“I’m calling that one The Good Husband,” Lilly said for all to hear.
Rosemary made a show of smooching her hand and blowing the kiss toward Martin. “Have fun with your brothers. It’s strictly girl talk over here.”
Martin, who had begun to make his way toward Rosemary in a sort of mock foxtrot, performed a quick U-turn back to the window.
From the bar cart behind the sofa, Lilly took the Scotch bottle and poured a splash into her wineglass. “Can I ask you a question?” She sipped the Scotch and continued. “If you had to choose between yourself and your husband, who would you choose?”
“Pardon me?”
“I also don’t know how to talk to people,” Lilly said. “But if you had to choose between the man you love, on one side, and on the other was your own life and all that you had worked for—how would you do that?”
Rosemary stared at Lilly, trying to untangle the question. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know what you’re asking.”
“Never mind it,” Lilly said. “I don’t even know what I’m asking.”
“I know that I’d never leave Martin,” she said. “I made a vow, but also I—I’d never do that.”
“But what if you were already apart?” Lilly put one hand over her eyes, her head bowed. She could not look at this woman, who had made a vow, while she spoke. “What if you were on one side of a river—a dark, fast-moving river—and he was on the other, and you knew that the only way to see him was to jump in and try to swim?”
Rosemary extended her hand, placed it on Lilly’s knee. She leaned in closer. “Is someone waiting for you at home?”
“Yes. Or no. Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She reached for her purse, though she knew there was no handkerchief—nothing but a list of things to do, a list of one medium’s nonsense. Rosemary unwound the linen from the neck of the wine bottle and handed it to Lilly, who dabbed her eyes. “These last days have—have not been easy.”
“But you’re leaving soon?” Rosemary said. “So you’ll see him before too long?”
“If I go.” It was the first time Lilly had given voice to the thought, and now it was out there. She was willing to betray love, and she had admitted it to this bright and hopeful American, who had made a vow, who would never leave her husband. “Prague is bad, and it will get worse. Everyone knows it.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. The papers say—”
“It doesn’t have to, but it will. It’s a fact.”
From the window came a burst of laughter. Martin—or Francis? It was incredible to Rosemary how much they sounded alike. She had noticed on Sunday that the Dempsey brothers all had the same walk.
“Lilly, what I said, about Martin. That was about me. You have your own life, your own—”
“You say so, and he says so, too. But what does that make me?” She took Rosemary’s hand in hers. Her grip was fierce, her eyes glistened. “Who abandons love?”
Another howl of laughter from the brothers was followed by Francis loudly proclaiming that if he did not eat soon, he would be forced to roast Michael over an open fire on the roof of the hotel. He was ravenous, he said, and little Michael was looking like a pullet ready to be plucked. The truth was, his thoughts of tomorrow and what he must do to keep these people—his favorites in all the world—safe from harm made him desperate for a final send-off, a last supper. In the movies, even a condemned man got to choose his final meal.
Martin gave a hearty “Hear, hear!” to the idea of dinner out, and the Dempseys insisted, en masse, that the Countess Eudoxia accompany them. Lilly protested that she had too much to do, but Rosemary wouldn’t accept it. “You can’t abandon me to these hooligans,” she said, and Lilly relented. Dining with ersatz aristocrats wasn’t on the New York List, but she would have to pencil it in at no. 21. So Collier made calls and a table for five was procured and when Lilly saw the number painted on the lantern in front of the restaurant—21, of course—she shook her head in wonder and resignation. Coincidences had become commonplace, and all of them pointed to the veracity of the psychic’s list. Shouldn’t she stop claiming she was ready to brave any trial in the name of love? Wouldn’t it be a relief to submit to the logic of that no, no, nein?
After a dinner of steak and caviar and salads soaked in lemon and anchovies, Francis insisted that the night was still young. Tommy Dorsey was at the Pennsylvania and Louis Prima had just opened at the Famous Door, but Francis said he’d heard there was a hot band at the Kensington—Chipper Kingston or some such? Rosemary put a quick end to that; the word on the street was that they didn’t sound half as good since they’d lost their clarinet. As Francis paid the dinner tab, they settled at last on the Cotton Club on Broadway, only five blocks away. Martin knew what Hooper and the Minton’s regulars thought of the place: nothing but white money staring at black talent. But even though he had the right face to get in the door, he’d never had the money for the cover—until now. Francis was flush with cash and Bill Robinson and Cab Calloway were leading the revue, and that was a tough ticket to turn down. Calloway always went heavy on the horns, and the whole place would shake when he went into his hi-de-hi-de-hos. As for Bill Robinson, even if Michael couldn’t hear his feet, he could still be amazed by what Bojangles could do.
“I saw him in The Hot Mikado last month,” Martin said.
“Hey, buster,” Rosemary said, with an elbow to his ribs. “You were going to take me to that.”
He had meant to take her, and he couldn’t remember what exactly had scuttled the plan, but it was easy enough to guess: another of his marathon nights in the city, with Rosemary home in the Bronx. Now he saw a chance to make good on a busted promise—and with Rosemary looking like she’d stepped out of the pages of Photoplay, and giving his knee a squeeze beneath the table, he had to assume that his past misdeeds were forgiven, if not forgotten.