American Pie (7 page)

Waiting for Stefan, holding the lunch pail tightly in her gloved hand, she guiltily anticipated the moment when she could safely look into the pit. Each day she wondered if Jamie would still be there. Each day her heart soared to discover him leaning on his shovel, watching her, and Lucie felt a secret pride grow that Jamie was proving himself and making his way.

When she was certain Stefan would not see, she darted a swift glance toward Jamie's wheelbarrow. As if he had been waiting, too, he stood looking up at her, his dark eyes moving intently over her trim figure, pausing mischievously at a glimpse of ankle revealed by the hot breeze.

Lucie's breath caught in her throat. Sweat oiled his naked upper body, and the mat of auburn hair tangling across his chest glistened. When he saw her, tension swelled the muscles on his shoulders and upper arms and his sunburned hands tightened on the handle of his shovel. He gazed at her as eagerly as a drowning man might gaze at sky and air.

Lucie wet her lips and swallowed, aware her pulse beat thundered in her ear, smothering the traffic noises behind her. Before Stefan pulled himself out of the pit and came toward her, she met Jamie's eyes and silently assured him that she understood about the fight, that she forgave him. Then Stefan was bending to the lunch pail, and she didn't dare glance at Jamie Kelly again.

But she felt him watching her, sensed when he moved away from the wheelbarrow to sit against the dirt wall of the pit where he could see her as he ate his noonday meal. If proof was needed that she responded to his half-naked body and the intensity of his stare, she saw it in the tremble of fingers as she removed Stefan's lunch items from the pail.

Afterward, as she returned to the tenement, stopping to call wherever she spotted a Help Wanted sign in a shop window, thoughts of Jamie Kelly whirled through her mind. She saw again the sunlight glowing in his hair, the line of his strong jaw, the way his tensing shoulders tapered to a lean waist. Blushing, she recalled the glistening sweat that drew her attention to his naked chest. And she thought about the strange heated flutter in her stomach when she met his gaze. She would have given anything to speak to him even for a few minutes.

She absently tucked a heat-damp tendril beneath the brim of her straw boater. Practical Lucie, she thought with a rueful smile. Was it possible she had been wrong all these years and actually she was a romantic at heartthinking immodest thoughts and pining for a man she could not have? Stefan would never agree to Jamie Kelly, not in a hundred years.

Sighing, she tried to banish Jamie from her thoughts and concentrated on crossing the jammed street, holding her hem away from horse droppings, tobacco splats and the ever present summer dust. But Jamie Kelly would not be banished so easily. Already her practical mind counted the hours until noon tomorrow. And the romantic leaning that had gone unsuspected until now wished for a fresh blossom to pin to her breast. Something pretty and bright to make her desirable in one man's eyes.

"I didn't think you'd still be here, boyo," Gustoffer said with a grin as he counted a dollar into Jamie's blistered palm. "The Broadway book's been losing a bundle betting each day is your last."

"And I've been making a bundle," Jamie said with a tired smile, "betting that it's not."

"Shrewd one, aren't you?" Gustoffer laughed. He winked. "Last four days I been betting on you myself, hoping to recoup my losses." He started to clap Jamie on the shoulder, saw the sun-scorched redness and changed his mind. After waiting for Jamie to hang up his shovel, Gustoffer followed him outside and locked the shed for the night. The rest of the men had gone. "Finding it a bit unfriendly, son?"

"A bit," Jamie said, easing his shirt over his sunburned skin. He slicked back sweat-damp hair and settled his cap at a jaunty angle.

"Give it time." They stood beside the pit for a moment, studying the deepening excavation, then walked toward lower Broadway, idly examining the lavish displays behind the windows they passed. "It ain't none of my business"

"But?" Jamie asked, smiling.

"But there's trouble coming. Every horse on the site knows you're lollygagging after Kolska's sister. Except Kolska. And that ain't gonna last, boyo. If Kolska don't see soon what's right under his whiskers, some buck is going to tell him. You get my meaning?"

Jamie thrust his hands into his pockets and kicked a stone along the pavement. "I mean to court her."

Gustoffer made a sound of disgust. "Only a bastard mick could be so gol-damned stupid! You was lucky once, you ain't gonna be again. Next time Kolska is going to kill your arse."

He suspected Gustoffer was right. "As long as you're in an advice-giving frame of mind, how do I persuade Kolska to allow me to call?"

"Son, you got to be the most stubborn set of coattails this mother's son ever seen." Gustoffer spit a stream of brown juice toward a passing carriage, then stopped to stare at Jamie. "Believe me, this ain't the girl for you."

Jamie's chin firmed. "Yes, she is. I knew it the minute I saw her."

"Well, you ain't gonna get her. Not while Stefan Kolska is alive. You ain't never going to be on borrowing terms with Stefan and that's regrettable, but that's a pure fact."

"There was a time, Mr. Gustoffer, when no one thought I could get to America. And here I am. A time when it didn't look as if I could find work. But I did." He reached in his pocket. "I've got two dollars that says Kolska will eventually allow me to see his sister. I won't give up until it happens."

"Two dollars?" Gustoffer's eyebrows soared. "How much have you been betting on yourself with the books?"

"Are you willing to wager two dollars?"

"Hell no, son. It don't take no wall to fall on Henry T. Gustoffer. I lost enough money betting against you, I ain't gonna lose no more." He grinned, waved, then turned into a side street.

Jamie continued along Broadway for another block, then cut toward his new lodging house. It wasn't fancy, he hadn't won that much money. For three dollars a week he received breakfast and a cold supper, and shared a room with only one other man who worked the night shift at the Chatham Street El station. That's where Jamie slept; he lived for the moments he saw Lucie.

The next day when he realized he was listening for the noon whistle and waiting for his first glimpse of her, he remembered what Gustoffer had said about everyone on the site being aware of the long silent looks he exchanged with Lucie Kolska. He warned himself to be more discreet, but when he saw her pert straw hat appear over the rim of the pit, his mouth dried and his spirits soared. Just the sight of her was balm to his aching back and blistered hands. She refreshed him in a way nothing else could.

At some point before she departed each day, she managed to send him a secret smile and today was no different. He stared up at her and read volumes into that single wonderful smile. He believed she was telling him that he was never further from her thoughts than she was from his. Yesterday her smile had spoken of pride in his staying power and he had returned to his shovel with renewed vigor. The day before her smile had turned tender with sympathy for his raw sun-burn. Always her smile gave him hope for the future. He could not see that lovely sweet smile and doubt that someday they would be together.

Today after Lucie departed and Gustoffer shouted them back to the shovels, he crossed the pit and forced a place for himself beside Stefan Kolska. Matching the heavier man scoop for shovel scoop, he worked in silence for several minutes, rehearsing his approach. It was pointless to request permission to call on Lucie until they settled the bad blood between them.

Stopping work, Jamie straightened and looked at Kolska. "Gustoffer made the choice, Kolska. I didn't."

Stefan dug his shovel into the dirt with savage force, refusing to acknowledge he was being addressed.

"It was luck and desperation, that's all. In any other circumstance, you would have won." He was flattered that Kolska did not seem to believe him, but he knew it was the truth. "It's over. There's no reason you and I can't be friends."

Finally Kolska straightened and glared at him. His dark eyes glittered with loathing. Beads of sweat clung to his heavy mustache and eyebrows. "Ordinarily I'm not a fighting man, Kelly, but anytime you want a rematch, you just say the word. I'm ready."

Jamie stared at him, seeing Lucie in Stefan's thin nose and beautiful dark eyes. "I have no quarrel with you. No wish to fight again."

The muscles in Kolska's jaw knotted. His knuckles turned white on the shovel's handle. "Get out of my sight, Kelly, before I take you on right now and cost both of us our jobs."

Someone nearby laughed and Jamie swore he heard Lucie's name mentioned. He didn't have much time to put things right. As it seemed he would end in another fist fight no matter what, he decided to force the issue. And he had to do it soon.

By the end of June, the New York Morning Journal announced the heat wave had diminished but it didn't seem so to Lucie.

Fatigued by the heat, her feet sore from walking, she returned from a day of seeking work and paused in the courtyard to wet her hands and face at the rusty pump.

"Any luck today?" Maria Brovnic asked as she bent over the pump to fill a cooking pot, but only a dribble emerged.

Unpinning her hat, Lucie waved it before her flushed face. She looked toward the tenement door, thinking how hot it would be inside. "I'm sure something will turn up tomorrow," she said. Because Maria did not speak English, they spoke in a mixture of Polish and Russian. "Is your husband feeling better?"

Shortly before Lucie's arrival Woicheck Brovnic had suffered a serious accident. The oyster wagon he drove collided with a heavy chandler's van and overturned. The iron wheels of the chandler's van had crushed Woicheck Brovnic's hands. Now he was unable to find work, and worse, he had given up trying.

Maria balanced the cook pot on her hip and pushed back the kerchief covering her dark hair. "I don't know what to do," she said in a low voice, frowning at the row of reeking latrines everyone called "school sinks." After drawing a breath, she shouted at her two oldest children to play farther away from the stench. "If it wasn't for them, I'd go home." Bitterness hardened her voice. "There's nothing for us here."

"Oh, Mrs. Brovnic!" Lucie turned to her in distress. "You've suffered a terrible misfortune, but surely you remember what it was like at home?"

"I remember we took care of each other," Maria said, closing her eyes. "I remember shade at the edge of the plots."

Lucie took her hand and peered into her eyes. "Do you remember what it was like to bend over all day in the fields? Do you remember when the rains didn't come and the harvest burned in the sun? Do you remember the cossacks?" She shuddered.

"Miss Kolska, I know you're trying to offer encouragement, but there is none. Soon the money will run out. Then what difference does it make if my children starve here or at home?"

"Here there is a chance for something better! At home nothing changes except each year life gets harder."

Maria gazed at the twilight sky. "We were saving to bring Woicheck's brother and his wife to America." She drew a breath. "We could use the money ourselves. We could go home."