“Damn it all,” he said. “I want to see you again. Tonight. And the next night, and the next, and all the nights after that.”
“Then Ruth will know for sure.”
He swore again. “Can’t you get away at all?”
She squinted. “I could tell her I’m going away on a drawing holiday. There’s this class I’ve been taking at the American Institute. I could say we’re going to sketch monasteries in Tuscany or something.”
“That’s it. You could stay at my flat. I can’t take any vacation myself, or they’d know something was up. But I’d come home early every night. I’d take the most lavish care of you. We’d have a week or more.”
“Like paradise. But not until the stitches are out. And the cast.”
“How long is that?”
“Four more weeks for the cast. Is that all right? The first week of May.”
Sasha bent his head to kiss her hand. He’d brushed his hair wet, and the warm light from the courtyard turned his hair a sleek, dark gold. Iris thought how soft his hair felt as it fell on her stomach and breasts and thighs.
“All right,” he said. “The first week of May.”
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
I first discovered Barbara Kingsley in the same way Columbus discovered America—while I was busy looking for something else. There was this party in Greenwich Village, some artist pal, low-down dive kind of crowd, and I was hoping to glimpse a certain on-again, off-again beau of mine and climb on again.
At the time, Barbara was doing some artist work—you know what I mean, sitting there nude on a stool to inspire a bunch of men and their drawing pencils—and she lounged on a sofa between a pair of girls, bearing a glass of gin and a bored expression. The bells went off in my head. I forgot all about Mr. On Again and bustled right up to her.
“Excuse me. Ruth Macallister.” I stuck out my hand. She not so much shook it as curled her fingers briefly around mine. “If you haven’t already signed with a major New York modeling agency, I’d like you to consider mine.”
“You don’t even know my name, Miss Macallister.”
“What is your name?”
“Barbara Kingsley,” she said.
“Well, Barbara Kingsley, I think you’re about the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I’d like to set you up with a photographer for some headshots. Our expense, of course.”
The bored expression hardened into appraisal. She later told me that she was trying to figure out if I was making a genuine professional advance or a personal one, if you know what I mean, and being of a sapphic bent herself, she was hoping for the latter. （She didn’t put much faith in white folks who wanted to sign her up as a model, which was perfectly fair, I guess.）
Anyway, I convinced her eventually that my offer was bona fide, no strings attached, and we proceeded with the usual formalities. But that look of appraisal was a warning, I thought. It was like that yellow colonial flag with the snake, Don’t Tread on Me. Miss Kingsley might allow me to manage her career—and champagne and oysters with a few celestial bodies at the Palmetto Club certainly fell under the standard definition of a professional outing, if a sensational one—but take one step across that line and Barbara called the shots.
Which all goes to explain how I wind up losing my bet, after all. We remain at the Palmetto for less than two hours, just long enough to drink a case of champagne and eat five dozen oysters, before we part company with our glittering entourage and head uptown to Barbara’s neck of the woods. Her cousin owns a club, she says, a joint where they play real live jazz, none of this watered-down midtown nonsense, and she’ll vouch for me. I say all right.
I thought she was kidding about vouching for me, but sure enough, the doorman stops us on the way in and respectfully asks Miss Barbara what the devil she thinks she’s doing.
“Aw, she’s all right, Linus,” Barbara says, and Linus sighs and waves us through. Barbara finds us a table right near the front. The orchestra’s on a break, it seems, so we get to talking while they bring us some drinks and peanuts.
Barbara watches me light a cigarette and cracks a wee smile. “Well, that was certainly fine work, Miss Ruth. I’ll bet they can see your halo shining all the way over in Brooklyn.”
“Can’t they, though. I call it two birds with one stone—flashbulbs popping for Miss Barbara Kingsley, the newest modeling sensation, and the Palmetto Club gets a lesson in human decency.”