Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(62)
So, she knew, given her virginal status or lack thereof, that she could not depend upon Duke for protection. And it was a given that she could not depend upon the law. Any law. Anywhere. It all came down to class distinction.
Thus, she summoned her skimpy courage and focused her meanest hypnotic glare on the little man. “What swampy muck did ye worm yuir way out of, Moishe Klein?”
At her use of his real name, his troll’s face reddened. “Soon, maybe a matter of months, Hitler’ll snap close his mouse trap – and I will, too.”
At the bottom of the stairs, just behind Moe, appeared Duke’s formidable frame. “Keller, isn’t it? Moe Keller. Not sure what that threat you just made is about, but harm her in any way, and I’ll stomp a mudhole in your misshapen self.”
Moe bristled like a porcupine, but Duke elbowed him aside and offered her a hand of assistance to descend the three steps.
Three steps that might make a difference of a lifetime. Ignoring Moe’s belligerent countenance, she placed her palm in the tentative safety of Duke’s engulfing one.
Without sounding jolly ridiculous, the air seemed charged with something she had never felt anywhere else. How they reached his pickup, which took a goodly fifteen minutes of threading through the crowd that surged around them, like water around a boulder, and next wending through the parked vehicles – including everything from jalopies to flatbed wagons to bicycles – she never could recollect.
What she was distinctly aware of was the shocking electrical current flashing in the dark around her and Duke, like a multitude of fireflies. He opened the pickup’s door, and his hand at her elbow, boosting her up inside, created an explosion of molecules, atoms, and universes.
If there existed any romantic inclination about her, it insisted that this extraordinary sensation was a result of the combustible union of their energy, resulting from that unforgettable night of surprising yearning, of the soul’s straining, to connect beyond mere copulation.
But then a belief in romance and courtly love and happy-ever-after fairy tales had never been her strong suit. Practical demands always interfered.
As if negotiating Austin’s heavy traffic on Saturday nights on Sixth Street demanded his full attention, Duke said nothing.
And neither did she, not when the air in the rattletrap Ford was heavy with her wanting. A wanting bankrupted by so many things that would never be said. Important things. Like, I have never felt like this before. Like, Tis splintering I am when you come into the room. When me stomach crashes, and me knees falter. These feelings take me by surprise. Do you feel them, too?
Once on the highway back to the S&S, the mortar-like set to his squared-off jaw indicated he was not in the mood for her usual repartee.
At last, just past the S&S wrought-iron, arched entryway, he eased back somewhat into the dirty gray wool seat and glanced over at her. “Wanna tell me what happened back there, between you and that damned dwarf?”
Looking anywhere but at him, she fiddled with her purse clasp. “As they say in those mob movies, Moe’s got the goods on me.”
“Because you entered the U.S. on false papers? Because you are not Jewish? Or did you break other laws back in Germany, as well?”
Despite the moonlight, it was too dark to see the grassy fields and tree leaves and crops that were shooting from the earth that spring, but she knew they were a youthful pale green. While she felt very old.
“Back in Germany, I have a brother. The Nazi doctors were elated when we two were swooped up from a street performance. Not only were we Gypsies, we were twins. Fifteen-years-olds. And Luca was gay. What better experimental subjects?”
“Jesus Christ!” He brought the pickup to a stop in front of the barn. Switching shut the ignition, he shifted his lengthy frame on the bench seat so that they faced off. “Go ahead.”
“Ye see, all the ghouls’ notes and preliminary examinations and interviews were blown to bits when I escaped after that first experiment, leaving them with only me brother. And, of course, they would be delighted if I were to be returned to Sachsenhausen’s labs. Moe was one of their stoolies – he remembers me from there.”
She slid him a sidewise glance. She dreaded what other questions, personal questions as probing as surgical instruments, he might ask.
He didn’t. He lapped a hand around the back of her neck and the other around her waist and hauled her across the split upholstered seat onto his lap.
Trapped between his chest and the steering wheel, she buried her face in the cradle of his neck and wide shoulder. “I willna let ye make me cry again, Duke McClellan,” she mumbled.
“Hell, sweetheart, I’ll cry for you if you want me to.”
Giving that some thought, she said, “I think I’d rather ye kiss me.”
“Asking for trouble again, are you?” His next words rumbled out like summer thunder, concealing that slight speech impediment that occurred when he was on unfamiliar ground. “You have to know that if you have it in your head to stay on at the S&S, Sunshine, I can’t help but try to cover you.”
Her heart was jangling like a tambourine. She had a solid idea of what he meant by covering, in the breeding sense of the word. But for her, cover, his covering, meant his large body sheltering hers, protecting her from all harm. To hold her and to hide her. Her body guard. Always beside her. If only.
“Aye.” That one-word acquiescence yielded to whatever he was asking of her.