Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns by J. California Cooper Page A

to call her. She asked Mrs. Gaines, “Is he all right? Is he sick? Has anything happened to him?”
    All Weldon’s employees thought Lily was just another employee in management. Besides, she was African-American. “Nothing wrong with her, just, Mr. Forest surely wouldn’t, well, you know. He is strictly business.”
    Mrs. Gaines could hear the sincere concern in Lily’s voice, so she answered, “Sometimes he goes out of town, Miss Kneeds. He runs his business so well, we roll along without him. He’ll show up any day now, or I’ll hear from him, and let you know. Do you have an emergency, or anything I can do?”
    “No, Mrs. Gaines, things are just fine over here, too. I was just a little worried when I . . . You’re right; he is probably just fine. He deserves a little time . . . Oh, never mind. Thank you, Mrs. Gaines, and you don’t have to . . . Good-bye, Mrs. Gaines.”
    Mrs. Gaines surmised that Miss Kneed cared more about Mr. Forest than she had thought. “Good! Because he has a really good business going over there.”
    Lily spent the time she was used to spending with Weldon musing, thinking. About all the things that had happened to her in the last year. All the changes in her life. About her past, her mother, and Maddy.
    “I used to feel so guilty because I was born ugly. I wondered who my father was because no one else in my family looked like me. I thought I would be set apart from the whole world all my life, until I died. Because I was ugly. My whole life was a wasteland of ugliness . . . and loneliness. I had made a gift of my life, my future, to my mother . . . and Maddy. Now . . . look what Weldon has done for me. He changed my . . . No, he helped me change my life. I work hard. Thank God for self-preservation.”
    In the past year, she had thought with all her business activity, school, all the new things in her life, she would never be lonely again. She had been almost drunk with all the things she was discovering about life. “And it is, at last, my life. I exist; I am real.”
    After the first few days of Weldon not being around, a different kind of loneliness moved into her apartment with her. She had not acquired many new things, except for the things Weldon brought or sent to her. At last, she was able to buy as many books as she wanted. She now had a fine library in the second bedroom.
    One empty evening, after browsing through her “library,” she found nothing that interested her. She felt the loneliness move close, inside her, again. Right in her lovely apartment, right inside the expensive silk negligee lovingly covering her body. It surprised her when the thought came into her head, “I’m not satisfied. I’m still lonely. I need some . . . thing.”
    She sighed as she sipped from her glass of wine. “What more can I need? Is it love I am missing? They say you can’t miss what you’ve never had. And I don’t miss all that love music by Cole Porter, Dinah Washington, and Frank Sinatra. And all those Billie Holiday songs he loves to play all the time. I love music, but that stuff makes you want to haul off and kiss somebody, anybody.”
    She set the glass down. “Do I love Weldon? No, I know I don’t love Weldon. But I do love Weldon . . . in some . . .” She reached for the wineglass. “I miss Weldon; I need Weldon. So . . . I must love him. But, I thought there was supposed to be fireworks, bells, a certain feeling.” She finished the bottle of wine before she went to bed.
    Lily Bea had told herself, after Maddy, she never wanted to make love, have sex, again in her life. “At least, not for a long, long time.” She knew she felt something for Weldon, but . . . was it love? The next day, at work in the shop, she thought, “Wouldn’t I know?” What she did know was that she was extremely lonely, and worried about Weldon.
    Everywhere she turned her eyes, something made her think of him. In fact, she constantly thought of him. “Did I hurt his feelings? Was he just