Author's note: Any characters you recognize are not mine, and no profit is being made from this story. Lyrics to "We'll Meet Again" are by Hughie Charles.
"Well, Ted, you shipping out too?" Lucy looked over her shoulder to catch the trombone player's answer.
"Yep, Lucy, I'm headed to the Pacific. Gonna be a Seabee, or so I'm told." Ted finished latching the trombone case and hefted it onto his shoulder. "Gonne be building bridges, not playing Benny Goodman for a while."
"Is it true that he offered you a job?"
"Yeah, but I gotta do my part now. Benny-boy'll be here when I get back."
Lucy took another swipe at her stage makeup with a washcloth loaded with cold cream. "This stuff never will come off."
"That's on account of youse gals putting it on too thick." Ted grinned his trademark sarcastic Jersey boy grin.
"You're one to talk. I never saw you trying to take off a transport load of rouge."
"With my complexion? Are you pullin' my leg? My natural glow don't require no rouge." Ted stuck his tongue out at her, then ducked the flying washcloth.
"Well, with reflexes like that, at least you might do all right in the Navy."
"With reflexes like this, I outta be playin' for the Dodgers!" Lucy groaned.
"Get out of here before I call the loony bin on you!" The photographer and part-time trombonist (or trombonist and part-time photographer, depending on how business was going) threw her a mock salute and walked out the club's glass-paned door. Lucy chuckled to herself. Well, if my brothers aren't around, at least I have Ted to tease. She walked the few blocks back to her apartment in Harlem, humming the band's latest tunes under her breath.
As she passed the Army recruitment station on the corner, a lump sprang up in her throat. Posters in the windows proudly proclaimed that "Uncle Sam Needs YOU!" Did you really need him that badly? She thought back to the day her brother left for the war. "Aw, Lucy, can I have a smile before I go?" Her tall, quiet brother always had been able to coax a smile out of her, even on the toughest days. How many times had she come home from the club with a case of the sullens, vowing that she'd never sing again? And he was always there to be the voice of reason, calming her turbulent moods. "Chin up, Lucy," he'd say. "It'll get better by and by. I know you can do it." Lucy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Keep smiling through, just the way you used to do, till the blue skies chase the dark clouds far away." Will do, Ivan. But it'd sure be a lot easier if you were home.
Author's other note: I solemnly swear this is the closest I will EVER come to self-insertion in a story. But I couldn't resist letting my granddad be Lucy Kincheloe's verbal sparring partner. I miss you and love you, Granddad.