Free Golden Girl by Sarah Zettel Page B

with Mr. Jones too and asked him about his work in dry goods and what he thought about California politics and the latest crisis in Europe. Beforelong, the whole table had decided Shake was a long-lost friend.
    While Shake worked his way through a fourth ham slice, I couldn’t seem to manage to do more than cut my biscuits into little pieces and push them around in puddles of gravy. I didn’t dare look up. Somebody would see that the only person at the table who wasn’t glad Shake had joined them was his niece.
    “Callie.” Mrs. Constantine came out of the kitchen, a fresh pot of coffee in her hand. “Your friend Jack is here. I put him in the parlor.”
    I threw down my napkin and ran out without an “excuse me” or a backward glance.
    “Callie! I got great news!” shouted Jack as I came through the curtains. I glanced back over my shoulder, waving at him to keep it down. Jack just rolled his eyes and grinned at me. He sure didn’t seem any the worse for our late night. In fact, he looked ready to wrestle bears or monsters, whichever he could find first. “I got a telephone call from Ivy Bright!”
    “You did? How’d she know where to find you?”
    It was pretty plain this wasn’t anything close to the reaction he’d hoped for. Jack’s face went sour as he shrugged. “Asked at the office, I guess. That doesn’t matter. What matters is she wants to meet you.”
    “Me? What for?”
    “Dopey! She wants to say thank you. I don’t think she remembers exactly what happened, but she knows somebodytried to kidnap her and
we
saved her.” He pulled himself up straight and proud, every inch the conquering hero. “This is your chance, Callie. If she likes you, she can get you a job on the lot, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
    I thought about properly meeting the most famous girl in the country. Then I thought about how I’d kind of already met her in the first place. “I don’t know, Jack.…”
    “What don’t you know? You need a job, don’t you?” Jack’s salary was having a hard time stretching to cover two rooms and two boards, plus streetcar fares and clothes and all the other little expenses that seemed to keep marching in.
    “Mr. Robeson said he could get me a job,” I reminded him.
    “He said
maybe
, and he didn’t say it was with the studio. It could be hotel work or something. That won’t get you any closer to finding your folks, will it?”
    Something in the way Jack said all that dug under my skin. He spent a lot of time acting like he knew more than I did. Sometimes it was true, but sometimes it wasn’t. “Yeah, well, it might not be a good idea to have me hanging around where the Seelies can come calling anytime they darn well please.” That stopped him in his tracks, and I admit I kind of enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if the thought hadn’t come out of my conversation with Shake. I did not want to start trusting what my uncle told me. “Besides,” I said before Jack could start up again, “we got a problem.”
    I told Jack about Shake. All the excitement that hadbeen brimming over in him drained away. So did most of the color in his cheeks, which turned a kind of sick yellow shade. “You let him in here?”
    “I didn’t let him. He just sort of got in, and then once Mrs. Constantine saw him, there was nothing I could do.”
    “You coulda called the cops or … or something.”
    “And tell them what? He hasn’t done anything.”
    “Except try to kill us!”
    “Callie?” Right on cue, Shake pushed his way through the parlor curtain. I guess he’d gotten worried about how long I’d been gone. “Who’s your young man?”
    “You know good and well who I am, mister,” Jack answered, soft and low. The friendly kid vanished. This was the tough Jack, the Jack who’d been a bootlegger, ridden the rails across the country, and even been on a chain gang. You didn’t see this Jack a whole lot, and you really didn’t want to.
    “So I do.” Shake