BOOKER

I have only been home maybe ten minutes and am trying to ice my knuckles while simultaneously disrobing when some idiot pounds on my door. “Oh, for Cri’s sake, now what?” Who the hell comes calling at three o’clock in the morning? Isn’t it enough the night has already crept along like a moonshine-soaked turtle, while displaying damn near every shade of balled up known to man? Now company comes knocking at my door at o’dark hundred?

I throw back the three fingers of Canadian Club sipping whiskey I poured but have yet had opportunity to actually sip. I was a little busy getting ice for my hand, then detaching my stiff, high wingtip collar and removing my shirt studs and one cufflink with my left hand while burying my right one in the bowl I’d dumped the ice in. Pulling the latter from the frigid cubes, I gingerly pat it dry against the bedspread I’m sitting on. Setting the now-empty glass on the night table next to my bed, I climb to my feet then stalk down the hall to the door, trailing the shirt I’ve shrugged out of from my left wrist. I’m wrestling the final cuff link free as I reach the tiny entry.

Someone hammers yet again, shaking the door in its jamb.

“Knock it off!” I roar. “Who the hell are you, anyhow?”

“Open the goddamn door, Jameson!”

My heart performs a weird hurl-itself-at-my-ribcage maneuver. “Will?” I can honestly say he is the last person I expected to arrive on my doorstep. Not after tonight’s sideshow. Curiosity alone is enough to have me reaching for the knob.

I open the door.

My former best friend strides past me, his wide shoulder catching me in the collarbone and sending me staggering back. Okay, fair enough. Rubbing the spot he slammed, I follow him into the living room.

“Long time, no see,” I say with a bite of sarcasm layered atop the manners I was raised on. Then, watching him drop into a chair in my living room, the sarcasm grows deeper. “Please. Sit your ass down. Make yourself at home.”

“Done that. Thanks.” He looks up at me. “Interesting look.”

I glance down and shrug. I have yet to change out of my dress slacks, and my bowtie is still neatly tied. Having finally rid myself of my shirt on the entry floor, however, from the waist up I’m dressed only in the tux tie and my undershirt.

Well, too damn bad. “My house. Dead of night. If you want sensibly dressed, come back at a reasonable hour.”

He shrugs right back at me. “Got any hooch?” The words no sooner leave his mouth than he barks out a laugh. “Of course you do. You own a damn juice joint.”

I study him. Is he my rival now for Lena’s love? My thoughts on the latter have been all over the map tonight. One minute I’m thinking yes. The next, no way in hell. My bottom line at the moment is: what does she see in him, exactly?

Sure, Will has always had an easiness in his own skin I envied. Before I discovered it for myself, I had to spend fifteen months in European trenches and woods, then more than five years forging my way through the clubs of Paris, learning everything I needed to know to eventually run my own business. My one-time friend is a little battered right now because of me, but I suppose he’s nice enough looking with his tall, rangy build, dark eyes and sun-streaked brown hair. Shit, how would I know? Men don’t consider that sort of thing about each other.

Clara and Dot sure as hell couldn’t stop talking about him, though, when they left Lena’s dressing room for a quick drink at the bar before heading home. Truth be told, I was relieved when the dancers finally left.

I look down at my clenched fists, and slowly straighten my fingers until I’m no longer sporting bloodless white knuckles. I remind myself Will has never approached anything close to movie idol handsome. And his money likely isn’t the attraction. He was never dirt poor like Lena back when we all lived in Walla Walla. But he had been a lot closer to her income bracket than my father’s. And from what I overheard outside her dressing room earlier, he’s taken those drawings he was always working on and turned them into a career as an illustrator. I’m guessing it’s probably a decent living, but I doubt it has him rolling in dough. So what is it, exactly, all the women see in him?

What does Lena see?

Of course, the details people like my father would consider drawbacks never seemed to matter as much to the ladies. And Lena wouldn’t give a damn if Will was rich as Croesus. She sure hadn’t given two shakes about my wealth or lack of it. She would appreciate Will’s creative mind, though. Women almost universally found him interesting. So my money is on Will’s easygoing confidence being his biggest drawing card.

Yeah. I can easily envision Lena liking a confident man.

Will follows me to the dining room where I cross to the bar I’ve established on the sideboard. Snatching up another highball glass, I splash a couple fingers of the rye whiskey into it. I start to turn away, then appropriate another glass and pour some for myself.

I hand Will his and carry mine back to the living room, where Will sits down again in his easy chair. Dropping onto the couch across the small, low table from him, I shoot him a level look. “So, what are you doing here at—” I glance at my watch “—three-goddamn-twenty-three in the morning? If you’re wanting an apology—well I guess I might owe you one.”

“You think?”

His lack of expression riles me. “Look, what did you expect to happen when you came waltzing into my club? Could I have handled my goodbyes better back then? Yes. And I should have talked about going to war with Lena first. But I did try to call her at the foundling home and I sure as hell kept my promise to write to her. She’s the one who couldn’t be bothered to respond. So, I concentrated on two things: staying alive and being a good soldier.

“A week or two before the war ended, I broke down and wrote home to find out what Lena was doing and maybe discover why the hell she hadn’t written. Mom’s letter back to me was short and sweet. She said, I am so sorry dear, but Miss Bjornstad left town with your friend Will.” I stare him down. “You might as well have gutted me.”

Will doesn’t display an iota of guilt. He merely raises an eyebrow at me. “Why would you care? You were gonna go to France to live in Paris anyhow. Or so Lena overheard your mama telling the postmaster.”

“I was already in France. In September of Eighteen, the 1^st Army was the attack on the Western Front at Saint-Mihiel.”

I scrub my eyes with the heels of my palms, then drop my hands to grip my knees. I would give a bundle to be all cool and composed. But it’s late, I’m fried and I just don’t have it in me. I instead blow out a breath and simply tell Will the truth. “I felt betrayed on all fronts to hear you and Lena were together while I was fighting that fucking awful war. So, yes, rather than come home I went to Paris. I had to earn my own living for the first time in my life, and I liked it there. It’s where I fell in love with clubs and cabarets. They were such an antidote to the war.”

I look Will in the eye. “War wasn’t anything like the glorious adventure you and I envisioned. It was constant mud and fear. It was infected feet from standing in water up to your calves in the trenches and seeing fellow soldiers get blown up in front of you out in the fields. It was airplanes strafing the ground all around you and fighting off tanks with a goddamn machine gun.” I suck in a breath and shake off the old nightmare. I give my one time friend a small half smile. It’s the best I can manage at the moment.

“So, yeah,” I admit. “I liked the night life in Paris. It saved my sanity and gave me purpose. And since I was making a living, saving and learning a lot, I stayed until the beginning of last year when I was ready to implement my plans to open my own place. But I tell you what, Will. While I’d flirted with the idea of living in Paris, I didn’t make up my mind until I got that note from my mom about you and Lena.”

“Wanna know the big flaw if you’re using that as your reasoning?” Will asks easily. “Lena and I weren’t together.” Clearly seeing me open my mouth, he waves a hand. “Yes, we left together,” he says. “After mama died, I came into a bit of money and shared it with Lena so we could both get a fresh start away from that damn small-minded town. But she and I...? Booker, we have never been anything but good friends.”

My heart is suddenly trying to drum its way out of my chest. But I suck in a deep breath and slowly, slowly, exhale it.

Then give Will a slight nod. Because... “I might have caught a hint of that earlier tonight.”

“It better be after you decked me, asshole.”

“Yeah. It was sort of beginning to sink in you had had nearly a decade to get married and have yourself a passel of babies.” I ignore the way the thought of the latter in particular hollows me out. “Then I went backstage to talk to you and maybe apologize for punching you. Instead, I heard you two talking. And it didn’t sound lover-like. You didn’t call each other pet names.” A thought that hadn’t occurred to me earlier sends the right side of my mouth kicking up in a half smile. “And Lena never once offered to kiss your nose all better.”

Will gapes at me. “Why the hell would she wanna do that?”

“Because once, in the park back home, we watched a woman clean her little fella’s hands in the drinking fountain after he skinned them up on the sidewalk. When she was done, she patted them dry with her handkerchief and said, ‘Let mama kiss it and make it better.’ Then she carefully kissed each one. Lena was completely taken with the gesture.”

“I can picture that. God knows she had no one, growing up, to give her any kind of tenderness, let alone taking the time to kiss her ouchies, as my mama called them when I was little.” Will smiles fondly.

I clear my throat. “Yeah. A while after that incident I cracked my crazy bone against the door jamb of the Feed and Seed and Lena kissed it better.” I remember being touched and totally aroused, thinking of other places I could ask her to kiss.

I’m smart enough not to say as much aloud, but, hey. I was an eighteen-year-old boy at the time. Or maybe simply saying I’m male is all that’s needed to justify my youthful thoughts. I take a sip of the Canadian Club.

And spray it all over myself when Will murmurs, “If I’d had a pretty girl say that back then, I would have been seriously tempted to point out some other body parts needing a good kiss better.”

I pull a clean handkerchief from my slacks pocket. Dab at my chest and thighs. And scowl at Will. “Jesus, man, give a fella a little warning, would ya?”

Will shrugged. “You can’t tell me the thought never crossed your mind.”

“Of course it did. I figured you’d lay me out cold, though, if I mentioned it in conjunction with Lena.”

Will winced. “Yeah. I’d rather not rub those two thoughts together. She’s the closest thing I have to a sister.” He throws back the rest of his drink and sets the glass on the end table. “Speaking of which, what is the deal with all these missing letters?”

I’m exhausted and not tracking anywhere near an efficient level. Consequently, I don’t exactly sound brilliant when, in answer to Will’s question, I meet his eyes, one of which is—shit—turning black and swelling shut, and say, “Huh?”

“I know Lena never received a single letter from you, Booker. And I know how badly it busted her up inside. But I’m going to tell you the same thing I told her. I have never known either of you to lie to me or each other. You have both always been straight shooters. Yet here we are, with the two of you insisting you wrote the other. Damn, man. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that so many goddamn letters went missing? You were always aces with numbers, Jameson. And you and Lena were tighter ‘n ticks at the time you left town.”

Will tunnels his fingers through his hair, holding it off his forehead as he studies me through the eye that’s not swollen. “Given that, what are the fucking odds not so much as one letter got through from the two of you the entire time you were gone?”