Hands Against Hearts

Chapter One

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
 Men were deceivers ever,
 One foot in sea and one on shore,
 To one thing constant never.
 Then sigh not so, but let them go,
 And be you blithe and bonny,
 Converting all your sounds of woe
 Into Hey, nonny nonny.
-William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene iii

Across the long, feast-full table Howard breathed out a heavy sigh, his smoky breath cascading up into the swooping red velvet-curtained ceiling. His eyes narrowed, and he spoke in a hushed tone to the waiter who had delivered the message he now held in his hand and peered at through a haze of gray smoke. He hid his mouth from me so that I was unable to see the words he was uttering, but something between happiness and conniving crossed his face in an instant before it was gone, and only I stopped to notice.

Ophelia sat next to me, unaware that her father had received some kind of news, sipping a glass of champagne in a most timely way, for at that moment her father stood with his brother, my father, following toward the back door without a word. I gazed after them, wondering where they might have been running off to, but my attention was pulled back to the table when Ophelia huffed in disdain.

"That Elliott Leonard told me he'd treat me to a dance tonight," she complained, "and where, I ask, is he?" She threw her hand up across my face and pointed out a lanky, golden-haired boy across the dance floor with his hands all over Marcie Finch.

"I'd say you're lucky," I shrugged. "It'd be a shame if his hands went looking all over you like that and found something they weren't ready for."

She playfully swatted my arm, then wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in close next to her in the booth. "You know what I mean, though. When's my guy gonna come around and sweep me off of my feet like that?"

I stared at Marcie Finch for a long time, the way she shimmied up to George Leonard and put her face so close to his that they would have kissed if she hadn't been such a tease. I knew the answer to Ophelia's question, and the answer was that she would still be waiting a good long while because while she loved to dress up and play pretend as a Marcie Finch, neither one of us was really like that. Ophelia hadn't even cut her hair, just pinned it up every day, carrying a huge mass of thick, nearly black hair in tight rolls and elaborate braids to give the illusion that she was a Marcie Finch, a modern girl, who cared about very little. But she wasn't, and anyone could see that if they really looked.

And Ophelia gave herself away. The way she pulled her dresses up at the top or down at the bottom, the way she would ask me to put on her makeup but always wipe a little off when I was done. The way she withdrew to the corners of rooms and smiled happily, wondering when the George Leonards of the world would come for her, all the while knowing that if any George Leonard came for her, she'd turn them down because she wasn't really interested in a fling. She wanted real love, not the groping hands of some anybody in a crowded spot on a Saturday night.

On the other hand, while I was no Marcie Finch, I was not as naive as Ophelia. I'd cut my hair the moment I saw a picture of Greta Garbo on a poster outside a movie hall for her movie The Temptress, regal as a queen, free from the burden of being tied down to a man, and I knew I could do the same. My father had been mortified, and Ophelia too had urged me not to be so drastic, but I didn't stop there. I changed out my wardrobe for the shorter, shinier dresses, bought myself some makeup, learned the new dances that everyone was doing. I wanted to be a Greta Garbo, mysterious and witty and altogether beautiful. I gave in a little to the pressures of changing after doing my time as an Ophelia Malone. Yes, I'd been like her, waiting on someone handsome and accomplished to take me away from whatever in the world I thought I needed to be taken away from.