by Vanda
The parlor rug had been rolled to the side to make a dance floor, and a few couples were doing the Lindy Hop. Juliana’s husband made drinks at a makeshift bar in the corner while talking to some guests. A buffet table with food sat near the bar.
I slipped into Juliana’s bedroom, past the bed piled high with coats, threw my coat on the pile, and opened her closet door. The smell of lemons and flowers drifted over me. When I reached in to look for my new dress, my hand brushed a man’s pair of pants hanging near Juliana’s black silk dress. What are they doing in her closet? Finally, I came to the strawberry dress. I grabbed a half-slip out of her drawer and found some shoes. The dress was sleeveless and had a deep cut bodice. When I tried to pull up the zipper, it got stuck. I squirmed and jiggled, but I couldn’t get the dang zipper up .
“Can I help?” came Juliana’s voice from behind me.
“Would you?”
“You look lovely.”
“Really?” I asked, not believing that someone who looked like her was saying that to someone who looked like me.
“Really. Now let me see that zipper. Hold your arm up so I can get at it. You’ve got it a little stuck here.” She pulled on it.
“Just a few years ago, all we had to worry about were buttons. Dresses didn’t have zippers. Why do they have to keep changing things?”
“I think that’s what’s called progress.” She pulled the zipper loose. “There we go.” She started slowly pulling it up my side, but then stopped. She put her hand inside the dress. “Your skin’s so warm.”
“Juliana, you have guests right outside that door.”
“I know,” she said, with that grin that meant that was all the more reason to proceed.
She reached her hand in further and unsnapped my bra. “Juliana, we can’t—”
Then she was kissing me and touching me and somehow we ended up in her closet with clothes falling on top of us and getting mixed up with the clothes we were wearing. I had her underpants in my hand, and our shoes were banging against the closet door when I saw on her face that she was about to climax, so I stuck what I thought was the edge of her husband’s pants in her mouth until she relaxed.
She kissed my ear and ran her fingers between my legs and pushed the crotch of my underpants out of the way so she could touch me there, and it was getting to be time for her to stuff her husband’s pants leg into my mouth when she said, “That’s where you feel me. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. Quick. Kiss me.”
I loved the feel of her lipsticked lips against my lips while she kissed me.
“You’re so wet,” she whispered, “and if I kept doing this you’d orgasm, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m close.”
She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “No, dear.”
“What?”
She took her fingers away. “I want you desperate for me.”
“I am.”
“Sorry, hon,” She got up. “Not now. I have guests.”
I grabbed her arm. “Please.”
“I love it when you beg for me, my sweet.” She winked and pushed open the closet door. “We’ve got to do something to liven up this dull party.”
I lay there for long minutes, listening to her move about in the bathroom and feeling myself throb. I couldn’t believe she’d just done that to me.
I heard her opening the bedroom door. “Merry Christmas, George,” she called out cheerfully. “I didn’t know you’d arrived. How nice to see you. ”
After washing my hands in the bathroom, I put on some of her lipstick and made my way out of the bedroom trying not to look as stiff-legged as I felt. The parlor was cloudy with cigarette smoke. They were all singing “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman.”
Juliana stood behind Johnny singing and turning the pages of the music. Riley and Warren stood on either side of her looking at the music. She looked up when she saw me come into the room and winked. I wanted to punch her.
“Julie, why don’t you sing us an aria?” one of the women guests suggested.
“No, this isn’t the right—”
“‘O, Mio Babbino Caro,’” Johnny said. “Sing it for me.” She looked at me standing in the center of the room. “All right. Just that one. Then we’ll have some of my famous rum punch.”
Johnny played and Juliana sang. It was the same song she’d sung that first time I heard her sing opera at the Canteen. She looked right at me as she sang, and the sounds she made entered my body. It was like she was touching my breasts, and my stomach, and reaching between my legs, and making me shiver. It was like we were alone among all those others. We held each other’s gaze as her voice reached for the high notes, and my body bucked, and my breathing quickened, and my legs grew weak. We were breathing together, no, she was breathing for me. The breathing came faster and faster, and right there, I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop it, it was happening, happening, happening, oh, yes, it was happening, happening, happening and then—came the ease, and she was smiling at me. She knew.
Richard put an arm around me and I jumped. Had he sensed what just happened between his wife and me?
“Quite a girl, isn’t she?” he said.
“Sure is.”
“I can see you really appreciate her gifts.”
“You can?”
“Your tears.”
When Juliana sang the last note, everyone stood there staring. It was like standing in the presence of some celestial being. “And now,” Juliana said, intentionally cutting into the mood, “I am going to get that rum punch.”
“I challenge you to an opera duet,” Margaritte, the Frenchwoman, said.
“Was that a duet or a duel?” Juliana asked.
“Whichever you prefer. Did you know,” Margaritte said to the guests, “Juliana and I studied together at the Conservatoire de Paris. Didn’t we, Juliana, dear?”
“Well, not exactly, but that’s another story.” Juliana did not look pleased. “How about some rum punch, everybody?”
“After our duel,” Margaritte persisted.
Juliana said in an intimate tone not meant for the other guests, “Margaritte, I don’t think— ”
“You don’t think?” Margaritte bellowed. “Therefore, we can’t? Are you chicken, Juliana?” Margaritte started clucking like a chicken.
“What are we, six years old?” Juliana shot back, but still in a tone meant for Margaritte alone.
Margaritte waved her hand, which somehow encouraged other guests to start clucking like chickens, too. I could tell Juliana was getting sore.
A tall, thin man in a gray suit came up behind Margaritte. “Come, dear.” He tried to take her arm.
“Off me, husband.” He backed away looking helpless. “This is between Juliana and me. Isn’t it, dear?”
“All right,” Juliana said, resigned. “Choose your weapon.”
“‘Sull’aria’ from The Marriage of Figaro . Think you’re up to it?”
Juliana nodded at Johnny and he played the introduction. “You sing the Contessa,” Juliana told Margaritte.
“You give me the lead? You’re too generous, dear.” She stood near Juliana and began. I wanted her to sound screechy and off key, like the lady who sang opera in our church basement, but she didn’t. Then Juliana began her part and they harmonized and sounded good together. Not as good as Juliana singing by herself but good.
“Good, huh?” Richard said, and I turned to see he was talking to me again.
When they finished, everyone applauded.
“Now, how about that rum punch?” Juliana said.
“That was good, wasn’t it?” Margaritte effused. “Just like the old days.”
“I’m not old enough to have ‘old days.’” Juliana said.
“Well, neither am I! But we sounded good together. Admit it.”
Juliana nodded. “It was okay, but now I have guests to attend to.”
“Okay? That’s all?” Margaritte grabbed Juliana’s arm to stop her from leaving.
Juliana
pulled her arm away at the same time and Margaritte’s nails dragged along Juliana’s arm making a long scratch and drawing a few drops of blood. I ran toward her, then stopped. What did I think I was gonna do? The man in the gray suit, Margaritte’s husband, Albert, ran up to Juliana.
“It’s nothing,” Juliana said. “Only a little scratch.
“Let me put some mercurochrome on it,” Richard said, his hands on Juliana’s shoulders.
“I’m fine. But I do need some punch.”
“I’ll take her home,” Albert said. “I’m sorry, Julie, Richard.” He turned to his wife. “Let’s get your coat.”
“I’m sorry, Albert. It was an accident.” Margaritte now seemed like a penitent child. “It was an accident, Julien. I’d never hurt you on purpose. You know that, don’t you? I love you, darling. I love you.”
“A little too much to drink,” Albert said as he draped his wife’s coat over her shoulders and pushed her out the archway .
People went quickly back to their own drinking, smoking, and talking. Warren played a haunting solo on his saxophone.
I supposed most of the guests thought Margaritte’s “I love you” was just an expression of affection between women. I knew differently. I also knew using those words with Juliana would get her nowhere, and I liked knowing that.
Johnny lightly pulled Juliana toward him. “Let me see your arm.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You were holding back when you sang with her.”
“When have you ever known me to hold back?”
“Not till tonight.”
Richard came over to me. “So, Alice, what are you drinking?”
“Do you know how to make a sidecar?”
“Certainly. That’s my wife’s favorite.” As he started making the drink, he said, “You’re the kind of girlfriend I want my wife to have.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You seem like a serious person who can truly appreciate her gifts. So many of her girlfriends are silly creatures. You saw that nut Margaritte. That one might even be dangerous.”
“Does she come over—uh, I mean, see Juliana a lot.”
“Not if I can help it.” He handed me my drink. “Juliana told me you volunteer at the Stage Door Canteen.”
“She talked to you about me?”
“She wants me to introduce you to one of the soldiers here. She says you’re just getting over a heartbreak. I’m sorry to hear that. You’re at the Canteen?”
“Yes.”
“You see, that’s what I mean. You think of others. That’s the kind of girlfriends I want my wife to have.”
“It must be hard fighting in a war. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Well, I don’t really fight. I’ve been trained to fight, of course, but I’ve been spending the war typing.”
“That’s important, too.”
“I hope my wife thinks that. Could you tell her that typing in a war is important, too? I’m not cut out for soldiering. Mortgages. Loans. Investments. Stocks. Bonds. Those things I understand. My family’s been in business for generations. I come from a long line of bankers, and I’m related to a few vice presidents at GE and Kellogg’s. Uncles and cousins, mostly. Business is in my blood. I’m good at that. But this army marching around stuff has me stymied. You’ll tell her I’m doing important work, won’t you? I wouldn’t want her thinking she married a pansy.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”
“Did she say that?”
“Well, no, but she doesn’t think that.”
“Can I tell you something? You’re easy to talk to.” He lit a Winston and blew smoke over my head. “Sometimes, I’m afraid—well—you can see what she looks like and what I look like—and sometimes, I wonder why she ever said yes to me. You know, to be my wife. So now that I’m away with this war, I worry she’ll find some good-looking guy and, well you know—”
“Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I can safely say I’ve never seen Juliana with any other man. You know, in that way. I don’t think she’s very interested in men. I mean, except you, of course.”
“I’m glad I talked to you. I feel much better. As soon as I met you, I knew you were the perfect girlfriend for my Juliana.”
“Well, thank you.”
“I know you’re probably terribly busy, but I hope you’ll come and see Juliana as often as you can. I think you’re good for her.”
“I’d like that very much.”
“That’s swell. So you’ll come and see her everyday right up until she leaves?”
“What do you mean leaves?”
“Didn’t she tell you? She’s joined an overseas USO camp show. She’s going to be entertaining on the front lines in Europe.”
His words buzzed around my head but didn’t quite go in it.
“It’s almost time,” Johnny called in the background of my mind that kept repeating “up until the time she leaves, overseas USO, Europe, front lines.”
A voice called out, “Somebody open the window so we can hear the chimes from the church.”
“Turn on the radio,” another voice said.
In a daze of smoke and rushing bodies, I wandered through the room. Where was she? Where was she? I think I was bumping into people as they brought their drinks to gather in the parlor. Air from the open window whooshed over me. A voice on the radio counted, “Ten, nine, eight ….” There was a glass of champagne in my hand. People in the room joined the count, “Seven, six, five ….” Where was she? “Four, three, two.” Where was she? “One.”
“Happy New Year!” voices shouted. Whistles blown, chimes from Grace Church ringing through the cold night air. Benny Goodman and his orchestra playing on the radio, singing “Should old acquaintances be forgot ….”
On the other side of the room—Juliana—Richard’s arm around her. They held glasses of champagne and looked into each other’s eyes the way lovers look. The song came to an end and glasses were raised high. “Happy New Year!” people shouted as they kissed each other. Some tall scrawny soldier pulled me into his arms and kissed me on the cheek. I pushed him away. Richard drew Juliana into his arms, but she didn’t fight it. He kissed her, and it was a long kiss, and I wanted to pour my glass of champagne over his head. He finally let go of her and with his glass held high, said, “May 1944 bring peace, at last, to our world, and may all the soldiers come home safely. ”
A few voices pronounced a quiet, “Amen.”
“And,” Richard continued, “we’re going to kick the Krauts, Guineas, and Japs right in their keesters till they can’t get up again.” Everyone cheered. “And,” Richard was still not finished, “may God be with my brave wife who has signed up to entertain the troops in Europe on the front lines.” There was a shocked hum that encircled the room and might have dampened the festivities, but Richard said. “Raise your glasses high, and drink to my wife’s safe return.”
Everyone drank and said things like, “To you, Juliana, so brave, and to a happy New Year and to peace.” I drank mine down in one big gulp and slammed my glass onto the bar. I marched over to Juliana. She was surrounded by admiring well-wishers and Richard. I pushed past them all and stood between her and Richard. “Excuse me, Richard. I need to speak to your wife.”
“Sure,” Richard said. “You listen to her, Juliana. She’s a wise woman. Peter,” he called to the colored man who was refilling champagne glasses. “Help me with the mixed drinks.”
“Yes, sir,” Peter said.
“What do you mean barging in between my husband and me?” Juliana scolded.
“Didn’t you hear? I have your husband’s permission ’cause I’m wise. So when were you going to tell me you were leaving? After we got the telegram telling us you’d been killed?”
“Stop being melodramatic. I’m not going to be killed. I’m going over there to sing. I just want to do something useful for the war. Like you.”
“Then volunteer at the Canteen.”
“I have.”
“Do it more. We need the help.”
“I need to do more than that.”
“This is a career move, isn’t it?”
“Of course not.”
“You can’t just take off to work in a war zone.”
“I have to do this. I have a talent, and I can share it with those boys. Nothing is happening with my career now anyway. The war has put everything on hold.”
“I gave you ideas about what to do.”
“I have to get booked before I can use any of those ideas, and my husband isn’t around to set up any gigs. Besides, he thinks it wouldn’t be classy for me to flirt with men onstage.”
“Well, he would think that, wouldn’t he?”
“I might as well use this time well.”
“And when were you going to tell me ?”
“I can’t do this with you now. I have guests.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Stop interrogating me. ”
“Fine. Fine.” I ran, grabbed my coat, dashed into the hall, and started rushing down the steps.
“Stop!” she said, coming after me. I stopped in the middle of the stairway. “Why are you so upset? I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t even discuss it with me. You’re just going.”
“I discussed it with Richard, my husband, the one I’m supposed to discuss it with.”
“And who am I to you? Somebody you just fuck.”
“Al! You don’t talk that way. I didn’t even think you knew that word.”
“Neither did I!” I shouted. “When the hell are you going?”
“Next Wednesday, and stop cursing.”
“Oh, so the ‘great departure’ is to be in a week, huh? You are so selfish. You never think of anyone but yourself. Max warned me about you.”
“Max? What does he—”
“But I wouldn’t listen. Stupid me. Go to hell. I never want to see you again.”
I ran and slid down the rest of the stairs in a blind haze of anger, pain, and too much alcohol.
Chapter Fifty-Two
When I awoke the next morning, I felt as if someone had died. When Danny wrote that last letter, I felt lost and alone. But not as lost and alone as I did that morning. When I knew my relationship with Henry was over and there’d be no marriage, I felt bad—no, I didn’t really feel bad. I felt bad ’cause I didn’t feel bad. But this thing with Juliana—it was like losing all reason for getting up in the morning.
