Paula and Claire extended their hands, and Lily shook them awkwardly, as if they were all men, while Claire said, “I don’t think I know Jean. What’s her major? I’m at Cal too.”
Lily took her glass of beer—it was cold and slippery—and lifted it to her lips so that she wouldn’t have to talk. It tasted frothy and a little like soapy water, but it was cold and went down more easily than she anticipated. Claire and Paula and Kath were all talking about Jean now, and Lily thought she had avoided their scrutiny until Claire said, “We don’t see many Orientals around here. Do you speak English?”
Lily blinked. “Of course I do.”
Claire didn’t seem to hear the umbrage in Lily’s voice. “Do you know Mary Lee? She runs the Candlelight Club down the block.”
They all looked at her expectantly, and she swallowed. “No, I don’t know her.” The name Mary Lee was so common it seemed as fictional as her false identification. “What’s the Candlelight Club?”
“It’s a tiny little place,” Claire said. “Very friendly.”
“If you like this place, you’ll like the Candlelight,” Paula said, and raised her glass. She was drinking beer too. “Cheers to new friends,” she added, and Kath smiled and knocked her beer glass gently against Paula’s.
Lily raised her glass too, because it seemed to be the thing to do, and as it clinked against Kath’s, a bit of beer spilled over the lip, running coldly over her fingers. There was nothing to wipe her hand on, and nobody seemed to be paying attention to her, so Lily held her hand down at her side, letting the beer drip from her fingertips onto the floor in the dark.
* * *
—
Tommy Andrews was late for her second set, and the rumor was traveling around the club that she might not return that night. The stage room remained dark, and the husband-and-wife couples had all left but one—the one with the woman who had smirked at Tommy’s performance. Kath continued to talk with Paula and Claire; it turned out the movie they’d seen, Olivia, was quite famous in Europe but had just opened in the United States in a few select theaters. It was set in a girls’ boarding school where several of the female students and teachers had suggestive relationships with each other.
“In one scene they even kissed,” Paula said, sounding shocked.
“Not really,” Claire said, shaking her head. “The teacher kissed one girl on her eyes. Her eyes!” She laughed as if this was ridiculous.
Lily drank her beer and stayed quiet. She had never drank an entire beer by herself before, and as her glass emptied she began to relax. She felt a little warm, but not unpleasantly so. The Telegraph Club lost some of its strangeness; the darkness started to feel friendly. The girls were friendly too. Claire and Paula tried to include her in their conversation; it wasn’t their fault that Lily felt as if she had nothing to say. After they’d exhausted the subject of Olivia, they talked about playing in a local softball league and driving up to Marin County to see the redwoods. Lily didn’t want to tell them about her weekends: helping her mother run errands around Chinatown, going to church on Sundays, occasionally seeing the Cathay Band perform or cheering on the YMCA basketball team. She thought of Shirley working at the Eastern Pearl, folding hundreds of napkins over and over, so that they might be used to wipe the mouths of Caucasians. And then she looked around the Telegraph Club and felt as if she had rocketed herself to another planet; it seemed so far away from home.
Still Tommy did not return to the stage, and Kath asked if anyone wanted another round of beers. Lily realized she needed to go to the restroom, and when she stood to excuse herself, Claire said, “Are you going to the girls’ room? I’ll come with you. I’m dying! Paula, get me a drink while I’m gone, will you?”
Claire headed off and Lily followed her through the room. Just to the right of the archway, Claire veered into a dim passage that Lily had overlooked when she first entered. It turned into a hallway that ran toward the rear of the building, and on one side was a stairway lit by a single yellow bulb at the top, exposing a grimy whitewashed wall. Claire wobbled a bit on the stairs, grabbing for the railing, and Lily felt the wooden bar rock slightly beneath her own hand. At the top of the stairs, a narrow hallway ran along the side of the stairwell toward the front of the building, and half a dozen women were lined up outside the door to the restroom. Claire took her place at the end of the line, and Lily followed suit. Some of the women glanced at them briefly; others looked a little longer, particularly at Lily. She shrank back against the wall and wished she was invisible.
“How long do you think the wait will be?” Claire asked the woman ahead of her. “Is it moving?”
The woman, who was dressed in pants and a blazer, said grimly, “One of the toilets is stopped up. It’s slow.”
Claire groaned. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to come up here. The line always kills me. You’d think they’d give us the men’s room too.”
The men’s room was through one of the doors down the hall, though Lily hadn’t yet seen a man come or go from it.
“Go ahead and try it,” the woman said with a grin. “No one’ll stop you.”
Claire laughed. “I’m not dressed for it, honey.” She turned to Lily and said, “Your friend downstairs—Kath? She said she’s been here before but you’re a new one, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Claire leaned her shoulder against the wall and said companionably, “When I first came here—oh, two years ago now, can you believe it?” She paused a little in wonder, and then went on: “I had no idea what this place was. I was beyond shocked. I grew up in San Mateo, you know, and we only ever came up to San Francisco for shopping or special occasions. Where are you from?”
“Chinatown.”