deepest, darkest woods. “Blossom, when I picture that horrid bully harassing you all—”
“Oh, honey, you’re too good to us. What you and I are going to do is picture it over a nice strong drink,” Blossom proposes. “Come along, we’ll order three or four dozen oysters.”
“Hold the elevator, would you?” Jenny requests. “I’ve nearly completed the guest list for Miss Jackson’s Benevolent Tea Soiree next month, and it’ll only take Mrs. Vaughan three flights up to fix the seating arrangements.”
In the wake of Mrs. Vaughan’s faltering flutters, Blossom is about as poised as a clock tower again when the three women leave, a palpable relief. Dr. Pendleton walks with great gravitas to a nearby cabinet, selects a cobalt vase without any flowers in it, pours an arm-straining draft from this hidden cache into a tumbler, and exits.
“Saints alive,” Mavereen mutters. “Fine. We’ll parley more when everyone’s less shook up. Max, are you all right?”
“Never better.”
“You sure enough have a talent for trouble, child.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
“Please explain . . . whatever else Miss James here wants to know, I ain’t got the sense nor the stomach presently. Seeing as she’s so itchy to help. Rooster, we’re back on duty.”
“Never was off it,” Rooster concurs.
They depart, shutting the door.
“Well.” I exhale.
“How do you like them apples?” Max ruminates, setting his elbows on the table.
“Bit mealy. Care for something to wash them down?”
Max nods, and I head for the cabinet to repeat Dr. Pendleton’s procedure. When I deliver the refreshments, I perch on the table in high flapper fashion, sliding off my eyeglasses. Wishing I were in my mixed-lace tea dress, dozens of panels of pure ivory stems and petals twining together. This close, the gash on his head looks dreadful, though he isn’t sweating over it.
Second thought, maybe a nurse’s uniform, all bleached white with petal-pink lip color.
“Here’s how,” I say. “Have you been missing me dreadfully?”
We clink as I reflect over my capacity to pose wildly inappropriate questions.
“Aw, sure.” Max studies me. “Nice schoolmarm getup.”
“You’re too kind. Explain your abandonment of the Paragon’s population.”
“I got a cabin here. Away from the hoi polloi. When I’m in Oregon, I maintain it, oust any possums. Listen to the trees when I get the chance.”
“You are a poet, sir.”
“Nah. Just a trench boy what likes forests that ain’t shooting at him.”
“Give a girl a tour sometime?”
He narrows bronze eyes at me, speculative and open—dare I even say hungry?—and I can feel my pulse in my throat.
“Who was that Mrs. Vaughan? She’s ever so striking.”
Max squints. “Pal of Blossom’s. She was born here, heads up just about every charitable concern in town—rights for everyone, grub for everyone, school for everyone. Completely cuckoo. Oh, and married to the Chief of Police, Tom Vaughan, that there’s how her ear’s so close to the ground.”
“My. Quelque intrigue. Is he anything like his intrepid staff?”
“Nah, he means well. Washes behind his ears, wouldn’t speed up if he saw a stray in the middle of the road.”
“A model citizen, then. But wait, I did wonder . . . why did Overton muscle you specifically during the raid?”
A dark smile curls Max’s lip. “Once when I was in town, he’d been sampling the contraband and came on too strong to Blossom. Said as he’d pay for a private concert, like, and if she told him no, it weren’t no skin offa his nose for it to be free. I told him if he tried anything fresh with my friend, I’d guarantee all of Multnomah County knew he was a nigger lover. It was swell.”
The laugh that emerges yanks my stitches. But it’s still the niftiest sensation in days. “Your tastes are peculiar, my good man. Now. Deliver unto me the situation, per Mavereen’s request.”
Max taps at the edge of his tumbler. “Started last year. Pamphlets, auditorium speeches, articles in the ’papes. America first! Over and over till you heard it in your sleep. Figured it for a fluke, seeing as how you could round up all the Negroes in the state and fit ’em at the same Sunday service. But it’s sticking, see? They’s after the Japanese and Catholics mostly. But the Paragon is conspicuous—chafes at ’em regular. ’Course, they don’t outright call for blacks to go home bleeding. It’s all raising dough for temperance, baskets of food for poor whites, lady purity. Kris Kringle Kristmas shindigs.”
“Marvelous altruism.”
“Right up to the dead cats, sister. True enough, we ain’t never caught nobody in the act. But it ain’t a long walk