visibly tightening as she swallowed, I couldn’t tell if it was irritation or guilt behind Ariel’s eyes as she slid her glass onto the table. “What would you like to talk about?” she asked, and it sounded like a cheap question, since she had to know.

When she looked up, though, her eyes meeting mine, I didn’t want to talk at all. I wanted to find out what it took to turn the train around, to go back to New Orleans. I wanted to be friends with Desmond and Buddy, and people like them who were willing to break the rules to be humane. I wanted to lean across the table and kiss Ariel, as I had wanted to kiss her all day, so hard she stopped pretending things were as they were before.

I wanted to think any one of those things could be done without repercussions.

That was Nan’s advice, wasn’t it? Love first. Love hard. Worry about the consequences later? It was Desmond’s advice too, to just hold on. Along with those words of wisdom, though, I couldn’t stop seeing Desmond’s face, swollen beyond seeing, almost beyond smiling.

I thought about Ariel, how she had been in the night, not in the good part, in the before part, how well she handled the sudden onslaught of chaos. It wasn’t natural to be so reactive in the face of the unexpected. It could only be experience, and that worried me for her. There were things that made one fear, I knew, things that made one abandon fear, and things that made one so different, she could never be the same person again. Of all the things that scared me, it was that which scared me most, the idea Ariel may no longer be Ariel.

“Has anyone ever hurt you?” It felt as if my heart was plucked in my chest as I considered the things they might do, what punishments they would think Ariel deserved for her particular sins.

Apparently not expecting it, Ariel glanced to the people across the aisle at the question, reaching for her drink again when she seemed to feel all ears were far enough away.

“Not irreparably,” she answered.

“But they have hurt you,” I pressed, not sure what it was I felt when there were so many things to feel. Though, there was anger I could pinpoint, and sadness, and fear. Always so much fear. “You’ve had to run before.”

“I’ve been roughed up a few times.” She declared it with the same accepting tone with which she might announce a gardener must anticipate the occasional thorn. “When you go where people go looking for prey, you spend some time running.”

“But you keep going,” I shook my head, unable to understand her, or the risks she took, or why she would put herself in such danger repeatedly when she’d seen the possible result.

“What else am I to do?” she asked, and, though the words were different with each answer that came into my head, I realized, in essence, they were all the same. “Do what they say, so they’ll stop coming after me?” Ariel summarized them in one slightly amused, slightly pained question.

“You would be safe,” I returned.

“That’s all I would be,” she murmured.

“You could die!” Terrified at her complacency, I couldn’t stop my outburst, and when the people around us turned, I ducked my head with the humiliation of causing such a scene.

“Is everything all right, Ladies?” the waiter came over to ask, because I was a terrible disturbance upon the other diners, I assumed, and my embarrassment grew.

“Everything is fine,” Ariel said quickly, glancing to me with uncertainty. “I would like to pay.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the waiter was more than happy to see us off. “I’ll be right back.”

Watching him walk away, Ariel sipped her drink with greater vigor, and I knew she had no intention of responding to me.

“Do you think about that?” I demanded of her in a whisper, feeling tears in my eyes at the mere thought. “That you could die?”

“Of course, I do,” I could tell Ariel responded only to silence me, and that she wasn’t entirely convinced all eyes and ears were back in their own business. “But I don’t fear dying as much as I fear not living. If you can live as people want you to, Elizabeth, you probably should. But I don’t want to just get by. I want to feel. I want to be in love. I want to be…” Breaking into a small, sad huff, she was so exquisite, I hated the universe for being so cruel. “…taken with someone. Why should I get by when other people get to have what they want?”

It was a fair question, and, searching for something to respond, I found all my easy answers, the ones that had been so clear and certain in my mind, had been destroyed in New Orleans. I couldn’t say it was wrong, or sinful, or sick, not after what Ariel and I had shared. I couldn’t say other people were right. All I had was that it was dangerous to go against the tide of popular opinion, and it was silly for me to think Ariel needed reminding of the ways in which she might be made to suffer after a night in which it had been demonstrated firsthand.

I knew then, it wasn’t going to be like it was for Nan and Desmond. I could want Ariel to be safe, be willing to give her up to keep her that way, but I could not change Ariel. I couldn’t send her back to a life with less danger. Whatever I did, she was going to live her life on her own terms, with all the risk that went with it. The only person I had to protect was myself.

“Are you taken with me?” The answer felt imperative to whether or not I wanted to do that.

“I’m not answering that,” Ariel replied instantly.

“Does that mean you’re not?” I asked, swallowing the upsurge of pain, amazed at how quickly I felt defensive, on guard, wounded by her not wanting me enough.

“It means I’m not answering,” Ariel responded, looking relieved as the waiter made it back to our table with the bill.

“I’ll come right back with your change,” he said when Ariel handed him payment.

“That won’t be necessary,” she returned, backing her chair up to go, and I knew Ariel would pay any amount of gratuity to get away from me as expeditiously as possible. “Thank you.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the waiter said. “You ladies have a lovely evening.” As genuine as the sentiment was, I didn’t know how he failed to see by the way Ariel was rushing away from me that there was nothing remotely resembling lovely in store for us.

“Ariel,” I caught her arm in the vestibule before she could walk through the gangway into the next passenger car. If she made it to the sleeping car ahead of me, I had the distinct feeling I would be locked out of our cabin for the rest of the night.

“What, Elizabeth?” she turned sharply to me, and her tone was sandpaper on my skin.

“I just need to know,” I said.

“Like you needed to know what it was like to be with me?” she forced through her tight expression. “Stop asking me to persuade you into a life. Whatever I tell you to do, if you end up unhappy, you will resent me.”

“No, I…”

“You don't think you will, but you will,” Ariel trembled beneath my hand, and I realized just how much I had upset her. “This is your life. You have to decide. But decide, Elizabeth.” When her voice suddenly broke, all I wanted to do was hold her, to take away the pain I didn’t know until then I had the power to cause her. “Don’t do this to me.”

Paralyzed in the vestibule as Ariel pulled from my grasp and went through the door to the gangway, I realized I didn't need a clearer answer. Everything I had asked of her, she had given, from the moment she kissed me back in the garden. She had been so careful with the feelings she showed, though, I wasn’t sure until that instant if they went deeper than the flesh.

The only reason for her not to let me see how much she felt, I realized, was because she was scared too, and the only reason Ariel had to be afraid was if we both had something to lose.

T
o my relief, she didn’t lock me out, but Ariel wasn’t particularly inviting either when I made it to the cabin. Returning to our pattern of not speaking for the rest of the night, it was as I watched her lie down in the lower berth it occurred to me I might get no more opportunities, that Ariel and I might never have another completely private moment between us.

“Can I sleep with you?” I asked her, any concern I had I might make her angry overshadowed by my desire to be close to her, to make the most of what time we had left.

Not sure if she felt the same, or was simply relenting to me, I was just grateful when Ariel slid over, making room for me beside her. Burrowing against her, I rested my hand on her chest without asking, feeling her heart beat strong and fast against my palm, and my heart changed tempo to match.

I knew it would beat to the rhythm of Ariel’s heart for the rest of my days.