In Chicago, Piero and Antonio lurked on Track 12 while the Los Angeles Limited to Las Vegas was boarding. I had no choice. I had to board and wait to see if they did, too. I found my seat and stared at them and at my ticket to Los Angeles. I didn’t like Frank. Not at all. I wasn’t pleased with his family or his business, which seemed to be entirely illegal and often dangerous. But walking away meant running; how and how long I didn’t know. As the porters were pulling up the stools, I saw Frank’s men turn away.
That’s when I heard the last call for the California Limited. It was like a clarion. I slipped off the train and took off running.
***
“Make me understand,” he said, pulling a chair up and sitting down in front of her, his gaze earnest and hands resting heavily on her knees.
She told him the story of her life, beginning with her name.
“Margaret Anne Ward. My mother’s name.”
“That was the truth. You would share anything with her, you said.”
She nodded with a faint smile. “My father called her Margie. And when I was born I was a dainty little thing, he said. So they called me Minnie.”
How they weathered the Depression.
“Your poor hands,” he said, taking them in his, stroking the palms with his thumbs and rubbing them against his cheeks, then kissing them. “I’m so sorry I ever said anything.”
That her father lost his job. How she met Frank. Everything.
“But you got off the train and ran for the California Limited.”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
He tenderly stroked her face, flicking her tears away with a thumb. Then he leaned in to kiss her, stopping right before his lips met hers to look into her eyes, his heart anxious and wondering in the gaze. Her eyes met his with pleading, with longing, and without fear. So he kissed her, gently, tentatively, then harder, desperate as if he were starved and would devour her. She met him eagerly. Desperate, too. They held on to each other and kissed as if they couldn’t bear to let go. Until finally they pulled away, gathering their jagged breaths.
“I’m so glad you did, sweetheart,” he said and kissed her again, a light, almost careless peck. “So very glad.” He nodded, then she nodded.
“But it’s not safe for me to be here now that Frank knows.”
“First of all, you’ll remember he doesn’t know. Not for sure. And even if he did, so what? He lives in Vegas. Is happily married by all accounts. Just tonight he rushed home to her. There’s nothing to fear.”
She nodded as still more tears filled her eyes. “I-I don’t know. I can’t feel safe. I can’t trust him.”
Suddenly angry, reminded of his hurt, Jack sat back. “And you can’t trust me to keep you safe. Not six years ago and not now.”
Of course it was too easy. He would fall back in with her, the connection, the touch. But he didn’t trust himself. And he definitely didn’t trust her. The trusting soul he had been was discarded at La Grande like her suitcase. He hated that place and was glad it too had been discarded.
“It’s not about trusting you,” she said, trying to caress his cheek, but he grabbed her hand and pulled it down.
“It is,” he said, glaring at her. “That’s exactly what it’s about. The only thing it’s about. Christ!” He stood and walked away from her, pacing, thinking.
She stood. “Maybe you should go. It’s late and—”
“And what?” He turned to her. “You have to be on an early train in the morning? No.” He shook his head.
“No.” She paused, her mouth gaped as if she were searching for words.
“Yes. That’s exactly what you were going to do. Whatever else you do, please do me the favor of being honest.”
“No. I’m—I’m tired is all. My nerves have been frayed since this afternoon. Now I’ve seen you I…” Her words fell away, her eyes distant.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
She turned pleading eyes to him. “What would you have me do?”
“Promise me you’ll not do anything rash. Not tonight. Then tomorrow you’ll come see me at my office in the Ambassador.”
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine I have a job after what I did. Your brother is always babying that piano.”
“He hates that piano. Don’t worry about that. You have a job. If not on the main stage, I can find you something. A cigarette tray, perhaps.”
She nodded, walking him to her door. She went to turn the knob when he grabbed her hand and kissed it. Then he placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging lines up her neck with his thumbs.
“I can’t walk out this door. I can’t…” He shook his head.
“You can’t keep one eye on me for the rest of your life.”
“I can. And when I can’t, I can put someone else on you. Believe it.”
“Oh, I do,” she said, her hands lightly stroking his lean waist. “But you don’t want me to feel like a trapped animal, do you, Jack? A trapped animal that strikes out at her handler.”
He pulled her hands from his waist and squeezed them gently. “Frankly, Minnie, that doesn’t frighten me. It excites me. I would rather have you hitting and kicking and spitting at me than lost somewhere. Not knowing where you are or whether you are alive or dead or whether you’re hurt or hungry or being abused.” He cupped her face, pressing his to it. “Not. Knowing. That is the greatest agony. I won’t feel that again. I won’t let you make me feel that again.”
Jack left Minnie’s apartment, nodding to his man Gregory before getting into his car. He would not be unprepared with her. Never again.
Chapter 10
“You’re late,” he said sternly, tapping his watch as she walked into his office.
“You left my apartment only a few hours ago. I need to sleep, Jack. Though I hardly did much of that. What time did you get in?”
“9am on the nose.”
“You don’t sleep?”
“I had a lot on my mind.” He gazed at her pointedly.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said as she stood anxiously fidgeting with her fingers.
“You’re working. Just like you did yesterday and will do tomorrow. Now my brother is…a little peeved, you could say. Give him a couple of days. A week and you’ll be back on the main stage.” He produced a canary-yellow sleeveless leotard with a plume of yellow feathers trailing down the back and handed it to her. “In the mean time, your uniform.” He flicked some fingers at a door. “My bathroom. You can change there.”
Minnie took the hanger and draped the uniform on a chair.
He stood, a forearm crossing his waist, the other elbow resting on it, that hand casually splayed against his cheek. “Ya know, you might be a little grateful. Just yesterday that belonged to number twenty-three.”
“Really?”
“M-hm.”
“What’s she wearing now?”
“Not me. And that’s all I care about.”
“So. Unrestrained glee?”
He smiled tightly and went to her, cupping her nape and kissing her, a teasing light brush, then spun her toward the bathroom with her uniform, locking the door of his office when she closed the door.
She emerged a few minutes later dressed as a sexy bird, shoulders and arms exposed, waist pulled tight and pushing her full, round tits up to her neck, a flowing tail of feathers cascading from her bottom. He had never seen a Canary Girl look so delectable.
“I’m not sure this fits you quite right, darling” he said, crossing the room to her.
She looked down, arms out. “It fits me like a second skin.”
He slid his arms around her waist and grabbed her bottom, pressing his arousal into her, glancing into the valley between her breasts. “And what of your first?” He tsk’ed. “It seems desperate for air. Let’s take this off.” His hands slid to the hidden zipper in the back and she darted away, shaking her head.
He took a deep, exaggerated put-upon breath a
s he slid the strap for a cigarette tray around her shoulders. “You should set a target of getting everyone in the club to take a cigarette.”
“And if he already has one?”
“Then you should make him want to fuck you so much that he wants whatever it is you’re offering, whether a cigarette or a Roman candle,” he said, his voice biting and hard.
She blinked slowly as if exhausted, then sighed. “Are you going to punish me for the last six years?” She turned to go back to the bathroom. “I don’t need to work for you that badly.”
But he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. “Maybe not all six years. But you owe me, no?” She didn’t respond. “So go ahead. Dazzle me. Seduce me into smoking a cigarette. Go.” He sat down at his desk.
She stared at him, her expression inscrutable, holding her dignity the way she held her tray, with cool indifference to the vulgarity she was selling. Then she blinked and it was gone, a different woman staring back at him. She leaned far forward with the tray, the deep swell of her bosom, alluring. “You shouldn’t smoke,” she said in the huskiest most seductive voice he had ever heard, then straightened. “It’s bad for your voice.”
“Well,” he pulled his hand away from his mouth to reveal a smirk, then rested it on his cheek, “I’m not a singer. I don’t give a fuck about my voice.” Then he sat forward, his forearms braced on his desk. “And you’re a bad cigarette girl, if that’s how you really feel.”
“I’m an actress,” she said, smiling slyly.
“So I’ll never know how you really feel. Grand. Now we’re being honest.” He rolled back from his desk and turned to her. “Put your tray down, bad cigarette girl, and come here.”
A leery look in her eye, she put her tray down and stepped between his legs. He peered at her as his fingertips skated up the outside of her legs. She shivered. He smiled. Then he unclipped her garters with a flick of his fingers and her hands fell to her thighs. “What are you doing?”
“No,” he said, his voice a punishing lilt as he shook his head. “It’s my turn to ask the questions.” His hands fell back to her knees and whispered lightly up her thighs, fingers on the fronts and thumbs inside. His concentrated touch, just enough and not enough, was making her sag, a puddle of arousal in his hands.
“Why did you hang up on me when I called?” He kissed where her thighs met her core and all around, light and teasing pecks. He heard her swallow and smiled.
“I-I don’t know. I wanted you to call.” Her voice was breathy and insubstantial as he plied her. “I had been wanting to see you for weeks when Frank came. When I saw the tuner had pulled the strings I got the idea. It was stupid, I know, but I was desperate. I think when you called me Minnie and I knew it was you, I-I just panicked. I wanted you for so long…”
Minnie
Running away from my promise to Frank, my obedience to my father, I was thrilled and scared as I ran for Track 7. When I saw the train was still there, a porter still helping a last passenger onto the train, my heart leapt. I’d never felt so free.
Fear and happiness and ferocity and gratefulness, such a swirling mix of emotions I could not have imagined or feigned. Then I slammed into Jack. When I grabbed him, I didn’t want to let go. I hadn’t known how much I needed an anchor until there he was.
When he turned those deep-water blue eyes to me I knew what it was to need someone you had only just met. And that scared me, too. Because I couldn’t have him. Not how I wanted, not for a long time, and then if ever.
He pursued me and I let him because I wanted to be pursued by someone like him. He was handsome and wealthy but in a completely different way than Frank. I know how that sounds. That I’m shallow and materialistic. Perhaps I am. But he was lovely to look upon and it was so nice, after six years of scraping and struggling, after want and worry, to relax and be surrounded by plenty, to laugh and eat and play as if that was all of life.
I could feel his goodness, his uprightness. An innate caring, it was no surprise to learn he was the eldest son. He seduced me, yes. I was not so naïve that I couldn’t recognize it for what it was. But he cared for me, too. That I felt as surely as anything else. I wanted so much to be cared for. Not in Frank’s slimy-doll-way. But in being seen, being known, even while I was hiding. And he did see me. He did know me. My hands. I think I loved him a little when he told me about my hands. How they were me. And it was no faint praise.
That’s when I knew that I would let him make love to me. That I would give him my virginity. I didn’t know if I would ever marry and I felt as far away from my sister and her life as ever I could. I wanted to have sex and if that made me a slut, I didn’t care. I just wanted Jack to touch me, to whisper dirty things into my ear, to put things inside me. I wanted Frank erased from my mind and my body.
When Jack proposed that we continue seeing each other in LA, that is when I knew a kind of longing, a wish for something so badly, that I felt my heart hurt. Physically hurt. Because I couldn’t be with him. Not in LA. Not anywhere that anyone could find me. And Frank and his father would find me if they wanted me badly enough.
After helping with family expenses, I had saved around $500 from my gig at the Lucky and my mother gave me $500 more. If I was wise and frugal, I could live on $1,000 dollars for awhile. But I needed to keep moving, needed to immerse myself in a world of other hidden people who kept moving. And I wanted to live in California. One day I hoped it would be safe to return to LA, to perform.
My mother set up a post office box.
“To let me know where you are,” she said. “If you’re safe.”
A POSTCARD FROM CALIFORNIA
To
Mrs. George Ward
P.O. Box 1257
Racine, WI 53403
Safe
From figs in the Coachella to strawberries in the Salinas and grapes in the Central, I moved, working the seasons as I needed to supplement my money, which I never let get below half. A white American from the Middle West, if a woman, I was luckier than most, allowed into any labor camp, onto any farm or ranch if I was willing to bend my back to the work.
Twice a year I dared to skirt the city and the man I still dreamed of to pick up anything from my mother. A note. A package. A sign. Then in the summer of 1941 I finally saw it:
A POSTCARD FROM RACINE, WISCONSIN
To
Miss Mae Wilson
P.O. Box 1468
Los Angeles, CA 91602
F.F. married.
***
“Tell me how you wanted me for so long,” Jack said, unbuttoning the snaps at Minnie’s sex and peeling the leotard up to reveal her underwear and garter belt.
“I never wanted to leave you,” she began as he unhooked the belt and pulled down her underwear. “You have to believe me.”
“Make me believe you,” he said, standing as he traced two fingers up and down the lips of her sex and trailed a line of wet kisses down her neck to her chest.
“Frank corrupted me. Made me feel small and helpless. I never wanted his attention yet had to suffer it. But you, you made me feel coy and feral and hot and…” Her words trailed off as she sucked in a breath.
“And?” He pulled the zipper down her back, the leotard gaping at her chest. He peeled it down, exposing her breasts.
“I believe you’ve taken this off a girl before,” she said.
“I believe you’re right,” he said.
Then he grabbed one breast, lightly cupping and stroking it while he took the nipple of the other one in his mouth.
“I gave you my virginity because it was truly my own to give and…” her voice broke, “…if I could give anyone anything, I wanted it to be you.”
His heart in his throat, he stopped abruptly and looked into her eyes, seeing a wide open expanse, lust and love and gratefulness. He traced her face, fingers skating lightly across as if to touch the emotion in it. Then he kissed her tenderly, not a seduction but a recognition.
“You didn’t want him,” he said, prodding
the story forward.
“No. I wanted to be allowed to want whomever I wanted.”
“And that was me,” he said, rubbing his lips around an areola.
“Yes.”
“Like this,” he said as he pressed a finger into her sex. “Oh, perfect,” he groaned, her sex so wet and plump. “I do believe you want me.”
“Yes. You corrupted me in a completely different way. I wanted you every minute on that train. Every day for six years.”
As he pulled his finger out and pressed two back in its place, slowly stroking out then back in, he looked at her face, reddened with an aroused blush. “Grand,” he stared into her eyes. “I would hate to think you were indifferent.”
“Never,” she said, cupping his hardened face. “I could never be indifferent to you.”
“Good.” He smiled wolfishly as he picked her up and placed her on his desk. “Spread these legs like the coy, feral, and hot girl I know you to be.” He spread her wide and took her sex in his mouth.
Elbows propping her up on the desk, her head fell back with a lustful cry as he worked his lips and tongue, his fingers penetrating and playing as he built her steadily. Her breathing jagged and thighs shaking, he stopped and stepped back, licking his lips.
“Fix yourself. Your shift started an hour ago. I’ll see you back here at precisely 5pm. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t touch yourself and you won’t be late.”
She sat up, incredulous. “What?”
He could feel her stunned confusion, her intense frustration, as he walked out the door without looking back.
“Dec,” he called down to his brother’s office. “Where’s Minnie? I told her to be in my office at 5pm sharp. Now it is—” he checked his watch, “—approaching 5.05 and she is yet to arrive.”
“Minnie?”
“Mae.” He sighed. “Mae Wilson.”
“Right,” said Declan. “She’s here.”
“Send her up right now. No. Better yet. Escort her personally. She has something that belongs to me.”
The Drazen World: The California Limited (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 10
