“I’m sorry I was late,” Lily said. “Frankie was sick and I had to wait till he went to sleep.”
There were a few beer kegs and some wooden crates stored under the stairs, but there was just enough room for the two of them. Overhead, cracks in the stair treads let in paper-thin shafts of dim yellow light. It slanted over Kath’s face as she closed the space between them and said, “I’m glad you’re here,” and then she kissed Lily.
“Me too.” Lily kissed her back.
When they drew apart, Lily remembered that she had brought a gift for Kath, and she pulled the toy airplane from her pocket. “This is for you,” she said.
Kath held it up to examine it in better light. “What’s this for?” She sounded surprised.
“It made me think of you.”
Flora’s father had assumed it was for Lily’s youngest brother, and she hadn’t corrected him. She had wanted to put it in a box and wrap it, but she didn’t have the right size box, and the only wrapping paper at home was left over from Christmas. Now, seeing Kath holding the bare little toy plane in her hand, she was embarrassed.
“It’s nothing,” Lily whispered. “It’s all right if you don’t like it.”
Kath spun the wheels and smiled. “I like it.” She slipped the airplane into her pocket and slid her hands around Lily’s waist again. “Do you want to go out to the show?”
“In a minute.”
“Just a minute?” Kath teased her.
Lily laughed. She pulled Kath closer; she felt her smiling mouth against her own. Lily remembered the sight of that other couple beneath the stairs, and it was as if time had folded upon itself and she couldn’t tell if she was herself or someone else. How many girls had stood beneath these stairs, kissing? Lily envisioned a long line of girls like them cocooned in this dark pocket of beer-scented air.
A shout suddenly went up from the bar, and the lights flashed in the hallway, startling them apart.
Tommy abruptly stopped singing. The pianist halted in mid-phrase, and then Tommy’s voice came over the speakers: “I’m sorry to say we’re calling it an early night, folks.” Voices rose at once in confusion and surprise, and the lights flashed again, repeatedly.
“What’s going on?” Lily asked. She glanced out into the hallway, which continued past their alcove beneath the stairs, and ended in a closed door.
Someone came running down the short hallway from the bar and went directly past them, knocking into Lily’s shoulder. They opened the door at the end and plunged through, and just as Lily was stepping out from beneath the stairs, more women came—dozens, all of them, it seemed—heading pell-mell for that door.
Kath grabbed hold of a stranger’s arm and asked, “What happened?”
The woman was in a suit; she dragged her arm away and called over her shoulder, “Cops! The club’s being raided!”
Lily was still holding Kath’s hand, and Kath squeezed her fingers as she peered down the hall at the door. It was a back exit. “Come on,” Kath said. She tugged Lily into the hallway, joining the exodus. Lily could smell the fog seeping inside.
Kath abruptly halted and dragged her out of the way. “Wait—I left my coat.”
The panic of the crowd was contagious, and Lily’s only thought now was escape. “Can’t you leave it?”
Kath shook her head. “My identification’s in the pocket. You go ahead. I’ll meet you out there.”
“Isn’t it fake? Just leave it!” Lily wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“I forgot to leave my real one at home. I have to get it. You go—meet me on our corner, okay?” Kath squeezed Lily’s hand once more, and then Kath went back down the hall, going against the tide of women, leaving Lily alone.
A woman brushed past her, advising, “You better get out of here, unless you want to get caught.”
Heart pounding, Lily followed everyone else outside and into a narrow alley. It was very dark, and it smelled like urine. Up above, the buildings loomed black against a cloud-covered night sky. Only a few windows were lit, and Lily was reminded of how late it was. Everyone emerging from the Telegraph Club seemed to be heading to one or the other end of the alley, and Lily went to the left—she thought that way was Columbus Avenue—but when she emerged onto a side street she didn’t recognize, she stopped. She looked back down the alley. The open door cast a rectangle of yellow light onto the ground, illuminating a puddle of rank liquid that several women splashed through as they ran out of the building. There was no sign of Kath.
Voices came now, loud and insistent. Men’s voices—and then men in uniform, wielding flashlights.
Lily fled across the unfamiliar street. There was a group of men there, standing and smoking in the shadow of a building. The embers at the ends of their cigarettes seemed to float in the air like tiny red eyes. They had probably seen her lingering in the mouth of the alley, and she ducked her head nervously, realizing she’d lost her scarf somewhere.
She kept moving, even though she didn’t know where she was going. She was approaching light and noise, but she kept her gaze lowered toward the stains and spots on the sidewalk, the darker shadow of the gutter running like a river beside her.