Now the moon has turned—has disappeared into the great Florida sky—and so this particular evening, instead of sitting down to a respectable supper, delivered on domed trays by hotel waiters dressed in crisp black and white, eager to please, I came forth from Evelyn’s room, smoothed my dress, and asked Clara if she knew about a place on the beach where a girl might have some fun this evening. (On the beach, mind you.) And her eyes went all bright and she said, Why, yes, I happen to know just the joint, and I said, Excellent, let’s go, and she said, But we’re going to have to find you something to wear, you know, and all that took a certain amount of time, and by good fortune Samuel happens to be working late tonight, because I dare say he wouldn’t have recognized us as we tripped out the lobby, having arranged for a chambermaid to keep watch over Evelyn, and climbed into the Packard baking quietly on the street outside.
And now the sun’s gone down, and still the heat rises from the pavement and the sand dunes, saturates the atmosphere like you could part it with your two hands, except you can’t. You can’t just push it away. It’s simply there, eternal, whether you like it or not, sticking your flirty purple dress to your back, coating your face in a tanned-pink sheen, wilting the ostrich feathers that shimmer on your sequined headpiece, melting your crimson lipstick. On Clara the effect is sultry and rather spectacular; I haven’t dared to look in a mirror and see what it’s done for me. (The man in the corner isn’t exactly smiling, after all.)
We sit at a small square table next to the musicians. It’s some sort of jazz, I guess, a strange and hypnotic noise. A few feet away a pair of girls dance together in abandon, feet flying and hands jiggling, cosmetics tracking down their faces in lurid, colored lines. Two more conventional couples give them a wide berth. A man in perfect formal dress dances alone, eyes closed, swaying rather dangerously close to the trombone. And that’s it. The other tables are empty. A barmaid makes a line for us; she must work on tips. I sit back in my chair and fan myself with my pocketbook while Clara orders for us. For such a tiny woman, she’s got a remarkably long neck, especially when it’s angled upward, as it is now, delivering our preferences to the waitress. She says something funny; they both laugh and glance at the man in the corner. Seems she’s noticed him, too.
When the waitress moves away, Clara leans forward over the table. “Don’t look now, but there’s a chap sitting there in the corner, watching our every move. Just imagine!”
“I noticed.”
“Did you? Clever thing. Mamie says he’s some kind of bootlegger!” She says the word bootlegger with a particular breathless excitement, like highwayman!
“Mamie?”
“The waitress.”
“Oh! Have you been here before?” (Innocently.)
“Of course I’ve been here before! My goodness. How do you think we got in?” She laughs.
“Well, it’s awfully nice of you, keeping me company this week when you might have been kicking up your heels in this place.”
“Oh? And how do you know I haven’t? I do fancy a drink and a laugh, from time to time.”
The door opens and a party spills inside, dressed in rakish elegance: three women and four men. The smell of sweat and drunkenness invades the hot room. Mamie perks up from behind the bar, like a dog scenting a covey.
“Speaking of which,” says Clara, “where the devil are our drinks? I want champagne tonight. I have the feeling we’re celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Why, your liberation! You’re free at last, or hadn’t you noticed?”
Four champagne cocktails later, the place is packed. I don’t know where everybody comes from. It’s rather wild and marvelously amoral, as if by defying the Eighteenth Amendment we are defying all the laws of ordinary society. The cocktails—even on my inexperienced palate—aren’t very good, the cheapest of the cheap, but the satisfaction of your palate isn’t the point. It’s the satisfaction of your cravings, the satisfaction of the base animal inside you. Someone asks Clara to dance, and she takes his hand and dances, sweating and jiggling in the fug of jazz and cigarettes, a sick-sweet fume of rum and gin, and when he wraps his hand around her waist and bends to kiss her neck, I turn away, so swiftly that my shoulder hits a thick, dark-clad chest.
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Do you have a moment?”
“Mr. Marshall!”
He takes my astonishment for assent, I guess. Wraps one hand around my waist and the other around my fingers and starts to dance, far more competently than I imagined a Prohibition man was capable of.
“I don’t want to dance,” I say.
“Neither do I.”
“Then what are we doing?”
He whirls me near a corner, where the music is muffled, and leans near my ear. “You need to go home, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. This isn’t the place for you.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Trust me.”
“I don’t trust you in the least. I don’t know why you’re here. Shouldn’t a revenue agent be arresting everybody?”
“Look,” he says, in a voice of pained exasperation, “just take your friend and get out of here. As far as you can. Back to town, safe and sound.”
“What if I’d rather be here?”
He draws back and frowns at me. Only an inch or two taller, but terribly fierce. “Why? Why would you rather be here, of all places?”
“Because I want to have a little fun tonight, that’s all.”
And his fingers clench on mine, and his brow—if possible—takes on an even more terrible grimace. “This isn’t fun, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. This is business, deadly business, and you’re a fool to mix yourself up in it. You’re a damned fool—pardon me—to think you can beat these fellows at their own game.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
I open my mouth to make some indignant reply, and he just seizes me by the shoulders and stares at me, breath tasting of spearmint and virtue, nose parked a mere half inch away from mine, and after the shock wears off—a few seconds, that’s all—I pull back and yank my hand free to smack him. He takes the blow with admirable calm, so I raise my hand for another try and someone grabs my wrist. Clara. She’s smiling; her lips are smeared. “Is this poor fellow troubling you, my dear?”
“He was just leaving.”
“Pity!” she says, giggling, and she tugs me away, into another room, more richly furnished than the last, where we collapse on a pair of red velvet chairs to be served a greasy, satisfying supper.
“Tell the truth. You’re a regular here, aren’t you?” I say.
“I cannot lie. But what about that chap of yours?”
“He’s not my chap. He was making a nuisance of himself.”
“That bad, was it? I’m surprised. He strikes me as the kind of fellow who knows how to kiss a girl properly.” She extracts an olive pit from between her lips and reaches for the champagne. Not just the supper but the drinks are better in this room. The champagne—a vintage Pol Roger—rests in a bucket of ice next to our table, just as if we’re not in America at all. Perhaps four or five tables occupy the space around us, filled mostly by men in dinner jackets who have presumably driven up here from various points of law-abiding civilization, just like us, along the road that keeps pace with the ocean.
“He didn’t kiss me.”
“He was about to.”
“Far from it. He’s not the kissing type.”
“I don’t know how you could judge a thing like that, on so little acquaintance. Unless you’ve met before?”
“No,” I say swiftly.
Her eyes grow a little sharper, and she nods to her right. “There he is again, if you haven’t noticed. He must be absolutely goofy for you. Are you quite certain you’re not tempted?”