1917

Les Jacobs woke up to sunlight descending upon his face. He shielded his eyes with his right hand and then rolled away from the picture window that had ferried the brightness into the room. Now faced away from the window, Les saw the red hair atop Alice Delman's head poking out from under the large beat up blanket that they were sharing; her face was hidden under the covers. Memories of the previous night quickly came back to him.

Les had worked a late shift at The Iroquois Hotel, where he had been employed as a porter in the hotel's restaurant for just over three years. When he finished his shift around eleven thirty, Alice was waiting for him in the alleyway by the kitchen's rear entrance. Even in the shadows of the unillumined alleyway, Les could tell that Alice had made an effort with her appearance. She was all gussied up, wearing her best dress, a butterscotch yellow number with small green diamonds on it. Her makeup was flawless. When Les saw Alice, he smiled. Alice performed manicures at the Iroquois' beauty salon, but she had finished her work day six hours earlier.

"What are you doing here?" Les asked, as if he didn't know.

"I just thought that you might want to see your best girl," Alice responded coyly, her brown eyes shining beneath the broad brim of her chocolate colored hat.

"Ya did, did ya?"

"You're leaving in a few days and I thought I might not see you before then." Alice wrapped her left arm around one of Les' arms in a possessive manner. The United States had just entered the European War in April and men under the age of thirty were eligible to be drafted. For better or for worse, Les' number had come up.

"You see me just about every day," Les chided her.

"Seeing you at the hotel don't count," Alice pouted.

"Well, I'm yours for the night. What do you want to do?"

Alice shrugged her shoulders. "I dunno, Les. Let's just walk down Broadway and people-watch." Ever since Alice and Les had spent New Year's Eve 1916 in Times Square watching the ball drop with some of their coworkers from the hotel, she had thought of that part of the city as being special to the two of them.

Les' eyes briefly rolled to the back of his head. Alice's suggestion of activity was quite typical of her. "People-watch? I watch people all day. What do I wanna do that for?"

Alice pursed her lips at Les' reticence and for a hot second, she resembled a perturbed rabbit. "Yeah, but the guests at the hotel are all so posh. People-watching on the street is more fun. You see all sorts of folks."

"I guess so," Les said with little enthusiasm.

"Well, you got any better ideas?" Alice asked while drumming her fingertips on her forearms.

Les had lots of better ideas. They could go see a midnight flicker. Constance Talmadge's new film, The Lesson, was playing at the Criterion; Les was pretty sure that Alice hadn't seen it yet. Then, they could go to Barnabys to split a bottle of wine. They could go dancing. Or dancing first, and then Barnabys. Yes, they could do all of those things, but all of those things cost money, something which neither of them could spare at the moment.

"Not really," Les concluded.

So, Les with Alice clinging to his arm, slowly meandered from the Iroquois to Seventh Avenue and then down to Broadway, taking in the sights and smells, some pleasant and some not, of Manhattan's shopping and entertainment epicenter. Gargantuan signs for Planter's Peanuts, Chevrolet, and Chalmer's Underwear shone down upon pedestrians and automobiles like neon deities. Every once in a while, a trolley lumbered past them. It was drawing close to midnight but since it was a Friday night, and the weather was fine, many people were out and about.

It wasn't that Les was particularly keen to spend the evening with Alice, but he knew that if he went home to the flat that he shared with his mother, she would probably still be awake, despite the late hour and that he might be faced with a sobering night of staring at his mother's melancholy face. Les was the only Jacobs' child who still lived at home and the Jacobs' matriarch, Esther, had relied on him for companionship ever since his father had died. She was inconsolable about his imminent departure.

Alice stopped in front of a shoe store at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street, peering into its front window. A pair of bronzed leather shoes with white kid tops and white laces caught her eye.

"I wish I could afford those. They're sure dilly," Alice said, pointing out the shoes to Les. "Last week I painted the nails of a lady who wore a pair almost exactly like that. She tipped me a whole fifty cents!"

"Ah, they'd probably just pinch your feet," Les countered. "Fancy shoes like that ain't worth the money." Les was usually the pragmatic one between the two of them.

"So, they're not dancing shoes. So what? If I were a lady of leisure, I'd wear them and eat bonbons while writing long letters to my French pen pal."

Alice's imagined scenario of living on easy street made Les smile. She could be a bit goosey at times, but she could certainly make him laugh. "If you had a French pen pal, you'd have to learn French. Ya think you have the patience for that?"

Alice chuckled. "Maybe my French pen pal speaks English!"

"Come on, lets keep walkin'," Les insisted, pulling Alice away from the window.

As the pair strolled down Broadway and passed into the Garment District, Les knew that they might end up at Alice's apartment. It was probably what she had intended when she set out to meet him that night. When they had indeed ended up in the one-room that Alice rented above a barber shop and she had pressed her lips to his and led him towards her bed, Les knew that he wouldn't be seeing his mother that night.

Les heard Alice sniffle next to him. He thought that she had been asleep.

"You're really going, ain't ya?" Alice said forlornly, her voice slightly muffled as it travelled through the blanket.

"Yeah, I am."

Alice pushed the blanket down from her face, letting its top edge rest just below her clavicle. The mascara and lipstick that had been so carefully applied the night before were now smudged. "Maybe you could hide at my place till the fighting is over. Then you wouldn't have to go."

Les smiled at the simplicity of Alice's thinking. "The country needs me Al, I've got to go."

Alice knew that her proposal had sounded foolish, but she didn't care. With a hint of desperation in her voice she whispered, "I hope you won't forget me."

"Don't be silly," Les said, trying to hide the niggle of annoyance that he felt. He then leaned over and kissed Alice softly on her forehead. "I'm coming back."

"I know, but things change." Alice sniffled again.

Les Jacobs knew what love was. Love was Sarah and Jack and it had been his mother and father. Les also knew what love wasn't. Love was not David and Lily. Les had some theories about why David and Lily had never settled into marital bliss, but he kept them to himself. While Les loved Alice, he knew that he wasn't in love with her. Maybe he would settle down one day and maybe he wouldn't. Sarah had given his parents grandchildren that they could brag about and David had given his parents a university education. As the youngest, Les didn't feel as if there was any pressure on him to achieve much of anything, and so he did more or less as he pleased. As for Alice being his best girl, she knew full well that he had a wandering eye. Les also sometimes spent evenings with the hotel's assistant chef's niece, Edith, and there was a looker named Louise who lived in the flat below him and his mother.

Les had simply never taken to study like his older brother, David. When Les was fifteen, he had applied for a job as a dish washer at a small Italian restaurant in his neighborhood. The owner took a shine to him and taught him some knife skills. From there, Les worked his way from restaurant to restaurant until he finally landed the job at The Iroquois when he was twenty-four. The job itself could be tedious, but he liked working in the hustle and bustle of midtown. There was always something to do.

Les slipped out from under the blanket, leaving Alice by herself in the bed. He found his trousers on the floor next to Alice's dress and quickly pulled them on over his union suit. He then stepped into his shoes and looked around Alice's apartment for something to eat. The one-room flat was just large enough to fit a bed, a small dresser, a little square table, and two chairs. The apartment had no kitchen and Alice shared a toilet with six other tenants. As Les wondered how long Alice would continue to live there above the barber shop, he spied two red apples in a ceramic bowl on the table. He picked one up and rubbed it on the fabric of his sleeve before biting into it.

"I—" Alice began, but then stopped, her voice a bit unsteady. "—bought those for you," she finally finished.

Alice's words almost made Les wish that he hadn't taken the apple. Lately, people were going out of their way to do small kindnesses for him. About a week prior, when Les had gone to get his hair cut, the barber, who knew that Les was soon bound for basic training, refused to take payment.

"What are you thinking?" Alice suddenly sat up in bed with her arms wrapped around her thin torso to keep warm.

"Dunno. I guess I feel like people are treating me different lately. Like yesterday at work, Denis gave me two fresh croissants for my lunch." Restaurant staff, particularly those lower down in the chain of command, normally only got to enjoy the previous day's goods, the ones that hadn't sold. It was uncharacteristic of Denis, the hotel's pastry chef, to be so generous with his creations.

"What's wrong with that?" Alice reached for a sweater that was draped over the bed's footboard and slid it on.

Les ran the palm of his right hand over his face, trying to rub the sleep out from his eyes in the process. His fingertips lingered on the moustache that inhabited his upper lip. Would the Navy make him shave it off? He knew that beards weren't allowed. Les still hadn't answered Alice's question.

"It just feels like people don't expect me to come back. It just feels…" Les couldn't think of the right words to express the way that he was feeling and fell silent for a moment. At last, he said, "It's almost like people look at me and see a ghost."

Alice's mouth turned into the shape of an upside-down horseshoe. She swung the lower half of her body away from the wall so that her bare feet touched the floor. "You shouldn't talk like that, Les. It's bad luck."

Alice stood up and shuffled towards Les. When she was as close to him as a thumb is to an index finger, she encircled her arms around his waist and buried her head into his chest. Les felt the wetness of her silent tears transfer onto his clothes. At first, his arms hung dumbly at his sides, seemingly unable to reciprocate Alice's gesture of affection, but then after a few seconds, they found themselves folding around the girl's slender frame.

Author's Note:

Dilly - 1910's slang that describes something which is excellent or outstanding