Chapter 8 Adelaide #2
I watched him bend to sign the registration book.
Marge and I weren’t the only girls attracted to him.
Flora’s face turned hot pink as she handed him the pen.
Two other girls quickly appeared at the registration table as if to help him.
One of them—a big-chested brunette from the Seventh Ward, named Betty—leaned over the book directly in front of him, deliberately displaying her generous décolletage.
He straightened and handed the pen to Betty, his gaze sweeping up to her face with admirable smoothness.
He smiled at her, inclining his head to listen as she said something.
I saw him respond, smile, then say something to Flora.
Her blush spread to her neck. Her face was the color of a rooster’s crown.
“He’s coming this way!” Marge whispered, unbuttoning her sweater. She whipped it off in record time.
But he looked at me. His glance was a physical thing; it warmed my skin like a lingering caress. My mouth went as dry as the inside of a Q-tip box. I tried to smile, but my lips pulled into the kind of unnatural curl that makes for bad photographs.
“Hello, Flyboy,” Marge said as he approached. She had a breezy way of talking with the soldiers, which I envied. “New to the air base?”
“Actually, I’m just passing through. I’m here for a couple of weeks to learn the ins and outs of a new plane.”
She fluttered her eyelashes. “Well, then, you’d better make the most of your time in New Orleans.”
“I intend to.” He looked at me again. I started to attempt another smile, then gave up and glanced down at the punch.
“Would you like some cake?” Marge pressed.
“Maybe later.” His voice was deep. There was a throb in it—or maybe that was my own pulse, pounding in my ears. I risked a glance up, and found him still gazing at me. I nearly melted under the blaze of his smile. “What I’d really like is some of that punch.”
I picked up the punch ladle. My brain was so fizzed by his smile that it couldn’t send the proper signals to my hands. The ladle slipped through my fingers and crashed to the table, knocking over the vase of tulips.
His hand zoomed out and caught the vase before it tumbled to the floor—but the good deed came at a cost. Water splattered all over his uniform.
“Oh no!” I gasped. “Oh, dear. Oh, I’m so sorry!”
I was beyond sorry; I was mortified.
“No harm done.” He set the vase upright. One of the tulips had fallen out and the others listed forward.
“Your uniform is soaking wet,” I murmured.
“Here.” Marge handed him a stack of napkins.
Mrs. Brunswick bustled over. “Good heavens, Addie,” she scolded. “You must be more careful!”
“It was entirely my fault,” the man said. “I was reaching for a napkin and I knocked the ladle out of her hand.”
He’d done no such thing. It didn’t seem right to let him take the blame, but then, I couldn’t very well call him a liar—especially in front of Mrs. Brunswick. My face burned.
“I should have had a better grip on it,” I stammered. Not to mention on my nerves.
He bent and quickly wiped the floor with the napkins. “There. Good as new.” Picking up the fallen flower, he straightened and held out the tulip to me. “Please accept this, along with my apologies.”
The flower wasn’t his to give, but Mrs. Brunswick gave me a nod, indicating I should accept it. I smiled. “Thank you.”
He tossed the napkins in the trash can against the wall. Satisfied that the situation was handled, Mrs. Brunswick moved away.
I twirled the tulip in my hand. “That was very chivalrous, taking the blame for me.”
“Yeah,” Marge chimed in.
It was as if Marge hadn’t spoken—as if she weren’t even around. I know it sounds corny, but it really felt like we were the only two people in the room.
“I’m afraid you’ve gotten water on your dress, as well.”
I glanced down. Sure enough, water spots splotched my skirt.
“Well, there’s only one solution for this,” he said. “We’ll have to dance together until we dry.”
“Oh—I can’t! I have to stay here and man the punch bowl for the first hour.”
“I’ll get you a replacement.”
“What?”
He held up a finger. “Be right back.”
A crowd of servicemen converged on the refreshment table, relieving me of the need to talk to Marge.
As I ladled punch and handed it out, I caught glimpses of the airman heading to the registration table.
Flora’s face turned the color of an inflamed tonsil, and Betty put her hand on his arm.
He said something to her and she laughed.
I lost sight of him for a few moments as I served three sailors. When I looked up again, the airman was talking to a chaperone at the door, Betty clinging to his arm.
A serviceman from Wyoming tried to start a conversation with me. When he finally left the table, a line had gathered behind him. Marge leaned over to me. “Looks like Buxom Betty stole the prize.”
I followed her gaze. The tall airman was crossing the room, the curvy brunette clasping his arm. To my chagrin, they stopped in the punch line.
I handed out glasses to the sailors and soldiers ahead of them, my heart racing harder and harder, until they stood right in front of me. “Betty here has generously agreed to do me a favor,” the airman said.
“Anything to help a serviceman,” she said in a breathy voice.
“Anything?” Marge asked pointedly.
Betty didn’t have the grace to blush or the wit to respond. She batted her eyes at the airman.
“Well, that’s wonderful,” he said, “because I’d like you to take Addie’s spot serving punch.”
Betty’s face fell. “But . . . I . . .”
He put his hand in the small of her back and guided her around the table, then took the ladle from my hand and placed it in Betty’s.
“This is what I love about you southern girls,” he said.
“You’re so polite and helpful and genteel.
Not to mention lovely.” He flashed Betty a smile that left her dazed and glassy-eyed.
He took my elbow and inclined his head toward the dance floor. “Shall we?”
Feeling dazed myself, I let him lead me through the crowd. His fingers were warm on my bare skin. My elbow had never felt so alive.
“That was shameful,” I said.
“I think you mean shameless.”
“It’s shameful to be so shameless,” I said.
He laughed as we reached the dance floor. The band was playing “I Remember You.” He took my right hand, put his other hand on my back, and pulled me into a foxtrot. “Well, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
The heat of him, the brightness of that smile, the scent of soap and faint aftershave and virile male made me slightly dizzy. “And what, exactly, do you have to do?”
“Get to know you.” He spun me around. “I knew it from the moment I saw you.”
I felt like I was still spinning even though the twirl had ended. “I’m disappointed,” I said. “I thought you’d have more original material.”
“That’s not a line.” He pulled me closer, smoothly moving me across the dance floor. “I mean it. And here’s something that’s going to sound even cornier: I feel like I already know you. As if I’ve seen you in my dreams.”
“You’re right. That did sound even cornier.” But the funny thing was, I felt the same way. It was as if my soul had recognized him, as if a puzzle piece had just slipped into the right slot.
He guided me backward. “Seriously. Have you ever been in California?”
“No.”
“Texas?”
“No.”
“Is your picture on a billboard or a soup can or something?”
“No.” I laughed at the outrageous question as he spun me around. “I tend to stay behind the camera, not in front of it.”
“You’re a photographer?”
“Yes. For the Times-Picayune.” I felt so proud, saying it.
“A newspaper woman? Like Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year?”
“Oh, exactly like that.” I gave a dry smile. “Minus the wardrobe, the salary, the hairstylists, and the ability to dance in and out of the newsroom at will.”
“Still, that’s really something.”
I was pleased that he thought so. “I love it, although right now I spend most of my time in the darkroom developing photos shot by more experienced photographers.”
“You’re far too pretty to be kept in a darkroom.”
“No,” I said, tilting my head up at him. “I’m far too good a photographer to be kept in a darkroom.”
He laughed. “Maybe so, but you’re also awfully pretty.”
I felt my face heat.
“So what makes a good photographer?” he asked.
The music swelled around us. “Timing. Getting the moment right. Framing things. Lighting. Trying to see just what the camera will capture—although you never entirely do. It always surprises me how the lens can see things differently.”
“It’s like people.” The music swelled. He guided me around the edge of the dance floor. “You can never be really sure that what you mean is what someone else understands. Everyone frames things in the context of their experience and according to their mood.”
I looked up at him. It was not the kind of conversation I expected. I’d just met this man, and yet we’d jumped from getting-acquainted chitchat to really talking.
“It’s interesting how we all move around in the same space, yet live in our own interior worlds,” he said.
My interior universe seemed to have just collided with his. Our exterior universes were connecting pretty well, too. I was keenly aware of the warmth of his hand on my waist, the warmth of his fingers gripping my hand.
I tried to put the conversation back on familiar ground. “So what about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a pilot.”
There must be a thousand different jobs in the Army Air Force, and most of them were on the ground—but somehow I’d known from the moment I first saw him that he was a pilot. “I’ve always wanted to fly. Is it as marvelous as I imagine?”
“What do you imagine?”
“Well—a sense of boundlessness, I suppose. Not freedom, exactly, because, after all, you’re in the military and you’re not able to steer wherever you want—but a sense of not being fettered by gravity.”