Tender Deception: A Novel of Romance (8 page)

During those seven years, she’d had no direct contact with Jimmy LaCross. He hadn’t written her a letter, nor had she ever expected that. Probably, he would be hard pressed to even remember the skinny little fourteen-year-old pianist he had known back in high school. From people she’d talked with in her home town the times she had gone back for her father’s funeral and to visit her mother during her final illness, she’d heard that Jimmy had, indeed, gone to New Orleans and was making a name for himself in music circles.

Lilly had a small amount of money when she finished college, a bit of insurance money her father had carried with his company on his last job, plus some she had earned playing at night spots on weekends and scoring musical arrangements for local groups.

With her funds, she bought a bus ticket to New Orleans.

She had gotten her degree at midterm. It was a blustery winter day when she boarded the bus for New Orleans. She settled in her seat and gazed out the window, a tiny smile playing across her lips. For seven years, she had carried a secret goal in her heart. And now it was going to be realized. She was going to see Jimmy LaCross again....

CHAPTER FOUR

They gave Tiny Smith a real New Orleans funeral. Jimmy LaCross led the band through the narrow streets in the cold, drizzling rain. Musicians, bartenders, bookies, show girls and jazz fans formed the second line, walking in measured steps behind the band, timing their pace to the sad funeral dirge.

After the grave-side services, the procession wound its way between the slick, wet marble vaults out to the streets again. The band, carrying out the tradition all the way, swung out with happy, two-beat jazz, the way New Orleans funeral bands had done since they gave birth to that kind of music in another age.

They were expressing their joy that Tiny’s worldly troubles were over now and he was in heaven. They played,
Let the Tailgate Down
,
Rampart Street Parade
, and
Muskrat Ramble.

Tiny had had a lot of friends along Bourbon Street, and that night a lot of glasses were raised in tribute to the departed. Bourbon Street was not one to mourn for long. It had a lot of jazz to play and absinthe to drink and pretty girls to watch.

The rain was still coming down slowly, steadily. Cobblestone streets in the French Quarter and ancient wrought-iron grillwork gleamed darkly. Ghosts of Creole ladies, Napoleonic soldiers and swarthy pirates hovered in the dripping shadows of courtyards and behind shuttered windows.

Later, Jimmy LaCross described that night to Lilly.

Tiny had been more than his band’s pianist. He had been Jimmy’s close friend since Jimmy quit playing as a side man and formed his own band four years ago. The place was not going to be the same without Tiny’s round, smiling face.

A musician’s life was a hard one—irregular hours, too many cigarettes, too much booze. The doctor had warned Tiny to get out of it before his heart stopped ticking one night. But Tiny had grinned in his characteristic manner and shrugged, “Live fast, die young—make a good-looking corpse.” And he’d made his exit the way he would have chosen, bouncing on his piano bench in the middle of a hot chorus of
Panama.
And now there was an emptiness in Jimmy’s heart to match the vacant place in the band. The personnel in a jazz band changes rapidly. Tiny had been the last original member of the band Jimmy formed four years ago.

Jimmy had spent the afternoon when they came back from the funeral drinking steadily, but the alcohol had little effect on him today. Now he lit a cigarette and flipped his match into a running gutter. He walked slowly toward the Sho-Time Bar in the next block. Around him, Bourbon Street was coming awake for the evening. The rhythm of jazz music floated out of the bars. Neon tubes glowed around provocative, life-size photographs of bare-legged dancing girls.

Six nights a week, from ten in the evening until four the next morning, Jimmy led his band at the Sho-Time bar. Tonight would be no different. Tiny would have been sad if it were otherwise. There would be a substitute pianist, but the music would go on.

The crowd filled the place tonight to drink and listen as usual. Jimmy tapped off the beat of the opening number and raised his golden horn to his lips. Tonight, he played with a special inspiration.

He made up the improvisation, big and mellow, out of the shadows of smoke and dripping rain and fog on the Mississippi, out of the licorice taste of absinthe and the smell of close-packed bodies and marble vaults wet and cold in the night rain. He made it up and blew it out of his horn, and it made the people laugh and clap, and sometimes it made them shiver.

They played
Bourbon Street Parade
good and solid, the way it had been played here in the French Quarter, the Vieux Carré for years. He put himself in it—a message for Tiny, a message for the world that he was Jimmy LaCross, and he had something to say with his horn.

As he was playing, he opened his eyes a little and saw the young woman through the fog of smoke. She had just come in. Beads of rain glistened in her blonde hair like diamonds and on her cheeks like tears.

She moved through the crowd. The Sho-Time Bar was a long, narrow room with padded, wine-colored walls, sparkling chandeliers over the bar and a dais behind the bar for the band. The customers sat around the walls at miniature tables or on stools at the bar and watched the musicians perform. She edged her way to a vacant stool at the far end of the bar, and sat there alone, listening intently to the music.

Something about the young woman disturbed Jimmy. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her. She had been visiting his place nightly for the past week. She always came alone. She usually came about midnight and stayed as long as the band played, carefully nursing along a single drink, much to the scowling displeasure of Alex, the bartender.

The thing that bothered Jimmy was that there was something vaguely familiar about the blonde. He tried to fit her into the parade of attractive young women who had moved through his life, but he couldn’t place her. Yet the feeling was there that he knew who she was. He’d been planning to speak to her, but at every intermission he’d been cornered by fans wanting his autograph or by the bartender with some new crisis. Jimmy hired bartenders with the understanding that they would handle the operation of the club while Jimmy ran the band. But it never quite worked out that way. Not the least of the problems was the fact that the last bartender he’d hired had stolen him blind.

So far this week, by the time the problems were solved, the fans were off his back, and the band had played its final tune for the evening and instruments were packed away, the girl had gone. But tonight, at last, he got off the stand after the final number before the young woman left. “Hi,” he said, pausing at her spot near the end of the bar.

“Hello,” she said quietly, looking directly at him with large, violet-blue eyes.

“You must like music,” he smiled. “I’ve seen you come in for several nights now.”

“Yes. You’ve really gotten good since I last heard you, Jimmy.”

He gazed at her with a puzzled frown. “Do I know you from someplace?”

She smiled quietly. “Yes, but you don’t remember, do you? I didn’t expect you would.”

His frown deepened. “Here in New Orleans? That time we played in Baton Rouge? On the riverboat? No?”

She shook her head. “Much, much further back than that, Jimmy....”

* * * * * * *

Each night, Lilly had tried to find the courage to go up to him. But, whenever he stepped down from the bandstand, other people had claimed his attention. Tonight, when she saw him coming directly toward her, she had felt a thudding in her chest. Her hands had grown cold. She had dreamed about this moment for seven years. Now she found it hard to believe it was actually happening.

The years had changed Jimmy LaCross, though probably not as much as they had changed her. He seemed taller than she remembered, and a bit heavier, and there were tiny crow’s feet around his eyes. He was more handsome than ever, with the slightly dissipated look of a professional musician. Her heart had wrenched at the sight of him, and she wished she could reach up and push back the hair that still tumbled carelessly over his forehead.

Whatever changes time had wrought in both of them, it had not disappointed her. She had often wondered if, when she saw Jimmy again, it would turn out to be a sad illusion. She would see him and realize the dream she had carried in her heart for so many years was only that, just a dream, with no claim on reality. The Jimmy LaCross she’d pictured had only been a childhood fantasy, a teen-age crush that had turned an ordinary boy into a romantic hero.

But, no. Jimmy stood before her now, very much flesh and blood. And she was not disappointed. The boy she had loved all these years was very much a real person. And what she felt was no illusion.

There was one important difference. She was no longer a naïve fourteen year old, so overwhelmed by him that she couldn’t find her tongue. She still felt some natural shyness. But she could meet him more on his own terms now.

She challenged him with a look and a smile. “Perhaps if I give you a clue, Jimmy, you’ll remember.”

He followed her curiously as she moved off the stool, around the bar to the band dais. She wondered at her own brashness. But the importance of the moment gave her courage. She had not waited seven years and come all this distance to let inhibitions get in the way. Besides, she felt more confident when she was seated at a piano.

Now, on the bandstand, she ran her fingers lightly over the piano keys. She made herself comfortable on the bench, and began playing one of the traditional New Orleans tunes that the band had played tonight,
The Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.

She sensed Jimmy’s presence at her left shoulder, watching her intently. She swung into a stride rhythm with her left hand. Nature had blessed her with a large reach for a woman. She played tenths with ease. She improvised a chorus with the joy and excitement she felt. When she had finished, she swung around on the bench. “Now do you remember me, Jimmy?” she asked.

He wore an expression of stunned surprise. “I’ve only heard one female in my life play that kind of jazz piano,” he exclaimed. “A little girl back in my home town—”

“Do you remember her name?” Lilly asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh—”

“Try Lilly.”

He snapped his fingers. “Lilly Parker! You’re Lilly Parker. My Lord, I can’t believe it. Little Lilly Parker, all grown up!”

He lifted her from the piano stool and gave her a mighty hug. “Why in the devil didn’t you come up the first night and tell me who you were?” he demanded.

Joy and excitement bubbled inside her. She felt warm all over from his hug. “You’re a popular guy,” she said breathlessly. “I never could get close to you. Anyway, it was kind of fun to just sneak in and listen to you and see if you’d remember me.”

“Tell me all about Millerdale,” he exclaimed. “How are the kids we went to school with? Is old Jeff Singleton still the town constable? He used to be on my back all the time about the way I’d race down Main Street!” Jimmy laughed.

Lilly shook her head. “I don’t know, Jimmy. I’ve been gone for several years getting my music degree.”

“No kidding! You went on to college? How did you swing that? Your folks weren’t any better off than mine.”

“Music scholarships...government loans. And I worked part-time—”

“Well, that’s great, kid. I’m glad you didn’t let that small town smother you. You have too much talent.” Then he asked, “What the heck are you doing in New Orleans?”

She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him the truth, that she’d quietly been carrying a torch for him all these years and coming here to see him again was the realization of a dream that had lived in her heart for so long.

Instead, she murmured, “Just a whim, I guess. I graduated at midterm. I had saved a little money. I thought I’d like to see New Orleans. You know, a kind of pilgrimage to the place where our kind of music got started.”

“This is the place,” he nodded. “Louis Armstrong got his start playing at Lulu White’s joint in the old Storyville section. Just down the street is the place where Jack Teagarden was playing his last engagement when he died—”

He interrupted himself, “Come on, Lilly. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” He motioned to the bartender.

He led her to a private booth at the rear of the place. The bartender brought them steaming mugs of coffee. Jimmy sipped the black Louisiana brew with its sharp chicory flavor. He leaned back against the booth seat, smiling at her.

His smile brought a flood of emotion to her heart. She wanted to grasp this moment, to distill every bit of feeling from it, to memorize the sound of his voice, the touch of his gaze. She had waited so long.

“You’ve—you’ve gotten really good on that horn, Jimmy. I remember how good you sounded back in high school, but you’re even better now. Your tone is bigger. Your technique is improved. And you have some wonderful ideas—”

“Yeah, well, there’s something about this old city that inspires you to play good jazz,” he said. His eyes half closed and he seemed to gaze past her, at scenes in another time and place. Dreamily, he said, “So much of it happened right here, back in the early days when it all got started. King Oliver, marching with a brass band down these very streets. The riverboats with their jazz bands coming down the Mississippi, docking at the levee. The funeral bands playing
Didn’t He Ramble.
You kind of feel it in the air.” He looked directly at her again and grinned. “Y’know, sometimes I have the feeling that the ghosts of those legendary old horn men—Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard, Bunk Johnson—are still around and some nights they come in out of the fog and mist and put their fingers on my keys when I’m playing, showing me things I never thought of on my own.”