concern sizzles, golden thunder sparks flying. Despite the damp, my cheeks flush. Max adjusts his fedora, takes a lap around the useless sundial.
“Look, ain’t no way is Mavereen gonna convince Blossom to go in for house arrest.” He rubs a palm over his mouth in frustration. “Back when we was in No Man’s Land living offa bully beef and rainwater, sometimes a guy would go a few days without any real sleep. Get a little cross-eyed. This here’s different. I gotta admit, I’m worn down, Alice. Just the notion of that kid out there . . .” Max stops, wincing.
“I know. Worriment is worse than Jerry fire,” I offer softly.
“Damn right it is. But ’scuse my saying so, worriment on this many fronts is just about as much as a fella can stand.”
I think of Blossom, and the near-sure fact that Max won’t have cause to be anxious over his friend for long, and my breastbone aches. “Blossom held her own. You needn’t worry on that account.”
“It ain’t just Blossom.”
He steps closer. I’m at the pictures suddenly, or would be if movies could show color, a trick of the rain making the image before me flicker like a celluloid reel.
“Bringing you here, Alice—I didn’t have no choice. You was on the way out and I seen that before, more than enough times. But now.” He bites his lip, shrugs. “This shit is getting too rough for my taste. S’posing you wants to skip town, I’ll put you on the train personal.”
This is unacceptable.
“Don’t make a girl blush.”
“I ain’t,” he says shrewdly. “I’m making a gun moll think.”
“As admiring as I am of my own hide, you’ll find I’m just about as loyal as a bad rash. And I’m terribly fond of you all. It isn’t in me to leave you in the lurch.”
Max scours me with soldierly eyes. “That’s real nice. But it ain’t regular. So. Wanna get started telling me why?”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” I answer.
Standing there with tiny gem drops decorating our coats, I briefly tell Max about Rye. That there was no protective barrier between him and the world. That when he listened to a ragtime riff, his soul seared on a griddle. That when he saw the Yiddisher kid who’d been blasted by polio begging on the corner of 123rd, her skin the thickness and complexion of eggshells, he tossed her change but never flinched away. That he hated himself more than he ever hated the planet that tormented him. I mention heroin tonic.
Every-colored lights in Rye’s eyes. The glimmers of good days remembered but long gone away.
“I don’t leave people,” I conclude. “Or cut my losses and depart simply because times get hard, and I don’t pull the butterfly stuff. I’ve lost too many old friends. So I’m not terribly anxious to misplace new ones.”
Max rubs a hand over his nape. “You’re gonna need to spell it out, ’cause I still don’t follow. You were pretty strong for this guy?”
“To distraction,” I agree. “So what?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“And yet, you’re perfectly audible. What?”
He coughs with Brooklyn reticence. “Just that you said as I reminded you of somebody. And here I is, a mixed black sorta fella with a fair amount of music in my bones. And we two been kinda close, proximity wise, ever since I boarded that Pullman coach in Chicago. And I made nice with you. And I ain’t blind.”
I stand speechless for an instant too long, and he continues.
“How do you figure I remind you of a jazz hound with a taste for forgetfulness?” Max shakes his head. “This guy you see standing here, he remembers things. No offense to your boy back home, I seen my share of poppy heads, there’s trench rats with chunks missing what suck it down in their orange juice. It happens. Not to the likes of me, though.”
A peal of laughter escapes me and I clap my trap shut. Dreadfully keen to snatch it back.
“All right, all right, you ain’t soft on me, Jesus,” Max protests, raising his palms. “Have it your way. But—”
I catch his hands in mine. “You don’t remind me of Rye. At all.”
“Then—”
“Blossom does,” I explain. “And I adore that about her. The sort of headlong way she has about needing to tell the truth, then regretting it when she sees a lie would have been ever so much kinder. I mean, Rye was kind. He certainly never hung out anyone’s foibles to dry in public. But they both .