Wait (Beloved Bloody Time) Read online

  If he had just been able to talk about it, she would have made up a story to explain where the money had come from and bought him an exemption. But he had never given her the chance.

  “That’s the thing,” Gabe replied, giving up on finding the scrap of paper he would have written the details upon – probably with a piece of drawing charcoal he found in the bottom of his pocket. He’d be lucky to be able to read it by the time he found it again, for the charcoal would be smudged and smeared. “This dude, he didn’t have to pay for it.”

  “Not pay for an exemption? But...I don’t understand. No doctor just gives them away. Where’s the profit in that?”

  Gabe shook his head, his smile even wider. “That’s just it. It’s so cool, Tally. This doc...He’s on our side. The dude, the one at the bistro? He said he just had to talk to the doctor. Tell him why he didn’t want to go. Then the doctor talked through his medical history. Said he’d come up with something that made sense. That was all. That was it.” Gabe was almost vibrating with excitement.

  Her spine prickled. So did the back of her neck. “It sounds too good to be true,” she said flatly.

  “I know!” Gabe bounced up from the mattress and onto his feet. They were bare. He refused to wear shoes until the frost set in, and even then, he wore his old steel-toe boots under protest the whole time. The back hems of his bell-bottom jeans were frayed from where the hems scuffed the floor with every step he took. The knee was out on the left leg, too.

  Tally smiled as she looked at him. Gabe had misunderstood her, but that was alright. She could tell by the energy crackling through him that he wouldn’t hear her no matter what she said. He had made up his mind. This opportunity looked to him like a get-out-of-jail-free card and no one was going to stop him from hunting down the opportunity and tackling it to the ground if necessary.

  “Would you like to go up there to see him tomorrow, honey?” she asked.

  He looked at her, his smile fading. The look in his eyes told her he was really seeing her. His mind had stopped driving him just for a moment. “You’re aces, babe. Really. You’re the best.”

  “I know.” She gave her best smile in return.

  * * * * *

  Harlem was a chancy place to visit, so they shelled out for a taxi to drop them right at the doctor’s address. The office was on the second floor of a brownstone just across the road from Marcus Garvey Park.

  Tally stepped out onto the sidewalk, brushed down her maxi dress and looked up at the brownstone. It was unremarkable. “Are you sure this is the place?” she asked Gabe as he paid the driver.

  “It’s cool. This is the place,” Gabe told her. He strode over to the door of the building and scanned the row of resident call buttons and pointed. “See, here he is.”

  Tally looked. Unlike the other tags, which were yellowed and curling around the edges, this one was white, clean and covered in some sort of clear plastic. Hamilton, was all it said.

  Tally stared at it, while her heart leapt to life and beat heavily. It couldn’t be…

  “Tally?” Gabe prompted her.

  She straightened up and gave him a smile. “Let’s go see the doctor,” she told him and leaned passed him and pressed the button.

  The door immediately buzzed and clicked open. Gabe pushed inside and Tally followed him, trying to get her heart back under control and quiet. They climbed to the second floor and read off the door numbers until they found twenty-three. Gabe took a deep breath and blew it out, then held his thumb against the old-fashioned call button next to the door.

  The door clicked open and they stepped into a room full of people, most of them black. Babies were wailing, children were playing on the faded linoleum floor in between the rows of plastic chairs where people sat waiting. It was warm and almost airless in the room. In the corner just next to the door, a middle-aged nurse in a white uniform sat behind a desk. She looked up at them. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  “Can the doctor fit us in?” Tally replied.

  The nurse scribbled on a sheet of paper and held it out. “Have a seat. I’ll call your number when he can see you.”

  Tally looked down at the note. Seventy-three. “Did you start at one, this morning?” she asked curiously.

  “Have a seat, ma’am,” the nurse replied.

  Gabe tugged at her hand and pulled her over to a seat on the end of a row. He took the only spare seat on the row opposite her and leaned forward. “Guess he’s a real doctor and all,” he said quietly. “Do you have a notepad and pen in your bag?”

  Gabe always forgot to bring even a small sketch book with him. She pulled the spare she always carried and a 2B pencil out and handed them to him, then settled in to wait.

  It took nearly ninety minutes for their number to be called and in that time, Tally had convinced herself that the doctor couldn’t possibly be Christian. It was just a coincidence in names. Hamilton was a common name. It could be anyone at all in the room behind the closed door.

  So when the nurse held the door open for them, Tally walked through calmly.

  Christian looked up from a file he was reading as they walked in. His hair was longer and had a slight wave to it, but it was a respectable length for a professional of this day and age, unlike Gabe’s hair, which hung below his shoulder blades.

  Christian was wearing black again. A black shirt, at least, and a green tie that matched his eyes and drew attention to them.

  She saw his jaw loosen and his lips part, just a little. Then he pressed them firmly together and looked at Gabe. “Have a seat,” he told him. “What can I do for you folk today?”

  Gabe glanced toward the shut door. “Um…”

  Tally leaned forward. “We were given your name by a former patient of yours.” She put her hand on Gabe’s arm. “Gabe got his letter nearly two weeks ago. He’s to report to Fort Dix at the end of the month.”

  Christian put his pen down, studying them. “Writing false medical reports is illegal,” he said. “I don’t know what your friend told you—”

  “Hey man, it’s cool,” Gabe told him. “I don’t talk to the man. I don’t tell him anything I don’t have to. You’re safe as a daisy with me.”

  Christian got to his feet, which made Gabe scramble to his. Gabe was shorter by a few inches. Tally reluctantly rose, too.

  “I have no idea who you people are,” Christian said flatly. “Please leave.” His gaze flickered toward her and her heart squeezed.

  Tally caught at Gabe’s hand. “Come on, honey. We’re wasting our time here.”

  He was staring at Christian, anger fighting with desperation on his face. “Man, you don’t understand. They’re going to send me to Vietnam.”

  “I understand perfectly. We all have our responsibilities.” Christian walked over to the door and opened it. Immediately, the cry of babies, sick people coughing and the warm air of the reception room wafted in. The open door stopped Gabe from protesting, for the people in the waiting room would hear him.

  “Fuck you, man,” Gabe said bitterly, brushing passed Tally and heading for the door.

  “And have a good day yourself,” Christian told him.

  Tally glanced at Christian. He was watching her.

  She hurried to catch up with Gabe, her heart working overtime again.

  * * * * *

  The Astoria had been torn down during the Depression. Tally had returned from Europe when a second war was threatening to break out there, and she’d had to relearn Manhattan’s layout for much had changed, include a new Waldorf Astoria being built on Park Avenue.

  She stopped at Bloomingdales on the way there and bought a conservative pair of trousers and a button-through shirt, plus some decent shoes. She brushed out her hair and tied it up in a long braid, for it swung past her waist these days. She bought a big pair of sunglasses as she left the store, and hailed a taxi to take her to the Astoria. No one she knew right now would recognize her and more importantly, the staff at the Astoria would not refuse
her entry, which they might have done if she had strolled up wearing her hippy gear.

  In the back of her mind was the additional thought: Now she looked more like someone that Christian would meet with.

  There were five restaurants and bars in the hotel. She picked the least crowded one with the most privacy and claimed a table in the back of the room and ordered a drink and a round of sandwiches.

  Then she plugged a quarter into the public phone on the wall and connected with the operator and got her to look up Christian’s number. She asked only for Dr. Hamilton in Harlem, for she wasn’t sure he was using his first name, this time around.

  The operator connected her and Tally listened to the phone ring.

  “Dr. Hamilton’s Surgery.” It was the battle-axe nurse.

  “I have a message for Dr. Hamilton.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Tell him that Tally called.”

  “And what is it regarding?”

  “It’s personal,” she said flatly. “Tell him the Peacock Alley Bar. Do you have that?”

  “This is quite irregular—”

  “It’s very important. Do you have the name?”

  “Peacock Bar. But—”

  Tally hung up and went back to her seat to wait.

  * * * * *

  Christian’s heart kept breaking out and beating on its own. He knew he should rein it in and keep it under control, but he really didn’t want to. As he paid the cab driver, he glanced at the glittering brass and glass foyer of the Waldorf, and for the first time in decades, felt a genuine, gut clenching excitement.

  The doorman pointed him toward the right lounge bar and Christian stopped at the entrance to the bar, looking for her. He had to look over everyone twice before he spotted her, for she had changed into something utterly conservative, compared to the flower child headband and flowing print dress and rope sandals she had been wearing only three hours before. Even the long masses of her hair were tied back neatly.

  She was reading a book and hadn’t seen him. Christian threaded his way through the tables, and stopped by her side. “Good story?”

  She looked up and smiled at him. “You found me.”

  “My nurse was indignant as hell. She thinks I’m seeing a floozy.”

  Natália grinned. “In a way, you are.”

  He sat at the table. “You don’t look like one. Not right now.”

  “Ah. You didn’t like the maxi dress.”

  “The dress was fine. It was the beads and bangles that killed it for me.” He shook his head. “Not that I really give a damn anyway. It’s so good to see you.”

  She closed the book, but left it sitting on the table by her elbow. “I was quite shocked, to see you sitting behind the desk. I saw your name on the door of the building but I figured it could have been any Hamilton. The odds that it would be you…”

  He nodded. “We do seem to keep passing each other, don’t we?”

  “Ships on the horizon,” she finished, telling him she remembered what he had said.

  A small silence settled between them, humming with pleasure. He looked her over. She was as beautiful as ever, and the steel backbone was just a little bit more in evidence from her self-assured air, the way she had dared sit in a bar by herself, and the control and alertness in her.

  “So…” she said. “You’re a doctor. I can’t tell you how much that pleases me.”

  “Because it was your idea?” He shook his head a little. “You gave me the thought. It had to fester a few years before I did anything about it. I couldn’t think past the idea of doctors I’d seen working in first aid stations in the field. I wanted no part of that. By then I had moved back south. It was there I met my first family doctor, the kind that made house calls – although we don’t do that anymore. I spent an evening with him, while he told me about the satisfaction he got from helping people. Most of his patients he’d known their entire lives. It…appealed to me. So Dr. Soames helped me get enrolled in college.” He grimaced. “I had to go back to basic college and work up from there, but it’s not like I don’t have the time, right?”

  Natália smiled. “It didn’t occur to you to fake the undergrad degree?”

  Christian frowned. “You fake such things?”

  “Only for those accomplishments I already have, if they’re in the wrong name. I just bring them up to date and put my current name on them. It saves me from having to re-qualify for everything.”

  He blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You’re still used to thinking like an honest human,” she replied.

  Christian stretched out his legs, as the waitress came over to the table. “Red wine, please,” he said.

  “I’m good, thanks,” Tally told her, touching her glass of white wine.

  Once the waitress was out of earshot, he said: “I’ve been nothing but an honest human for nearly fifty years. Once I got my medical license, Dr. Soames took me on as a partner, and I took over his practice when he died. I did that until I couldn’t fake my age anymore, and came up here to New York. I changed the date on my medical license, so it matched my apparent age, and moved into Harlem. And that’s where I’ve been for the last ten years. I tell you, Tally, I’ve done more good in the last fifty years than I ever did in the decades before that.”

  She caught his hand in hers. “I’m so very happy for you.”

  “And you…” He drew in a breath. “You’re a hippy.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Are you living with him?” The question emerged more harshly than he had intended it to.

  Natália tilted her head to look at him with understanding patience.

  It irritated him even more. “You really believe all this free love guff they spout?”

  “I believe Gabe when he talks about it, and about other things,” she answered. “He has a very different perspective on the world.” She sat up straighter, reminding him for one dizzy moment of the night they had spent on a bench in Seville, watching the sun come up, and the very proper way she had sat. “I’ve learned a lot from Gabe.”

  “Is that why you’re with him?”

  “That…and other things.” Her smile spoke of secret sensuousness and abruptly, his body responded, tightening up and throbbing. It didn’t help that her scent, some subtle perfume he didn’t recognize, was wafting to him across the table. It was unique, unusual. He wouldn’t forget it, nor the effect it was having on him.

  He was grateful that the waitress arrived right then with his wine, forcing him to keep his mouth shut. He tried to push away the images dancing in his mind. Tally with that…that…human. His arms around her. His mouth….

  When the waitress was gone once more, Christian turned the glass on the table, spinning the stem with his fingers. “You’re calling yourself Tally now?”

  Her grin was full of mischief. “This life, I am.”

  “What were you passing as in Europe?”

  Her smile faded. “Lee…Hamilton.”

  Christian stopped spinning the glass and just stared at her.

  For the first time she looked something other than completely sure of herself. After a moment, her gaze dropped to the table.

  His heart was loose again. Pounding. And his body… “Do you know,” he asked her, keeping his voice very low, “how much I want to kiss you right now? Kiss you and much, much more.”

  She looked up at him, startled. No, not startled. Just surprised. There was a glow in her eyes. It was the promise of things unsaid and it pulsed between them.

  After an age had passed, Christian leaned across the corner of the table and reached for her. His fingers trembled as he curled his hand around her head and drew her to him.

  His senses were hyper-alert and he heard her indrawn, unsteady breath as he brought his lips against her.

  The kiss was as sweet as the first, all those decades ago. He had not forgotten a second of it, but he had forgotten the true power of their kiss. His body tightened to an almost painful
arousal. The chairs, the table, were in his way. The public room was a hindrance. He wanted…oh, he wanted to drive himself into her, to taste her in every way possible! He was infinitely more experienced now and knew the enjoyment two people could bring one another. He wanted to share that with her. He wanted to bring her to the point of ecstasy, where her senses were swept away by the power of her pleasure.

  Tally wasn’t fighting him. She wasn’t drawing away. She was kissing him with as ferocious a need as he was. Her capitulation was as sweet as a victory.

  She wanted him.

  He groaned, trying to pull her closer and closer. He could lift her over the table and into his lap. It would take very little of his real strength to do it. But he had constrained himself to human feats of strength for so long, that he could not break with the habit now.

  Tally tore her lips away from his. Her hands were clenching the arms of his shirt – he hadn’t noticed her touch until now. She was trying to push him away. “No, Christian. Not now. Not…yet. There is something we must speak of, first.”

  The heat and lust curdled in his chest and groin as he realized what she was about to say. “The exemption?” He sat back and pushed his hand through his hair. It didn’t surprise him to feel that he was trembling. He blew out a breath, trying to recover his normal calm, so that he could think.

  “You write them, I know,” she said. “Gabe isn’t a stupid man. He wouldn’t fall for some stranger spinning him a yarn. The man would have had to work to convince him and he had your address.” She leaned forward to make her point. “You were right to throw us out this morning. That is what you would have done with any strangers. But it is you and I now. I know you write them. You know you write them.” She sat back. “I just don’t understand why you don’t take payment for them.” She sounded baffled.