Destiny's Daughters

by Gwynne Forster

  “Not half as much as I do,” he said. “See you.”

  “If I know Konny, you two hit if off just fine, or he would have brought you home immediately. Say, was that a business suit he had on under that overcoat? I thought I saw gray pinstripes.”

  “You did, indeed. Thank you for introducing me to him. I like him a lot.”

  “Gray pinstripes. Next, I’ll see rabbits hopping on my ceiling. Well . . . we rehearse tomorrow from eleven until one, and—”

  “I know. Konny told me. After the rehearsal, he’s going to take me to explore Union Station. I’ve heard it’s like a little city.”

  “Nobody ever heard of Konny doing anything but working, going jamming at clubs, and going home. Something tells me I don’t know Konny.”

  Cindy looked at her and grinned. “Your description of him didn’t exactly fit, and I liked the difference.”

  Sleep didn’t come easily for Clarissa that night. For the first time since she left Lydia’s employment, she had an acute sense of loneliness. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Konny had said to Cindy. Four words, but his smile and the intimacy those words conveyed sent shivers through Clarissa. She could feel, almost taste and smell, the simmering emotion in that seemingly innocent scene.

  “Everybody but me,” she said aloud. She needed the arms of a man she cared for, the sweetness of a man’s strength and tenderness, the joy of belonging to that man, and knowing there was little likelihood that she’d have that feeling any time soon brought tears to her eyes. For the first time in her life, she wanted a nameless, faceless any-man to make love to her and cool the fire of her libido, a fire that Josh Medford had never been able to quench.

  “I’m not jealous of Cindy or of any other woman who has a good man,” she said aloud, sitting up in bed when sleep still hadn’t come at three o’clock. “I just want what’s due me.”

  After her show that night, Clarissa gave Cindy a key to her apartment. “Konny will look after you. I’ll see you later.”

  “Where you headed to?” Raymond asked her.

  “You said I needed a life, didn’t you? See you tomorrow at eleven.”

  She got a taxi in front of the club and settled into the backseat. Calm and peaceful. I ought to be scared. The taxi soon turned into Twelfth Street and stopped at the door of the Marriott Downtown Hotel. She paid the fare, got out, and strolled into the spacious and grand lobby. After letting her glance sweep the place, she took a seat in a dark-blue lounge chair near the entrance to the bar, removed her coat to expose her red sheath evening gown, and crossed her knees. She wished she smoked, because that would give her something to do with her hands. How did women get the nerve to go into a bar alone and sit there comfortably, as if they belonged there?

  Very soon, a man passed, turned back and looked at her, but she refused eye contact, and he went on into the bar. About forty, she surmised, well dressed, decent-looking, and on the make. She wondered if his wife knew he picked up women who sat near the entrance to bars in big, high-rise hotels. Am I any better? Maybe he’s like me. Lonely.

  Deciding that she didn’t have the stomach for it, she uncrossed her knees and rose to go. “Would you share a drink with me?” the man who’d gone into the bar minutes earlier said as he came out and walked directly to her.

  “Thanks, but I’m leaving.”

  “Too bad. I see you don’t care for this sort of thing any more than I do.” He extended his hand for a handshake. “My name is Lawrence Bishop, and I’m from Shreveport, Louisiana. I’m here for a merchants’ meeting, and I’ve had a rotten day. I just want somebody to talk with, somebody who’s not interested in merchandising.”

  She didn’t know why, but she believed him. “All right. We can talk for a few minutes.”

  He put her coat across his arm. “It’s noisy in the bar, but they’ll serve us in that section over there.” He pointed to a cluster of tables amidst a group of artificial trees strung with lights for the coming Christmas holiday.

  “I won’t ask why you’re here alone,” he began, “because it’s none of my business. Do you mind telling me your name and what you do for a living?”

  “You may call me Clarissa Mae. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not a prostitute. If I had a mother, I’d be happy for her to know what I do and to watch me do it.”

  His laugh had a merry, infectious ring. “In other words, you’re famous and you’re keeping your identity from me. Fair enough. What do you do when you get lonely?”

  It was her turn to laugh. “I consider doing things that are out of character.”

  “Me, too. I walked in here looking for a woman to take upstairs to my room. It’s a good thing I ran into you or I’d probably have been an adulterer for the first time in my life.” He shook his head. “I was so damned miserable. I just needed to lose myself in a loving woman.”

  “What did I do that caused you to change your mind?”

  “Body language. When I walked up to you, you stepped back from me, increasing the space between us, and your handshake was brief. A teenager could have read that. Why did you sit near the bar?”

  She lifted her shoulder in a quick shrug. “Same reason why you went in there and, like you, I don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “But you’re young, elegant, and so beautiful. Why should you be lonely?”

  “I could say those exact words to you. I’m a relatively recent divorcee, and I haven’t yet tested the waters, mostly because I’m not eager to get back into that quagmire.”

  The waiter took their orders, bourbon and water for him, white wine for her. “Marriage can be bliss if you’re lucky enough to get the one who’s right for you,” he said.

  “Did you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, and I hope I’m never tempted to violate it again.”

  “That’s a naïve hope. You’ll be tempted aplenty, but when you see trouble coming, walk the other way. My ex-husband walked right into it and wallowed in it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Trust me, Mr. Bishop, I’m happier now than I was during those fifteen years I was married to him. Loneliness is better than living in a futile relationship. Maybe I didn’t meet his needs, just as he didn’t meet mine. I wish him well.”

  Bishop raised his glass and sipped the bourbon a little at a time. “The sad thing about our encounter is that I’m positive I would have enjoyed making love with you. You’re sensitive, and you’re very tender. I could use some of that.” He let the contents of his glass stream down his throat. “Thanks so much for your company, Clarissa Mae. We’d better separate before I do something stupid like asking you to spend the night with me.”

  She rose and reached for her coat. “Thank you for the compliment. Have a good life. Good-bye.” She refused his assistance getting into her coat and headed for the door.

  “May I get a taxi for you?” she heard him call after her. But she didn’t respond. Talk about sensitive and tender! She needed him as badly as he needed her, and if she had remained with him much longer, she might have gone with him to his room, and guilt would have plagued her for the rest of her life. She got into a taxi at the hotel’s door and headed home.

  She had no pride in the fact that she didn’t follow through with her plan to find someone to sleep with. God was answering prayers she’d stored up over the years when he led Lawrence Bishop into the lounge. Maybe what his wife didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, but if he’d bedded another woman, he would behave differently toward her thereafter, and she’d feel it. It might be barely noticeable, but he would lose something of his feelings for her and she’d catch it in a minute. She knew, because she’d been there. She’d nearly gone berserk when she’d found out Josh was screwing around. Damn him! From then on, she’d felt nothing for him.

  Cindy had gone to bed when Clarissa got home. She sat in the darkened living room, musing over the evening. Would she have made love with that stranger if he had encouraged it and if he hadn’t been married? And what about the next time? S
he went into her room, undressed in the dark, and went to bed. I need to find someone I can care for, she said to herself and turned out the light.

  Chapter 10

  On December the twentieth, Clarissa and her band checked into the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York City and went directly to the recording studio in Long Island City, a helter-skelter, industrial-type area that bore no resemblance to sleek mid-Manhattan. Yet, it was only a short drive across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.

  “Lord, I never saw so many rude people in my entire life,” she told Raymond. “They knock you down if you don’t jump out of the way. What’s their hurry?”

  “Don’t ask me. I lived here for nearly twenty years, and I soon discovered that the way to make it in this city is to act just like the New Yorkers act. Don’t let grass grow under your feet. If you stay here longer than a week, you’ll have to take antistress pills.”

  She looked at him much as a mother does when indulging a recalcitrant child. “Raymond, if you think I should take stress pills, I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning. Some of that stuff makes people forget who they are.”

  “Yeah? I can think of a few people I’d like to keep supplied with it. Maybe they’d get their behinds off their shoulders. I hope these recording sessions will be over by Christmas Eve.”

  “Don’t even think it,” Oscar said. “We get Christmas Day off and we have to go back into the studio on the twenty-sixth. I told my old lady to forget about the tree and presents, and we’ll have Christmas here in New York. This place jumps during Christmas.”

  “Are you planning anything for Christmas Day?” Raymond asked Clarissa.

  She was, but it wasn’t anything she could share with Raymond, dear as he was. “I’m going to ride through Central Park in a hansom carriage, if I have to do it all by myself.”

  “I hate to think of you by yourself on Christmas Day—if I didn’t think we’d freeze to death, I’d go with you. I’ll be with my brother and his family. What you doing, Konny?”

  “I’m getting a train to Washington at four o’clock Christmas Eve, and I plan to be back around noon on the twenty-sixth.”

  Clarissa eyed Konny with an appraising look. “She’s a lucky girl. What about your parents? Won’t they expect you?”

  “They’re not stupid. I’ll call ‘em.”

  “Yeah, man,” Oscar said. “Your dad will definitely understand the call of the wild. But don’t count on your mother. She’ll think you should go home to mama. Getting my mother to understand that I needed to be with my girl was like trying to teach a tone-deaf person how to sing. Go do your thing, Konny.”

  Clarissa didn’t want to be with her band members Christmas Day, for she saw it as her one chance to be alone long enough to call every Holmes entry in the five New York City telephone books. She got up early Christmas morning, ate breakfast in her room, called the reception desk and requested the telephone books. By lunchtime, she’d gone through the two hundred and fifty-five entries in the Manhattan directory.

  Why can’t people be more loving? she thought. Very few of those she called sympathized with her plight. She telephoned Lydia, wished her a pleasant day, dressed, and went downstairs to lunch.

  “Somebody ought to teach these Yankees how to roast a turkey and how to make decent gravy,” she said to the person at the table next to her.

  The woman pressed her napkin to the corners of her mouth and looked sheepish. “I’ve been thinking how good it is, but of course it’s well known in my family that I can’t cook. I take it you can.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Clarissa said. They exchanged pleasant small talk for a few minutes. She rose to leave. “Well, Merry Christmas. I have to make some calls.” Back in her room, she continued her search in the Brooklyn directory until pangs in her stomach told her that it was time to eat.

  Her phone rang. “Hello. Hi, Raymond. How’re things at your brother’s house?”

  “Great. We’re thinking of going to the Vanguard to take in some jazz. Want us to pick you up?”

  “Thanks, Raymond, but I’m going to stay right here where it’s warm. You go, and have a good time.”

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t ask you.”

  She hadn’t even started on the Queens Borough. If Louis Armstrong and other black notables had lived in that area, she was sure many other African-Americans lived there. Around midnight, exhausted and aching with the pain of failure, she closed the last book and flung herself into bed. Maybe they had married, as she had, and used their married names. Maybe . . . Anything was possible, but she would find them. When she made enough money, she would be able to afford newspaper and television ads. Comforted with that thought, she dozed off and was soon trying to climb a barbed wire fence that separated her from two women whose faces she couldn’t see.

  She slept fitfully and awakened exhausted when she received a call from Morton Chase at nine the next morning. “What’s the matter, Clarissa? You sound groggy.”

  “Hi, Morton. Hard time getting to sleep last night. What’s up?”

  “I got you booked into Toronto. That town’s big on jazz.”

  She got out of bed, stretched and yawned. “Morton, don’t butter me up. It’s cold as the devil up there right now. That place will make Kansas City seem like a boiler room. When?”

  “It’s a New Year’s Eve gig.”

  “I’ve never asked the guys to work on a major holiday.”

  “Tell ‘em they’ll each get a five-hundred-dollar bonus. They’re paying you twice your usual fee.”

  “Tell those Canadians to make the bonus a thousand each for the band members, and we’ll take it.”

  “A thousand-dollar bonus for one night on top of my regular salary?” Oscar asked her. “Damned right, we’re going.”

  She couldn’t understand her eagerness to get back to Kansas City. It wasn’t home, and she would never regard it as such, but she was drawn to it. “When we leave Toronto, I hope we’re headed for Kansas City,” she told her agent when she called him.

  “Right. You got a two-week stand there.”

  She hung up and began to pack. She’d promised to see Lydia before the end of the year. “I’m going to Washington, and I’ll meet you in Toronto December thirtieth,” she told her band members later when they met.

  “I’m doing the same,” Konny said. “See you guys in Toronto.”

  “You really like Cindy, I take it,” Clarissa said to Konny, as they sat together on Amtrak’s Acela Express to Washington, D.C.

  “From the minute I first saw her. She’s wonderful.”

  “I’m happy for you,” she said, feeling the emptiness, the loneliness begin to seep back into her. “I’d give anything to feel what you’re feeling.”

  He propped his left foot on the footrest in front of him, leaned back and closed his eyes. “Didn’t you feel it when you fell in love with your husband?”

  She shook her head. “Konny, I’ve never felt it. I realized long ago that I married to escape the situation I lived in. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I was eighteen. What a mistake I made!”

  “Put it behind you, Clarissa. You have a great career before you, and you’re one of the finest women I’ve ever met. Decent to the bone. Warm and giving. You’re in for some happiness, lady.”

  A frown eclipsed her face. Konny didn’t speak that way around Raymond and Oscar. “Thank you. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”

  “Don’t thank me. It’s true. If you’d given me the slightest encouragement, I’d have gone after you like the FBI after a counterspy.”

  She swung around and stared at him. “You’re making this up.”

  He laughed, but the laugh held no merriment, only a hollow sound. “I can laugh about it now, because I’m over it, and I have Cindy. Don’t you know how a woman’s simple kindness and gentleness affects a man, and especially if she looks like you?”

  She wanted to get off that subject. “What is it about Cindy that attrac
ts you?”

  “Everything. She began smiling the minute she saw me with that sign. And you know, she’s the same kind of woman that you are. Independent, feminine, decent, honest, and tender. And she’s a straight shooter. I hope we can make it.”

  “So do I. Give her my love. By the way, when do you think our CD will get to the radio stations?”

  “Raymond said the first recording we did has been packaged as a single, and the studio shipped it to disk jockeys yesterday.”

  “Good, that means our New Year’s Eve program should have ‘Another Kind of Blues’ in the second spot. I don’t mind. I love to sing it.”

  “Thanks, Clarissa. I think it’s the best pop song I’ve written.”

  They separated at Union Station in Washington, and he left her with much to think about. For instance, what had he written that wasn’t a pop song? And if she had encouraged him, he’d have gone after her. Whew! That had never occurred to her. She breathed deeply with relief as she settled into a Capitol Cab. He wouldn’t have told her if he hadn’t already gotten over it. Thank God for Cindy.

  Chapter 11

  Warmth and a sense of well-being stole over Clarissa as she rang the bell of the elegant beige-and-brown Tudor-style house on upper Sixteenth Street. It struck her forcibly that Lydia Stanton’s house was the place she called home, and she didn’t know when she began to feel that way.

  “Well, well. Miss Holmes. Come right on in. Merry Christmas,” Lorraine, the housekeeper said, gushing as if she were welcoming Lydia Stanton’s daughter. “Mrs. Stanton is in the living room.”

  She handed her suitcase to Lorraine, hurried to the living room, and came to an abrupt halt at the door. So this was how the wealthy celebrated Christmas. Near the fire that crackled in the marble-framed hearth stood a ceiling-high Douglas fir decorated with hundreds of twinkling lights and trinkets of all kinds. Colorful Christmas stockings hung from the mantel, and the odor of fresh green pine branches and bayberry delighted her olfactory sense. She looked at Lydia’s wheelchair-bound figure, alone amid the beauty and wealth, and experienced a pang of guilt. I owe her everything, every opportunity and every applause, and I should have come here to be with her at Christmas.