Murder For Love

The Brothers Three was very/crowded tonight. Lots of smoke and laughter and the sound of a four-piece band coming from the other room. Piano, drums, alto saxophone, and trumpet. There was a dance floor in the other room. I wondered if I should ask Dominique to dance. I had never danced with her. I tried to remember when last I'd danced with anyone.

I'd been limping, yes. And a French girl whispered in my ear-this was after I'd got out of the hospital, it was shortly after the armistice was signed-a French girl whispered to me in Paris that she found a man with a slight limp very sexy. "Je trouve trés sèduisante," she said, "une claudication Légère." She had nice poitrines, but I'm not sure I believed her. I think she was just being kind to an American doughboy who'd got shot in the foot during the fighting around the Bois des Loges on a bad day in November. I found that somewhat humiliating, getting shot in the foot. It did not seem very heroic, getting shot in the foot. I no longer limped, but I still had the feeling that some people thought I'd shot myself in the goddamn foot. To get out of the 78th Division or something. As if such a thought had ever crossed my mind.

Dominique kept smiling at me.

Boozily.

I figured she'd had too much coffee.

She was wearing basic black tonight. A simple black satin, narrow in silhouette, bare of back, its neckline square and adorned with pearls, its waistline low, its hemline falling to midthigh where a three-inch expanse of white flesh separated the dress from the rolled tops of her blond silk stockings. She was smoking. As were Vi

Dominique kept drinking and smoking and smiling at me.

I smiled back.

My grandmother ordered another round.

She was drinking Manhattans. Dominique was drinking Martinis. Vi

In the other room, a double paradiddle and a solid bass-drum shot ended the song. There was a pattering of applause, a slight expectant pause, and then the alto saxophone soared into the opening riff of a slow, sad, and bluesy rendition of "Who's Sorry Now?"

"Richard?" Dominique said, and raised one eyebrow. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"

She was easily the most beautiful woman in the room. Eyes lined with black mascara, lips and cheeks painted the color of all those poppies I'd seen growing in fields across the length and breadth of France. Her dark hair bobbed in a shingle cut, the scent of mimosa wafting across the table. "Richard?" Her voice a caress.

Alto saxophone calling mournfully from the next room. Smoke swirling like fog coming in off the docks on the day we landed over there. We were back now because it was over over there. And I no longer limped. And Dominique was asking me to dance.

"Go dance with her," my grandmother said. "Yes, come," Dominique said, and put out her cigarette. Rising, she moved out of the booth past my grandmother, who rescued her Manhattan by holding it close to her protective bosom, and then winked at me as if to say "These are new times, Richie, we have the vote now, we can drink and we can smoke, anything goes nowadays, Richie. Go dance with Dominique."

Is what my grandmother's wink seemed to say.

I took Dominique's hand.

Together, hand in hand, we moved toward the other room.

"I love this song," Dominique said, and squeezed my hand.

There were round tables with white tablecloths in the other room, embracing a half-moon-shaped, highly polished, parquet dance floor. The lights were dimmer in this part of the club, perhaps because the fox-trot was a new dance that encouraged cheeks against cheeks and hands upon asses. A party of three-a handsome man in a di

Two, in fact.

I wondered how Dominique would look in a purple wig.

"Dominique?"

Bruno's voice.

He rose as we came abreast of the table, took her elbow, and said to the man in the di

"Pleasure," Mr. Noland said.

Dominique nodded politely.

"And Richie here," Bruno said as an afterthought.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

Mr. Noland's eyes were on Dominique.

"Won't you join us?" he said.

"Thank you, but we're about to dance," Dominique said, and squeezed my hand again, and led me out onto the floor. I held her close. We began swaying in time to the music. The trumpet player was putting in a mute. The piano player eased him into his solo.

Liquid brass.

Dominique's left hand moved up to the back of my neck.

"You dance well," she said.

"Thank you."

"Does it ever ache you? Your foot?"

"When it rains," I said.

"Was it terrible, the war?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I did not much feel like talking about it. I gently steered her away from the ring of tables and back toward the bandstand, sweeping her gracefully past the table where Bruno was gri

Mr. Noland was standing slightly behind me and slightly to my right, his hand resting on my shoulder.

"I'm cutting in," he said.

And his hand tightened on my shoulder, and he moved me away from Dominique, my left hand still holding her right hand, and then stepped into the open circle his intrusion had created, looping his right arm around Dominique's waist and shouldering me out completely.

I moved clumsily off the dance floor and stood in the middle of the arch separating the two rooms, feeling somehow embarrassed and inadequate, watching helplessly as Mr. Noland pulled Dominique in close to him. At the table he'd just vacated, the two women were laughing it up with Bruno. I went through the arch and back into the lounge with its black leather booths and its black leather barstools. My grandmother raised her Manhattan to me in a toast. I nodded acknowledgment, and smiled, and walked toward where Mickey Tataglia was sitting at the bar, chatting up a redhead, who was wearing a windblown bob and a liquid green dress the color of her eyes. He had his hand on her silk-stockinged knee. She had in her hand, I swear to God, a long cigarette holder that made her look exactly like any of the Held flappers on the covers of Life. This was a night for firsts. I had never seen two women with purple wigs, and I had never seen a woman with a cigarette holder like this one. I had never danced with Dominique either; easy come, easy go.

As I took the stool on his left, Mickey was telling the redhead all about his war experiences. His brother Angelo was behind the bar, filling coffee cups with booze. I told him I wanted a Bosom Caresser.