Golden Girl (22 page)

Of course my uncle Lorcan had heard me. He was in my head, and I was in my head hollering for all I was worth because I wanted Jack to be able to find me, and that was how these things worked. You opened yourself up so one person could get a good look at you, and everybody and his uncle could get a good look at you. Or everybody and your uncle.

Get out of the way!
I screamed.

I can’t
, he answered.
Believe me, I’d like to, but I just can’t. Poor boy. It’s real cold back there
.

I knew exactly what he was doing, and I hated him in that moment as hard as I hated Ivy Bright. But he blocked the path solidly. I couldn’t even feel the edge of him, let alone Jack behind him.

What do you want?

Pull back your sleep, niece. Let me go. I won’t interfere any further with you rescuing Mr. Holland
.

He knew I’d do it too. He knew I’d do anything he asked, because he was between me and Jack and I didn’t have the strength left to shift him. I moved to shape one more word, to ask him to promise.…

Promise. My uncle had already made a promise about Jack. Relief rushed through me.
No
, I said to Uncle Lorcan.
You have to get out of my way! You’re hurting Jack. You promised no action of yours would hurt him. You can’t break that promise
.

I charged forward, straight at him. My uncle’s presence tore like paper and I heard him scream, but I was through and on the other side.

Nicely played, niece of mine
. He’d pull himself together back there and wait for his next chance, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

Jack!
I called.
Jack!

“Sisters, sisters, we are climbing …,”
sang Mr. Robeson, way back in the human world.

I felt it again, the faint whisper brushing against the edge of my mind.

I’m cold, Callie
.

I plunged forward, calling his name. I didn’t care who heard. I’d fight the whole Seelie court if I had to. They were not taking Jack away from me.

I can’t see, Callie
, Jack was saying. He was closer now. He was battered and frozen and he was scared like I’d never known him to be before, but it was Jack all the same.

I know
. I tried to keep my thoughts calm and strong.
But we’re getting out of here
.

How?

Take my hand
.

I reached. I reached with everything I had. It was as easy as wishing, as hard as believing. But I had held Jack’s hand before, and he’d held mine. I knew what it felt like to have him standing beside me, and he knew me. We both wished we were in the same place, and so we were. I took hold of him in that darkness and that cold, and I pulled.

Jack was heavy. He was so skinny; how could he be so heavy? But he was. I only had one hand for him, because I had to hang on to Paul’s song with the other.

“We are climbing Jacob’s ladder …”

Rung by rung, we were climbing, groping our way up out of the cold, back to the real world, back to the land of the living. Me and Jack both.

And then, all at once, we were there. Jack slipped back into his own skin, easy as breathing, and opened his eyes
for one sweet second, smiling at me from under his oxygen mask. I wilted and would have fallen if Mr. Robeson hadn’t caught me.

“Will the boy be all right now?” he asked.

I nodded. My tongue felt thick and cottony. I wanted to lie down and sleep for a year.

“We’d better get out of here now, Callie. That doctor might take an exception to our appearance when he comes in.”

I nodded and let him lead me out of there. I had just enough strength to glance back to see how Jack’s chest rose and fell under the bedsheet.

I really don’t remember much after that. I think there was a cab ride, and I do remember some hot soup. I was shivering. The world kept fading in and out. I wanted to sleep, but I was afraid, because Shake was in there somewhere, waiting for me.

But in the end, my mind just sort of slipped away, and it stayed good and gone for a long time.

When I woke up again, I was in a plain bed in a plain room.
Hotel
, my mind said.
Dunbar
, it went on. I sat up.
Jack
.

I threw back the covers. I was in a clean nightdress and clean socks. I didn’t stop to think about it. I ran to the door. On the other side was a tidy sitting room all done in shades of beige, brown, and gold. A slim, light brown lady I didn’t know sat on the sofa.

“Who’re you? What’s going on? Where’s my clothes?”

“Ada Freeman,” she answered calmly. “Mr. Robeson thought it would be better if you had someone to sit with you, and your clothes are being washed. I’ll go tell Mr. Robeson you’re awake.”

She left me there with my thoughts spinning and my heart hammering, and came back in a minute with Paul Robeson right behind her.

“Thank you, Ada.” He touched her arm and gave her a big smile. “Maybe you could see if her clothes are ready?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Robeson.”

She left us alone, and I shifted my weight, suddenly feeling strange about being there in a nightdress. He sat down in one of the chairs. “Ada’s friends with one of the hospital orderlies,” he told me. “He says Jack is sleeping peacefully and was awake enough this morning to drink some water and eat some Jell-O.”

“He’d hate that,” I breathed. My relief was so big I didn’t have words for it. I had to talk about little things instead. “He hates Jell-O.”

“That just proves he’s got taste,” Mr. Robeson said. “Now, as soon as Ada comes back with your clothes, you come meet me down in the dining room and we’ll talk, all right?”

I agreed, and he left. I realized he was being careful about appearances, for his sake and mine. That felt strange too. I mean, I had been careful about my appearance my whole life, but this was different. A whole other world of different, in fact.

I was glad not to have too much time to think about that, because it was a lot more than I was ready to deal with, especially now. Ada came back with my clothes all cleaned and pressed. I really didn’t want to wear anything I’d borrowed from Ivy. I knew now why she’d distracted me with playing dress-up and girlfriends. She’d been fooling me, the same way she fooled everybody else. But it was take the clothes or go naked, so I dressed. Somebody’d put the penny loafers under the radiator to dry, and they were stiff as boards when I shoved my feet into them. Somehow knowing that I’d gone and ruined her shoes made me feel better. It didn’t make sense, but there it was.

Ada walked me down to the Dunbar’s restaurant. Mr. Robeson was sitting at a table in the corner, and he stood when we approached. A waiter hurried up to pull out my chair and pour me some water. I ordered a stack of pancakes with syrup, whipped cream, and butter. I could have eaten a horse if they’d had it on the menu. Especially white horse.

“Now, Callie.” Mr. Robeson leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “How about you tell me what’s been happening since the last time I found you by that bridge?”

I glanced around. The room was maybe half full of people, eating and talking and paying absolutely no attention to us. So, softly, one slow word at a time, I told him. I had to stop when the waiter brought my pancakes and Mr. Robeson’s fried eggs, ham, toast, and coffee. We ate, and I
kept talking until I ran out of words. Mr. Robeson didn’t interrupt me or question me until I got around to repeating the prophecy.

“Interesting,” he said, pouring himself more coffee from the pot the waiter had left on the table. “What’s the third world?”

“Huh?” I mumbled around a mouthful of pancake.

“ ‘She,’ meaning you, is described as being the daughter of three worlds.” Mr. Robeson tore his toast in two and soaked half in egg yolk. “Two are obvious—the fairy world and the human world. But what’s the third?”

I opened my mouth. I closed it again.

“I don’t know.” I hadn’t even thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said again.

“Well, we’ll look at that later. Go on.”

I went on. I told him about leaving Kansas and coming to Los Angeles, sneaking into MGM, finding myself in San Simeon and almost not getting out. That was when he interrupted again.

“You’re sure it was your father? It was Daniel LeRoux?”

I nodded. “But … but it didn’t make any sense,” I whispered to my plate. “Why would they leave him, I don’t know, unguarded, able to help like that? They controlled him so tight that other time … why leave him free at all?”

Paul considered this for a moment. “It’s no fun to lord it over someone who can’t feel your power,” he said at last. “Perhaps they let him out on occasion so he will feel the times of close confinement more cruelly.”

Now, that sounded just like the Seelies. “Besides,” I added slowly, “who’d be dumb enough to sneak right into the castle to try to rescue him, right? They’d only get themselves caught, so there wasn’t any danger.”

“Exactly.” Paul took another sip of coffee, and then gestured with his cup for me to keep going.

When I finally finished, my head felt clear. The food helped, but having somebody who knew the whole long horrible story was even better. I felt like I could breathe again.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “How come … how come you believe all this?”

Mr. Robeson sighed and set his coffee cup down. It clicked against the thick china saucer.

“It was some fifteen years ago now, I guess,” he said. “I was living in New York City, up in Harlem. That was a great time. The town was full of music, poetry, and artists. Everything was wide open. We were trying to create a new world with words and music, new thoughts, new chances. Some of us were doing it for the race; some of us were doing it because we were young and wild and it was the biggest party in New York City, and that made it the biggest party in the world.”

“And my father was there?”

Mr. Robeson nodded. “I don’t even recall exactly where I met him first. He’d come to parties and just hang around. I figured him for some kid in from the sticks. I do remember the first time he sat down at the piano.”

“He was that good?”

Mr. Robeson chuckled. “He was that bad. Got laughed off the bench, which made him mad as a scalded cat. But he came back the next night and sat down again. I was surprised, and so was everybody else. That time he was better, and the third night he was better yet. I never heard anybody pick it up so quick. He could hear a tune once and play it back to you note for note. Pretty soon he was playing all over town: rent parties, juke joints, anyplace they had a piano and wouldn’t throw him out too fast. We did a few house parties together. I’d never met anybody so in love with the nightlife. I tried to tell him maybe he should slow down, it’d swallow him up if he kept at it, but he just laughed at me.

“ ‘Not me, Paul,’ he said. ‘I’m home at last.’

“That was when things started going good for me. I was acting, I was making money from my singing, I had my wife and son, and the concerts were getting good notices. Then one night we were in a black-and-tan … you know what that is?”

“A nightclub?” I guessed.

He nodded again. “Anyway, this white pair, dressed to the nines, comes up, and they want me to come sing at their party. They named the fee, and it was high. Higher than I’d ever heard anyone get for one night’s work. Of course I said yes. We set the time, and I turned around, and Daniel was there.

“ ‘Don’t do it, Paul,’ he told me. ‘Those two are bad news. You’ve got to trust me on this.’

“I remember what it felt like to have him say that to me. I wanted to do just what he said, as much as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. But I needed the money. I had a wife and son to support, and it was tough times. In the end, that was what won out. So I laughed him off. He shook his head at me and turned and walked away. He only looked back once. I remembered thinking I’d seen the last of him, but at the time I didn’t know why.”

I left the remains of my pancakes cooling on my plate. I didn’t want to miss one word of this. I could see my father standing beside Paul Robeson, his smoke-and-starlight eyes shining as he tried to persuade the other man to stay away from the party. I could feel his disappointment when he failed.

“What happened then?” I breathed.

“I found another piano player, had my suit pressed, and went to the party. It was in a penthouse on the Upper West Side. Beautiful, expensive place, full of beautiful, expensive white people. There was champagne and food, and I danced with all the girls and nobody batted an eye. We did two sets, and everybody loved it. I felt like I’d found paradise.”

I knew just what he’d felt like. He’d felt like he’d come home.

“I lost track of time in all that glitter. Next thing I remember clearly was the hostess coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, you must come out to the country with us, Paul. Stay for the summer. You must. Say yes, Paul, do. Promise you’ll come stay with us.’

“I was all set to say yes. Why wouldn’t I? It was like I couldn’t remember anything outside that room full of beautiful people.

“But then Daniel had hold of me. I don’t know how he got there. I never saw him come in. ‘One more song, Paul,’ he was saying. ‘Let’s give ’em just one more. Come on.’ He pulled me over to the piano, and he sat down and started to play. ‘Scandalize My Name,’ it was. I started singing.

“And it was like a magic trick. Like someone yanked away the tablecloth and I saw what was underneath. That glittering party I’d been standing in the middle of was a room full of monsters and nightmares. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Oh, yes. I’d been in the middle of that room too.

“Well, of course I started to holler, and of course they knew it was your father who’d pulled the scales off my eyes. They charged up—one big lynch mob of nightmares. But he was on his feet, and … I don’t know exactly what he did then, but those monsters were suddenly all falling down and banging into each other like Keystone Kops, and me and him were out the window and running for our lives.

“We holed up in a speakeasy cellar, down with the barrels of booze. He told me everything then, about the Seelies and the Unseelies, about how they would take musicians to their country and never let them go again.… I shouldn’t have believed it, but I did. He warned me they might make another try, told me some things to help me protect myself.” Mr. Robeson reached into his pocket and pulled out a big,
old-fashioned black iron key. He twirled it once in his fingers and tucked it away again.