It Stings So Sweet (34 page)

I’m dead on my feet when the sun finally sets.

“You need a break,” Robert says, walking
the picket line beside me in the sweltering heat. He glances at Hamilton, Irene, and Ethel arm in arm.
“Your friends are willing to spell you.”

My clothes cling to me like wet rags and my toes are
blistered, so I’m in no position to argue. I go with Robert around the front of the hotel and he
sits me at the edge of a fountain, pulling my shoes off, one by one. Bone weary, I dunk my toes into
the water and let out a delirious sigh.

“Isn’t that better, Miss O’Brien?” Robert asks with
a tip of his hat.

“You’re behaving suspiciously like a gentleman, Mr. Aster.”

He laughs.
“Touché, mademoiselle.”

Looking at him in the glow of the streetlights, I ask, “Why did you
join us today? Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m following your lead . . . I can do
that, you know.”

“No, you couldn’t,” I say, remembering the silk tie he broke in love play.
“We tried that once.”

“Just because I like you under me in a bed doesn’t mean that’s the way
I want you out of it.”

I swallow. “That’s not how it sounded when you proposed.”

“Well,
I made a mess of that, didn’t I?” He clears his throat, pulling his tie open so that both ends hang
from his sweat-stained shirt collar. “So what was his name, the young coal miner who got you to agree
to marry him?”

My eyes close and I see a flash of meadow flowers, but I can’t remember his
face anymore. “Quinn,” I say softly, ashamed of myself. “But I never agreed to marry him. I know how
I made it sound, but I wasn’t being honest. Quinn proposed, but I never said yes. It’s just that when
a boy dies, especially the way he did, you saint him in your heart. Then you can’t very well admit
that you ever had doubts. Not even to yourself. He becomes a way to fend men off. Because they’ll
believe you if you say you’re a widow in spirit, but they won’t believe you want to be your own woman.”

“I’ll believe it,” Robert says. “If you’ll let me.”

“Just what is it you want me to let
you do?”

He has to work himself up to an answer. He cups his hand, dips it in the fountain
and splashes the water on his face, smoothing it into his hair with his fingers and letting it drip
down the back of his neck. Then he turns to me and says, “I was furious with you, you know. Hundreds
of women—literally, hundreds—have thrown themselves at me, trying to get me down on one knee. Yet,
both times I’ve been ready to shackle myself to a woman, body and soul, I’ve been turned down. With
Nora, I could chalk it up to follies of my youth. But you? I thought you ought to have been damned grateful
for the offer. It stung my pride like the devil when you weren’t.”

“Do you really think—”

“Let me finish,” he pleads with me. “Or I don’t think I’ll be able to get it all out. The truth
is, I’ve always been good at figuring out what other people need and abysmal at taking stock of
what I need. I’ve finally realized that I don’t need your gratitude. I don’t need my pride—though I’d
like to keep a little of it—and I don’t need marriage. I don’t need my father’s approval, or to impress
society ladies in the tearoom, and I don’t need any of a thousand things I was brought up to believe
were important. What I need is you, in whatever capacity you’ll have me.”

“So you’re saying
you
don’t
want to get married?”

“I’m saying we can live in sin and become the most notorious
lovers in the city, if that’s what makes you happy,” he says, lifting my hand to his mouth and kissing
my fingertips. “That’s what I want, Sophie. To make you happy. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted.
Because making you happy makes me stand taller. It makes me steady and strong. It makes me at peace
with myself in a way I’ve never been. So it’s a selfish thing, really . . .”

His words chip
away at the dark caverns in which my fears live and light breaks through. It’s a blinding feeling,
as if I’m seeing the world in vivid color for the first time. By god, I’ve been the greatest fool that
ever lived. What he says is an echo of everything I feel for him. All those times, I wondered how
I could be so filled with spiritual joy at the animal acts that gave us pleasure, I never considered
the simple truth of it.

I love to make him happy. Making him happy makes me stronger and truer
to myself. And that’s how it ought to be between a man and a woman in love. In and out. Push and
pull. Give and take.

That’s something beautiful. Something I’d be a fool to deny. A single
tear slips over my cheek and I put both hands over my heart, to keep it from bursting. “I love you,
Robert Aster. I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine.”

“I’m already yours,” he says, his words a solemn
vow in the night.

“Good thing, then,” I sniffle. “Because neither of us can afford a wedding.”

“Don’t get too excited by the idea of our impoverishment,
Comrade
. I’m not penniless yet.”

“You think your father will change his mind?”

“He might. If I run for political office,
he won’t want the Aster name diminished no matter which party backs me, but truthfully, I don’t care
what the ambassador does. I don’t need his money the way he thinks I do.”

“You’ve never been
without money, Robert.”

“I don’t plan to ever be,” he says, affronted. “You see, most soldiers
need to live off their wages. I saved mine and invested it into a wildly successful little movie
company with my business partners, the Vanderbergs. We’ve made a handsome profit so far. That’s the
beauty of unfettered capitalism for you, by the way . . .”

I laugh through my tears. “Are you
trying to pick a fight with me, Mr. Aster?”

“Will it get your Irish temper up if I do?”

“It just might,” I say, throwing my arms round his neck.

“Then I’d better cool you off!” he
cries, falling back, dragging me with him. We hit the water with a splash and I yelp with laughter as
droplets rain down on us from the fountain above. I try to drag myself up but he holds me against
him under the spray until the rapture radiates through my whole being.

“C’mere,” he says, leering.
“I want to give you something new to write in your journal . . .”

He kisses me, heedless of
passersby who point and stare. Grinning, I rest my hands on his soaked jacket where I feel something
slightly crinkly in the pocket. “What’s this?”

“Another card, but it’s all wet and smeared
now.”

A thrill of excitement goes through me. “What did it say?”

He looks down at me sheepishly.
“It said:
Love me forever
.”

My heart squeezes in my chest and I’m filled with joy.

Love
me forever.

I know the rules. And this command is one I’m honored to obey.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Roaring Twenties were a time of sexual liberation,
experimentation, and exploration. Having just won the vote, women were at the forefront of social causes
and societal change. In spite of—or perhaps because of—Prohibition, the Twenties were boom times.
Young women attended college, flocked to major cities to find work, and lived on their own in numbers
never before seen in the history of the nation. Homosexuality was more public and more tolerated.
Rules for dating changed. Nonmarital sex became common, and women began to demand and use birth
control.

Flappers changed the world of business, fashion, politics, and popular entertainment.
The Hays Code wouldn’t be adopted and enforced until 1930, which meant major Hollywood films pushed
the boundaries of propriety and gave the country some of its sexiest stars. (Clara Bow was one of
them, and she served as an inspiration for me.)

In short, the Twenties were a period of social
transition—one of those pivotal times in history when women took one step forward, before being
shoved two steps back. And because flappers have more in common with women today than almost any generation
since, I wanted to write about them.

For me, the beauty of using an historical backdrop in
fiction is that you get to comment on the world today. That was certainly the case with this book. So
while I spent more time studying the etymology of era-appropriate words and idioms than I did actually
writing the stories, I’ve erred on the side of accessibility. The flavor of the Roaring Twenties
is reflected in the dialogue and narrative, but an occasional anachronism crops up simply because
it made a point or was too delicious to resist.

For reference, the stories in this book take
place in 1928 and 1929 before the stock market crash that touched off the Great Depression. The exact
chronology of the affairs involving Joe Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, William Randolph Hearst, Marion
Davis, William S. Paley, and Louise Brooks have been fudged a bit but occurred roughly contemporaneously.

People from all walks of life came together to agitate for progressive change in the Twenties
and, in many instances, African Americans led the way. At the same time, the era saw a resurgence
of the Ku Klux Klan, inspired, in part, by the 1915 race-baiting incendiary film,
The Birth of a
Nation.
Consequently, it was with some trepidation that I used the word
Negro
, which was polite
vernacular at the time.

I want to make plain the fact that while Sophie, my working-class Irish
heroine, is first seen encouraging a black coworker to participate in collective bargaining, this
should not be taken to diminish the leading role in the social movements taken by African American
women like Ida B. Wells, Amy Jaques Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, and others like
them.