A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best story books to read .txt) 📗

That explained it. Idle rich.

He crossed his right leg over his left and leaned in to consider me from close up. Squinting as he scanned my face, he informed me that I hadn’t mentioned my age.

“And I’m not going to,” I said.

“I have the right to know. I don’t want to end up in jail on a morals charge with a precocious high schooler.”

“What makes you think you’re getting anywhere near a chance to rate a morals charge with me?”

Okay, the repartee was fun, but I couldn’t keep up the gymnastics much longer. It was exhausting. I smiled and asked if he was from Saratoga.

“Washington. Northern Virginia, actually. But I make the pilgrimage to Saratoga every August.”

“So you like to play the horses?”

“You could say that.” He lit a cigarette, which he held out for me. I begged off. Charming though Freddie Whitcomb may have been, I was not yet ready to share saliva with him. He continued unfazed and adopted the smoke for himself. “But I come more for the horses themselves. And the social scene. What about you, Eleonora?”

He was trying to restart the flirting. “We had an agreement about names. I’m a reporter for a local daily not far from here.”

“I knew that already. Press pass. Strange, though, I had you pegged for a New York girl. NYU. Or Boston? Maybe Brandeis?”

My smile dimmed. I’d heard that song before. Were NYU and Brandeis code? A not-so-subtle attempt to establish if I was Jewish? Freddie continued on, though, chatting about something called Travers Day, which was coming up on Saturday, and I scolded myself for being too sensitive. I primed my smile again and interrupted his musings on an upcoming soirée at the casino in Congress Park.

“Barnard,” I said.

He was confused. “No. My name is Frederick. Freddie, remember?”

“I studied at Barnard. History and journalism.”

The penny dropped. “Then I was right. You are a New York girl. I studied linguistics at Pennsylvania. Let’s see if I can guess your address from your accent.” He rubbed his chin and squinted at me. “I’m getting a hint of Park Avenue. No, Madison and Eightieth,” he said deadpan. “Or maybe Hell’s Kitchen. West . . . Fifty-Fourth Street? Staten Island? Flushing?”

“Lower Fifth Avenue,” I said with a chuckle. “Off Washington Square.”

“Washington Square? Are you an heiress, Miss Stone?”

Poor Freddie. He couldn’t have known that he’d stirred up a hornets’ nest of emotions in me. No, I wasn’t exactly an heiress, but my late parents had left me quite comfortable. I didn’t have to work if I didn’t want to, but of course I loved my job. Parts of it, at least. Not the garden parties and social page froth, but a double murder on a ghostly stud farm, yes.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked. My expression had surely betrayed my troubled memories of family. I waved off his concerns as breezily as I could manage. Then he invited me to dinner.

“I was thinking that a couple of swells like us shouldn’t waste our time with the hoi polloi. Besides, we gotta eat.”

There he was, the linguist, bending language and accent with his agile tongue, as if his high station afforded him such privilege. As if he knew the simple folks who actually spoke that way would indulge him for his charm.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not tonight.”

Freddie coughed, took a sip from his highball glass and a drag on his cigarette.

“But I’ll check my agenda for Friday. If the offer’s still good.”

“Make it Saturday. I’ll take you to a fancy gala at the Canfield Casino after the Travers Stakes.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Saratoga Springs Friends of the Library Society gathered at the Gideon Putnam Hotel at 4:00 p.m. Tuesday to raise funds and awareness for underprivileged minority education. I appeared a few minutes late and seriously underdressed. The fifty or so ladies in attendance were decked out in floral dresses, pearls, sunglasses, and the occasional hat with ruffled bow. I was wearing a plaid skirt and white blouse. The nice woman who checked me in withheld her judgment, though, and pointed the way to the garden where the festivities were getting under way. I took a seat in a folding wooden chair on the lawn, near the back of the congregation. A woman in a violet dress and matching jacket—the society’s president as I later learned for my story—was delivering a welcome to members and friends. Then she introduced the event’s guest of honor, the fundraising drive chairwoman, Mrs. Georgina Carsten Whitcomb. I choked.

Mrs. Whitcomb addressed the gathering in a warm, engaging voice. I wouldn’t have been able to guess the exact provenance of her honey-flavored Southern accent, of course, had I not already met her son. Northern Virginia. She expounded on the need for those of means to help those without. Especially children. And that went double for Colored children whose circumstances were exacerbated by poverty, broken homes, and genetics. I caught myself wondering why her white-woman’s-burden rhetoric hadn’t sent me running for the exit. Despite myself, I had to admit that the sweetness with which she’d delivered the speech somehow tempted me to grant her some leeway. Or was I failing to condemn her because I’d allowed myself to be charmed by her son? Of course I found everything she’d said abhorrent and insulting, especially to Colored children and their parents.

I put those thoughts to one side for the moment and scribbled notes into my pad. Then, sensing she was wrapping up her case for philanthropy, I unsnapped my Leica and shot a couple of frames of her at the dais. Once the assembled erupted into thunderous applause—no more than the gentle pat-pat-pat of gloved hands, really—I rose and swung around to the front for some photos of the attendees. Ten minutes later, I had a couple of rolls of Tri-X to document the historic step forward in education and race relations.

I waited patiently as several ladies