The Last Dance at Dunmore

The trumpet blared like a wounded animal and the crowd in the Dunmore Club went wild. Dixie Calloway moved across the stage in a flash of silver sequins, her hips rolling with a rhythm that had nothing to do with music and everything to do with survival. She had been dancing for three hours and her feet were bleeding inside her shoes, but the crowd wanted more and Dixie always gave the crowd more.

After the set, she collapsed onto a stool behind the curtain and drank from a paper cup of bootleg gin that tasted like turpentine and regret. Her manager, a one-eyed Irishman named O'Malley, leaned against the wall and counted money.

"Another good night, darling," he said. "Wells is here. He wants to talk to you."

Dixie's stomach tightened. Prescott Wells was fifty-two, married to a woman who lived in a house on Beacon Hill, and gave her five hundred dollars a month in exchange for dinner once a week. It was the best deal she had, and she hated him for it.

"Tell him I'm busy," she said.

"He said he'll wait."

She closed her eyes. The club was loud—jazz pouring out of every corner, glasses clinking, bodies moving in the dim light. New York in 1926 was a city that never slept and never forgave. She had come here from Pittsburgh six months ago with nothing but a suitcase and a pair of dance shoes, and already she understood that the city would consume her if she let it.

She was about to stand up when the door behind the curtain opened and a man walked in. He was tall, wearing a dark suit, and he moved with a quiet authority that made O'Malley stop counting money and stare.

Then she saw his face.

The paper cup slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a clatter. The gin soaked into the wooden planks.

"Tommy," she said.

Dr. Thomas Harrington III stood in the doorway and looked at her with an expression she couldn't read. His face was thinner than she remembered. His hair was shorter. There were lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before. But the eyes themselves—the warm, intelligent, devastating brown eyes—were exactly the same.

"Dixie," he said.

She wanted to run. She wanted to throw something at him. Instead she said, "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." His gaze swept over the club—the dancing, the drinking, the men leering through the curtain. "This is a long way from Pittsburgh."

"It is." She wrapped her arms around herself. "What are you doing in New York, Tommy?"

"Teaching. Neurosurgery at Columbia." He paused. "I came here to see you."

The words hit her like a punch to the chest. She felt the air leave her lungs. "Why?"

"Because I've been thinking about you for three years." He stepped closer. "Every day. Every single day."

She laughed, but it came out wrong—brittle and sharp. "You don't know what you're talking about. You were a boy when we met. A brilliant boy, but a boy."

"I was twenty-two. And you were seventeen." His voice was gentle. "I know what I'm talking about."

The curtain parted and O'Malley poked his head in. "Mr. Wells is getting impatient—"

"Tell him to wait," Dixie said without looking.

O'Malley disappeared. Tommy watched him go and then looked back at Dixie. "Who is Prescott Wells?"

She felt her face go cold. "None of your business."

"He's the older man. The one who pays for your dinners." Tommy's voice was flat. "I saw him tonight. In the front row. He was watching you like a wolf watches a lamb."

"Go home, Tommy."

"I can't." He took another step. "Not after three years. Not after the war. Not after—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "After I lie awake at night and think about you dancing for strangers and letting old men buy you drinks."

"It's none of your business what I do."

"It was my business when you were seventeen and I was your—" He stopped. "It was my business when you had nowhere else to go and I was the only one who—"

"You were nothing!" The words came out louder than she intended. The club noise swelled around them. "You were a boy who gave me tea and told me I was smart. You left. You went to Harvard and I stayed in Pittsburgh and you never wrote and you never called and now you show up here like you own me?"

Tommy's face went very still. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

"I wrote. Every week for the first year. You never answered."

She had no answer for that. She had burned the letters. She had burned them all because they hurt too much to keep, because they reminded her of a version of herself that existed in a world that no longer existed.

"I was seventeen," she said quietly. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Come with me."

The words hung in the air between them like smoke. Dixie felt something crack inside her chest. "I can't just—"

"Why not?" His voice rose slightly. "Because of Wells? Because of the money? Dixie, I can give you money. I can give you everything—"

"I don't want your money!" The words tore out of her. "I want you to leave. I want you to go back to Columbia and teach your students and operate on your patients and never come back to this club. Never come back to me."

He looked at her for a long time. The jazz played on. The crowd laughed and drank and danced.

"You don't mean that," he said finally.

"I do."

"Elara—"

"My name is Dixie."

He nodded slowly. "Goodbye, Dixie."

He turned and walked out of the curtain and into the noise of the club. She watched him go. She watched him disappear into the crowd. She watched the man who had been the only real thing in her life walk away and not look back.

She picked up another paper cup of gin and drank it in one swallow. It tasted like turpentine and regret and everything she had ever known.