It wasn’t mean-spirited, or at least Fleurette didn’t take it that way. She was absolutely giddy over the fact that she was there at all, as she’d half expected to find her sisters standing in front of the Hotel Jermyn, blocking the entrance. Sheriff Heath would be nearby with his motor car, looking on approvingly as Constance arrested a few mashers on the sidewalk for good measure before dragging Fleurette bodily back to Wyckoff.
It was tiresome to even think of it. How dull and predictable they both were, Norma with her war-mongering and her silly birds, and Constance with her blind crusades for justice and her petty grievances against the sheriff’s enemies. Other girls had sisters who loaned them dresses and introduced them to the younger brothers of promising young men. Why didn’t she have sisters like that?
To her relief, Norma and Constance hadn’t been lying in wait outside the hotel. Once Fleurette had been swept upstairs with the rest of the troupe, leading a fleet of porters who wheeled cart-loads of trunks and bags, and once she’d settled into her room with Charlotte and Eliza (trying to look as blasé as they did about every cunning detail of the room: the tiny sink in the corner, the little gilt-edged mirror, and the vanity with a neat stack of free writing paper)—once she was settled, and saw that she really had triumphed in launching herself into a new life—a monumental task came to her, in the form of billowy armloads of costumes in need of mending.
“You’ll have to stitch our names into these terrible old petticoats,” Eliza said. “We’re supposed to wash them ourselves, but we get them hopelessly mixed up anyway.”
“The sleeves are too tight on these shirtwaists,” said Bernice. “The costume change is so fast that we rip them. Do something about the sleeves, or do something about May’s favorite number. One of the two isn’t going to survive another week.”
“A few of us are slipping out after Ironsides falls asleep tonight,” Charlotte said, and Fleurette’s hopes flew around wildly. “I wonder if you can bring up this hem by a couple of inches so I don’t look like a schoolgirl when I wear it.” There was no mention of Fleurette going along when they snuck away. It was only her first night with them, so she didn’t dare ask. As it was, she had more than enough mending to keep her occupied.
May Ward, of course, kept a suite to herself, down the hall and around the corner from the Dolls and Mrs. Ironsides. (Mr. Impediment wasn’t allowed on the women’s floor but stationed himself in the lobby, within easy sight of the elevator, and paid the hotel porters to keep watch when he couldn’t.)
Mrs. Ward liked to keep a room apart from the girls, they told her, because she “comes and goes at irregular hours, and keeps irregular company.”
It was easy enough to guess at what that meant. Fleurette wondered how May Ward managed to slip past Mr. Impediment, or wasn’t he in charge of watching her, too?
There was no performance on the first night owing to the late hour of their arrival, but on the second night, a maid knocked at her door around five o’clock. The Dolls had gone ahead to the theater, and Fleurette stayed behind to finish what mending she could before the show started. Seeing the Dolls perform every night was to be her great reward for a day spent in a cramped hotel room, bent over a sewing machine that rocked back and forth on the unsteady vanity. It didn’t matter if the Dolls went running around to shops and arcades all day without her, or snuck past the chaperone at night, as long as she was with them at the theater and could somehow be a part of the show, even from backstage.
The maid had a little card for Fleurette, with a note from Mrs. Ward summoning her to her room. Was this another audition? Was she to be put on stage already? The maid didn’t know and said only that she was to come quickly.
There was no time to do anything about her hair or to find a better dress among the half-unpacked trucks and piles of frills in need of mending, so she slipped on her shoes and followed the maid down the hall. At Mrs. Ward’s door, the maid knocked and went on her way.
“Florine!” called a raspy voice from inside.
“It’s Fleurette.” She hoped she didn’t sound impertinent.
“Well, hurry up and help me with this!”
Fleurette let herself into what must’ve been the hotel’s most lavish suite for women. There was a woven carpet of royal blue and gold fleurs-de-lis, wallpaper of a matching blue and gold stripe, heavy mahogany chairs, three electric chandeliers, a marble fireplace, and, in the room beyond, an enormous brass bed with a heavy brocade coverlet tossed over it. May Ward was nowhere in sight.
“Come on through!” she called.
Fleurette followed her voice through the bedroom and into a bathroom as elegant as anything she’d ever seen. Never had she imagined that so much marble and brass could be rallied together in the service of hygiene, nor had she ever seen herself reflected in so many mirrors at once. There were two or three on every wall.
But she wasn’t there to admire herself in the mirror. Mrs. Ward sat on the edge of the bathtub, with a bucket of ice next to her and something clear and pungent in a glass.
Her eyes were red, her face flushed, her hair in wild disarray. “Oh, there you are. What’s the use of having a seamstress if I can never find her?”
“I was only just?—”
“Never mind. Look, I stepped on this damned frock. Stitch it up, will you? There’s a motor car running downstairs and gasoline is dear.” She glided to her feet and twirled around. Fleurette gasped when she saw the damage. Mrs. Ward had, for some bewildering reason, already put on her costume for the opening number: a filmy gown meant to emulate a Greek goddess, with layer after layer of impossibly frail chiffon. It had been rent apart and sewn back together in three or four places. One of these ineffective patches had given way when Mrs. Ward stepped on the hem.
From down on her knees behind the actress, Fleurette mumbled, “I didn’t bring my kit.”
May spun around, tossing ice cubes as she did. “Didn’t bring your kit? Why’d you think I called you? Here, the hotel must have something awful you can use,” and she ransacked the drawers until she came up with a little wooden box holding needle and thread. Fleurette did what she could with it, but warned her that the entire piece should be replaced. “Or just let me take off this outer skirt, and switch it with one of the inner layers,” she offered.
As soon as Fleurette snapped off the thread, May spun around in front of the mirror, gleeful. “Oh, that’s just fine. Anything can be mended, can’t it, Florine? Here, I want to see what you can do with this old thing.” She pulled a shimmering beaded gown of pale green and gold from a hook and tossed it at her. “I keep losing the damned beads. There’s a whole handful of them in a little dish on the dresser. I’ll send someone down to your room to pick it up when I’m back from the theater.”
“Do you mean—tonight?” Fleurette saw hours of work ahead of her, and no hope of watching the show from backstage.