In their room, in the tiny aisle between the bunk and the single bed, each with its own tiny brass lamp, Doll leaned into a hand mirror and examined her eyelashes. “I hate it in here,” she said. “It’s so crammed, and there’s hardly any light.”
Bess nodded but couldn’t complain. It was the most independence she’d had, having grown up under first her mother’s constant religious admonitions, then the protective watchfulness of her older sister. And she did not regret leaving her sister’s tiny apartment on Grand Street, where the wealthier townhomes of Bedford were always just within view, their elaborate stonework and silk-draped windows a reminder of what she could never have. When Doll and Anna had asked her to join the singing troupe, she’d had nothing to lose. She had only a year of high school left, and the careers ahead of her were wife, nun, or shopgirl.
Most of the Gut had burned down a decade earlier, but it was still a wicked place to live, and no girl walked alone there at night. They practiced their act instead in the afternoons, in the park adjacent to the Manhattan Beach Hotel. The performance consisted mainly of love ballads for soprano and alto, accompanied by swaying hips and flickering eyelashes. Onstage, they wore feathers in their hair, black ankle boots, and skirts hemmed to their shins. After a half hour of rehearsal, sprawled on the cool hotel grass, they listened to the guests splashing in the saltwater bathhouses next door and plotted how to win a spot in Henderson’s Music Hall, with its polished wood stage, red velvet seats, and gilded balconies. Bess had been in Coney Island for only three weeks, but already she was lulled by the routine of their lazy afternoons, their evenings at the clam bars or the racetrack, the easy and unpoliced flirtation between men and women. None of it seemed scandalous to her. It did not seem like Gomorrah but rather like Eden, the carousels and the ivory sand and the hotels with their burning lights and pastel awnings, the thick, syrupy smell of the confectioners in the lobbies. She could almost forget the hot, baked sidewalks of Grand Street, the raging nightly altercations of the couple who lived on the other side of the apartment wall. When she was onstage with the girls, the evening air drifting through open windows and the piano music echoing behind her, she could imagine herself living this life forever, accountable to no one, her dark hair braided with pink feathers and the sound of her voice carrying, After the ball is over, after the break of morn, after the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone.
Dash met them first, swinging his stage jacket over his shoulder and cracking some joke about Harry primping like a girl. He picked Doll up by the waist and spun her in a quick circle, pressing his mouth against hers. “I was hoping you’d come,” he said.
“Oh, the act was wonderful,” she breathed. “We wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
He turned to Bess. “I’m Dash,” he said, pumping her hand. “My brother and I saw you in your show last weekend.” He nodded at Doll. “I stopped this one on her way out.”
Bess felt her cheeks burning. She hadn’t noticed them. “I usually don’t pay attention to faces,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry. I know that seems rude.”
Dash shrugged. “Nah.”
“Are you two really brothers?” she asked.
“We are.”
“You don’t look much alike.”
“We’re Hungarian,” he said, as if it were an explanation. Bess didn’t press him further, because the one Doll had called Harry had come outside and was striding over to them. His hair was newly brushed and he’d changed his shoes, but while Dash had switched shirts, Harry wore the same clothing she’d seen onstage. She couldn’t see any stains of perspiration on his shirt. She wondered if that, too, was a trick, whether he’d simply changed into an identical shirt to make it seem as if it had all been easy. If so, it had worked; she was impressed.
“Well, that was good fun,” he said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Now who are these lovely women here?” He spoke with a slight European accent, enunciating each word carefully, as if he were being especially cautious not to give himself away. Bess wondered what he’d make of learning that her real name was heavily German.
She introduced herself as Bess. When she held out her hand, he turned it over and, boldly, kissed the middle of her palm. She snatched it away, surprised and a little scandalized.
“My mother always told me never to shake a woman’s hand,” he said. “It’s disrespectful.”
Doll laughed and reached for Dash’s arm. “You magicians are quite cheeky, aren’t you?”
Bess considered Harry’s bold gesture. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was taller than she was, which was easy considering she was still the height of a child, but he had an arrogance about him that unnerved her.