Authors: Elaine Lowe
For all that the place was filled with lunatics, she felt safe. She moseyed along the paved pathways underneath elms and sycamores, letting their calm patience ground her. The park to her wasn’t just a place for labor unions to hold rallies, old winos to get drunk and a motley group of odd fellows to play chess. This was sacred ground. The trees’ strength, subtle sense of quiet power, the very lifeblood of the place came from the ground up. Most people ignored the fact that the park was built over a graveyard. A huge graveyard, with thousands of residents. This vibrant, passionate park so loved by New Yorkers was the most profound monument to the people who built the city.
The wind had let up, though it was still cold. She skirted around the fountain and the college folk chowing down on questionable fare from lunch carts and street hawkers. Across the spraying fountain on the other side of the plaza, Crazy Joe Riley was standing on a box giving an impassioned speech about…well, she’d never really figured out what the heck he was so passionate about, other than drawing an audience. Swanky college romeos with long checkered coats and white silk ties tried to talk up short-haired shopgirls taking a lunch break and trying to soak up a tiny bit of chilly sunshine. A lonely fiddler plucked out a jaunty tune and Sophia threw him a couple of pennies for his trouble. Her favorite sycamore called out to her and she sat at its base, her back against the bark. Slightly to her right, she could look out at the great arch and down Fifth Avenue and see all the hustle and bustle of the heart of Manhattan. To her left, she could peer through the trees to see the southwest corner where dozens of people, young and old, competed in a never-ending chess tournament. Personally, she’d never had the patience to learn the skills required and the vibrant emotions of the competitors would too easily tip her off that she was about to win or lose. She’d rather just watch. This park was probably one of the finest places in creation just to sit back and watch the world go by.
Staring off into space, her thoughts latched on to that idea. Was that why she was in New York? To watch the world go by? Jimmy had written her about his excitement to be shipped off from the big NYC, to see the big ships and giant buildings, the lights at all hours of the day and night. All the thousands and thousands of people. She’d never been the one to want to go off and see the world. She was happy with her books and with Jimmy. But Jimmy had wanted to see the big wide world and had enlisted in the army the first chance he got. He’d written her sporadic letters but she knew that it was a long shot that he’d ever be happy in Geauga County with a girl he’d known his whole life. Not when he’d walked the streets of New York and Paris. He’d been back in the US, waiting to be discharged, when the influenza had struck his camp and he’d succumbed.
She wondered if the drive to leave Newbury had not just been the drive to get away from her mother and her siblings and her house without Grams. Maybe it had been to find a little bit of the awe Jimmy had had when he’d come through. She’d found it. She loved the city. The energy, the music, the thrill of it. But, it also ate at her. She was alone amid millions, with no one who really gave a damn about her. Maybe Alan, or Mr. Banbridge, or some of her friends in the party scene up in Harlem. But she didn’t really have a soul-deep connection like she thought she’d had with Jimmy. Like Daron West seemed to inspire in his little band of followers. She wondered what it was like to have friends like that, who cared so much that they’d do just about anything to make sure you were happy.
She wondered if some of those followers were more than friends. The sizzling jealousy she felt with the thought of another woman touching
her
Mr. West was completely unfamiliar and startling. She’d never been jealous of another woman, not with Jimmy. They’d just been meant to be and everyone had known it for miles around. Why worry? They’d done everything with each other first. First jump in the swimming hole. First kiss. First fondle. First time making love.
Sex had been sweet and wholesome and not nearly often enough for Sophia. Jimmy was worried about getting her pregnant and he didn’t like hearing that she was taking herbs to be sure of her cycle. He didn’t want to hear anything about herb knowledge or things like that. Not when his daddy was the pastor of the Methodist church. She chuckled at how Jimmy wouldn’t recognize her anymore. Her hair was short, her curves more generous. Her eyes were hollow. She could drink half of a fifth of whiskey if someone else was doing the buying. She wore high heels and had smoked dope more than once and her underthings were made in Gay Paree. She could suck a man’s cock dry and scream like a banshee when she came.
She had a feeling the man who’d been haunting her thoughts lately could certainly make a woman scream. He must have had more than his fair share of action. The chickadees would have been drawn in by the crackling energy that flowed off the man like a waterfall. She could close her eyes and see an image of that aura behind her eyelids and even the image was enough to heat her blood and make her loosen the scarf wrapped around her throat. Her eyes fluttered open again and she focused on the chess tables in the distance again. And blinked. As though she’d called him into being, she stared into the remarkable face of Mr. Daron West, who stared back at her with eyes green enough to see the color from five hundred feet away. His hand was poised midway to the board and she could have sworn that the chess piece he held in his gloved hand was big enough to be none other than the black queen.
How appropriate
.
Chapter Five
Mrs. Bertolli in 403 woke Daron up by banging against the water pipe leading down from the antiquated reservoir on the roof. The reservoir that was right next to his head. His head was still on the cot in which he was uncharacteristically asleep at close to eight in the morning. He dragged himself out of his tangle of blankets and into the cold blustery light to fiddle with the temperamental valve letting water down into the fussy plumbing of the building he managed. You breathed wrongly and the thing decided to get stuck. If only he had the touch with machinery he had with living things, he’d be a rich man by now, especially here in America. He cursed vividly and shivered with the cold until the flow started up again and Mrs. Bertolli’s muffled stream of angry Italian ceased. He gave a great yawn and dashed back into the little shed on the top of the building he managed. He fed the tiny stove a couple of coal lumps and pulled on his coat to try to warm himself up enough to face the day.
Today was the fifth day of the ancient New Year. It was the most dangerous day, in the stories his father would tell, tales older than the
Romani
or even the
Magi
. Legends said today was the day when the Gods decided whether mere humans still deserved the spark that was life. It was a day to either act to prove your worth, or hide yourself in fear of judgment. Unable to ponder such weighty matters, he simply stared into the fire and ran his fingers through his hair, viciously yanking out the knots to wake himself up. Sleep hadn’t been easy, not since Sunday. He’d been plagued by dreams and half-dreams, lost in a fugue of desire. He knew she was his. He knew he could have her here, now, bent over the edge of the roof and staring at the pavement of Lexington Avenue six floors below as he buried himself inside her, one hand on her clit and the other fisted in that short sexy hair. He could fuck her in that little basement flat of hers, making her scream loud enough to shock the proper upper middle class housewives ensconced in the floors above. He could drag her out of this crazy American city and out somewhere in the countryside and teach her a new way to ride a horse. No silly cowboy saddle, just his legs around the horse and her legs around him as he drove the horse and her harder and faster.
How could a man sleep when he could practically taste the texture of her nipples and he knew exactly what her arousal would smell like? The answer was he couldn’t. Daron had dark circles under his eyes and a haunted expression. He knew June was worried about him and Giuseppe had sent up enough almond biscuits to feed an army. Mary had just clucked her tongue at him and told him to “Go get de gal! She be wantin’ ta be got!”
It wasn’t that easy. Sophia Hunter was a modern American woman and she knew nothing of his people or what had happened to the two of them. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to burden her with such a bond. His father and mother had been the happiest couple he’d seen when they’d been bound in such a way. She was a wild
Gitana
, a Spanish Gypsy as fiery as Bizet’s
Carmen
. She spoke Calo to her children, even though they’d traveled for years with those who called her language a bastardization of their own pure
Romani
. Her children
would
know her language and Daron and his sister Simza would speak
Gitano
Calo,
Romani
, French, German, Italian and their father’s Spanish by the time they were six and seven. Their father was the son of a
Magi
born in Ireland who had traveled to the Galician coast of Spain to find his own
ashavi
. The pair was well matched and their arguments were legendary among every group that the family traveled with. They had loved and fought with equal passion and used their skills together to make certain that whatever group of
Sinti
or
Romani
that they had adopted as a home for that season was welcomed. His father could make the finest of instruments and
Romani
and
Gadje
alike came from far and wide to track him down. Daron had learned English from a concert violinist who had trekked into the Alps to find Sean Caracol. And to see his wife, Micala, the most renowned dancer among the scattered bands of the western Rom.
By the time Daron was twenty, the Great War had been raging for years. He would never understand why his father had insisted they travel so close to the Ardennes, why they could not have retreated to the mountains of Switzerland or France rather than flirt with the tentative entrenchment of the front line in Belgium. His father had gone out hunting for a particular kind of spruce wood only to be found in this region. He’d never come back, hit with shrapnel of some misdirected artillery shell while trying to help a wounded solder who’d run from the front lines in terror.
It was bad enough to lose one parent but he and his older sister had in truth lost both. Within a month, their proud, beautiful mother had seemed to melt to skin and bones, her eyes dark shadows of their former fire. Her pain was visceral and every person who saw her could not look at her for long without flinching. She was a ghost among the tribe, until one year to the day after her husband’s death, she danced one final time. The war had ended and they had fled to the border between Switzerland and Austria, comfortable territory to hide in a time of trouble. Comfortable enough to get the wagons in a circle around a campfire and warm themselves under the cold starry night.
Daron could still see her, gaunt, her old dancing skirts hanging from her emaciated body but her chin held high and proud once more. Her hair had gone from lush black to steel gray almost overnight and the gray waves streamed around her as she stomped into the firelight, commanding everyone and everything to stop. What had followed was the most amazing work of art he’d ever seen, though he lived among a people to whom art was the breath of life. Micala Caracol had danced to taunt Death. She’d dared the saints to stanch her tears. Her leaps were those of a young girl on fire with love, her slow spins the seduction of a woman burning with passion. Her kicks lashed the stars in the sky for the loss of her lover. With wild ululations she poured forth her anguish and Daron and his sister had clung together in sadness and fear.
The fear was well founded. With a final call to Sainte Sara la Kali, Micala Caracol threw herself in the flames of the bonfire. All but Daron turned away from the flames as she screamed in the ecstasy of grief. He hid his sister Simza’s face from such a thing but he could not turn away. Her sadness poured into him, through him. It was flayed into his mind.
He stared into the grate where flames licked at the coal. Did he have a right to inflict such potential for pain on another person? Especially when they had no idea what was involved? Every
Romani
girl knew what a
Magi
was. It was a rumor that every girl whispered about. The men sneered at him behind his back. The women lusted after him. In a culture where becoming a woman was a kind of a curse, a
Magi
was a man who could make you into a goddess instead. He’d been pursued by many and caught by a fair few. He’d learned the power of pleasure from widows and dared to teach girls his own age the power of pleasure without taking their precious virginity. They all knew he was a womanmaker. That to be chosen as his mate was to have a kind of magic. But no one really understood the depth of that bond. He hadn’t understood, not until his mother’s dance with Death.
He was unconvinced that any
Gadje
woman would have the spirit required to be his mate. To quench his lusts. To deal with power.
Mary and June and Irene and Ixchel were all strong
Gadje
women. But he was skeptical that a flapper girl with French underthings and long legs and soft, soft skin could deal with him. She just might break. And he didn’t want to be the type of man to enjoy that.