14
“WHAT IS IT?” LETTY ASKED AS SHE STEPPED AWAY FROM the mirror in the cigarette girls’ dressing room and toward the doorway. Several girls were huddled by the threshhold, whispering excitedly.
Paulette hung back from the others, her long frame leaning against a wall, a cigarette resting between her fingertips. “It?s that playwright you were so interested in—Gordon Grange.”
Letty stepped over toward the huddle and peered out at the nightclub floor, where there stood an older man in a well-worn tweed blazer. He had a dapper quality, like an Englishman whose greatest pleasure derives from smoking a pipe in a musty library, and hanging on his arm, her body pressing close against him, was the cigarette girl named Clara Hay. Shouldn?t she be out hustling cigarettes like the rest of us? Letty wondered, before the graver implications began to dawn on her.
“Clara Hay was cast for my part?” she gasped before she could think better of it. “But she?s blond!”
“Well, you can?t call it your part if you didn?t even try for it,” Paulette laughed. But when she saw Letty had nothing to say to that, she went on more seriously. “Men are disgusting. They?ll do anything for a girl who?ll let them give her the business, which is why God gave us bigger brains, so we can outwit them. Right now, Miss Hay?s wits have gotten her further along than yours, but don?t worry, sweetie—you?ll catch on.” Paulette dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with her toe. “Currently you?re paying your own bills, though, and me too. So come on, before Mr. Cole thinks better of it and kicks us both out.”
This was reminiscent of something Cordelia might have said, and before she could help it Letty?s mind had turned to her old friend, who was out in the world somewhere and enjoying herself without any thoughts for the people she used to know. Letty sighed heavily and knit her brow.
“Don?t take it too hard,” Paulette said as she stepped toward the racket of the busy nightclub floor. “No matter how many old playwrights Clara Hay lets seduce her, she?ll never sing half so pretty as you.”
Despite her sunken mood, Letty couldn?t help but smile at that. She pushed into the main room of the speakeasy, where there were cigarettes to sell and a crowd spinning ever faster. The tray of goodies led, with her red smile following shortly behind. She hummed a little now as she went from table to table, leaning in here and there in a gesture of offering. A middle-aged man, with a girl who could not have been much older than twenty, purchased a paper carnation for his date and a few chocolates wrapped in silver; two women in dramatic dresses, who barely spoke to each other while their eyes searched out something more interesting, bought a pack of cigarettes each. She was moving steadily to the far side of the room when she heard a snapping near her ear.
“You, new girl!”
Letty turned, bewildered, and saw Mr. Cole, the manager. His small eyes flickered nervously, and he straightened his tuxedo jacket.
“Yes?” she said, keeping pace with him as he darted between tables.
“A very important customer has just arrived.” He pointed in the direction of a couple approaching a table just to the left of the stage. “See if they want anything, but don?t linger, know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Letty answered, although Mr. Cole did not bother to listen for her reply.
The couple was tall and slender—the back of the woman?s dress, which faced Letty, was low and deep, exposing the lovely bones below her shoulders—and they moved effortlessly together, as though they had been in love a long time. His hair was a light brown, almost metallic, and it was neatly arranged over a high, smooth forehead. There was an unmistakable aura of privilege about him—he seemed to have just stepped down off a yacht—and Letty found herself longing to be part of a club as exclusive and well-dressed as their crew of two. She placed her hands firmly on her tray and stepped forward. The man had moved to pull back the seat for his girl, who gracefully lowered herself, rotating her neck as she did to take in the room. When the line of her jaw came into the light, Letty stopped suddenly.
She would have known Cordelia anywhere—but oh, how transformed she was! In the brisk, dark dress she wore, she was as much a lady as anyone in that room, and the gold band that circled her head suggested the imperious ease of a Grecian goddess.
For a moment, Letty was flooded with relief and excitement to see her friend looking so enviably well, but then she remembered how it was when they had last seen each other—she had been staring at Cordelia?s back then too, before she had stalked off into the night without so much as glancing behind her in apology.
The thick emotion within Letty began to turn, and she became self-conscious of the tray of goods strapped to her middle, the girlish dress she was wearing, and the way she?d thought cutting her hair might make her appear cosmopolitan, simple as that. Her heart went low. Mr. Cole?s brusque instructions were still in her ears, but her feet were stubborn. In a few seconds she realized that the rest of her didn?t want to have to face Cordelia, either, and an idea seized her.
Across the room, Cordelia?s eyes were so full of Thom that she hardly saw anyone else. She didn?t even notice which establishment he?d had in mind until they were inside, and the riot of color and noise brought her back to the last evening she?d spent with Letty. There were the same stained glass windows and the same hysteria from the band on stage, but she regarded the room as she might have some fairgrounds she?d visited as a young girl. Everything looked different now, when she was so much more traveled in New York?s after-hours.
“I guess they like you here.” Cordelia put her elbow against the table, draping her body forward.
“You?ll find they like me everywhere,” Thom replied, letting his fingers linger on her bare back and turning toward the band.
The music was wild and fast, blurting and bouncing in every direction; the beat echoed across the room in the ecstatic shaking of shoulders, the furious tapping of toes, the jittery clicking of fingertips. When the song ended, the room erupted in applause. The waiters continued to wind their way between the tables, and the poor souls hanging back in the entry inclined forward to see what was so exciting.
Cordelia?s red lips bent upward in a natural smile as Thom?s fingers grazed her spine, sending shivers from her neck every which way along her skin. Then her eyes returned to the stage, where a girl was stepping, a little shyly, toward the microphone. She was petite, with cropped dark hair, and she was turned away, saying something to the cornet player. All the members of the band were straining to hear her, and some of them wore expressions of surprise. She was wearing a flouncy cream-colored dress and brown fishnet stockings, and when she turned around, Cordelia couldn?t help a whispered exclamation of shock.
“Oh!”
But if Thom heard her, he didn?t respond. Cordelia sat frozen, her lips parted, as the frightened pallor disappeared from Letty?s face, replaced by a broad smile, and she fixed her hands to her hips. A low rumble was beaten out on the bass drum, and Letty?s big, blue irises went theatrically left and right. Then the rest of the band joined in, and her brows moved flirtatiously up and down. After the first few bars her hands rose up, fingers splayed, and she opened her mouth. The crowd gasped, and even Cordelia, who had heard Letty sing many times, felt a shudder of surprise at what a deep voice that slip of a girl could produce. But mostly she felt a surging pride: Letty sang with such beauty and confidence that it carried to the rafters. And it was obvious that all these strangers heard the same thing, too. She recognized the song, but only vaguely—Anabelle Baker had performed it on a radio show they?d listened to back in March, something about dancing barefoot—and wondered if Letty had practiced it in private, or if she simply knew it from memory.
When the song ended, Cordelia couldn?t help herself. She stood and began to clap, almost forgetting in the moment the man she?d walked in with.
Letty?s chest rose and fell. She turned in the direction of the tall girl who?d shot up, so quickly, from the crowd. Their eyes met, but by then everyone else was standing and clapping, too. Letty?s attention turned to the audience that had risen like a wave, and she regained the flashy smile of her performance. Someone yelled, “Encore!”
With all the excitement, Cordelia hardly noticed the bodies crowding in behind her, and the noise was loud enough to drown out her yelp.
By then it was too late. She was being hustled back through the tables, and the two men behind her were so large that she wasn?t even able to glimpse Thom when she turned. Danny was ahead of her, pulling her by the arm, a fact that only stoked her anger. None of the other patrons, who had gawked so freely before, so much as glanced in her direction now.
“What is this?” she demanded, as they came stumbling onto the sidewalk. The single bulb above the entrance cast a pool of light around her and the three men. After the mania inside the club, the blue night seemed especially calm, though inside Cordelia was heaving with fury. “Who do you think you are?”
Danny wouldn?t look her in the eye, and she saw that he was sheepish, that he hadn?t wanted to pull her away any more than she?d wanted to be pulled. The two men with him were older, and they were large—standing side by side, they constituted a rather formidable blockade. On the other side of them, the door to the club opened, and for a moment all the music and voices within became audible again. Dress shoes sounded on the single stone step. Cordelia craned her neck and saw Thom coming toward her. What was in his face—anger, concern, humiliation? Before she could read it, Danny opened a car door and one of the other men pushed her inside. The car was in motion before she even managed to speak.
“What—?” she began. But when she saw Charlie?s big furious face, his simian brow tense and his lips taut, she lost her breath.
A long way, but only a few blocks west, in a church still used for its original purpose, a reverend railed against bad behavior for a handful of midnight faithful. “This lewd new music,” he lectured, “this unspeakable jazz!” But down alleys and up rickety stairways hundreds of feet moved along, as dancing bodies for the first time contemplated a very modern cadence. This was the tempo of the time, and for a brief moment Letty, on stage with her innocent face and experienced voice, was its perfect expression.
She beamed and sparkled and caught her breath. She was just trying to think what song she should sing next, when she noticed a gaping hole in the audience where a few seconds before had been one truly familiar face. Letty had felt so full of glory, but now she experienced the sting of rejection. Why would Cordelia have left so quickly? she asked herself. Was she still angry at Letty, or simply embarrassed by her former friend? There was no way of knowing, so Letty smiled sadly at the boys in the band, and stepped off the stage toward her waiting box of wares. As she was strapping it to her waist, she heard someone call her name.
When she turned, she saw Grady.
“I?m so glad I got to hear you sing again,” he said from the same barstool he had occupied the night before.
She gave an appreciative bow, and the great blues of her eyes gleamed. With her hair short and her lungs exercised, she was even lighter than usual. And so Letty kept on through the crowd. She looked right and left until someone met her eye or whistled or summoned her with a gesture of the hands. Suddenly she was the most sought-after girl in the room. They were interested in her for being precisely what she was: a cigarette girl who had done the unexpected, something exciting and gay that stoked their imaginations and their curiosity, and now they all wanted to buy their Lucky Strikes and gumballs from her.
She went forward until she felt a tightening around her waist. Someone, she realized with a pinch of fear, had taken hold of her. Bewildered, she turned, but she was already being pulled backward.
“Would you like something?” she said, a little hotly, to the man in the tuxedo who was holding onto her apron strings as if she were a marionette. He had manicured eyebrows, long and horizontal, and a trim, dark mustache hovering above a grin. His features were handsome, though his face reminded her of an overly polished apple.
“No, no, nothing for me just now.” He glanced at the other men at his table, all of whom were dressed similarly, with the same high shine, and all grinning like rakes. “Boys?”
The boys shrugged.
“Nothing, pretty baby.”
A long pause followed, during which Letty began to feel especially self-conscious about the way he was restraining her, as though she were a small child or a pony. A few people at the surrounding tables looked, or pretended not to look, and over by the bar she saw Paulette next to Grady Lodge, both of them watching the spectacle she?d stumbled into.
To Letty?s relief, the man let go of the strings and patted her gently on the elbow. “I only wanted to tell you that you should be on that stage every night.” He leaned forward, resting his arm on his knee and staring intensely into her eyes. “And I ought to know.”
There was something haughty about his I ought to know, but Letty smiled complaisantly and remembered Paulette?s instructions. Saying as little as possible, she went back to work. She worked until her legs were tired and her bones felt heavy, and then she worked another hour, until they felt numb. Later, after they had counted out their tips in the backroom and put their coats on over their girlish uniforms, Paulette and Letty finally stepped out into the refreshing night air.
The darkest hour had already passed, and the first signs of dawn to the east were becoming visible. Revelers were still stumbling home from long evenings of debauchery, and there was a street vendor selling hot popped corn with melted butter in wax paper bags for five cents. She and Paulette each bought one, paying with a quarter and telling him to keep the change. They ate as they walked toward home, not in any particular hurry.
“You know the fancy pants who grabbed you by the apron strings?” Paulette asked as she brought a handful of popcorn to her mouth.
“Yes,” Letty replied distractedly. She hadn?t known how hungry she was until she?d taken her first bite, and tasted how rich the butter was on her tongue, and heard her belly growl for more.
“Well, he?s Amory Glenn.” Letty didn?t respond immediately, and then Paulette went on. “Of the theatrical Glenns. His family owns some of the biggest houses on Broadway!”
“Really?” Letty pictured him sitting there at that prominent table, with his crisp white collar and neat bow tie, with the slick hair and dark eyes, and she realized that he had had a moneyed, important way about him, and what he had said to her—“I ought to know”—didn?t seem so haughty after all. She thought then of Cordelia and the handsome man with her, and marveled at how, in the span of so few days, both girls could catch the attention of such important-seeming fellows. They really had been too big for Ohio, she supposed, and perhaps they both had what Mother used to call “magic.”
Letty let out a long, contented breath. There was a touch of moisture in the air, and it was refreshing on the tip of her nose. She looked at Paulette, with her long legs and her head full of information about the secret workings of the world—what a lucky stroke it had been to find a new best friend like that!
A few stars were still visible in the brightening sky, and Letty sensed that at least one of them was for her. She was charmed—she just knew it, and she felt the tingle of the many possibilities laying in wait for her tomorrow and all the days after that.