Oasis of Night Read Free Page A

hate clichés, it was true. He made it clear I could depend on him, and I returned the favor by letting him have the run of the kitchen and the bar. He talked me into hiring a part-time cook to handle the lunch crowd, and found me Dave Chan, a quiet Chinese kid from around the corner, whose family had been here for at least a hundred years and who could cook like nobody’s business. I let Chris supervise Dave, not that Dave needed much in the way of supervision; he was a good kid, quiet and polite and very clean, and he always left the kitchen spotless at the end of the day, which impressed me. I tried to stay out of Chris’s way and let him do his thing, so when I wasn’t in my office at the back, I confined myself to waiting tables and filling up the coffee cups. Things might have gone along all right until the first Tuesday after Easter, the day the redhead came in.
    â€œHey, Jack!” Chris called to me from behind the bar. “There’s a phone call for you. I think it’s Frankie.” Too bad Frankie wasn’t the redhead in question; it might have saved Chris a world of grief if he had been, but neither my luck nor his ever tended to go that way.
    She came in through the front door like she owned the place, towing an expensive-looking suitcase behind her and wearing a fur stole. She was maybe twenty-nine or thirty, with the kind of creamy-pale complexion some women are just born with, and intelligent green eyes. Her lips were full and painted bright red to match her hair. The suit she wore was wool, and I could tell by looking that her stockings weren’t exactly wartime surplus. It had been ages since I’d seen a dame with real silk on her legs, but she wore it like she deserved it, and maybe she did. She stopped at a table near the window and looked around, then sat carefully, smoothing her skirt under her behind. It was a real nice behind—yeah, I noticed—and the rest of her went with it. She was classy all the way through, the kind of dame that makes you work for it.
    But don’t you understand? There’s no way! I couldn’t possibly. I’ll tell them that you forced me. I will. I promise.
    I shook off the bad memory and turned back to the phone. Frankie was giving me directions to a poker game that night in the city’s East End and telling me to bring enough to cover all my bets. We joked a bit about his awful luck and how I always beat him in the end, and by the time he rang off, Chris was at the redhead’s table, taking down her order. As I watched, she reached out and ran one long red fingernail down his arm, right where his rolled-up shirtsleeve left it bare, and I felt something then that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
    I got over there double-quick. “Anything I can get for you, Chris?”
    â€œAw, no thanks, Jack. It’s okay. I got it covered.”
    The redhead sized me up and stuck out her hand. “Chris tells me you own this place. I’m Julie—Julie Fayre. Isn’t it funny? Everybody thinks I made it up, but it’s my real name. I just got in from Montreal. It’s so good to be home.” Her voice was low and throaty, the accent more Canadian than local, that kind of neutral, midcontinent sound that might be Upper Manhattan or Toronto, you’re never really sure.
    â€œJack Stoyles.” I dropped her hand like it had burned me. “Chris, can I have a word with you?”
    The redhead caught Chris’s eye and winked. “He’s afraid I’m going to corrupt you.” She turned her gaze on me and let it play over me, taking her time. Obviously she liked what she saw. “I think I’m going to like this place. Such big, strong, handsome men to look out for me.” She took out a compact and a lipstick, and suddenly all I could think about was Miss Julie Fayre with Chris—touching him, kissing him, running her long red fingernails up the inside of his thigh, pausing