There were muffled voices in the background. Corinne thought she heard music.
“We just lost track of time,” Ada continued. “I’m not going to make it to the play tonight.”
“Who’s we? Where are you?”
“Charlie and I are in the South End. You don’t need me, do you?”
Corinne wanted to tell her that she did need her, even though that wasn’t strictly true. Mostly she just didn’t understand why Ada would rather go to what sounded like a party with Charlie than help them figure out who was behind the shooting at the docks.
“I’ll live,” Corinne said. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Everything’s copacetic. Don’t go alone, though. Take Gabriel.”
“I hope you realize that making me attend a play alone with Gabriel is cruel and unusual punishment.”
“I owe you one, Cor. Gotta run.”
The line went dead, and Corinne dropped the receiver into its cradle with a sigh. She returned to the common room, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t upset. Ada had begged off things before, and Corinne understood that. The theater district was a welcoming place relative to the rest of Boston, but society could stomach only so much progressiveness before it revolted. A girl who was both black and a hemopath could not expect a carefree evening on the town, which was something Ada had to remind Corinne of occasionally, as Corinne preferred to forget the ugly truth of it.
This was different, though. Two members of Johnny’s crew were dead, another wounded, and Johnny still hadn’t returned. Why did Ada insist on pretending that everything wasn’t falling apart? Corinne kept telling herself she wasn’t angry all the way across the common room and to Saint’s doorway. She knocked on the door twice, and after a few seconds he creaked it open, dripping paintbrush in hand.
“You’re coming to the Mythic with us tonight,” she said. “Find a suit.”
Ada hung up the phone right as the musicians in the other room roared into a new song. It was all staccato horns and plucked strings and rolling piano. She couldn’t help but smile at the sound.
“Hey,” Charlie said, sticking his head into the room. “You need to go back?”
Ada shook her head. She took his hand, and he led her back into the parlor, which had once been a quaint sitting room, decked with floral wallpaper and matching chartreuse curtains. Now the room was hot and packed with bodies. Everyone moved together, sharing cigarettes and passing bottles of liquor. The glossy china plates displayed on the walls quivered with the pounding percussion and shaking floors. The ambience was overwhelming and powerful, and Ada felt closer to the music than she ever had before—even when she coaxed it herself from the violin.
Corinne didn’t need her at the theater to talk to the Gretskys. And if Ada was honest with herself, she didn’t really want to go. Even if they figured out who the thespian at the docks was, there was nothing they could do about it until Johnny came back. She would rather be standing here, leaning slightly into Charlie, letting him sprawl his fingers over her left shoulder. His index finger tapped an absent rhythm into her collarbone.
He hadn’t told her much about the party on the way here, just that he knew the band that was playing and it was not to be missed. There were enough iron fixtures in the house that Ada knew the hosts, at least, weren’t hemopaths. When she’d asked Charlie if they knew about him, he had just shrugged and told her that those who knew didn’t care, and those who didn’t know didn’t care to.
When the music started, Ada began to suspect that she and Charlie were the only hemopaths present. There were no emotions being forged by the instruments. The sound was fully organic, offered with no agenda. It had been so long that Ada had forgotten what it felt like to just listen to the music, to feel whatever she wanted to feel about it, to think about other things while she listened, like how reassuring Charlie’s touch was and how well she fit against his chest.
“Dance with me?” he asked, his voice rumbling against her back.
“All right,” she said.
She took his hand, and they slipped into the crowd of dancing couples. The song was slow for dancing, and much of the crowd thinned while the pianist crooned a ballad about a moonlit night and a lovers’ rendezvous. Ada and Charlie stayed pressed together, her arms around his neck, his around her waist. As they swayed to the rhythm, Ada rested her cheek against his chest and breathed deeply. He smelled like freshly laundered cotton, and for a moment the Cast Iron and Haversham felt so far away that she thought maybe they had happened to someone else. Maybe this was the only life she’d ever had, dancing here with Charlie Lewis.
When she opened her eyes, she realized they were the only ones still dancing. How long had the music been stopped? Charlie hadn’t noticed either, and Ada blushed hotly at the whistles and cheers they garnered. Charlie just laughed.