Page 10 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

STAR-STUDDED NIGHTS, WORLD-CLASS MUSIC, ERA-DEFINING STYLE.

THE PARTY ENDED TOO SOON WHEN AN ELECTRICAL FIRE DESTROYED THE NIGHTCLUB, INFORMALLY MARKING AN END TO THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE ERA—WHEN BLACK BRILLIANCE CAPTIVATED THE WORLD.

Ricki read the last line out loud. She thought about being Black in the ’20s, facing unfathomable obstacles and still flexing on theworld. If Josephine Baker could go from being a thirteen-year-old divorcée eating out of Saint Louis garbage cans to a Broadway superstar in five years, why was Ricki crying? Her biggest problems were that she bruised easily and lacked closet space.

And that was when she noticed the undeniable fragrance: the sweet, heady vanilla almond of night-blooming jasmine. It wafted over her, carried on a chilly breeze.Sigh.It was her favorite scent. She’d recognize it anywhere. Ricki followed the walkway to a lush bed of jasmine where the delicate white and yellow flowers were crawling up a garden wall.

Transfixed by the nocturnal blooms, she almost didn’t register the feeling of being watched. But then it hit her. She spun around and gasped, clapping a palm to her mouth.

A figure stood in the shadows.

He was tall and powerfully built. Chunky shearling coat, charcoal jeans. His features were cut from granite, with an impossible jawline and a stern, commanding brow, but then there was the sensual surprise of his mouth. It gave his chiseled masculinity a vulnerable, lush softness. The effect was mesmerizing.

Jesus Christ, he’s beautiful, she thought, unabashedly staring.He’d be beautiful in any era, anytime, anywhere.

Then Ricki caught the blazing intensity in his expression. She froze. It was something beyond surprise, beyond shock.

The man looked terrified.

Ricki felt a punch of emotion in her chest almost knocking her off her feet. This moment was important. She didn’t know why, but itwas. She didn’t know him, but shedid. The hairs on her arms prickled, and every cell in her body jolted to attention. Her brain went haywire with images too vague to grasp. She was reeling. All the secret places she hid herself felt exposed. She stood before this man, this glorious stranger, and felt utterly naked. Laid fucking bare.

A thrilling, throbbing sense of inevitability surged through her, and then she realized she felt as terrified as he looked.

He must’ve felt it, too.

But before she could ask, he was gone. As swiftly as if he’d never been there at all.

And Ricki was left standing alone in the garden, clutching her pounding heart.

Thoroughly thunderstruck, she realized only later that the mystery man wasn’t the only reason she’d left the garden feeling so unsettled. The scent of night-blooming jasmine made no sense. The plant flowered only from July to October. And it was winter.

February 1.

CHAPTER 3

CAROLINA SHOUT

February 1–2, 1923

February 1! The month of love, cuz. And we gon’ get you some tonight,” announced Sonny, strolling down Lenox Avenue a few steps in front of his slightly dazed cousin Breeze. Sonny was the king of bold proclamations—every thought and feeling this man had was emphatic—and so Breeze took his announcements with a grain of salt. Besides, he wasn’t thinking about love. At least not with a person.

Breeze was in the early stages of a lifelong love affair, one that, after he’d spent a mere twenty-four hours in town, had seized him in its clutches and refused to let go.

Harlem.

It was the New World. And at twenty-three, the same age as the young century, Ezra “Breeze” Walker III (or IV?) had already put a lifetime between Fallon, South Carolina, and his future. Breeze had stepped off the train yesterday morning, boarded the subway to 135th and Lenox, and headed straight to the Harlem YMCA. There, he’d slept for exactly one hour before wandering around, gobsmacked, until after dark.

He’d thought he knew what to expect. Sonny had been mailing him copies of theAmsterdam News,Negro World, and theCrisisfor the past year. So Breeze knew that Harlem was the Sepia Paradise. But he wasn’t ready for the dizzying intoxication of the city. Honking streetcars, glistening pavement, ritzy estates. Unfamiliar Caribbean accents announcing the sale of fruits he’d never heard of. Glamour girls gossiping in rapid-fire slang he couldn’t follow. Big-shot intellectuals huddled together behind café windows, plotting God knew what. A new play? A revolution? Whatever they were up to, it felt larger than life. Even the dope peddlers, whispering high-priced lures from corners, seethed with style.

And all this shit was Black.In every incarnation. Ebony, honey, pancake pale, short, fat, tall. Doctors, bandleaders, attorneys, chorus girls, clergymen, debutantes, poets: all afire with a showy swagger that would’ve bought trouble anywhere else. Here, in this enclave of citified habitués, the old rules were dead, and Black wasn’t wrong. Black was right.

Breeze knew in his bones that he was supposed to be here, in this cosmopolitan land of plenty. Everything up to this point felt like a lie.

“Tonight,” continued Sonny, “I’m taking you to a juice joint.”

“What, they got special juice over there?”

Sonny slapped his palm across his forehead. A full head shorter than Breeze, with frenetic Chihuahua energy, Sonny was sharp in spats, a wool suit, and a panama hat. Breeze may have gotten all the good looks and height in the family, but Sonny had flash.

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