Sweet Like Jazz (Sapphic Short Story)

Sweet Like Jazz

Love was always a fickle-little thing. For most of your life, it seemed just out of your grasp, and sometimes you thought you found it to only turn into pure hate. For most of my life, I had always believed that it was a monster. It lured you in with a sense of security and would be so gentle, but so often it turned to disaster. A young maiden with so much life was killed by a dagger to the heart. A young man standing on the riverbank as a bullet went through his head. The single tear of a young child as her parents fought through each night. She was so young but she held the age of a woman that had seen so much more than her.

I thought I had learned my lesson about love when I was seven. I was in my childhood bed clutching onto a toy black cat that was made from a dress that I had long grown out of and ruined at that point. My babysitter and next-door neighbor, a kind woman by the name of Katherine, had made it for me. I still remembered the green button eyes that it had. I never knew that buttons could be so bright.

I remember staring into those eyes as in the apartment next to us, my mother murdered Katherine with a kitchen knife. That night, my father lost the love of his life, and then his wife went to prison. From that moment on, love seemed more trouble than it was ever worth to me. Throughout high school, many boys would try to woo me, but they never won. Those scratchy beards and the urge to manifest destiny never appealed to me. Oftentimes, I found myself skipping out on dances and being left out of the normal fun things other teenagers did. I was so scared of being burned by life, just like my father had.

However, instead of being burned by love, I found myself in the company of criminals and madmen. Something about them always drew me to them, maybe it was because they reminded me of my mother or never fell for love's tricks. It was daring for me, to be able to choose money over love.

I was at the local speakeasy while soft jazz filled my ears. I had long since become accustomed to the soft tunes of Miss Ricki and her band. The red flapper dress with glitter hung tightly around her masculine frame. She loved those dresses, but every night she would be forced to retire them for the day as she conformed to society. She would slip her legs into the pants legs of a suit and instead would become Richard.

I had my elbow resting on the bar, Floyd was sliding me a glass of hooch when she walked in. She was wearing the most ridiculous outfit I think I had ever seen in my life. Long flowing sleeves made of stripes of black and white poked out of her baggy blue jean overalls that made it look like she was a kid in her dad's clothing. Her hair didn't look much better. It was wild ginger sticking up at all ends as if she had been struck by lightning.

Before I could even pry my eyes off the girl when she made her way over to the bar. One of the gentlemen who was part of Mad Man Willie's gang blew smoke in her general direction before he began chuckling. If she heard the chuckling over the jazz it wasn't obvious as she just kept walking, nothing dampening the soft smile on her face. I recognized the Mad Man Willie's gangster, he was the only Italian in a group of anglo-Saxons. His darker complexion always stood out against their pale skin like an elephant against the snow.

"Hey, Bellomo. What did I tell you about making fun of the newcomers, do I have to get Charlie?" I shout across the room, my Boston accent filling the room. I lifted the glass off the counter, taking a swig before slamming it onto the count. "Then we could both beat your ass, so you don't complain to Willie about you getting socked by a dame," I was quickly moving away from the bar now, passing the strange girl.

"You ain't no dame, Lottie," He said in his rough, Brooklyn accent. Another breath of smoke escaped from between his lips.

"That's not what you said when you went running to Willie. Hey Floyd, you remember what he said," The other patrons of the speakeasy were already beginning to snicker, despite how used they were to my antics of embarrassing anyone that had the unlucky draw of being at the end of my short fuse. Floyd the bartender even once was at the receiving end of it, only that night no one laughed. They knew he'd kick me out, and with Prohibition in full swing, they didn't have anywhere else to go.