Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (31 page)

At half past midnight, Memphis paced in front of the Hotsy Totsy, nervously jangling the change in the trousers pocket of his borrowed tuxedo. His stiff shirt collar felt as tight as a tourniquet. He read over the poem he’d written that day, folded the paper again and tucked it back inside his suit jacket, then resumed pacing and occasionally peering down the street.

“Lord, Memphis, you’re about to wear a hole through that pavement,” the doorman, Clarence, said. “Somebody after you?”

“More like I’m after somebody,” Memphis said.

A taxi pulled to the curb. Memphis heard a familiar husky voice calling, “Keep the change,” and turned to see Theta stepping out of the backseat in a black beaded dress and white fox stole. She’d ringed her dark eyes in heavy kohl pencil so that they shone like two dark pearls. Her black bob was sleek and sharp. A smile tugged at the corners of her crimson mouth as she moved toward Memphis like a vision.

“Good evening, Princess,” he said when he found his voice.

“You clean up nice, Poet,” Theta said.

“You are…” He searched for the right word. “Incandescent.”

Theta arched a thin brow. “Remind me to pack my dictionary next time.”

Memphis smiled big. “Next time. I like the sound of that.”

Clarence shot Memphis a look and opened the door, but Memphis waved him off.

“Aren’t we going in?” Theta asked.

“Not here. It’s a surprise, remember?”

Memphis escorted Theta over to Seventh Avenue and 134th Street. A cop walking his beat approached and Memphis hung back, keeping a careful distance from Theta. The cop tipped his hat to her, and Theta managed a tepid smile in response. When the cop moved on, Memphis fell into step with Theta again.

“Next corner,” he said.

“So what’s this big secret you got planned?”

“You’re about to find out. Close your eyes,” he said. “Now. Take three giant steps. Aaand… open.”

Theta blinked up at the bright marquee. “Small’s Paradise? Is this a joke?”

Memphis hooked his thumbs under his lapels. “Do I look like I’m kidding in this getup?”

“Okay, I give: What’s the occasion?”

Memphis grinned. “It’s the eighteenth anniversary of our very first date.”

“This joint is swank. Where’d you get the cabbage for this, Poet?” Theta whispered as a white-gloved doorman ushered them inside with a cool “Good evening.”

“Oh, sold some stock. Made a fortune on Canadian whiskey. Found out I’m actually a Rockefeller. You know how it goes,” Memphis said. In truth, he’d been saving his money for weeks.

Memphis tipped the headwaiter five hard-earned dollars, and they were shown to a decent table—not as nice as the ones occupied by the really rich folks who could afford to tip a lot more than five dollars or the famous folks who could just waltz right in and have a table put down for them beside the dance floor, but it would do. The rule in the nightclub was that you could bring in your own flask, but Memphis wanted to buy bootleg from the waiters. It was expensive, but it kept the money here in Harlem, and it made Memphis feel like a real swell to do it in front of his girl. He wanted Theta to see him not as a struggling poet sharing a bedroom with his little brother in his aunt’s house
while running numbers for a Harlem banker, a fella trying to figure himself out as he moved along, but as a man in the know. A somebody. Like the kind of crowd she ran with on the regular.

The house band—Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra—kept the jazz percolating for a throng of dancers packed in so tightly it was a miracle anybody could move at all. Tuxedo-clad waiters twirled and danced between tables, keeping their heavy trays hoisted high above their heads without spilling a drop. There was even one enterprising waiter on roller skates. The whole atmosphere was one of a glamorous, anything-goes circus.

“When this band gets tired, the other band’ll take over,” Memphis said over the noise. “You never have to stop dancing. They’ll still be going strong come sunup. We can stomp all night long.”

“Let’s hope there’s no raid this time!” Theta shouted back.

“If it weren’t for that raid, we never would’ve met.”

“That’s true. But one escape is enough, don’tcha think?” Theta said.

A waiter swooped down and delivered their cocktails, disguised in teacups. “Here you are, Miss. Sir,” the waiter said, and Memphis could hear the subtle judgment lurking just under the courtesy:
What’re you doing here with a white woman?

“Thank you,” Memphis said, making a point to be extra polite, even though it made him mad to do it. Like he was apologizing for some crime he hadn’t committed. Even now, as he sneaked a look around, he could see disapproval in the faces of some folks. But maybe if he became a great man, a respected poet, it would be enough to let them bend the rules. And Memphis was writing every day now. Already he’d filled a notebook with new poems. Like the one in his pocket he’d written especially for Theta.

Memphis kept stealing glances at her now as she watched the dancers, hoping she was impressed. The last time they’d been together at the lighthouse, Theta had said that everything was fine, but Memphis could tell it wasn’t. He was worried that it was him, that he wasn’t enough. It was part of the reason he’d wanted to make tonight special.

“Everything copacetic, Princess?”

“Everything’s swell,” Theta answered, but beneath the silk of her gloves, Theta’s skin prickled with a soft heat, and she tried not to panic.
It’s nothing
, she told herself and kept her eyes on the dance floor, and after several deep breaths, the prickling went away. But she’d been feeling it more and more—ever since that night in the theater when she’d been running for her life from the Pentacle Killer. Once it had even happened in her sleep. She woke from a nightmare about screaming horses running wild in the snow around a burning village to find that her palms were as warm as freshly lit coals. She’d had to shove them under the tap for a few seconds to return them to normal.

“Well, then. I guess I should give you this.” Memphis took the folded paper from his pocket and laid it on the table beside Theta’s glass.

“What’s this?”

“Anniversary present,” Memphis said. “Been working on it for a week now.”

Theta toyed with the edge of the paper. “Should I read it now or later?”

Memphis shrugged. “Whatever suits you.”

Fresh heat licked up Theta’s fingers. Her heart beat wildly. “I… I think I’m gonna save it for later, like a present,” Theta said, slipping the note under her beaded handbag. She felt like crying, but she was afraid that if she did, her hands would really start acting up again. So she kept her eyes trained on the people dancing until they were a pretty blur of color.

Memphis tugged at his collar. His special anniversary date seemed to be going off the rails, fast. He watched as a group of white fellas escorted their dates to the floor, laughing and carefree. Every night, they came up by the carload to catch the action, then took it back with them downtown, where it was reborn in Broadway shows, swank clubs, and hotels that catered to whites only. It burned Memphis up that they could come here to
his
neighborhood, to
his
clubs with their dates, and it was no trouble at all. They expected to be able to do it, no
questions asked. But Memphis had to be careful with his own girl in his own home.

Under the table, out of sight, Memphis laced his fingers with Theta’s, enjoying the silky softness of her glove. Just to stroke her palm was a thrill. A couple of tables away, a group of Harlem high-hats stared with disapproval. Well, damn them. Damn the white fellas making the rules and the good people of Harlem for playing by them.

Memphis grasped Theta’s fingers more solidly. Theta gasped.

“Trust me,” Memphis said, and he brought their clasped knot of fingers out of hiding, resting them on the smooth sea of tablecloth. He stared back at his own people a few tables over, challenging them. Finally, they looked away, and Memphis enjoyed the thrill of winning:
Don’t tell me how to live.
The orchestra launched into another dance number. More dancers swarmed toward the already crowded floor. A white couple passed by, their hands joined like Theta’s and Memphis’s. The girl, a blond in a sparkling rhinestone headband, looked from Theta to Memphis and back again. The girl might’ve taken a lot of care to dress the part of a sophisticate, but her expression was the truest thing she wore, and it was one of naked contempt. She paused for just a second to let her judgment settle on them.

Theta stared back. She didn’t look happy. Memphis held Theta’s hand firmly, letting her know that everything was jake. He was with her. Her hand was warm in his, very warm, and suddenly, Theta’s expression changed from challenge to fear. Rabbit-quick, she yanked her hand away. The blond’s smile was smug as she and her fella ran to join the happy dancers. Memphis felt it all like a stab to his gut.

Theta jumped up quickly, bracing herself on the table and nearly knocking over her drink as she did. She grabbed her purse. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling so good, Poet. I-I gotta go home,” she said and ran from the club.

“Theta! Theta!” Memphis shouted. He started after her but was stopped by the waiter.

“Your bill, sir.”

“I’ll be right back, I swear!”

“I’ve heard that one before,” the waiter said, unmoved, and Memphis felt doubly humiliated by Theta’s abrupt departure and this man’s suspicion. Nobody was stopping white patrons at the door. Everybody was watching as Memphis reached into his wallet and dropped some bills on the silver tray.

“Happy?” he said.

The special night hung in tatters. To top things off, Theta had left the poem he’d worked so hard on. Angrily, Memphis grabbed the paper and stalked away, never noticing the faint outline of two singed handprints on the edge of the white tablecloth.

Harlem streets that had been bathed in neon hope taunted Memphis as he walked toward home. A cluster of young, drunk downtowners pushed out of the whites-only Cotton Club and stumbled down Lenox Avenue singing “Everything Is Hotsy Totsy Now” at the top of their lungs. They took up most of the sidewalk, and Memphis wanted to knock into them, pushing them into the street. Instead, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the suit he wore, his fingers still clutching the crumpled poem.

“Hey, Romeo! What happened to your big date?” Clarence called, laughing, from the front door of the Hotsy Totsy as Memphis passed by. “Aw, now, don’t worry none, Memphis. Plenty of girls inside.”

Not the one I’m in love with
, Memphis thought. At the edge of the neighborhood, on a derelict street far from the excitement of Lenox Avenue, a man sprawled across a sidewalk, reeking of liquor. Memphis recognized him as one of the local drunks—Noble Bishop. He didn’t have a coat. A man could freeze to death out here.

Memphis shifted from foot to foot. “Hey. Hey there, Mr. Bishop. You all right?”

The drunkard swore at him.

Fine. Lie there
, Memphis thought. He knew what Octavia would say: “You can’t help a person who doesn’t want to be helped.”

But the man was a wreck. His shirt was ripped, and there was a nasty wound on his arm that looked bad. Memphis stood in the cold, torn.

“Looks like you could use a doctor,” Memphis tried.

Noble Bishop gaped up with red eyes and an expression devoid of hope. His voice wasn’t much more than a frayed thread of sound. “Why? He gonna make me free?” And then he laid his head down on the cold sidewalk and cried.

Memphis was no doctor and he was no saint. He couldn’t make either of them free. But he might be able to do something about Noble’s festering cut if he was brave enough to try. Or would he fail at that, too?

“Mr. Bishop, I better take a look at that cut on your arm,” Memphis said, drawing closer. His heart thumped in his chest. The whole night was a disaster, and here he was flirting with the possibility of even more trouble.

The drunk kicked at him halfheartedly. “Don’t need no help from you! Git!”

“You need help from somebody. Just let me have a look. That’s all.”

Reluctantly, Noble offered his arm, an expression of barely checked violence in his eyes. He smelled not just of booze but of piss, too. Fighting back his revulsion, Memphis gripped the man’s arm at the wrist and just below the elbow and closed his eyes, trying to draw on that healing place deep within. But nothing caught. No spark. And suddenly, the night veered from awful to hopeless.