Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

  He saw Grace reading the menu with consternation, and when he examined the menu himself, he understood immediately. The Special Chinese dinner sounded terrible; it was all egg foo yung and chop suey. “I think we should have the American one,” he said. “I’d like to have the steak.”

  Her expression relaxed and she nodded, folding the menu and setting it down. “Of course, steak it is.”

  He glanced around the restaurant as they waited to make their order. There was a small stage for the band, and Chinese paintings of beautiful maidens hung on the walls. Cocktail waitresses were coming around with trays of drinks: mai tais and Singapore slings, zombies and tropical punches. When their waiter arrived, Joseph ordered a rum concoction called the Flying Tiger solely for its name; he had known one of those pilots during the war. When the drink was delivered, he was disappointed to discover it was 70 percent crushed ice with a smattering of pineapple on top. Grace liked it more than he did, so he offered it to her and ordered himself a mai tai.

  The dinner was a well-oiled machine: each course delivered in succession, the waiters swooping through the restaurant almost like dancers, their wide round trays held high overhead before they descended to table level. The couple at the table beside them had ordered the Special Chinese dinner, and the smell of sweet and sour sauce wafted over to Joseph as he cut into his steak. Wielding his knife and fork reminded him, suddenly, of surgery in a tent out near the Burma Road, and for a moment he stopped eating. He saw again the makeshift surgical table where the soldier was lying, dosed with morphine, and the ragged flesh of the man’s arm where it had been punctured with shrapnel from a Japanese bomb.

  He blinked and saw his steak again, sitting in a puddle of thin brown juice, and he raised his eyes to his wife, who was chewing her own first bite. “How is it?” he asked, though he still felt partially enmeshed in his memory (the clang of the scalpel against the metal tray). He wasn’t sure why the memories came when they did; he wondered what triggered the neurons in his brain to fire. How incredible that electricity surged through his nerves; how strange that they called up these fragments of memory.

  “Are you all right?” Grace was saying.

  Joseph blinked again and lifted the piece of steak to his mouth. It was salty and well marbled with fat that left a rich smear of beef flavor on his tongue. He chewed and swallowed. He took a sip of his mai tai, tasting the sugary rum cut with the acid of lime juice. “Of course,” he said.

  “I wish your family could come for New Year too,” Grace said. Her mother and brothers were coming for the week; they’d stay at a hotel in Chinatown, since there was no space in their two-room apartment.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it.” There was no possibility of his whole family coming all the way from Shanghai. At least, not yet.

  “I only worry about you.”

  “You don’t need to.” He wished she would drop the subject.

  “How can I not? The war was one thing, but now—who knows how long this situation will drag on?”

  “The Communists have acknowledged that the Nationalists are the legitimate leaders of China. I believe that Chiang and Mao both have the best interests of China at heart.”

  She looked skeptical. “I don’t know who to believe.”

  “Believe me. Besides, America has too much to lose if China doesn’t stabilize. We won’t let it happen. And then we’ll go back.”

  “I’ve never been.”

  She had never met his parents, only his younger brother Arthur, who was his sole family representative at their wedding.

  “Then you’ll go for the first time. We’ll bring Lily and Eddie to meet their grandparents. You’ll see. This situation won’t last forever.” He smiled at her, projecting a confidence that he almost believed.

  “If you say so,” she said as the band struck its first notes, but she sounded doubtful.

  They turned to look at the band; to Joseph’s surprise, they were all Caucasians. And then a trio of Chinese women dressed in diaphanous veils emerged, arms raised and fingers gracefully extended, to twirl across the dance floor. The show had begun.

  * * *

  —

  Their seats were quite good. When the dancing girls swept past, they came close enough that Joseph could smell their sweet, floral perfume. Their bodies were barely covered by those sheer veils. Every time they spun, the gauzy fabric floated free to give a glimpse of what lay beneath: muscular limbs, smooth white skin, youthfully firm breasts. They were not as alluring as the dancing girls he’d seen in Shanghai before he’d come to America (he allowed that he’d been younger then and probably more impressionable), but they carried themselves with an appealing, straightforward energy. They were almost wholesome, and he wondered whether Grace approved. She had always had a Puritanical streak in her, which he attributed to her American upbringing.

  The girls were followed by a number of singers. There was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a husky voice, billed as the Chinese Sophie Tucker. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man with slicked-back hair and an easy smile, billed as the Chinese Frank Sinatra. They were all good, Joseph thought, or at least they were good enough, and their being Chinese made up for the rest. He particularly enjoyed the Mei Lings, a duo of dancers who evoked Fred and Ginger in their lifts and dips around the dance floor. They had some real elegance.

  Joseph glanced across the table at Grace to see if she was enjoying herself. She was watching the show with an easygoing expression as the Mei Lings swirled past. He realized, slowly, that he hadn’t truly looked at Grace tonight until this moment. He’d catalogued the silk flowers in her hair (slightly crooked now due to their earlier encounter with his face), the V-neck dress she wore, her new pumps, but he hadn’t seen past the surface. Sometimes he felt as if he never saw past the surface anymore; it was safer to look at the world with a detached, clinical eye.

  When he first returned from the war, there had been an awkwardness between them. The years they had been apart had distanced them from each other. Though he had been eager to see his family, he realized the moment he set eyes on them (fresh off the navy ship, the dock crowded with weeping wives and shrieking children) that they had been frozen in his memories, and now Grace and Lily and Eddie looked strangely unfamiliar. Eddie had been reluctant to approach him at first, because he didn’t remember his father. It had been Grace who pushed him forward encouragingly; it had been Grace who took Lily to greet him.

  Now, as the all-Caucasian band played a waltz for the Chinese dancers, he looked at his wife. He had always thought she was pretty, but her prettiness had softened over the years. The line of her cheek, which she had rubbed lightly with rouge, was plumper now. She was both the same girl he’d met a decade ago and undeniably changed, and for the first time in a long time he felt a kind of ache for her. It wasn’t the yearning he would have felt as a young man long separated from his lover. It wasn’t a simple physical desire. It was thoroughly unscientific, this feeling that was overtaking him, as if his body was belatedly acknowledging how far apart they had been for so long, and his mind was finally catching up.

  He had missed her.

  Ever since he returned from the war, he’d felt as if part of him were still back in China, but he wasn’t there anymore. Those army hospitals had been long dismantled; those boys he treated had returned to their homes—or at least they were beyond suffering. And here he was now: in this gaily colored and dramatically lit nightclub in America, sitting across from his American wife. The music was loud and brash; the smell of perfume and cigarettes lay heavy on the air. He lifted his mai tai to his lips and took another sip of his drink, the condensation dripping down the side of his hand like an electric shock. Wake up. You are here.

  Grace turned to look at him. He put down his glass and reached across the table for her. She was surprised, but she put her hand in his.

  PART III

  I Only Have Eye
s For You

  November 1954

  19

  Friday night, after her parents had gone to sleep, Lily turned on her lamp and got out of bed. Ever since she and Kath had decided to go to the Telegraph Club, she had thought endlessly about what she should wear. She had only a vague idea of what one wore to a nightclub, and she wished that she could consult Shirley. Even if Shirley didn’t really know, she had instincts about these things.

  Shirley would probably tell her to wear something daring. A form-fitting, low-cut blouse tucked into a wiggle skirt or a strapless party dress with a gauzy shawl over it. Not the black rayon circle skirt Lily had planned to wear or the boring white blouse with its Peter Pan collar, or the girlish blue short-sleeved dress she’d been keeping in reserve just in case. They were all terrible: unfashionable and unattractive and wrong.

  Shirley would also tell her that looking her best began with a proper foundation—the right girdle and bra and stockings—and Lily was sure that nothing she had in her dresser was right. Her mother had bought her a new bra that fall, but she knew that Shirley would say it was the wrong shape. As she wriggled into her panty girdle, she contemplated her selection of stockings, and realized that none of them were sheer enough. She wore them to church, not to nightclubs, and they were thick and plain. Nonetheless, she rolled them up her legs and fastened them to the girdle; she wasn’t going to go to the Telegraph Club wearing bobby socks. That would definitely make her look like a schoolgirl. She hoped, at best, to be mistaken for a young secretary, or a college coed.

  Shirley would take her time with her hair, setting it in rollers expertly and fixing the curls in place with a pretty comb or hairband. Lily’s hair had never held a curl well—despite even Shirley’s efforts—and although she’d taken her bath a little early so that she could set her hair, it had only been a couple of hours. Not long enough. As she pulled on her slip, the rollers snagged on the nylon fabric, and she had to struggle to delicately maneuver the slip over her head without ripping. She was half blinded by the slip, which also restricted her arms, and a sudden burst of anger exploded within her. She hated her clothes and hated her hair and hated, most of all, her uncertainty about everything she was doing.

  Was she really going to do this?

  She finally managed to free her slip from her head and began to pull the rollers out as fast as she could. In the mirror she saw that the curls were already loosening and wouldn’t hold their shape. She glanced at the clock; she was supposed to leave the house in less than half an hour. If she didn’t hurry, she would be late, and if she was too late, Kath would leave. They had agreed to wait for each other on the corner of Columbus and Vallejo for five minutes, and if the other hadn’t arrived by then, they’d walk around the block and wait another five minutes. If they were still waiting alone by half past eleven, they’d give up and go home. They’d made their plan just in case, although what the case was had never been verbalized. It was some nebulous fear better left unsaid.

  The throb of her heart was so strong it frightened her. The anger that had reared up inside her was replaced, now, by a growing panic. She had never done anything like this before. Getting up in the middle of the night, sneaking out—it was unprecedented. Lily Hu didn’t do these things. She pulled the last roller out of her hair and dropped it into the basket, and almost as if she were rising out of her body she saw herself in the mirror like a stranger.

  Her face was so pale, but two red spots burned on her cheeks, making her look like a porcelain doll. Her lips were almost purple, and the lower lip—she had been chewing on it as she freed her hair—seemed unusually, even obscenely full. Her hair was tousled into loose black waves, and the strap of her pink slip was sliding off her right shoulder, revealing the cups of her white cotton bra, reminding her of Patrice in her negligee on that book cover. Her chest flushed, and color crept up her throat and into her face.

  If Lily Hu didn’t do these things, the girl in the mirror surely did.

  And she would definitely be late if she didn’t get dressed.

  A new energy flooded into her—a recklessness that gave her courage—and she impulsively put on her newest slim gray skirt instead of the black rayon. She put on the white collared blouse and a blue cardigan. She pulled her hair back with two clips, leaving some of the waves free in the back. She reached for the red lipstick that Shirley had helped her pick out at the Powell Street Owl Drugs. And she put on a soft beret, arranging it carefully over her hair. Finally she dropped her lipstick into her handbag along with the fake ID, put on her coat, and turned off the light.

  The flat was silent but for the sound of her own breathing. When she went to the pocket doors to press her ear to the crack, the floorboards creaked, making her freeze momentarily in case her parents had heard, but only silence followed.

  She gradually became aware of the sounds that filtered in through the window: car engines purring up the street; the occasional shout of laughter that reminded her it was Friday night in Chinatown; the clang of a cable car. When she was convinced that everyone in the flat was asleep, she opened the door and crept down the hall, shoes in hand. She felt her way down the dark stairs, and at the bottom, she unbolted the front door. It stuck. She had to tug more forcefully, and the hinges emitted a squeak, like the mew of a kitten. She twisted around to peer up the stairs, hoping that she hadn’t woken her parents. She saw only darkness.

  She counted to sixty, trying to breathe silently and slowly. Finally she stepped out onto the front stoop in her stockinged feet and pulled the door shut, locking it behind her. She was hot with nerves, and the concrete steps were blessedly cold beneath her warm feet as she descended to the street. The bumpy sidewalk dug sharply into her soles, but she was afraid to make the slightest noise beneath the front window, where her parents’ bedroom was located. She didn’t put on her shoes until she was halfway down the block.

  She had never been out this late on her own, perhaps never even in the company of her parents. The Chinatown streets were lit by tall neon signs advertising chop suey and noodles, and the pagoda rooflines of many buildings were outlined in white lights. The sidewalks were lively with people coming to and from cocktail bars, most of them Caucasians, with the ladies in fur stoles and the gentlemen in fedoras. Laughter and music spilled from the Shanghai Low, and the smell of deep-fried food wafted through the air. She hadn’t realized so many people would be out at this hour, and as she passed the Chinese man working at the corner kiosk she kept her head down and walked quickly, afraid he might recognize her. When she reached Broadway and crossed over to Columbus, she relaxed a little. North Beach was just as lively—it was Friday night, after all—but there were fewer Chinese to see her.

  The escape from Chinatown left her buoyed; she wanted to laugh, but at the last moment she suppressed it out of fear that someone would notice a solitary girl laughing on the sidewalk, and it came out of her in a wheezy giggle. That sobered her up quickly, and suddenly Columbus Avenue seemed very large and possibly dangerous. Men passed her, their faces obscured by hats, while women clicked by in their heels. Her shoes began to pinch, and as she approached the corner where she and Kath had agreed to meet, she worried that Kath wouldn’t be there.

  At Columbus and Vallejo, nobody was standing beneath the streetlight. Lily slowed down, hoping that Kath would appear soon. She looked northeast toward Washington Square, searching for a sign of a girl coming through the dark, but she didn’t see Kath. Lily stopped about ten feet from the corner, afraid to be spotlighted. She slid her hands into her jacket pockets and glanced around warily. When they’d discussed their plan, they’d had the sense to know it wouldn’t feel safe to linger alone on a street corner in the middle of the night, but now Lily realized that five minutes was far too long. Every passing man seemed like a threat. She moved toward the wall of the building on the corner, hiding herself in its shadow. She glanced at her watch, wishing that the minutes would pass faster. She eyed a couple
walking down Columbus toward her; the woman’s arm was linked through the man’s. As they went through the light from the streetlamp, the woman turned her face up to him, smiling. She looked so relaxed, so certain and natural. Lily shrank back against the side of the building and felt ashamed of what she was about to do.

  She began to second-guess their whole plan. She began to calculate how long it would take to scurry home through Chinatown and up the block to her building. She studied her watch again, angling it so that she could read the slim hands, and when she looked up, Kath was standing beneath the streetlight, looking around expectantly.

  Lily exhaled in relief. “Kath,” she said, stepping away from the wall.

  Kath came out of the light and met her on the dark edge of the sidewalk. “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily admitted.

  “Do you want to go home?” Kath asked, concerned.

  Now that Kath was here—really here, scarcely a foot away from her—the doubt that had risen inside her was held back by something stronger. She wanted to see Tommy Andrews. She shook her head. “Let’s go.”

  20

  The Telegraph Club’s white neon sign was smaller than Lily had expected, and it glowed over a circular awning that was also printed with the name of the club. Beneath the awning, half-lit by the nearby streetlamp, was a black door, and in front of the black door stood a person whom Lily initially thought was a short, stocky man in a suit, but soon realized was a woman. Lily had seen people like her before (she had always noticed; they had drawn her eye magnetically, somehow, in a way that made her pulse leap), but never in this context: as if it were natural, and even expected, to be dressed this way.