“I don’t give a fig about money,” I said. He looked back up at me, almost smiling, but not quite.
“That’s because you grew up with it—you don’t know what it’s like to not have it.”
“And what do you know about that either?”
We locked eyes. “Nothing, really. I have friends who do though. But, Marilyn—I’d photograph weddings and work at a corner shop and whatever else it took if we . . .” He realized his gaffe and trailed off. “If my family needed the money.”
“That right there,” I said, pointing at him. “That’s the problem. ‘I.’ I don’t want someone who solves problems for me. I want someone who lets me be an equal partner. And I know that may not exist, but if it doesn’t, I’m fine being like Ada and not being tied down.”
“Okay,” he said. “Say you never get married. What are you going to do? Take over the matchmaking game?”
“It’s not a game. She’s got it down to a science. And no.”
“Then what? You mentioned writing?”
I shut my mouth firmly.
“I wouldn’t want you to give that up if it’s what you love,” he said softly. “Besides, I bet you’re great at it. You’ll make more than I will.”
“And you’d be okay with that?”
He shrugged, but he was smiling. “Why not?”
A busboy came and took our plates and our waiter returned, asking if he could show us a dessert menu. “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “Just the check, please.”
“Miss Heller has already paid the bill.”
“Of course she has,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We should have ordered extra lobsters to go. Had a picnic on the beach.”
“Sounds awfully romantic. You sure you’d be up for that?”
He was teasing, but I pointed at him again. “Don’t you start.” I rose from the table, and Dan followed suit. “Let’s go.”
Dan threw some bills on the table as a tip, and I stalked out of the restaurant, him in pursuit. He looked at me standing by the car. “I didn’t do well enough for a second date, did I?”
He had said all the right things. But there was a big difference between saying he liked me as I was and actually living it. He needed to understand that I didn’t follow the same rules that he did. I eyed him carefully, then looked down at my watch. “It’s early. You driving back tonight?”
“I don’t have to. What did you have in mind?”
I grinned and started walking up toward Dune.
He followed, confused. “Where are we going?”
“Can you sing?” I asked.
“Sing? Not well.”
“Shame,” I said. “But probably a good thing you decided against being a rabbi, then.”
The bay stretched beyond us at the end of the street, the sun just descending over it now. I looked at it briefly, thinking how this was the actual opposite of the sunrise with Freddy. Then we headed south toward 36th Street.
The sign for the Black Eagle glowed neon in front of us. Avalon didn’t have much of a nightlife other than the small boardwalk. But I had heard about this place even if I hadn’t been.
“A bar?”
“They have live music on weekends,” I said. “Come on.”
He looked unsure but opened the door for me, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes smacking us in the face.
“You twenty-one?” a bartender called to us as we walked in.
“Twenty-two actually,” I lied. The restaurants in town had had no issue with me drinking wine, but the bar was stricter.
“You got ID to prove that?”
“At home—Dan, show him yours.”
Dan pulled out his wallet. “Isn’t the drinking age eighteen?”
“In New York,” the bartender grumbled, inspecting Dan’s driver’s license. “Twenty-one here since Prohibition. And I get fined if you’re not twenty-one.”
“I’ll vouch for her,” Dan said.
“I don’t need to drink if you don’t believe me,” I said. “You can give me a Shirley Temple, and I’ll be perfectly content.”
He shot me a grumpy look, then asked what Dan wanted. “I’ll take a Coke.”
We got our drinks, Dan sliding the man a dollar, and then I took his arm and pulled him toward the tiny stage where a band was playing a decent rendition of that new yellow polka-dot bikini song that was all over the radio.
The band finished, and I jumped out of my seat. “What are you doing?” Dan asked.
I flashed him a flirty look over my shoulder. The band was discussing what to play next when I sauntered up. “Hey, boys,” I said. The lead singer glanced up and smiled at me. He looked familiar.
“Marilyn, right?”
I studied him. It was the lifeguard who often shared a chair with Freddy. “In the flesh. What’s your name again?”
“Louis.”
“Well, Louis, think I can get a favor?”
“Sure. What song do you want?”
I shook my head, smiled, and told him what I wanted. He conferred with the band, and they said they thought they could figure it out. Probably helped that the song was a couple years old. Louis offered me his hand, and I took it, climbing up on the stage. I took his place behind the mic as the band launched into “Stupid Cupid,” by Connie Francis.
I had danced around my bedroom to that song too many times to count, so I knew all the words. And Louis did the claps behind me as I sang the lyrics, asking Cupid to leave me alone, swaying my hips and making sure I looked directly at Dan at that part. But he wasn’t taking the hint. Instead, he was smiling, nodding along.
I rolled my eyes as the joint applauded, then took a quick bow and waved to the room. “Wanna do another?” Louis asked. “A duet maybe?”
“Nope.” I pointed to Dan, leaning into the microphone. “But my friend over there wants to sing one.”
The color drained from Dan’s face. I hopped off the stage and went over to the bar-top table where he sat. “I told you, I can’t sing.”
I shrugged, sitting down and taking a sip of my Shirley Temple. A waiter arrived, bringing two old-fashioneds on a tray. “On the house,” he said.
I picked mine up and took a long drink. “It’s not about how good you are. It’s about if you can keep up with me.”
Dan looked at me for a long moment, then downed most of the drink in front of him, choking slightly on it. “If I do this, I get a second date.”
“Sell me on it up there,” I said, gesturing toward the stage.
He rose, looking at me one last time, then went to the band. Too quietly for me to hear, he said something to Louis, who then turned around to ask the band, who all nodded, one after another.
I leaned back in my chair, eyeing Dan suspiciously. He was going to chicken out.
But he didn’t. He loosened his tie, then removed it and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. A woman at the bar wolf-whistled. Then the band launched into Elvis’s “It’s Now or Never,” another song that was dominating the radio waves that summer.
To his credit, Dan was telling the truth when he said he couldn’t sing. But he could do an Elvis impression, leaning the mic down and crooning off-key toward me as he sang the lyrics, asking me to be his tonight.