Authors: Elaine Lowe
Her life was dancing in clubs. Minding this store and a few patrons here and there who still liked old-fashioned herbal medicine. Huddling in her apartment and trying not to dream. Dreaming would force her to remember how empty she really was.
George Sr. closed the paper with a rustle, “Boy those fellas can play some mean ball. Here’s to hoping tomorrow’s game looks more like this one!”
His enthusiasm was met with silence. Sophia tried to flash him a halfhearted grin and he shook his head sadly. “You need something to cheer you up dear. If the Yanks were playing at home and it wasn’t pouring out, I’d swear we should play hooky and let Georgie take the store for the afternoon and go take in a game! Crackerjack and a couple of homers from the Babe or Iron Horse do a soul good, my deary!”
This time, she gave him an honest smile and half a laugh and he grinned and walked into the back room to fill a couple of orders. George Lowbridge was a piece of work. He loved the money he got from that still but he wasn’t a bad sort really. He did care about people. It was too bad his sons had taken on opposite aspects of his personality. As soon as the room was empty, George Jr. came back in from his lunch break and passed behind the counter, making sure to bump into her and give her ass a pinch. She growled low but didn’t have enough energy to put up much of a fight. Junior must have sensed this and didn’t move on past, instead shifting closer to her and breathing hotly down her neck.
“My dear girl, you know you are looking far too glum lately. Are you sure I couldn’t escort you to the Cotton Club for an evening of fun and frolicking?” He raised one eyebrow and ran a hand through his greased-down hair and she shuddered. She didn’t know which was worse, the offer, or the thought that a few years ago she had been out on the town with smarmy idiots just as bad as George Jr.
She stiffened her spine, unwilling to be that person any longer. “Sorry Georgie! I’ve hit my quota for cavorting with rats this year. Maybe next year you’ll get your chance.”
He glared at her. “I’m sure, my dear girl, with an attitude like that you won’t be here next year.” He stalked off and she looked at his retreating back as he swooshed into the storeroom.
No, I don’t think I will be here much longer.
She wasn’t sure where she would go but this city was draining her dry. It had moments of stark beauty and effervescent joy but it writhed in pain and chaos too. There were too many things to feel too many lives to sense. Either she had to leave or risk losing herself completely to cold apathy.
Strangely enough, she didn’t want to lose herself anymore. That night when Daron had left her was seared in her mind. Not the abandonment that turned her body from scorchingly hot to icy cold in a moment, though that was bad enough. It was the image that he’d left her with. She wasn’t sure if it was a glimpse of how he saw her or her own construction of how she wished she could see herself but it was a vision more tantalizing than all the fleeting pleasures the anonymous city could ever offer her.
She could be strong. Use her powers, not deny them. Be happy and content, have a partner and children to love and be loved by. She could be beautiful.
Sitting perched on her stool behind the till, she gazed out the front window of Lowbridge & Sons into the endless gray drizzle. Every person tromping by through the rain was a fount of potential, the bright sparks of their essence calling out to the random passersby searching for friends, lovers, companions—it was beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time. On the corner, she saw a plain girl with a blue umbrella, just like every other navy blue umbrella and a white cap just like half the girls in New York wore. That girl stood still, letting the world pass her by in her loneliness.
But then there was a man in a tan trench coat, just like a hundred thousand other tan trench coats in the city, who swept in and embraced that girl. Her face transformed from plain to pretty as her smile lit up the pervasive gray and the fire of her heart turned for a moment brilliant in reunion with her love. Sophia found tears in her eyes, watching a play that took place a hundred times a day on the corners of the city.
Could she embrace life like that once again?
* * * * *
The subway was ridiculously crowded, as it had been every frigging day for the last week. She was jostled around between a crotchety old woman who stomped on her toe and a leering rotund bald man who smelled far too strongly of onions and liverwurst. She half-closed her eyes, letting go of her consciousness for a bit and letting the Lexington Line carry her toward her flat. It should be home but it wasn’t. Not really. It was where she slept.
She pictured a home sometimes, a little cabin in the woods with whitewashed walls and the shade of tall trees. The warmth of cocoa in the cold winter and sitting on the porch on a blistering summer afternoon. Making love on the kitchen table. Rocking a fussy baby in Grams’ rocking chair. She’d had it all planned out once but for all she’d tried, Jimmy had never really fitted into this picture. Her partner was always someone without a face, just a comforting presence that would fill up her heart.
Daron made the picture complete. She could see him in the rocking chair with a black-haired little boy. See him chopping firewood for the winter, sweat dripping down his broad back. She could feel her nipples dragging across the polished oak surface of an old wooden table as he pounded into her from behind, the scent of dinner burning on the stove.
She sneezed and her legs quivered for a moment as she was again brought into the reality of the damp and stuffy subway and some inconsiderate asshole lighting up a cigarette not three feet away in the packed crowd. She watched with jaded eyes as the lights within him scattered and went dimmer with each puff the dumb sap took. Small vengeance for the whole car having to breathe the stuff in the heavy, wet air. Sophia was happy once again that she had never succumbed to the temptation to take up the habit.
Finally, after managing to force her way past the bald mountain of onion breath and giving a discreet elbow to the smoker to set him into a coughing fit, she got out at her stop on Eighty-Sixth. Longing to take a good deep breath, she hurried up the stairs, unfurling her umbrella and standing for one moment on the sidewalk, breathing in the taste of the rain. There was wetness on her cheeks.
It’s just the weather, I’m not crying. I’m not.
People brushed past her, hurrying to get home to their families. Sophia walked slowly, having nothing to return to but some cold sausage rolls and a dried up apple. She hadn’t been out to the clubs or heard more than a passing note of music from some rich swell’s radio. She should probably try going out tonight but it was likely she’d end up staring at her ceiling, thoughts swirling in her head as she tried to face the cold reality of who she really was and who she wanted to be.
She walked into her building, folding her umbrella and nodding at the doorman, Todd. Turning away from the carpeted hallway to the elevator, she opened the service doorway to the basement flats. She looked down at her feet as she descended the familiar stairs, sighing at the state of her boring but sensible half boots, almost soaked through from all the rain they’d seen lately. They’d have to snuggle up to the radiator tonight while she wrapped herself in her blankets and tried to lose herself in sleep that rarely came. The pounding in her head would not let her thoughts come to a rest. Nothing she could think of had kept the horrible pressure from inside her skull, not booze, not aspirin, not music or crying or screaming. She had no doubt that the one thing outside death that she knew would give her peace was no longer an option. To be in the arms of Daron West.
Her eyes half closed and her actions were prescribed by habit as she dug through her clutch purse for her keys. She was shocked when she bumped into a body standing in front of her door. Jumping back, alarm flashed through her as she gasped her surprise. Cold eyes full of accusation stared back at her and her heart leapt to her throat as the energy of the woman in front of her flared scarlet in the heat of her righteous indignation.
“Are you happy now, you floozy?” hissed Irene Whitfield, cold and superior in her camel trench coat and cashmere scarf. The child she’d held the last time Sophia had encountered the woman was nowhere to be seen and hence there was no maternal softness to cushion the sharpness of this ex-patriot from high society.
Shocked for more than a moment by the rage seething off the woman, Sophia found that rather than a witty retort, the truth escaped her lips in a harsh whisper. “No. I’m not happy. I’m actually rather miserable.”
Irene blinked for a moment, the momentum of her diatribe stolen by this unexpected candor. Her hands, covered in fine gray kidskin gloves, opened and closed at her sides, as though searching for something to grip. Sophia wondered if the woman was about to slap her silly and whether she should bother to defend herself from the blow.
Instead of lashing out with physical violence, Irene folded her arms in front of her chest as though she was about to chastise a child. “He’s miserable too, you know.” Sophia nodded, her eyes threatened to flood with sudden hot tears. Her nose burned with the effort to keep them back but she barely managed it.
“He’s going to leave soon, I’m sure of it. He’s not saying his goodbyes in an upfront way but he’s withdrawing in his own way, making sure that all of us are doing well enough to carry on when he’s gone.” Irene’s voice was touched with a tinge of desperation. She looked off into the distance, her eyes vaguely unfocused.
“I owe him more than I can ever explain, much less repay. My son, my life…” A smile flickered over her face and Sophia found herself suddenly jealous, anxious to know such love as this hard woman had for her sweet baby. Irene snapped back suddenly, eyes flaring again with a kind of maternal protectiveness that made Sophia worry for the life of any girl who would tamper with the affections of Michael Whitfield. “I always knew he would move on someday, it’s in his nature, to look until he finds some kind of anchor. He’s the kind of man who’ll give you unending loyalty but deals with heartache by running. This time if he runs, I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to trust anyone ever again.”
The tears burned down her cheeks but Sophia couldn’t muster the courage to say a word. Irene would not let tears slow her down. “He’s been drained, Miss Hunter. You left behind a pitiful shell of a great man. Was that your intention or are you just the world’s biggest fool?”
Sophia snapped, yelling as fury and sorrow battled for dominance in her chest, “What the hell do you know? He’s better off without me! I’m nothing but a curse, I’m nobody!”
Irene screamed back, her hands whipping out and clutching at Sophia’s shoulders, the nails biting even through the kid gloves she wore and all the layers of fabric between them. “Then be somebody, damn it! Be somebody who deserves him, even if you have to dredge her up out of depths of your dreams. Figure out something, because if you don’t I’ll make sure that you’ll be miserable for as long as you stay in this city. I’m not afraid of whatever powers Nana Mary claims you have. Money talks, sister!”
With that, Irene swept past Sophia, darting up the stairs and back into the world of the upper-middle class that held apartments above street level in Yorktown. Sophia wasn’t sure whether to laugh or shake in fear.
Habit took hold and she put her key in the lock, entering her apartment without conscious thought. Her body seemed to know her routine without her mind interfering, because she found herself soon enough sitting at her tiny table, her sausage roll and her last apple propped in front of her, her hands shaking a bit as her poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher. She’d taken off her coat and her sodden boots and had slipped on the comfortable clogs she’d had since she was sixteen, the same ones she ran through the woods in with Jimmy.
She chewed without tasting and drank her glass of water slowly, not quite ready to rush into the decision that was bubbling beneath the surface of her consciousness. Filled with a sense of budding purpose, she rose suddenly, leaving her half-eaten dinner on the table and stood in front of her crackled cheval mirror.
I look like crap
.
There were dark smudges under her eyes and she’d never seen her skin so pale. Her hair was pathetic. She hadn’t styled it past brushing in days. Her work clothes did nothing for her figure. Her skirt was still wet from the rain.
I don’t care.
She grabbed her coat and her purse and ran out the door. Emerging past Todd who raised an eyebrow at her haste, she rushed out the door and cursed for a second that she’d forgotten her umbrella. Until she stopped and stared up at the sky, realizing that the rain had finally stopped.
Smiling slightly, she started the long walk between Eighty-Sixth and One Hundred Eighteenth Street, wanting nothing to do with the subway again today. Maybe on the way, she’d figure out what the heck to say to him to get him to take her with him, wherever he was going. She knew that where he was, that was where she wanted to be.