she insulted you. For trying to tell a funny story. For making me feel okay.”
“Just okay?”
“For making me feel like I can do anything.” His arms tightened around me. “As long as I have you.”
Eight
New York City
November 1950
The call came in the morning while I was deeply asleep. I stumbled to the phone and said hello.
“Will you accept a collect call from Virginia?” the operator asked, and that woke me up.
“Yes, operator, put it through.”
“I got your letter.” Billy never said hello. I’d teased him about it so many times. He just opened with what he wanted to say. Over the hiss of long distance, I could hear the nervousness in his voice. “I was so glad to get it.”
“I wanted you to know where I was.”
“I was thinking … I have leave. Before we ship out. I could come up to New York. Maybe around Thanksgiving.”
My heart was thudding, banging. I put my hand over it.
“Would that be all right?” he asked.
“Yes. That would be all right.”
“I’ll call back with details when I know. Kit?”
“Yes?”
“I woke you.”
“It’s all right.”
I hung on to the receiver, picturing his face. I closed my eyes, remembering how his mouth moved.
“There’s so much to say. I can’t talk. I’m in town, in a drugstore. I just have a minute. Thought I’d grab it before I lost my nerve. I have to go.”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I like the sound of that.” He stopped, and I listened to the hiss of the line. I wanted to hear his breath. His voice sounded so far away and yet it hit me in every muscle, every bone. “I’ll let you know.”
The phone clicked. He never said good-bye, either.
I put down the receiver and sank down on the floor, hugging my knees. I stared at the phone. I would have to call Nate and tell him. I’d thought that would be easy, picking up the phone with the simple news that Billy was coming. But now that the moment was here, I couldn’t do it. This was my news, not Nate’s.
But he had made it his, somehow, and I had let him.
I sat in the kitchen in the early afternoon, stretching out the kinks in my hips and back when I saw a fishing line bobbing down, down, outside the window. A hook dangled, a piece of paper stuck in the barb. I threw open the window and reached out, detaching the paper carefully. Then I looked up. Hank sat on the fire escape above. He didn’t look down. Instead he pretended to be absorbed in his book, the fishing rod held casually in his hands.
I read the note.
Sunday Dinner with the Greeley Family 5 p.m.?
I lived on canned soup and melba toast and cottage cheese, tea and toast and apples. There was nothing in my icebox for supper but an orange.
I’d thought on my day off I’d be roaming the streets, traveling down to Greenwich Village, exploring the parts of the city that Billy and I had talked about, the museums and jazz clubs and coffeehouses. But instead I stayed inside, reluctant somehow to go on my own.
I thought of Hank’s mother, the way her eyes had narrowed when she’d seen me close to dawn in my stage makeup. What had he had to do, to get her to agree to ask me to dinner?
Well, let her cook for me, then.
I scrawled Gratefully accepted and sent it back up. This time when I looked up, Hank was reading my note. He looked down and grinned.
The Greeleys’ apartment was stuffed with books. Bookshelves in the foyer, in the living room, even in the dining room. I was suddenly aware that there was not one book in my apartment. I tried to remember the last one I’d read. Or had pretended to read. A Tale of Two Cities, maybe? Actually, I’d never finished it. Muddie had told me the whole story one night while I’d washed out our underwear.
I’d dressed carefully for the evening, drawing my hair back in a ponytail and wearing just a touch of makeup. Plaid skirt, white blouse, flats. Take that, Mrs. Greeley.
Hank wore a gray crewneck sweater and gray pants. He’d tried to wet his hair down with water, but it was already starting to curl. I realized that I was wrong about his eyes and hair; they were the color of dark honey.
A man didn’t so much as rise from the armchair as push himself up with his arms, as though he were