The wicked redhead, p.35
The Wicked Redhead, page 35
“Any time.”
“When I’m feeling better . . .” she began, and stopped. A breeze crept in under the window sash and swirled around her arms and neck. Hector stood about a foot away, one hand resting on the piano, the other hanging by his side. He wore his usual uniform, the one he wore when he was making music: soft gray T-shirt, soft blue jeans. Barefoot. She always thought of him like an animal, some kind of wolfhound, not fully domesticated, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was just a guy, a musician who also built cabinets, pretty good in the sack, and all the rest was her imagination. Was just Ella getting away from Patrick and crowning some guy in her apartment building with all kinds of virtues he didn’t really possess.
And she was pregnant. Needing a mate. That clouded your judgment, for sure.
“It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s not fair, what I’m doing to you.”
“What do you mean, what you’re doing to me?”
“This. You deserve better than this. It’s so complicated.”
“Jesus, Gilbert. I’m a musician. Complicated is what I do. How boring would it be, if you were just some girl who showed up with no baggage?”
Ella started to laugh. “Oh, I’ve got baggage, all right. I’ve given you more baggage in one week—”
“Come here,” he said, but in one word: C’mere. He sat down on the piano bench, straddling it sideways, and pulled her down before him, so her back was nestled against his chest. He bent down and kissed her neck. Put his warm hands around her waist to rest against her complicated middle. “So. What are you going to do, Gilbert? What’s the plan?”
“The plan. I don’t know the plan. The plan seems to have veered off course. You were the rebound who might be the real thing. Now there’s two of me, and I have a big decision to make.”
“So what are your thoughts?”
“My thoughts. Well. I was thinking about something, during the drive today. Something my dad said to me. And my grandfather. There was all this drama, apparently, stuff I never knew about, and they just dealt with it, and maybe I should just deal with it, too. Deal with the messiness. Life is never perfect, right? And what if . . .”
“What if what?”
Ella allowed her hands to fall on Hector’s legs, just above the knees, and leaned back against his chest. “So then, there’s another thing. We were trying for a baby for a while, Patrick and I. We tried for a year, actually, and nothing happened. Like, every month, disappointment. So what if this pregnancy is a total fluke? What if this is the only chance I ever get? What if—you know—what if this baby is the only baby I ever have?”
“Or maybe it was him,” Hector said. “Patrick. Maybe he was the one who got lucky here.”
“Well, we don’t know for sure, do we? Either way. I mean, a baby’s forever, but so is termination. By definition. You can’t take it back. You can’t say, ten years later, I want that baby back, can I have it back, please? And what if I’m aborting Einstein?”
“Probably not,” he said. “But you never know.”
“Not that it matters, I guess. All equal in the eyes of God and all that. But okay. Those are my thoughts, in summary. So enough about me. What do you think?”
“Ella.” He lifted one hand and stroked the hair at her temple. “Don’t listen to me. You need to make this decision without giving a damn what I think.”
“Okay. If I were your girlfriend, what would you want me to do?”
“Ella, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but I sort of do consider you my girlfriend. For lack of a better word.”
“You know what I mean. If this were your baby, I mean.”
“Well,” he said, very slowly, “here’s the deal, Ella. See, I’m in love with you. The way I see it, if you’re having a baby, I’m having a baby. The sperm donation aspect of the case is not material to me at all. I’m with you. We do this together. With a side helping of your ex-husband that makes my head hurt to think about, but that’s—what did you call it? The messiness of life. File under Stuff You Have to Suck Up and Deal With. So, yes. It’s your call. And I’m not saying that you’re the kind of girl who would end a pregnancy just because her new boyfriend isn’t up for fatherhood. But if you were, which you’re not, you’d be wrong to think that. I’m up for this if you are. I’m ready to—I’m ready to—” His voice went rough. His right hand returned to her waist, joining his left, and his head bent back down to her neck. “Ready for whatever you want to throw at me.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
“I was awake all last night, thinking about all the fucking bourbon I fed you, the wine. I swear, Ella, if anything’s wrong—”
“The doctor said not to stress about it. It wasn’t actually that much. I mean, it happens. I just never in the world imagined . . .”
“I poured it all out. Every bottle, every drop. I was cussing like a sailor. You should have heard me.”
“You didn’t! All of it?”
“Every drop. I was so pissed at myself, I kind of lost it.”
“Hector, you fool. That was some seriously expensive booze.”
His arms went tight around her. She gripped his forearms, his elbows, the tendons of him, so taut and anxious. Nellie padded over and sat in front of her, looking puzzled.
“I am a fool for you, Ella,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Yes, you are. You are such a fool.”
The faint note of a clarinet wound its way through the window. Hector’s arms went stiff. His lips stilled against the soft skin beneath her ear. “Wow. Kind of early for that stuff, isn’t it?”
A trumpet joined the clarinet, and then a double bass. Hector said, Whoa, and loosened his grip around Ella, reached with his left hand for the piano keyboard while his right arm remained around her waist. He started to pick out a tune, matching the music that came through the window, through the floorboards, the walls, from no particular source. Just there. In the room around them. “Grandpa approves, I guess,” he said.
“That’s not Bruno? The bass player?”
“Dunno for sure. But he did play bass down there.”
Ella was too tired to play along. Too tired and too woozy. She leaned her head against the hollow of his shoulder, closed her eyes, and listened. Could hear his heartbeat through the thin cotton of the T-shirt, like some kind of percussion underneath the music itself.
“What did my father say to you? In the hallway?”
“Dad stuff. Along the usual lines of, Hurt one hair on her head and I’ll slice your balls off.”
Ella opened her eyes and started to laugh. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. What did you tell him?”
“Me? I said that if I ever hurt you, I’d hand him the knife myself.”
“Oh.”
“He also warned me that the ex–Mr. Ella might be a problem. Apparently he’s the jealous type, which I find kind of ironic, under the circumstances.”
“I am such a pain in the neck. The complications never end.”
“Eh, don’t worry about him. I used to fence in college.” He paused his left hand on the piano to make a few Zorro moves. “I got your back.”
She giggled and drew her hand back again, leaving Hector to play by himself. The wooziness was lifting with the laughter. Or was it the music? The ghosts in the speakeasy next door, playing their tunes. Next to the music stand sat the black enamel box with its delicate gold trim, the lid still open. She wound her fingers around his, where they lay at her waist.
“You never let me say it back,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“On the phone. You never gave me the chance to say it back.”
“Ah.” He chuckled. “Was that evil of me?”
“No. It was evil of me not to call you right back and make you hear it.”
“Didn’t need to hear it, Gilbert. I just needed to know that you heard it.”
Ella stared at the fingers of Hector’s left hand, still moving nimbly around the keyboard. Her head was full of his woolen smell, of the sound of his piano. “Remember how we sat right here a week ago?” she said. “You poured me a drink and sat me down with you, because I was so nervous.”
“I admit, that was some case of nerves. I was so afraid you’d back out.”
“I hadn’t slept with anyone but Patrick in five years. I felt like such a slut.”
“But you came around.”
“It was the music,” she said. “The music reminded me I was home. That it was okay to be a slut with you. And you were amazing. You were so patient.”
He laughed again. “Mind over matter, Gilbert. If you knew how horny I was right then, you’d have run screaming.”
“I always knew you were a perv, deep down.”
“Yeah, I figured the same about you.”
It was strange, how quickly the dizziness dissolved from her head. The music from downstairs or the laughter or the buzz along her spine, who knew? Maybe the pills or the water. She was not exactly herself, but she could glimpse Ella. Could just about touch her.
“Aunt Viv used to get morning sickness,” she said.
“Did she? How do you know?”
“She came to visit at the hospital this morning. Pulled up a chair next to the bed, when the others weren’t looking, and gave me a list of things that made her better. Some of them were pretty interesting.”
“Oh? Like what?”
She turned her head and whispered in his ear.
Hector’s hand paused on the keys, midnote. In the absence of the piano, the other instruments faded almost to nothing. But not quite. The clarinet remained, just barely, like a fine, reedy thread winding them together.
“Wow,” Hector said, not moving. “That sounds like a pretty unconventional treatment, to me.”
“She’s a pretty unconventional aunt. But she says it works, every time.”
Hector lifted his hand from the piano keys and gently closed the keyboard.
“Whatever it takes,” he said.
Acknowledgments
When I first set out to write a series set around Prohibition (beginning with The Wicked City in 2016) I didn’t quite realize how challenging a task it would prove, since these books, about which I feel so passionately, would have to fit around the yearly publication of my stand-alone novels. Many thanks to my publisher, William Morrow, and especially my editor, Rachel Kahan, for standing by Gin Kelly and her unique voice as she continues through the tumultuous twenties, when our modern world was taking shape. My gratitude is also due to the wonderful team of editorial assistants, copyeditors, and marketing and publicity professionals, who turn my words into books and bring them to readers around the world.
I am forever indebted to my formidable literary agent, Alexandra Machinist at ICM, who advocates so tirelessly for my books, and to her assistant, Ruth Landry, who keeps everything (including your author) in perfect order.
To my family, who give me such love and support, my thanks are unending.
And to you, my readers, who kept asking when Gin’s story would continue—and who demanded to know about “that redhead” who turned up in the epilogue of Cocoa Beach—I want you to know that your support means the world to me.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
* * *
Meet Beatriz Williams
About the Book
* * *
Reading Group Guide
Read On
* * *
An Excerpt from The Golden Hour
About the Author
Meet Beatriz Williams
BEATRIZ WILLIAMS is the bestselling author of ten novels, including The Summer Wives, A Hundred Summers, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, and A Certain Age. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University, then spent several years in New York and London as a corporate strategy consultant before pursuing her passion for historical fiction. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
About the Book
Reading Group Guide
Gin has a premonition in which she pictures her sister Patsy and herself “stuck on a wheel. The three of us, a nightmare Ferris wheel that turns over and over and never lets us off.” Why do you think she has this particular vision? What can she do to stop the turning of the wheel?
Gin is terrified of having children, after years of watching her mother suffer from repeated births and miscarriages, and then die in childbirth. How does her 1920s vison of childbirth as something potentially deadly contrast with Ella’s modern pregnancy?
What do you make of Mrs. Marshall’s “little proposition” that Gin marry Billy? Why is she so intent on what seems to be a terrible idea? Why does Gin agree to go along with the charade? What would you have done?
Granny Annabel tells Ella “You always see the best in people. You can’t imagine sin because you haven’t got any inside you. . . . You believed [Patrick] was good and faithful because you are good and faithful.” Is this true? If we see others as we are, how do you think Gin views the world? What about Theresa Marshall? Or Aunt Julie?
Stefan urges Ella to tell Patrick that she’s pregnant because “it would be a kindness to him, one he maybe does not deserve, but one which you have the power to give him. It is man’s burden, you see, to send his seed into the world, and sometimes never to know how it grows.” Is he giving her good advice?
Gin tells Christopher that “I’m nobody’s nice girl.” He disagrees and tells her she has a “noble soul.” Who do you agree with?
Why do you think Ella’s father waited so long to tell her the truth about her own paternity? Was that a mistake?
There are many characters in the novel who were raised by men who are not their biological fathers. What do you think the author is saying about the meaning of family and fatherhood?
Do you have suspicions about who might be Gin’s father? How does the mystery of his identity shape Gin’s decisions?
What does the future have in store for Gin and Ella? How would you like their stories to continue?
Read On
An Excerpt from The Golden Hour
LULU
JUNE 1941
(The Bahamas)
ON THE MAGAZINE COVER, the woman sits on a rattan sofa and the man sits on the floor at her feet, gazing not at the camera but upward, adoringly, at her. She smiles back in approval. She has a book in her lap, open to the frontispiece or maybe the table of contents—she doesn’t look as if she actually means to read it—and in her hair, a ribbon topped with a bow. (A bow, I tell you.) A pair of plump Union Jack sofa pillows flanks either side of her. A real domestic scene, a happy couple in a tasteful home. THE WINDSOR TEAM, reads the caption, in small, discreet letters at the bottom. At the top, much larger, white type inside a block of solid red: L I F E.
I’d been staring at this image, on and off, for most of the journey from New York, having paid a dime for the magazine itself at the newsstand in the Eastern Air Lines terminal building at LaGuardia Field. (It was the latest issue, now there’s coincidence for you.) I’d held it on my lap as what you might call a talisman, throughout each leg of the journey, each takeoff and landing, Richmond followed by Savannah followed by some swamp called Orlando followed by Miami at last, smacking down to earth at half past five in the afternoon, taxi to a shabby hotel, taxi back to the airfield this morning, and I still didn’t feel as if I’d quite gotten to the bottom of that photograph. Oh, sometimes I flipped the magazine open and read the article inside—the usual basket of eggs, served sunny-side up—but mostly I studied the picture on the cover. So carefully arranged, each detail in place. Those Union Jack pillows, for example. (We just couldn’t be any more patriotic, could we? Oh, my, no. We are as thoroughly British as afternoon tea.) That hair ribbon, the bow. (We are as charmingly, harmlessly feminine as the housewife next door.) The enormous jeweled brooch pinned to her striped jacket, just above the right breast—and what was it, anyway? The design, I mean. I squinted and peered and adjusted the angle of light, but I couldn’t make any sense of the shape. No matter. It was more brooch than I could afford, that was all, more jewels than I could ever bear on my own right breast. (We are not the housewife next door after all, are we? We are richer, better, royal. Even if we aren’t quite royal. Not according to the Royals. Still, more royal than you, Mrs. American Housewife.)
The airplane lurched. I peered through the window at the never-ending horizon, turquoise sea topped by a turquoise sky, and my stomach—never at home aboard moving objects—lurched too. According to my wristwatch, we were due at Nassau in twenty minutes, and the twenty-one seats of this modern all-metal Pan American airliner were crammed full of American tourists in Sunday best and businessmen in pressed suits, none of whose stomachs seemed troubled by the voyage. Just my dumb luck, my dumb stomach. Or was it my ears? Apparently motion sickness had something to do with your inner ear, the pressure of fluid inside versus the pressure of air without, and when the perception of movement on your insides didn’t agree with the perception of movement from your eyeballs, well, that’s where your stomach got into difficulty. I supposed that explanation made sense. All the world’s troubles seemed to come from friction of one kind or another. One thing rubbing up against another, and neither one backing down.
So I crossed my arms atop the magazine and gazed out into the distance—that was supposed to help—and chewed on the stick of Wrigley’s thoughtfully provided by the stewardess. By now, the vibration of the engines had taken up habitation inside my skull. This? This is nothing, sister, said the fellow sitting next to me on the Richmond–Savannah hop yesterday, local businessman type. You shoulda heard the racket on the old Ford tri-motor. Boy, that was some kind of noise, all right. Why, the girls sometimes had to use a megaphone, it was so loud. Now, this hunka junk, they put some insulation in her skin. You know what insulation is? Makes a whole lot of difference, believe you me. Here he rapped against the fuselage with his knuckles. Course, there ain’t no amount of insulation in the world can drown out the sound of a couple of Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp engines full throttle, no ma’am. That’s eight hundred horsepower apiece. Yep, she’s a classy bird, all right, the DC-three. You ever flown the sleeper model? Coast to coast in fifteen hours. That’s something, ain’t it? And so on. By the time we reached Savannah, I would gladly have taken the old Ford tri-motor and a pair of earplugs.
