In the Midnight Rain (17 page)

Marcus caught Blue's eye and lifted an eyebrow. Blue pounded a fist to his chest, like he was trying to get his heart started again after it had stopped. Marcus grinned.

Settling around the table, Ellie looked around with alert eyes. "This place is great! And Mabel really sang here?"

"She did," Blue said, and remembered to check out the bartender. "And we're in luck." He gestured toward the long bar, where several older men, all black, were hunched over their bourbons and gins and beers. Behind the bar, his arm propped up on the back counter, was a short black man with a goatee gone completely white and the belly of a drinking man. "That's Doc, behind the bar. He's been here since 1946."

"He doesn't look that old!" Ellie exclaimed.

"He's around seventy, I expect," Marcus said. "Came to work here when his daddy was killed in Italy." He looked at Blue. "Guess that would have to be around forty-four?"

Blue nodded. "I know he was a kid."

"The thing that makes Doc a good bet for you, Ellie," Marcus said, leaning over the table as he warmed to his subject, "is that he knew her. They were real close to the same age, grew up together. Then she sang here some. If anybody knew her, he did."

"Will he talk to me?"

"Any man in his right mind would talk to you, darlin'," Blue said with a slow grin. "Come on, I'll introduce you. You may not have much time tonight, since it's fixin' to get busy in here, but this way, you'll know who he is—and he'll know you."

She stood up with him, and they made their way through the close-packed tables and chairs. Blue put his hand on her back, right above the line of her dress, partly to get a guilty charge out of stroking the skin that was as supple as he expected, and partly to put his claim on her. A whole lot of appreciative male eyes watched her sidle through the chairs, turning this way and that, smiling her excuse-mes in the most natural possible way.

And in this, she surprised him. Some white women might have been uncomfortable in this crowd, even with him. There were other whites, but they were definitely the minority, a smattering of trophy girls with too much eyeliner and big hair, sitting in corners with dandies wearing a lot of gold. A few couples, in to hear the music, and some middle-aged guys who worked with black men at the lumber plant. One mixed couple, a black woman and a white man who had been married for more than twenty-five years, were regulars, and Blue lifted his chin their way as he passed.

At the bar, Blue and Ellie sat on stools, and Blue availed himself of the view of her upper thigh, encased in black nylon, exposed as her hem rode up. "Nice legs," he said.

She smiled. "You really are hopeless, aren't you?"

It irked him that no matter what he said, she wasn't about to take him seriously. To cover, he waggled his brows lasciviously. "Yes, I am, Miz Connor. You want some flirting lessons now?"

She inclined her head, and the red-painted lips pursed the faintest bit into a wicked, knowing smile. Her lids dropped seductively, exaggerating the tilt. "I think I know what I need to." She blinked, once, slow as a cat.

Just that fast, between one breath and the next, Blue got punched. "I guess you do, sweetheart."

Doc approached, saving him. "Blue Reynard," he said in a hearty voice. "How you doin', man? Ain't seen you in here for a couple months." He gave Ellie an appreciative wink. "Guess I can see why."

"Doc, this is Ellie Connor. I think I told you I was writing to somebody who was doing a book on Mabel Beauvais. This is her. She's in town to do some on-site research, and I told her you'd be the man to talk to."

"Is that right." Doc's face sobered and he narrowed his eyes a little. "How come a white girl wants to do a story like that, you don't mind me asking?"

"Why not?"

Doc turned his lips down, nodding. "Fair enough." A man down the bar called for another drink. "Let me get you two something to drink and I'll be right back."

They ordered—Jack Daniel's for Blue. "Same for me," Ellie said. Blue grinned as Doc moved away. "Be careful, sugar. I might get you drunk and talk you into my bed."

"I'm a big girl. I can handle you."

"You sure can if you want to," he said, and laughed. "Sorry. That was bad, even for me."

"You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I am," he said and hung his head in mock shame.

When she laughed, he lifted his chin and for one moment, they were simply looking at each other. He saw reluctant appreciation coupled with careful reserve—she thought he was dangerous. A dog, as Alisha put it. "You're thinking of my reputation again, aren't you?"

"Maybe."

And maybe he was a dog. The reputation, after all, did have some basis in reality, much as he hated to admit it. Maybe he was attracted to her not because of anything about her particularly, but because he'd lost his taste recently for bimbos and couldn't seem to work up enthusiasm for any kind of other connection with women. He picked up her hand and surprised himself by kissing the palm. "You're safe with me," he said.

"Am I?" The query was husky, musical, and made him look at her mouth, red and plump and tempting as sin itself.

"Well, maybe not."

Doc delivered their drinks and they pulled apart from the oddly intimate moment. "Now, then, young lady," Doc said. "What do you say we set up some afternoon meeting and you can ask me all the questions you want?"

"I'd love that. Lunch on Monday?"

"Sounds good. I'll meet you at Dome's Cafe at one o'clock." He gestured to Blue. "You can come, too, if you want."

Blue nodded at the oblique hint. Doc wouldn't be comfortable being seen having lunch alone with a white woman, no matter if it was thirty years past the civil rights era. He'd been shaped by his times.

"We'll be there."

Ellie loved the club, loved everything about it: the pine-paneled walls, the plain plank floor, the slightly out-of-season advertisements on the walls. She liked the customers, heads swaying, or bent in deep and serious conversations, or full of wild tales and head thrown-back kind of laughing. She liked the smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke curling into the air. She liked the ceiling fans swirling the moist air around.

But most of all she loved the music. The blues always made her half-drunk anyway, and the band in the corner tonight was very good, a couple of vocalists, an electric guitar and a sax, some good drums. They played a wild mix of everything from Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy to John Mayall and Allman Brothers. They had no rules about era or exactly what qualified as the real thing, freely mixing harmonica and voice, rock and roll and Delta sounds in a full-throated combination that made the crowd crazy.

Drinking JD and water in her little black dress, smelling smoke and bourbon and Blue behind her, Ellie thought it was about as close as she'd ever get to heaven. She trusted her companions to know what the blues did to a person sometimes, and didn't even try to be careful or make conversation, she just left herself behind and went inside the music, floating, dreaming, smiling—even laughing sometimes. One part of her knew it was dangerous to let down her guard when she had so many secrets in her mind, and she was sitting with a man she wanted and should resist, so close she sometimes felt his breath sough over her shoulder or nape.

But the mood in the club was irresistible. The music, the sounds of low voices rolling over those notes, the bone-deep pleasure of it made every joint in her body soft.

At a break she turned with a faintly delirious smile to the others and saw by their faces that they were coming down, too, like the music was a drug. Alisha lifted her glass over the table and grinned. "Whew," she said.

"Amen," Ellie said.

Blue shifted beside her, his cotton shirt brushing her bare arm. "So, Dr. Reynard," she said, using conversation as a shield, "how is it that you came to be called Blue?"

When he turned his face to her, even in the dimness of the club, his eyes were almost unbearably bright, so beautiful it was impossible not to stare at them. A quiver of restlessness moved in her thighs. For the first time, she saw that his eyelashes were very long, and tipped with edges of gold that caught the light coming from the bar. He looked at her for a minute, his mind obviously not on the question, then he fiddled with his drink and looked at Marcus across the table. "I went crazy one summer, I guess," he said, and his mouth quirked.

"Naw, Ellie, he didn't just go crazy," Marcus said. He leaned forward and settled his elbows on the table with a kind of relish. Ellie thought of the picture showing Marcus at his Afroed, platformed best, and knew Marcus was about to get even.

Blue knew it, too. "Come on, man," he said, bowing his head with an abashed smile.

"You ever know a kid who went crazy for a song and played that song over and over and over and over until you wanted to kill him?" Marcus asked, ignoring Blue.

Ellie smiled. "Sure."

"Well, Blue fell out over 'Mannish Boy.' No matter what time of day or night—you may not know this, but the man never sleeps—you'd hear that song blasting out of the house, rattling the windows."

Imagining a young Blue, with hands too big for his body and not enough flesh yet on his ribs, dancing around his big empty house, pierced her. She grinned to cover it.

"It wasn't months," he said. "That was just the song that got me. I moved on in a couple of weeks."

"No, Ellie, it was months. Over and over and over and over. When he finally figured out there were a bunch of songs like that he might like, we about had a parade."

Blue burst out laughing, and the sound of it was even richer than his voice, and surprising in a way Ellie hadn't expected. "Lanie started calling him Blue and it stuck," Marcus said.

Ellie chuckled. "Wonder if the ladies at the Readers' Group know that story."

Alisha laughed. "I wonder, too. Oh, wouldn't they love that."

"Do you know
all
my embarrassing secrets?" Blue asked, pained.

"I don't know," Ellie said, lifting her glass. "Do I?"

He dropped his elbows on the table and leaned in close. "I guess you'll just have to spend some more time finding out."

The same light that had touched his eyelashes now caressed the line of his nose and fell into the dip above his top lip. Ellie straightened and tugged at the hem of her skirt. He caught the gesture and watched. "What about you, little girl?" he said. "Did you dance around to some song in your bare feet, singing into a lipstick?"

He said it quietly, that drawl like melted butter. She looked at her glass and shook the ice cubes down. "No," she said. "I was a lot older."

"Yeah?" One syllable that slid like a slow finger over the curve of her breast. "Tell me."

Marcus and Alisha had evidently exchanged secret signals, for at that moment, they both stood up. "We'll be back in a little while," Alisha said. "I see a friend of mine I want Marcus to meet."

Blue didn't even look up. Ellie nodded, then found herself drawn right back into that intense attention. Somehow, without her noticing, he'd moved his knee so that it touched the outside of her thigh. Somebody dropped some quarters into the jukebox and "Mannish Boy" burst into the room.

Ellie laughed as Blue shook his head over his shoulder at Marcus, walking away from the jukebox with a bland expression.

"In your bare feet, huh?" she teased.

He lifted a brow. "Enough about me. You were older," Blue prompted, touching one finger to her knuckles.

"I had a roommate in college who dated a blues guitarist," she said. "She kept asking me to go along, but I was studying all the time, you know, being a good student."

"What were you studying then?"

"Architecture, believe it or not." So many years later, even Ellie had to smile at the absurdity of the choice. "I really loved music, but I couldn't
do
it, so I decided building things would be okay.

"But the college matched people up according to the interests and background, and I'd had a lot of training in various musical instruments, and put on my form that music was my number-one interest." She lifted a shoulder, remembering. "If you aren't good enough to land a record contract, or even be a studio musician or make a symphony, there isn't much open to you, you know? I couldn't really see myself putting on musicals with the fifth grade somewhere."

"Not real thrilling," he agreed.

"Right. But anyway, I drew this music major as my roommate, and it was a good match except that she was always wanting to drag me to this concert or that club." In spite of herself, Ellie was drawn back to that night. "I went to school in New York State, and it was cold, which I had a very hard time getting used to, and I'd flunked a math exam and was homesick and didn't even have a boyfriend."

He chuckled. "Nothing like eighteen."

"Exactly. So my roommate dragged me out with her and we went to see her boyfriend play. I mean, I'd heard blues before, but I wasn't really into them or anything. That night—" She broke off, remembering the pain that had gone through her when he started to play. "It was like the guitar told the history of the world, but especially my part." She shook her head. "It snagged me somewhere so deep I'd never be able to name where it was." She smiled. "You know who it was?"

His eyes glittered. "Tell me."

"Leroy Calhoun."

He tossed his head back, laughing again as he had a moment before, and his throat looked golden and vulnerable in the low light. Leroy was acknowledged to be one of the best blues guitarists in the country right now, and his style was a mournful, emotional sound that could make stones cry.

"Guess fate had plans for you," he said. "Did you change your major the next day?"

Ellie shook her head. "It took me another semester to figure out what to do, and I ended up changing schools so I could study music from an academic point of view. And even then, it was another couple of years before I figured out what I wanted to do—which was study the lives of musicians, write about them, for all the people like me who love music but can't do it."

"Like me."

Guiltily, she realized she hadn't given much thought to Mabel tonight, and looked around her, trying to imagine what it had been like in those days. Something looked familiar. "I have a picture of Mabel at about sixteen, in a club. Is this the one?"