His eyes search mine and drop to my mouth, and I feel his gaze like a hot, tender touch. My lips part on a caught breath, and I have to lick them. I have to stop before I make this weird and uncomfortable for him. He’s my boss.
I let the playbill fall from my fingers to the floor, seizing the excuse to bend, to break the hot connection between our eyes. It’s hot to me. I’m burning up, but when I sit up, Canon’s eyes are cool, his expression inscrutable. I want to apologize for disrupting the easy rapport between us, but I didn’t do anything. It just happened. My body inconveniently reminded me that Canon Holt is exactly my type, and I didn’t even know I had one. Big and brooding and brilliant.
“Saints and poets?” he asks.
For a second, I have no idea what he’s talking about. He’s staring at my hand holding the playbill, at the ink scripted along the outside of my thumb.
“Oh, my tattoo. Yeah. It’s from—”
“Our Town. The stage manager says that.”
I glance up to smile, but can’t hold it when I meet his eyes. There’s an intensity about Canon that I don’t think he even cultivates. It’s simply who he is—hungry to know, to understand, and his intellect and curiosity consume everything in his path. Every story, every project, every conversation. This conversation. And when you are the subject of his lens, you feel like he’s hungry for you. Like he wants to understand exactly what it is he’s looking at. And I can’t help but wonder how that hunger would feel in a kiss. Would he crush me against him like we couldn’t get close enough? Like the taste of me was driving him wild? My fingers burn with the need to scrape across his shadowed jaw, to trace his brows and lips.
“It was, um . . .” I clear my throat, desperate to rein in my rebel thoughts. “It was the last play I did in high school. That line stuck with me.”
“Where are you from?” he asks easily, apparently oblivious that I’m struggling to maintain some semblance of non-kissing normalcy.
“A-a tiny town in North Carolina you’ve never heard of. Clearview.”
“You’re right. Never heard of it.” He almost grins, yielding the slightest curve of his lips, and I realize how seldom he smiles. “So you had a burning desire to spread your wings and you struck out for New York City, diploma in hand?”
“Not quite.” The shard of Terry and Brandon’s betrayal pricks my heart. Not as much as it used to, but it may always draw a drop of blood. “I might have been content to stay there and do community theater. Get married. Have some babies.”
“But?”
“But things happen.” I shrug and force myself to meet the probe of his stare. “And it was off to Jersey, not New York. I had a scholarship to Rutgers, the drama program.”
“It would have been our loss. You might have been content to stay hidden away in Clearview, but it wouldn’t have been right. You were made for the spotlight. Whatever happened to make you leave was a blessing in disguise.”
My breath stalls. There’s so little space separating us, and the air seems to pulse in time with my galloping heart. And this time, now, I don’t wonder if he feels it, too. I know he does. It’s in the way he frowns and his eyes darken and his jaw tightens. It’s like a wavelength between us in the taut silence.
He clears his throat and leans away, inserting a few more inches between us. “So this play, Voodoo Macbeth.”
“Oh, yeah. The play. The play.”
“Right, before Orson Welles did this play, most had only seen Black actors on Vaudeville or in black face. There was even a national tour after the New York run, so this was huge.”
“I can imagine.” I need something to do with my hands, some way to reroute this conversation to neutral ground. I look down at the playbill and pull a photograph from inside. It’s of two young women posing in front of the Lafayette, both dressed well, smiling, glowing. Dessi and Tilda.
Canon flips through the small pile of papers and pulls the wedding announcement out again, placing it beside the photo.
I trace one finger over the handwritten words on the newspaper clipping.
I had to. Forgive me.
“For someone who supposedly disappeared from Dessi’s life,” Canon says, lifting his brows, “there’s a lot of letters from her hidden here. There’s a story here. Now we have to find it.”
15
Dessi Blue
May 8, 1936
Mama,
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write, but a lot has happened and I haven’t had time. I can hear you saying I just didn’t make time! You right, but I do have a lot to tell you.
I’m not working at the Cotton Club anymore. I know you hoped one day they’d find me in the kitchen washing dishes and decide I should be on stage, but that never happened. I wasn’t “Tall, Tan and Terrific” enough for them! They want that high yellow. I would still be there washing dishes if it wasn’t for my new friend Matilda Hargrove. We met at the Lafayette Theatre. I know you and Daddy used to go see the bands down there. Well, they did a Shakespeare play with all Black folks. Macbeth! Can you believe that? I never seen so many people trying to get into one place. I went down there opening night to get me a ticket. They were selling them outside for near $4! Some of them even five. Too rich for my blood, so I gave up, but I met Tilda, who gave me one of her tickets. Her beau never showed. But we got to talking and she set me up with some work.
Now I already see your face, Mama. I ain’t got a pimp and I ain’t hustling. It’s honest work down at the Savoy Ballroom. Tilda works there, hostessing. We teach the men who come in there who don’t know how to dance. We just show them the steps and they pay us! Better than washing dishes, I tell you the truth. Pay is better, too.
I know you been worried about me up here by myself since you moved back home, but I couldn’t go back to Alabama, not after New York. It ain’t perfect here for Black folks, but they ain’t hanging us from trees. We had that riot last year in Harlem, but it’s not as bad as down South. I’m never living down there.
I know you miss Daddy. I do, too. I understand why you wanted to go back and be with family, but I can’t. And see? I found a new friend!
I left the boarding house, too. Me and Tilda put our money together and we’re in an apartment down off 139th Street, not too far from the Savoy. We in the middle of everything. Everybody comes through. I feel alive, Mama. I’ve been so sad, what with Daddy passing and you leaving, but working at the Savoy, this new place with Tilda, it feels like things are looking up.
Tilda’s cousin takes pictures for The Crisis. He took this one of us at the House Beautiful that night. Ain’t we pretty? I’m also including $20. I’ll send more when I can. I hope it helps. Kiss Granny and Aunt Ruth and Cousin Belle. All of them. Tell them hey and I love you all.
Yours,
Odessa
16
Canon
The trip to Alabama was enlightening and broadened our understanding of Dessi’s journey, but I’m glad to be back in LA. I got off the plane and came straight to the production offices. The things we found in Alabama have changed everything. Dessi’s family always assumed she had two great loves: Cal Hampton and music.