The Lucky Ones (9 page)

With a gentle gesture, he leaned toward his mother and whispered in her ear. Mrs. Darby squinted in Cordelia’s direction, nodding but not otherwise acknowledging her. Then Max crossed the street in swift, purposeful strides until they were standing face to face. The day was almost done and the light was romantic, and Cordelia’s frank, red lips curled up at the edges because, for a minute or two, she and Max were just like any girl and boy who are shy about seeing each other after a separation.

“If you want to talk, we’d better drive somewhere else. They aren’t going to like you talking to me here any more than they’d like me talking to you in White Cove.”

Cordelia’s smile faded, but she nodded, understanding, and she walked around to the driver’s seat and started up the motor without comment. They drove cross-town, through streets filled with children running through fire hydrants that had been mercifully opened. The spray of the water looked like gold in the late afternoon light. Eventually they found themselves on the West Side, and parked on a sloping street just past an old cemetery.

“I bet your mother is happy to have you home,” Cordelia said after a time. They came to a park bench and sat down, a foot apart, as the sun melted over the river. The bank of trees on the other side were orange with sunset, and the water surrounding the sun’s reflection was silver and still and dotted with boats of all sizes—lazy barges and small fisherman’s barks with their lines cast out.

“She is, but she’d rather I was doing what I was meant to do. Anyway, it doesn’t feel much like home now. Harlem, I mean, not Ma’s apartment.”

“They aren’t proud to have you?”

“Nobody likes a prodigal. Not really. They’ll take me, but it doesn’t mean they like that I got famous while I was passing as white.” Max laughed a joyless kind of laugh and leaned forward, propping his elbows against his knees. The sun washed out his pale blue eyes, but he was staring back, just as intensely, as though he were challenging it. After a while Cordelia rested her hand on his arm, and he glanced up at her. He shook his head and leaned back against the bench, draping his arm around her shoulders. “You think if you went back to Ohio now they’d be happy to see you?”

“I know they wouldn’t.” Cordelia’s throat was dry and bitter, thinking of her hometown. There were so many reasons they wouldn’t want her back that were impossible to explain, so she just whispered, as sweetly as she knew how: “But nobody ever looked up to me.”

“They think you were kind of uppity back there?” His grip tightened on her, and she leaned against him, toward the affectionate way he pronounced
uppity
, as though it were a good thing.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

She nodded and knew that it wasn’t important to tell him how she’d come to leave, the memory of John Field standing at the altar with that hopeful grin, and then his face when she spotted him from the train and how it had been long with sorrow. Or the things her Aunt Ida used to call her, or the probable prohibition against saying her name out loud in their house now. They were alike, she and Max, and it was the characteristics they had in common that had driven her to the city, more than any of those other things.

“Max?”

“Yes?”

“They want me to negotiate with them.”

“Who does?”

“The Hales.” His arm against the back of her neck stiffened, so Cordelia opened her eyes and saw how fiercely Max was staring at her. The blue eyes were striking against his olive skin, and she could see the constriction in his neck. “Negotiate what?”

“A truce, between my family and theirs. Thom Hale came to see me the other night at The Vault. I haven’t told anyone yet—I think they’re waiting for me to say something to Charlie.”

“But why you?”

Cordelia shrugged. “I guess they think I’ll be easy to push around.” A half smile emerged on one side of her face. “I suppose you could tell them they shouldn’t count on that.”

But Max did not pick up the joke. “Don’t” was all he said.

Averting her gaze, Cordelia replied, “But why not? If they think they can push me around, they’ll find themselves disappointed, and anyway, there’s too much fighting as is. One of our boys died the night Astrid was kidnapped, and they lost a few, too, and I don’t want any more of that.”

“Don’t,” he repeated. Shaking his head, he went on, “They killed your father. What would stop them from hurting you? Please, Cordelia.”

“What use would it be, killing me?” Cordelia sat up so that she was next to Max with her legs tucked under her. “They may be killers, but I hardly think a dead girl would do them any good. It just wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“Well.” Cordelia sighed, wishing she’d said nothing and hoping her breath would blow the topic away. Half of her had wanted him to talk this way, but half chafed at it. “Lucky for you, Charlie’d never have it, so I think I’ll have to put off my dream of brokering peace between warring tribes for another day.”

“Good.” Max ran his fingers over her hair, and she closed her eyes, letting his touch send little tremors through her skull and down into her lips. Then something else occurred to him, and he stood up abruptly. “If there’s trouble, you should get home before dark,” he said as he offered his hand.

She stood without his assistance, and they walked slowly back to where she had left the car. They didn’t speak again, not even when she slowed the car to a stop in front of his mother’s house. His eyes darted from one window to the other, trying to determine whether they were being watched, and then he leaned in, holding her steady at the waist with his hand. The kiss wasn’t a shy kiss this time. He kissed her as though he needed to, as though he couldn’t stand not to, and she kissed him back, wishing it would go on and on. When he got out of the car he bent and gazed at her for a few moments, before disappearing behind that brownstone facade.

An exquisite sigh traveled across Cordelia’s whole body once he was gone and she knew for sure how it was between them: that she was in his mind, as he was in hers, but that she couldn’t know when she’d see him next.

9

WHEN SHE DESCENDED THE STAIRS THE NEXT MORNing, Cordelia heard yelling from behind doors and knew that something had not gone Charlie’s way. Jones was speaking, too, in his more quiet and measured voice, which told Cordelia that it was something to do with the business and that she would learn of it eventually. But her body was still pliant with sleep, and she didn’t feel like talking to her brother when he was angry. Twisting her long, loose braid over her shoulder, Cordelia proceeded to the first floor and found Len, the cook, reading that morning’s funnies with his foot up on a chair.

“What can I get you, Miss Grey?”

“I’ll have coffee and orange juice and a croissant,” she replied, and then went out to the verandah.

It was a little strange, saying the word
croissant
to a man like Len, who had only one leg and whose talents tended more to spaghetti with meatballs. But Darius had always liked fine things, and his daughter was getting used to asking for them. On the verandah, she adjusted her light linen shift and sat down in the elaborately curving white iron chair.

The sky was thick with formless, gray clouds tinged slightly yellow by a sun that was—Cordelia assumed, though she could not see it—approaching its height. Dogwood was peaceful at that hour, and the weather wasn’t so bad today, at least under the stone arches that protected the south side of the house.

“Thank you, Len,” she said as the cook placed her breakfast tray down on the white iron table. “Thanks,” she repeated, more gratefully, when she saw that he had folded up the newspaper he’d been reading before and tucked it next to the silver coffee carafe.

She looked for Max’s name in the sports pages of the paper but found it instead in the local section. Her anger flared when she saw why. The article mostly consisted of an interview with Mrs. Laurel about how she didn’t have any problem with Negroes personally, it was only that she, like most people, abhorred dishonesty, and that was the reason that her husband had to cut funding to his former prodigy. She went on to endorse a dry politician for the upcoming governor’s race and to make various allusions to the tide of immigrants—the Irish and Italians and Germans—who were ruining the country with their native drinking habits and strange-smelling foods.

A loud groan of exasperation escaped Cordelia’s lips, and she threw the paper aside, just before Charlie came charging through the French doors and strode past her.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said to his broad back.

Charlie stood on the lowest stone step, staring out at the lawns that rolled into orchards and fields and great clusters of trees as far as the eye could see.

“Astrid,” Charlie said darkly.

“Is that all?” Charlie shot her a suspicious, over-the-shoulder glance, so she added: “I heard you and Jones…talking.”

The only acknowledgment Charlie made of this observation was a snort. “She won’t look me in the eyes,” he went on. “Maybe she caught the cabin fever, having to live with a bodyguard and never goin’ out.”

“It’s been rough for me, too, with someone always on my tail.”

“Yeah, well. Get used to it.”

“Charlie…” Cordelia sat up straight and tucked her braid into her dress. An idea was taking shape in her mind, and she wasn’t going to let Charlie’s sourness arrest it. “You know, it really is no way to live… Perhaps it’s time we called a truce with the Hales?”

It took a while for Charlie to turn around. Once he was facing Cordelia she saw that he was wearing an expression like he’d just been called ugly. “Why would we do something like that?”

“They asked for it, for starters.”

“They asked
you
?”

“Thom did. He came in to The Vault the other night and told me he’d like to negotiate a truce.”

Charlie’s eyes glinted with anger. “Thom Hale was in our place!” he shouted. It was not a question. He repeated himself and then stormed back up toward Cordelia, grabbing the table with both hands so that it shook, sloshing coffee and orange juice onto the white iron curlicues of its surface. “Thom Hale was in my place and you
didn’t tell me
?”

“I was going to tell you.” Cordelia leveled her gaze at her brother. “I was thinking over what he said to me.”

“That we should pretend like they didn’t murder our dad? Or try to kill Astrid? All so we can make it a little easier on them business-wise?” One side of Charlie’s mouth was curled up, and he stared at Cordelia disgustedly before turning away. When he sat down on the top step and put his elbows on his big knees, she saw how his dress shirt was rolled to the elbows. Suddenly she knew that he had been up a long time already, worrying.

“Why did you hijack their shipment?” she asked.

He swung his head to look at her. “How did you know about that?”

She met his gaze evenly until he turned back to the landscape.

“We took a lot of clients from the Hales after Dad was killed,” he began slowly. “You know that?”

Cordelia put down her coffee cup and began to redo the plait of her hair. “Yes, I know that.”

“We lost some of them while I was away. Plus some old-timers, clients who’d been with Dad since the beginning.”

“Oh, Charlie, you weren’t away
that
long, I don’t believe—”

“We didn’t lose ’em because I was away. We lost ’em because the Hales got some new supply, real primo stuff. Through Nova Scotia, I guess.”

“If the Hales can get this stuff, surely we can, too,” Cordelia replied calmly. She had finished redoing her braid, but now it felt too tight, so she pushed her fingers in, trying to loosen it.

“That’s what Jones said.” Charlie gave a mirthless laugh. “But I couldn’t have that. Takes too long.”

Cordelia paused and watched her brother light a cigarette. She didn’t like the way he was talking, the ominous way he’d said
Takes too long
. “What did you do?”

“You seem to know already. We hijacked their delivery. Big one. Few days ago, on the road to Rye Haven.”

Cordelia took in a breath. With a shudder she thought how cavalier she had been, going into the city to see Max by herself. If Charlie had hijacked the Hales, she knew they were likely to strike back one way or another, and she had made it back last night only by being lucky—Max had been right. “What are you going to do with it?” was all she could think to say.

“I’m going to sell it! At a markup, to those same bastards who thought they could do better without us.”

Cordelia nodded. Though she still didn’t like the way Charlie was talking, she couldn’t really argue with him. She supposed that was what Darius would have done. “You aren’t nervous they’ll come back at us?”

Charlie lit a cigarette, striking the match hard against the stone. “Stop sounding so much like Jones,” he muttered. “Of course they’ll come back at us.”

“Unless we negotiate with them.”

Charlie stood and faced his sister. His cigarette was between his teeth and his meaty arms were folded tensely over his middle, and he regarded her for several seconds without saying anything. To her surprise he asked, “Did they give any conditions?”

Cordelia blinked. She was remembering Thom at The Vault that night, how he had watched her. That smug look on his face, and the audacity of him coming into her club. How it had been difficult to think of him as more than a boy who meant some harm to her heart, when in fact he was a boy who threatened everything she held dear. But what did any of that matter? Thom had stood there in his expensive suit wearing his tennis-court tan, and she had not been afraid of him. “Only that they want to talk to me.”

“You?” Charlie laughed out loud. “Why you?”

Cordelia shrugged. “I’d like to know the answer to that one, too.”

A cloud of smoke unfurled slowly from Charlie’s mouth. He was squinting, and for a moment he held the cigarette forward between his index and middle finger before dropping it and stubbing it out.

“Let me do it,” Cordelia said, switching the cross of her long legs.

“Hell no.” With a firm shake of his head Charlie came back up the steps and sat down next to her. He picked up her coffee cup and took a big gulp.

Cordelia sat back in her chair, heavy with a mysterious disappointment. “What’s coming if we don’t talk to them, Charlie?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know.” They were both looking south, in the direction of the city, and they saw the two figures coming over the rise at the same time. “I don’t know, but we’d all better prepare. Oh, and this came for you.” From his pants pocket he took a folded yellow square and placed it on the tabletop. “I don’t know what you two are up to, and I’ll do you the courtesy of not asking. You can take care of yourself, I guess.”

Charlie was up again, staring at something in the distance. In seconds she had unfolded the paper and read the telegram. The sender had been left blank, but Cordelia knew perfectly well whom it was from.

Thank you for coming to me yesterday. I wasn’t much fun, and probably didn’t deserve your visit. But seeing your face made me believe the sun might come up again, and sure enough it did
.

“Are there any games you
are
good at?” Astrid demanded. She had won the first game of croquet handily, and now, just when she had been going easy on Victor, he had put his orange ball in position for her to knock him out. “Whenever I remember your abysmal rummy game I have a private shudder and fix myself a drink, you know.”

Light played in Victor’s dark eyes, and he smiled in a quiet, untroubled way. He was standing with his mallet rested on his opposite shoulder, and he took his time answering her. “I know enough not to show you my hand that way,” he replied eventually. “You’ll just have to try to beat me at all of them and find out.”

“Oh, really?” Astrid gave him a little smirk before twirling around and walking over to her ball, the green one, and assuming a wide stance. The thin white cotton of her sleeveless V-necked dress just barely touched her skin, and the oxfords she wore without socks were beaten in and fit comfortably to her feet. She shook her hair away from her face and gripped the shaft with both hands. She took two practice swings, stopping short of the ball, before letting her mallet hit its mark. A loud
thwap
was followed by a quieter
cluck
when the green ball rolled against the orange one. “Ha!” Astrid pumped her fist in the air. “That’s the game, darling—you’ll never recover from this.”

“You could always take the extra turn.”

When she revolved to face him she saw that he didn’t really care one way or another—he was smiling at her in a happy way, and she knew that he wasn’t suggesting it because he wanted to win. He only wanted the game to go on longer. She wanted the game to go on longer, too, and she liked him for being so peculiarly indifferent to winning; but she could see the way the sky was darkening overhead, and anyway she herself hated to lose. “Not a chance, mister,” she said with a wink.

Victor ambled toward her as she put her foot on her own ball to steady it. With one long swing she knocked the orange ball high into the air. They both sucked in breath as it sailed, farther than she’d meant it to, up the hill and over the wall of the hedge maze. “Damn!” she said, when she saw it was gone.

“Come on.” Victor reached for her hand and pulled her toward the maze. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”

“No.” He glanced at her face and then at her hand, as though it had suddenly occurred to him that holding it wasn’t the best idea. She waited for him to let go, but he didn’t, so she went on, “It’s going to rain, can’t you see? I’ll send Milly out for it later.”

“All right.”

The air was full of that dry, earthy smell that comes just before a downpour, and the atmospheric static was playing in her yellow hair. She smiled and pulled him in the opposite direction, back toward the house. “I think I’ll beat you at backgammon next,” she mused as they walked over the grass.

“As you wish.”

“I
do
wish. And after that, I don’t know, maybe table tennis? Although I will have to ask Charlie to buy a set, I guess, because there isn’t one in the house… Are you good at table tennis?”

“I wouldn’t ruin the suspense for you.” He grinned. “Although perhaps we should start with billiards, since Dogwood already has a billiards table.”

“Aha! So
that’s
where your abilities lie. And you thought you could hide it from me. I’ll tell you what, Victor, I’m going to give you a shot, one shot…” She trailed off as they came to the rise that separated the south lawn from the less tended meadow where they had been playing. At first it was because she realized that she had been squeezing his hand, and then it was because she saw Dogwood sitting there below, like the country castle of some English lord. She didn’t want to let go—the surface of his palm was large and dry, and she liked the way it felt against hers—but then she saw a tall figure emerging from the shadows of the verandah on the south side of the house and her pulse quickened. She couldn’t remember what she had been trying to say, so she released her grip and went striding ahead of him across the grass.

They didn’t speak again until she was within shouting distance of the house and could make out the features of her husband, standing on the first flight of steps. “Thanks for giving my ego a little boost, darling. If you insist I’ll return the favor sometime soon over billiards.” Then, raising her arm above her head and calling out in a voice loud enough that Charlie could hear her: “There you are!”

The scowl she saw at a distance was still on Charlie’s face when she began to climb the steps. Behind him, at the breakfast table, was Cordelia, but she was absorbed in a telegram and didn’t acknowledge her friend. Astrid spread her vermillion lips in a brilliant smile that held steady even when he didn’t reciprocate it, and she threw both arms around his middle. “Don’t look cross,” she said with a laugh, shaking out her hair.

“Where have you been all morning?”

“Playing croquet.” Glancing over her shoulder she saw that Victor had remained below, leaning against one of the stone statues and staring in the direction of the city as though something might come at them from there. “Where have you been?”