Chapter 3 #2
Buchanan stayed at Fern’s side the short walk to the White Room, with Mr. Black behind them, and Buchanan’s friend bringing up the rear.
No one spoke. Tensions weren’t much better in the White Room, though at least there, a record was playing on the cabinet Victrola, and with drinks in hand, people appeared happy to have something else to focus on.
Her father, with palpable displeasure, offered Mr. Black a whiskey.
“No, but I’ll smoke if you don’t mind.” He glanced at Fern’s mother for permission, which she granted with a tremulous wave of her hand.
Mr. Black lowered himself into the corner cushions of the snowy white sofa and extracted a silver case from his breast pocket.
He busied himself with the task of lighting a cigarette.
By all indications—the staccato conversation, the tight hold of nearly every pair of shoulders in the room—the evening was going to end within fifteen minutes.
Any other night, it would have been a relief to her. But not tonight.
Fern had descended the spiral staircase earlier that evening with every intention of surprising her parents and brother, and the guests that had gathered, especially the bachelors, who had already formed expectations about her.
She’d been ready and willing to endure her mother’s wrath and her father’s disappointed glares.
But the enigmatic Mr. Black had derailed the night so effectively Fern hadn’t even had the chance.
Mr. Black inhaled his cigarette, and the tip glowed. She set her shoulders and took a seat on the ottoman in front of the sofa where he lounged. She crossed her legs to keep them from trembling.
“May I?” Fern gave a pointed glance at the cigarette pinned between his thumb and forefinger. His high-end clothing had been a good ruse, but the way he held his cigarette all but screamed that he was not of their social class.
Little gasps fired off around the room, and the distinct burn of multiple stares daggered her in the back.
Mr. Black ignored them and reached for his silver case.
He released the catch, and the cover, etched in a checkered pattern, sprang open.
He didn’t lean forward or stand to bring her the cigarette.
Oh no. Their strange guest was far too composed for that.
He simply held the case in his steady palm, which forced her to stand on her rather wobbly knees.
About ten long, thin cigarettes were underneath a levered bar designed to hold them in place. With a practiced tip of his hand, one cigarette rolled free into a cradle. She took it.
“Fern, darling, what are you doing?” Mrs. Adair demanded from the plushy, winged chair that couldn’t possibly have been any farther away from Mr. Black’s position on the sofa.
She and the other ladies had gathered in a crescent near the windows, the scattered chairs clearly rearranged moments before Mr. Black had entered the White Room.
“Simply relaxing, Mother,” she said without a glance in her direction. Had Fern done so, her will might have crumbled.
Mr. Black rolled the wheel on his butane lighter with practiced motion, and a small flame shivered into view. This time, he had the decency to lean forward and not force Fern to bend at the waist over him. She put the cigarette to her lips and passed the tip over the flame.
The hand holding his lighter was coarse, not as well maintained or manicured as the other gentlemen’s in the room. Mr. Black’s thumb knuckle had a long, white scar on it. Fern knew what aged scars looked like, and this one had been inflicted long ago.
She drew on the cigarette and captured the smoke in her mouth.
Sweet Betsy, it tasted awful! The smoke stung her throat and filled her nasal cavity, her eyes watering.
As Mr. Black capped the lighter and took his place on the sofa once again, his expression changed for the first time all evening.
A little smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, and his eyebrows furrowed together in amusement.
Fern’s chest was tight with the smoke she’d inhaled, but with every last gaze in the room fixed on her, she was determined not to dissolve into hacking coughs.
“Really, Fern!” her mother cried. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
Congressman Davis attempted a little levity.
“A little rebellion, of course. It seems I can’t go for a drive or walk these days without seeing at least a dozen young ladies of good breeding with clouds of smoke around their heads.
Count yourself lucky, Mrs. Adair, that your daughter still has all her hair! ”
Fern took another puff on the cigarette, much smaller than the last, as the conversation chugged slowly back to life.
Buchanan stood at the wet bar with a glass of gin and soda in his hand, his jaw tight.
He glared at Fern, his nostrils flaring.
She rolled her eyes at him. As if he didn’t see ladies smoking every day.
No, he wasn’t furious with the fact that she’d lit a cigarette—he with furious with the man who’d provided the flame.
A bootlegger—which wasn’t that uncommon these days.
How else was everyone supposed to get their booze?
The Anti-Saloon League had driven the temperance movement into federal law, but no one heeded the ban on liquor.
Not when a fortune could be made in supplying the illicit stuff.
More than once, she’d heard her father grumble about how Prohibition would only end up churning out more drunks than there had been before, when alcohol was legal.
And look—here everyone sat with their cocktails in hand, and yet, they were treating Mr. Black like he was some lecher off the street. Hypocrites, all of them.
“We were interrupted earlier,” Fern said as Mr. Black tapped his ashes into a heavy glass tray perched on the arm of the sofa.
He moved the tray to the cushion beside him, putting it within her reach too.
“Were we?”
“I asked what you were really doing here.”
“Why don’t you go sit with the other women?” He shifted his attention to where her father stood, eyeing Mr. Black with wary displeasure.
Fern hadn’t taken another drag from the cigarette, and the gray tip hung perilously. She leaned forward and fumbled to tap the ashes into the tray.
“I don’t think they’d appreciate the smoke,” she answered.
“I’m pretty certain that was your intent.”
Well, if the mysterious Mr. Black had gleaned as much, certainly everyone else had as well. Good. Hopefully, they would spread some new rumors.
“Snuff out that cig and run along,” Mr. Black said. “I need to speak with your pops.”
Oddly, the dismissal hit like the corner of a brick. She had no intention of slinking off to the sidelines now.
“Nobody wishes to speak to you, Mr. Black. I would have thought that much was clear.”
“Do you consider yourself a nobody, then? Because I can’t seem to shake you.”
She bit her bottom lip, eager to rise to the challenge of this verbal sparring.
“I’ll leave you alone if you first tell me what you’re doing here.”
He went as bristly as a porcupine at that.
“Listen, princess. Why don’t you go test out your little revolution on one of those other fellas? I’m sure they’ve got a flask hidden away in their coats and wouldn’t mind liquoring you up a bit.”
Their voices had been low, likely nothing more to the others than lip movements and murmurs. However, now, Buchanan and his friend left the wet bar and headed for the sofa.
“I’m most certain they would mind,” Fern replied, mashing out the butt of the cigarette. Buchanan was nearly upon them. “May I have another?”
Mr. Black sighed. “If it’ll get you out of my hair.”
He retrieved his case and popped the lid just as her brother arrived.
“She won’t be taking that.” Buchanan stepped between the sofa and ottoman and blocked Fern’s view of Mr. Black altogether. Her brother loomed over her, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. His shoulders were so tight they were practically up to his earlobes.
“Fern, you’re embarrassing yourself,” he whispered.
She stood and forced herself to look him dead in the eye. “I’m sorry, I know that’s usually your job.”
His lips thinned. “You are acting like a child.”
She knew she was but didn’t particularly like being accused of it.
“Mr. Black,” her father interrupted, saving her from saying something that would surely have been juvenile. “Perhaps we could speak in my study.”
The judge clasped Buchanan’s arm with noticeable force as Mr. Black took a leisurely time rising from the sofa.
Her father gestured toward the White Room doors with a convivial wave of his hand and an easy smile, as if he hadn’t been avoiding Mr. Black like the Spanish Flu all evening.
Fern could imagine why; no circuit court judge wanted to be associated with a bootlegger.
What in the world could they possibly have to discuss?
Mr. Black shouldered his way into the space between Fern and Buchanan. He held out his hand, the cigarette case still open to her. She took one, ashamed of the way her fingers trembled.
Mr. Black snapped the cover shut and tucked the case back inside his suit coat. “Teach her how to smoke those things,” he said to Buchanan before following the judge from the White Room.
As soon as he was gone, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
The silence thickened to an impenetrable state.
Fern clasped her hand around the cigarette and, without meeting a single gaze, left.
Echoes of her brother’s accusations—that she was embarrassing herself and acting like a child—followed her into the foyer.
They stuck to her back and were impossible to shake free.