“You’re always ready to run through any opening I give you, aren’t you?” Cal tsked. I could tell he was amused, regardless of how aggravated he attempted to appear.

I nodded. “You can’t say I don’t have talent.”

“You have lots of talents,” he crooned, kissing me, slow and sultry. I was sure he wasn’t alluding to my ability to speed read.

As my cheeks burned, I interlaced our fingers. I wished our minds and bodies could fit together like held hands, completely enmeshed with one another, leaving no space for air, no room for doubt. I had never cared to keep anything the way I coveted him. It was overwhelming, especially when I considered that one day I would be forced to let him go. Nothing lasted forever, especially in the tempestuous world we lived in. To think we would perpetually remain while everything changed was insane, but goddamn I wished I was crazy enough to believe it.

“No quip?” he asked, nudging his nose against mine.

Grinning at the playful gesture, I held him tighter, petitioning a greater power to make me an idiot and wondering if they already had.

“Back to André,” he said. “You’ll get a kick out of this one, I know you will. He was a saxophonist who played in this negro jazz band. I forget what they called themselves, but you would have loved their music, they had a Louis Armstrong feel.”

“Sounds like they were good.”

“Very,” Cal nodded. “They played Congo Square often, and I met André after one of their performances. We got to talking, and I found out he was planning to go Chicago too.”

“Weren’t all the blacks planning to come to Chicago?”

“A lot of them,” Cal confirmed. “Shit wasn’t good for them in the South, especially in the refugee camps. They were treated like dogs, and Hoover didn’t do anything to make it better.”

“Wait.” I screwed my eyebrows down. “Hoover didn’t do anything?”

Cal laughed. “Can you believe it?”

“Here I thought he was an effective President,” I joked.

“Sorry to pull the wool from your eyes.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Good,” he chuckled. “So, André and I spent a good amount of time together. We went to jazz clubs and art galleries. He was interesting. His life was so different from mine. I liked learning new things, especially things that changed my life completely.”

“That’s a big statement,” I noted, secretly seething with jealousy. I could confidently say Cal had changed my life, but I doubted I’d had a similar impact on him.

“I had a lot of lower back pain at the time from picking tobacco. André suggested I go with him to a Voodoo queen he saw for his ailments.”

“This took a turn I wasn’t expecting” I admitted. “Did you go?”

“Oh yes. She mixed me a Hoodoo ‘cure-all.’ It was a mix of jimson weed, sulfur and honey.”