Far away? That was a peculiar way of describing it. But she let that thought go, more touched by how sad he sounded.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. “You’re a millionaire. You can do anything you want to. You don’t have to waste all your time in places like this?—”
She broke off, horrified. She didn’t want him to think she was ungrateful, criticizing. But he was quick to take her up on her unfinished remark.
“You mean Delmonico’s? You don’t like it?”
“It’s very grand. But the waiters do tend to hover a lot and all the other people?—”
“Yes?” he prompted.
She hesitated before blurting out, “They remind me of a flock of turkeys all stuffed and dressed for Christmas.”
She feared he might be offended, but he laughed, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
“You astonish me, Rory Kavanaugh. I thought all girls dreamed of being wined and dined at Delmonico’s.”
“No, that’s not what I dreamed of. She propped her chin on her hand. “I always imagined supping at some quiet little restaurant, then going to the theater to see a melodrama. And after, perhaps going to one of the music halls, dancing my feet off until the sun came up.”
“The night is still young yet, Aurora Rose.”
The suggestive note in his voice snapped Rory out of her fantasy with a start. “Oh, no, I couldn’t stay out any later. I have to get down to the warehouse. Tony, my balloon?—”
But Zeke didn’t appear to be listening. He signaled the waiter to bring him the check, and then stood, extending one hand down to her. But it wasn’t his fingers that beckoned so much as the smile lurking in his eyes.
“Come on, Aurora Rose,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
The dance hall that Zeke escorted Rory to was located at the lower end of Twenty-second Street. It was not one that he had ever frequented, but close enough to his former haunts to render him a little edgy. Chances were good he might run into someone who would recognize him from the old days.
So what, he thought with a shrug. He was hardly a wanted criminal or anything. As he leaped down from the carriage, he stared at the dance hall’s brick frame structure, the light and laughter spilling through its open windows on the second floor. Zeke squared his shoulders like a prizefighter about to enter the ring.
He turned to help Rory down, only to discover she had already leaped from the steps herself and stood at his side. He wanted to tell her that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. But the lamplight haloed the radiant contours of her face, her eyes so bright and eager. He hated the thought of disappointing her. It had been a long time since he had wanted so badly to please anyone as he did this whimsical girl. He already felt badthat he hadn’t been able to gratify her wish of attending the theater.
Most of the plays on Broadway were well into their third act by now. He had thought of buying out one of the theaters, hiring the actors to start the show all over again, but he supposed that too would be showing off. The theater would have to wait for another night, but for now at least he could give her her dance.
Inhaling a deep breath, he offered her his arm. “I probably should have warned you. It’s been a long time since I did any dancing. I’m likely pretty rusty.”
“That’s all right,” she confided in a stage whisper. “I’m not so very good at it either.”
The night breeze tickled the curls alongside her flushed cheeks. She was a little tipsy from the wine at Delmonico’s. If he had any conscience at all, he would take her home right now, but the thought of doing so caused him to feel strangely empty.
Instead he tucked her arm through his, tightening his grasp as though she was some wayward Cinderella who might disappear at the stroke of twelve. He led her beneath the striped awning and into the dance hall. The restaurant on the lower floor was already closed up, the waiters upending chairs upon tables. But up on the second floor the sound of thumping feet could be heard, a band blaring out a polka.
As Zeke ascended the stairs with Rory in tow, he wasn’t prepared for the wave of nostalgia that washed over him. Stepping across the threshold, he felt he could have closed his eyes and still mapped out that room. He’d been in dozens like it before with its bare-board floor, a little bar tucked at one end, the platform for the band. No, they weren’t exactly Landers orchestra, but they could belt out a tune that set Rory’s toes to tapping.
Beyond the couples prancing across the floor, making the rafters shake, were a group of young lads lined up along thewall, trying to look smart in their straw hats, their slickly shined shoes, their best coats cleaned and pressed. Zeke had held up the wall in that same fashion himself once, ogling the pretty girls, casting contemptuous glances at the swells in the black tailcoats who sometimes came downtown to see how the lower orders went on.
Only now, he was one of the stiff-necked swells and the scornful glances were for him.
“Zeke?” Rory cut into his reflections. “Hadn’t we better dance before we get trampled?”
With a start, he realized he had led her out so far they were interfering with the dancers.
“Yes, I’d guess we’d better,” he agreed with a laugh, clasping her hand, placing his other at her waist. As they circled the room, Zeke felt awkward, even though some of the movements were coming back to him.
As for Rory, she was poker stiff in his arms. It amused him to note her intense look of concentration as she counted out the steps. Amused him and opened the floodgates of another memory as well, a rainy afternoon in the sitting room of the old apartment on Pearl Street.
All gangly arms and legs, he had been trying to master the polka under the tutelage of his youngest adopted sister, Agnes. So sweet, so patient, lisping out the count in her childish treble while the eldest sister, Caddie, plunked out the song on the old piano, badly out of tune.
