“I brought you this saucer of milk.” She held it out to him, her face deadly serious.
“And I brought you this lid.” Henry offered it to her. “A very rare item. A similar one sold for millions at auction.”
Flora laughed and the cat meowed again. She set down the saucer. “Sometimes she follows me here.”
Henry put the lid back on the trash and held out the flowers. “I know it looks like I might have pulled them out of the rubbish, but I didn’t. I was too much of a coward to deliver them. But now that you’ve caught me in the act, I might as well get credit for the gesture.”
She laughed again, pulled her robe tighter around her rib cage. “They’re lovely. Thank you. I give you full credit.”
“Am I getting more embarrassed or less as this conversation progresses?” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“If we’re talking relative levels of embarrassment,” she said, “one of us is standing here in a bathrobe.” Her expression changed. “Wait! I do have clothes on underneath. I would like the record to reflect that.”
“As I thought,” he said. “More embarrassed every second.”
Flora smelled the tulips. “Can we pretend this never happened?”
The cat meowed again. Henry shooed it aside gently. “Let’s pretend I walked up to you in a better place than an alley, and I wasn’t tripping over stray cats or holding garbage can lids, and I gave you flowers because I like the way you sing, and no one was mortified in the process. That way, I still get some runs up on the board.”
“Runs on the board? I didn’t realize we were playing a game,” Flora said.
“It’s a baseball thing. Sorry. I’m going to stop talking now. In fact, I’m about ready to agree that this never happened.”
Flora smiled. “Sherman’s going to have my head if I’m not ready to go. We’re onstage again in a few minutes.”
“And I am going to pay the cover charge and find a table, and not say another word. You didn’t see me. I’m a ghost.”
Flora reached the door. Then, looking over her shoulder, she said, “I’m glad you came back. I’ve gotten used to seeing you out there in the crowd.”
The door clicked behind her, as solidly attached as Henry’s heart.
AFTERWARD, Flora mopped her brow in her dressing room. She leaned into the tulips, breathing their clean perfume. What had happened onstage? She’d become aware of Henry in the audience again, of his eyes on her, of his hands on the table, of the way the candlelight gilded his face and hair.
This time, though, her immunity was gone. She had an overwhelming urge to look at him, to sing to him, and it terrified her. She fought it. But when the time came to sing “Walk Beside Me,” it was as though someone had found the source of music inside her and was pulling the notes out of her harder and faster than she intended. She was only able to resist for a moment more before giving in absolutely.
She sang to Henry, and to him alone. And once she gave her voice like that she couldn’t remember any more of the performance. What she’d sung. What it sounded like. Whether she’d been good. There had been applause at the end. That she knew, although the spotlight had disoriented her enough that she’d rushed offstage. It would be the last time she’d allow her feelings to get the better of her.
Needing fresh air, she left the dressing room and hurried through the narrow, carpeted corridor. The light was dim; only a few sconces with single bulbs lined the walls. She put her hand on the doorknob beneath an exit sign.
The night air was like a splash of cool water. She thought about going back for a coat, but decided against it. She slipped out and closed the door behind her, making sure it was unlocked. The fire escape was within reach. Glad she was wearing a shorter dress, she stepped onto the trash can and climbed to a small second-floor window. Someone had been tuck-pointing the bricks and left a ladder against the wall. She pulled herself over the lip of the building and onto a flat, tar-covered roof.
And then she heard his voice.
Sitting on the roof’s edge, she leaned forward. Henry stood in the alley, looking every direction but up. Her breath caught in her chest. What was he doing?
“Flora!”
She couldn’t bear the sight of him down below. He needed to be answered. “Look up.”
Henry’s eyes found her. “What are you doing?”
“Getting air.”
“There not enough on the ground?”
“It’s better up here,” she said.
“If you say so.” He scratched his head and glanced back at the door.
“Are you coming up?”
“Up? I don’t know —”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?” Did he not want to see her, after all? She tried to figure out whether that hurt or relieved her, or both.
“It’s that … it’s that I am deathly afraid of heights.”
She grinned and swung her legs back around the edge. After that confession, it would be rude to send him away. “This is an easy climb. Meet you on the balcony.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s not that bad.” There was a grunt as he jumped for the fire escape.
“Don’t look down,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted.
Henry, hanging tight to the ladder, looked down and then up at her. His face looked pale.
He scaled the fire escape and then the ladder, pulling himself over the ledge in a single, fluid motion. He hurried away from the edge. “How’s the view from the center? Whew. Safe. Now, about your singing.” He turned to face her.
“Shh,” she said. “Nobody likes a critic.” Her heart pounded. “We have to stop meeting like this. The stray cats will talk.” She found a seat on the rooftop a few feet away from him and caught his scent on the night air. Lemons and spice.
“Maybe I’m writing another article and I need an interview,” he said.
“Are you?” she said. A hope flickered that he would, and she’d find a sponsor. But she knew that was nonsense.
“No, but I’d like to.” He sat next to her. “Tell me about it. Why you like to fly. Where you’d like to go.”
She leaned back on her elbows, turning her gaze up. He was close, though not so close that their bodies touched. She couldn’t bring herself to face him. Nor, it seemed, could he look at her. But she felt him all the same.
“Ever hear of Bessie Coleman?” she asked.
“No, was she a singer?”
The disappointment that he was unaware of someone so remarkable, so important to her, pricked her like a needle. Flora tried to keep her voice light as she explained.
“She was the first colored woman to fly a plane. And the first of my people to have an international pilot’s license. No American schools would teach her to fly, so she went all the way to Paris to learn with money she earned doing people’s nails.”
She glanced at Henry as she spoke, gratified to see he looked embarrassed.
“Why haven’t I heard of her?” he asked.
She shrugged. She had a theory, but didn’t want to talk about it just then.
“Well, what happened to her?” Henry asked a moment later. “She sounds like a good news story.”
“She died,” Flora said. “In an accident.”
“That’s terrible,” Henry said.
Flora didn’t know what to say to that. It was terrible. But death happened all the time. It didn’t do to dwell, or you’d never get anything done for the sadness. This was why it was better to care less, at least when it came to others.
They were silent for a long while, looking at the cloud-muffled sky, hearing noises from below — people talking and leaving the building — as well as their own gentle breathing. She briefly wondered about Grady, and hoped he’d assumed she’d made her own way hom
e.
And then they talked about their families — Nana and Sherman. And the fact that Henry lived with Ethan and the Thornes, because he’d lost his family. Flora didn’t ask Henry about his newspaper job, whether that was his dream, as flying was hers. She didn’t need to know any more about what was in his heart.
Time passed. It was hard to tell how much. There were no stars or moon visible to measure the spent minutes. Light from the streetlamps reached the roof, polishing the planes of Henry’s face. She studied it and concluded that she liked it. Very much. What would she be thinking if Henry weren’t white? Would he be a possibility?
She scolded herself silently, first for thinking in terms of possibility, and second for thinking she would change anything about Henry. She’d never want anyone to try to change anything about her. What’s more, there was something so right about him. The way he’d been with Annabel. The way he paid attention to her music and asked her about flying and her family. And something else she couldn’t identify. Some people, like some songs, simply added up to more than the sum of their parts.
She pretended to inspect her fingernails, embarrassed that her teeth had started to chatter. She stood.
“You’re cold.” He stood next to her.
She nodded. Her body shook, but more from trying to keep herself from pressing against him. He put his coat around her shoulders.
“Thank you.” It was a miracle that she’d been able to control her voice, especially when a shy grin spread across his face and he pushed that one stray curl on his forehead back up where it belonged. The gesture pierced her. He just wanted to keep things in order. She could relate. She concentrated on the warmth and scent of his coat until her body stopped shaking.
“We should probably head home, shouldn’t we — back into our regular lives and such. Believe it or not, I have a test tomorrow. Then a baseball game.”
She nodded, surprised that, for once in her life, she wasn’t the one pulling away.
“Unless,” he said.
She looked at him, puzzled.
He whistled the opening line of “The Blue Danube.”
“A waltz? You can’t be serious.”
“As serious as scurvy for pirates,” he said. “I know we should go, but I want just one more minute of this, and I’m cold too. One more minute, a tiny bit of warmth. It’s all I ask.” He put on a grave look. “Please?”
She laughed. “You’re such the tragic figure.” Still, she hesitated. What would it be like if she were still in school, studying for tests and going to dances and such? Would it be like this? Or would she still be chasing other, bigger dreams?
She reached for his upraised hand and looked into his eyes, whose color reminded her of that sharply curving part of the sky at the horizon’s edge, the part she always aimed her plane toward. But it wasn’t just that. It was the openhearted kindness in them, so much that she forgot the loneliness that overwhelmed her most of the time.
He closed his left hand over hers. He moved his right to the hollow of her back and it was almost more than she could take, the warmth of his touch, this connection in two spots. He moved his feet. She moved hers in response. And then they were dancing together on the rooftop, wrapped with an invisible thread that she needed to snap before it killed her.
“A request, Henry.”
“Anything.” He looked into her eyes and it was a moment before she could work her mouth.
“No more whistling.”
“But we need music.”
“How about you leave that to me? Music’s more my thing than yours, after all.” If she could find her voice, she could find her equilibrium.
He smiled and looked as if he was about to speak, but he didn’t. Then she hummed the rest of the song as he moved her in circles. She put her own spin on the melody, so it was more swing than waltz, and he picked up on her cue, releasing her only to draw her back in, closer than he had before. Behind her, the black cat that had found its way to the edge of the rooftop meowed.
The sound brought her back to herself. What she was doing? It was a mistake for so many reasons, not the least of which was the fact of Grady. And then there were their different backgrounds, the wrongness of thinking of a white boy as anything other than someone to be wary around. But this wasn’t just any boy, or any white boy. There was something about him. Something worth knowing. That much was certain.
The cat hissed and slipped over the edge of the roof, and the feeling that had overcome Flora during her performance rushed back. She pushed away.
“What did I do?” he said.
“Nothing. We can’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Maybe,” Henry said, “some things just aren’t meant to be thought about.”
“Still,” she said, “we can’t do this. We can’t. For so many reasons.”
“What about someday?” he asked.
She couldn’t help but wince, as if the word itself had been formed to hurt her. Henry did not reply, but the look in his eyes shattered her.
As they made their way down the ladder, Henry looked straight ahead. He was glad Flora still wore his jacket. He’d have perspired clean through if he’d been in it. His fear of heights embarrassed him. He’d long wondered how something that existed only in his mind could so affect his body. But then again, fear wasn’t the only emotion that worked that way. Love was nothing you could see or touch. It lived entirely inside of you, invisibly. Even so, it could change everything.
One step at a time, one step at a time. And then he was down and walking behind Flora, reveling in the scent of her hair, feeling happier than he had in ages. She reached for the doorknob, jiggled it, and looked at Henry.
“Was it locked when you went outside?” she asked.
“Honestly? I haven’t a clue. My only thought was catching up with you.”
“It wasn’t. I made sure. And now it is. We’re locked out.”
“Is that a problem?”
“My pocketbook is in there,” she said. “My money and keys. I won’t be able to get into my house, or pay anyone to take me.”
He took her hand. “Let’s go around the front and knock like crazy,” he said. “Maybe someone will hear us. And I can always give you a lift.”
She wrested her fingers out of his, ignoring his suggestion that he drive her himself. “They’ll be gone. They’ll be gone and we’ll have no place to go until sunrise. And now this.” She held out her hand. “Rain.”
Henry looked up. A warm raindrop smacked his face. “Maybe it won’t turn out to be as bad as all that.”
As he spoke, the door swung open. In its dark mouth stood the bass player.
“Grady!” Flora said. “I thought you’d gone home.”
“I would have,” he said, staring at Henry with eyes full of hurt and malice. “But you left your things and I was worried. Who’s this, Flora?”
“This?” Flora said. “This is Henry. He helped write that newspaper article, the one on the Staggerwing —”
Grady interrupted. “I looked for you. Everywhere. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said. Henry looked away. “Just talking.”
“Do you know how late it is?” Grady said. “I’ve been waiting.”
“Grady,” Flora said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I needed some air, and I ran into Henry in the alley.” She slipped out of Henry’s coat and handed it back to him. Henry could hardly bear the look in Grady’s eyes.
“Let’s go,” Grady said. “Let’s get you home where you belong. Your grandmother will be worried sick, just like I was.”
Grady pulled Flora into the Domino. Henry held his coat overhead as the sky started raining in earnest. He stood in the deluge until he was drenched. But he couldn’t be miserable. The soft hands of the rain on his skin made him feel as though he stumbled on the
edge of someplace magical. He wasn’t sure which direction he should move next. And he wondered how serious Flora was when she said such things couldn’t happen, not even someday.
HENRY arrived at the Thorne mansion, every nerve in his body alight. He felt Flora in his arms, still breathed her essence in his jacket. He assumed everyone was asleep when he slipped inside, grateful the front door always swung on well-oiled hinges. He removed his shoes and crept toward the curving staircase.
Then Helen called his name.
Her voice had come from the kitchen. He found her sitting at the counter, which was laden with enough food to feed a hungry family. Cold cuts, soft rolls, sliced apples, cheese, a wedge of four-layer chocolate cake, and directly in front of her, a jar of strawberry preserves with a spoon sticking out of it.
“You’re out late.” Her tone was sharper than it had been earlier. She took a huge spoonful of jam and slid it into her mouth. “You could’ve invited me, Henry.”
It hadn’t occurred to him. But he was glad he hadn’t, even as he regretted Helen’s wounded feelings. “I thought you’d be far too tired. I apologize.”
“Oh, Henry.” Helen wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, pushed the jam away, and scanned the table for her next victim. “I’ll always rally for you.”
Henry’s collar felt tight.
“So where were you, anyway?” Helen shoved nearly half of her sandwich into her mouth. Henry’s eyes widened. “What? I get hungry. So hungry. You wouldn’t believe it.”
He had to look away a moment.
“There’s plenty to go around.”
Helen shoved the plates of rolls and meat in his direction. Henry, not one to decline food, put together a sandwich of his own.
“So you simply must tell me. Where were you? There’s something different about you right now.” She finished her sandwich and dragged the cake toward her. “Should I be jealous?”
The Game of Love and Death Page 10
