“Frankie showed me a year ago. There’s a piano in the storage room back there. He knew I liked to play. I come here every now and then to practice. No one can hear me while all this is going on.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You play the keys?”
He grinned. “Yup.”
“Hmmm.” I looked away like I wasn’t interested. A man in a fedora flipped a woman over his shoulder. She flashed everyone a glimpse of her garter belt.
“I hear some women can’t resist a guy who plays piano,” Blue said.
I shrugged. “Some women may have weaknesses like that. Not me.”
He laughed and nudged my elbow with his.
The band transitioned to a slower tune, and a trombone and clarinet pursued each other through the twists and turns of a mournful duet. Couples swayed and glided across the dance floor.
I turned my face to Blue, my cheek resting on the back of my wrist. There was something magnetic about him that I couldn’t explain. No matter what glorious sights 1927 Chicago had for me, my gaze never failed to find its way back to him.
“What do you want to do?” I asked him. “You know, when you grow up?”
He furrowed his brow. “When I ‘grow up’?”
“Yeah. When you’re out of school.”
“Been out of school for a while now. Had to start working because of Frank.”
“Oh, right. Good ole Frank,” I muttered.
“Yup. Good ole Frank.” He propped his chin on his fists. “I don’t know. I’ll probably just keep working at the deli.”
“But if you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?”
He squinted out over the crowd, thinking. “Maybe become a pilot. Or play in a jazz band. Or join the Police Academy.”
“Hm,” I said. “That last one wouldn’t make you very popular around here.”
“Good thing I don’t care about being popular,” he said with that easy grin of his. “What about you, Sousa? Got any plans of grandeur?”
“I really don’t know.” A week ago I was content to follow in Dad’s biomedical engineering footsteps. Now I wasn’t so sure. “Maybe I’ll join the Academy with you. Put some of my back alley fighting skills to good use.”
“Don’t you think that might upset your gangster husband?”
I groaned. “I don’t have a gangster husband, Blue.”
“Blue?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
I laughed, feeling stupid. I knew I’d slip up eventually. “It’s your nickname. The one I gave you before I knew your name. It’s just something stupid I do in my head. I do it for everyone I meet.” I tried to shrug it off, my silly little quirk, but he grinned.
“Not stupid. I like it.” He looked out across the crowd. “Blue and Sousa. Has a nice ring to it.”
“Speaking of rings,” I said, waggling my bare ring finger at him. “See? No husband.”
“Pfft. That doesn’t mean anything. You could’ve hocked that old handcuff when you got into town.”
I laughed at his choice of words. “Well, even if my life was like that, even if I was on the run from some gangster, I’d never go back to that life now.”
“Why not?”
“Because this life is better.”
“How do you know this one’s better if you don’t remember the old one?”
“Because I didn’t know you then. Now I do. That makes this one better.”
His mouth hitched up on one side. “Aw, you can’t say things like that to me.”
“I can’t?”
His hand found mine. “Not without expecting me to ask you to dance.”
He pulled me to my feet, and then it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” I said, looking down at my feet.
Believe it or not, I had danced with a boy before. Once. It was Jamal Webber, and it was during rehearsal for our fifth grade play. Everyone had a dance partner because it was set at a sock hop. I tried really hard to learn the moves, but I was hopeless. I stepped on Jamal’s brand new sneakers at least a dozen times. By the end of rehearsal, Jamal had another partner, and I was given backstage duty.
I started to second guess stealing a kiss from Blue. I was probably even worse at kissing.
“Just follow my lead,” he said. “We don’t have to get fancy.”
His hand slid around to my back and pulled me close. We swayed with the mournful trombone and clarinet. I felt the warmth of his hand on my back and his chest against mine. He danced better than Dad. Better than Pops.
I rested my head against his lapel. I swayed. I committed it all to memory.
The singer’s words hung in the air around us like mist. She sang of loving her sweetheart night and day, of him leaving her all alone, of her tears. She told him he’d regret it, that his heart would break one day. He’d miss the dearest pal he ever had. Someday. After he was gone.
The words caught me up and wouldn’t let go. Every minute I spent with Blue brought me closer to the moment I had to leave. I could feel it all fading away – that yawning, empty feeling that comes with the ending of things.
Something told me this was the last time I’d ever see Nicholas Piasecki.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the thought from my mind. It was just as unwelcome as Porter.
“You know,” I said, smiling up at Blue and trying to ignore the heaviness in my heart. “The boys back home in Annapolis don’t like to dance.”
“What?” He was incredulous. “Why not?”
“They think it’s stupid. They’d rather play video games.”
He tilted his ear closer to my mouth. “Video what?”
“Sports, I mean.”
“Sports?” he scoffed. “What a load a’hooey. Don’t they like girls?”
I laughed. “Yeah, they like girls.”
He shook his head. “If you’re stuck on a girl, dancing is the fastest way to get your hands on her. What kind of goof wouldn’t want that?”
“I guess no one’s ever been stuck on me enough to ask.”
He lifted my chin with his knuckle. His mouth hitched up on the side again. “Been hanging out with a bunch of blind guys, Sousa?”
I laughed and buried my face in his jacket. He wrapped both arms around me and rested his cheek on the top of my head.
Your heart will break like mine, and you’ll want me only. After you’ve gone, the sequined jazz singer sang. After you’ve gone away.
CHAPTER 11
PLAY IT, SAM
When the song was over, the band leapt back into a lively swing, but I didn’t feel like being upbeat just then. Instead, I led Blue back toward the storage room and pushed him through the doorway.
“Want me all to yourself?” he said with a laugh, clapping a hand on his cap so it wouldn’t fall off. “All you had to do was ask.”
I gave him one more playful push, then heaved the door shut, leaving the sounds, the laughter, the lights, and the smoke behind us. “I want you to play for me.” I spoke the words into the dark. Blue was a silhouette against the dim amber lights outside. I wanted him to play for me the way Sam played for Ilsa in Casablanca.
“OK.”
I followed him to an old grand piano standing by a wall of grimy windows. Stacks of boxes and crates were mounded all around it, but the top was propped open. He dusted off the bench and we sat side-by-side. He lifted the fallboard, flexed his fingers, then played a sweet and lilting melody, his hands moving like shadows across the faint ivory keys.
He played effortlessly. Happily. Passionately. He played so that I envied him and wished I had a speck of discernible musical talent within me.
When he hit the last note, he lifted his hands with a flourish, and we laughed. He wrapped an arm around me and gave my shoulders a squeeze. “How was that?”