Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

  “You girls sure you’re in the right place?” the bouncer asked.

  Lily felt for her fake ID in her handbag, wondering if she should take it out.

  “I’ve been here before,” Kath said. “We’re sure.”

  The bouncer gave Kath a little grin, and waved them inside with a flourish. “Well then, welcome back,” she said cheerfully.

  Relieved, Lily followed Kath into the club, avoiding the bouncer’s gaze. The black door opened into a narrow, dimly lit space. Lily didn’t know where to look at first; she wanted to see everything, but she was afraid to stare. There was a mirrored bar on the left where patrons sat on stools. There was barely enough space on the right for Lily and Kath to pass in single file. Lily was struck most forcefully by the smell of the place: a mixture of booze, perfume, sweat, and cigarette smoke. As she followed Kath down the side of the room, she noticed some of the women turning their heads to look at her, their eyes reflecting the globe lights hanging above.

  At the end of the bar, the narrow space opened via an archway into a wider room—perhaps three times as wide—and in the center rear was a tiny stage where a spotlight shone upon a solitary microphone. At the back of the stage was an upright piano, and a woman in a boxy suit with a poodle haircut was seated on the bench, placing her hands on the keys. All around the stage were little round tables, and each one was filled. Kath pulled Lily toward the side of the room and found a small empty space between a table and the wall. The pianist began to play, and the room, which had been lively with conversation and laughter, began to hush.

  The rear of the stage was covered by a black curtain, and Lily wondered if someone was going to step out from behind it. She had been waiting for this for so long that these last few moments seemed interminable. She quivered in her shoes as she gazed at the stage, at the people seated near the edge—she was jealous of their proximity to that microphone—and at Kath, who was watching the stage just as she was. Then there was a murmur behind them, and all the people packed into their section turned toward the archway.

  Someone was making their way through the crowd.

  Lily couldn’t see the person clearly, only the motion of others making way, like a wave, but she followed the ripple and turned along with her neighbors as that person strolled through the audience, and finally stepped onto the low stage and into the spotlight.

  Lily knew that this was Tommy Andrews, male impersonator. She knew that the entire point of the show was the fact that the performer was not a man. Someone nearby whispered, “Is that really a woman?” And Lily squirmed with embarrassment, because that question led her to imagine what Tommy’s body looked like under her suit, and that seemed so disrespectful—like those men who had leered at them at the bowling alley. Lily felt a queasy, self-conscious confusion. It was wrong to stare, and yet Tommy was onstage, and they were supposed to look. It would be rude not to watch, so she did.

  At first Tommy stood with her back to the room while the pianist continued to play, and the notes began to coalesce into a melody that Lily recognized. The spotlight gleamed on Tommy’s short hair, highlighting the way it was cut sharp against the nape of the neck, right above the white collar that was crisply framed by a black tuxedo jacket. Tommy pulled the microphone toward her mouth, with her face still turned away from the audience and toward the black curtain, and began to sing the first lines to “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”

  The voice that emerged was pitched low and husky, like a jazz singer with smoke on her breath. A faint gasp went through the audience as if people were surprised, but Lily knew it wasn’t surprise. It was acknowledgment of how immaculate the male impersonation was, how shockingly well staged. The contrast between Tommy’s voice (especially when it rose smoothly to the higher notes) and silhouette (legs spread and shoulders cocked) was deliciously scandalous. Lily felt her heartbeat thrumming in her chest as she watched; she was afraid to blink; she was afraid to miss the moment she sensed coming closer—and finally, there it was.

  At the end of the first verse, Tommy spun around with a cocky smile on her face, and the audience burst into applause so loud it drowned out the rest of the verse.

  The black-and-white photograph in the Chronicle had been a poor imitation of reality, smudged and blurry. It had left out all the important details: the sheen of pomade on the waves of Tommy’s hair; the precise folds of her black bow tie; the gold signet ring on her pinkie finger as she cupped the microphone close to her mouth. It had given no sense, Lily now realized, of Tommy’s physicality. The way she stood, the way she moved—her swagger—so like a man and yet—

  It was that yet that made Lily’s skin flush warm. The knowledge that despite the clothes that Tommy wore, despite the attitude that invited everyone in the room to gaze at her, she was not a man. It felt unspeakably charged, as if all of Lily’s most secret desires had been laid bare onstage.

  Tommy didn’t change the lyrics. The song was languid and liquid, with a hint of jaded self-reproach as if Tommy were confessing that she had fallen in love against her wishes. Hearing her sing to an unnamed “him” while dressed as a man was a sensation. The audience whistled at her, and she winked at them, so sure of herself it made Lily’s face burn.

  She didn’t want Tommy ever to stop. She could stand there in the hot crowd, craning her neck to see around the heads of those who had been lucky enough to get a table, gazing at Tommy in her tuxedo, forever. She had heard the song before, of course, but never like this, never the way Tommy sang with a purr in her voice that felt like she was whispering directly in Lily’s ear.

  Lily’s blouse clung to her damp skin, and she became increasingly aware of the press of people around her and the heat that rose from their bodies. The air was close and smelled more strongly than ever of cigarette smoke and alcohol, and the undercurrent of perfume now seemed shockingly intimate, as if she were nuzzling the necks of all the women here.

  And all of a sudden it was almost painful to watch Tommy onstage. She had to look away as if she were a drowning person surfacing for air. She saw that there were some men in the audience—husbands with their wives or girlfriends, seated in a clump on one side of the room as if they had huddled together for safety. The men seemed to be having a good time, applauding and grinning, giving each other approving glances as if to congratulate themselves on their adventurousness. The wives and girlfriends were more mixed in their expressions. One looked absolutely mortified and could barely keep her eyes on the stage; one leaned forward with a broad smile, occasionally giving her husband a smirk. The smirk was so thick with suggestion that it made Lily queasy, even though she didn’t understand what it meant. The not knowing made it worse; it opened a Pandora’s box of implication, and yet she was painfully aware of her own naïveté. She couldn’t even imagine what that woman wanted, but she was certain it was shameful.

  Beyond those couples, most of the audience was women, and some of those women were dressed like men. None as finely as Tommy, but some wore ties and vests, while others wore blazers with open-collared shirts. Some women were done up for a night on the town in cocktail dresses, with sparkling earrings and necklaces around their pale throats. There were a few Negro women seated together, but Lily was the only Chinese girl in the room. That meant there was no one from Chinatown to recognize her, but it also made her stand out all the more.

  She shrank back as far as she could, and when her foot touched the wall, she realized she could inch back a tiny bit more until she was entirely pressed against the wall, and Kath was half a foot in front of her, partly blocking her view. Now she felt safer, and when the song ended and the room burst into applause, she took off her jacket and draped it over her arm. Her blouse was damp where she had sweated through the back, but at least she was cooler.

  Kath glanced at her and asked, “Are you all right?”

  Lily nodded, but there was no time for her to elaborate, because Tommy was starting anothe
r number. This one was livelier, and it involved her stepping off the stage and flirting with the women seated around the perimeter. Lily was extra glad, now, that she was hidden against the far wall. She had dreamed about Tommy visiting her table, but now that she was in the room the possibility of that attention felt distinctly alarming. Instead she held her breath as Tommy perched on the edge of each table she visited, smiling down at the woman she had chosen and joking with the man nearby. She seemed utterly comfortable with what she was doing, as if wearing a man’s suit and flirting with women were the most normal thing in the world. She leaned toward a blushing woman in a low-cut green dress, singing “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me,” then turning to her male partner and adding, “Not you, sir.”

  The room broke into laughter at the aside, and Lily laughed along nervously, even though she was afraid she didn’t get the joke. She had wanted so desperately to come here, but the reality of the Telegraph Club was not what she had imagined. In her imagination, Tommy Andrews had been a lone, pure figure who could be admired from a cool distance. She had not been this swaggering creature who sauntered over to strange women and kissed their hands, who strode back onstage and surveyed the room like a king looking over his realm. In her imagination, Tommy had been like a matinee idol—sweet-faced and tender. In reality, Tommy was a woman made of flesh and blood, and that frightened Lily most of all.

  21

  At the end of Tommy’s set, the audience loosened up, stood and stretched, moved toward the bar or away from it. Kath spotted several women deserting a table nearby. She quickly claimed it, and Lily followed.

  Kath looked around excitedly and asked, “What did you think?”

  “I’m not sure.” Lily heard the strained self-consciousness in her voice and wished she had said something different.

  Kath looked at her then—really looked at her—as if trying to decipher what was beneath Lily’s words. Lily awkwardly dropped her gaze, studying the scarred wooden surface of the table. The votive candle at the center flickered within its red glass cup, and Lily imagined she could feel the heat from it radiating out in invisible waves.

  “If you want to leave, we can go,” Kath said.

  Lily looked up at her friend in surprise. Kath had taken off her coat, and Lily noticed for the first time that Kath wore a collared shirt with its top button undone.

  “I don’t want to leave,” Lily managed to say, and Kath nodded, and they sat there for a moment as the bustle around them went on: women carrying beers across the room; wineglasses ringing together; someone wondering loudly when Tommy’s next set would begin.

  Two women suddenly appeared at their table, and one of them asked, “Are you using these two chairs? Do you mind if we take them?”

  “No, go ahead,” Kath said, and the two women sat down, pulling their chairs back and away slightly to give them some room. One of the women was wearing a blazer and collared shirt, and her hair was cut boyishly short, but in a style that could be called feminine if she put on a dress. The other woman was wearing a blouse and a skirt, her hair waved and fastened with a silver barrette; she didn’t look much older than a high school senior.

  Kath scooted her chair closer to Lily and asked, “Do you want something to drink?”

  “We can’t,” Lily whispered, turning her head away from their tablemates.

  “I’ll get you something. I mean, Elizabeth Flaherty will.” Kath grinned.

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Lily said, worried.

  “It’ll be fine,” Kath assured her. “I’ll be back in a minute. Tommy’s second set won’t start for a little while.”

  And then Kath got up and left her there, sitting with the two strange women who had their backs half turned to her. Lily took a shallow breath, holding herself very still as if that might render her invisible. The women at her table were talking about a movie they’d seen recently; it sounded like a French film, and Lily wondered where they had seen it. They seemed quite absorbed in teasing out the nuances of the movie—it appeared to be about a schoolgirl—and though Lily didn’t allow herself to look in their direction, she listened quite attentively.

  When Kath returned with two glasses of beer, the women made room for her to slide into her seat, and the one in the blazer took that as an excuse to say, “We haven’t seen you here before, have we? I’m Paula, and this is Claire.”

  Kath introduced herself and shook Paula’s hand. “I’ve been here before with my friend Jean Warnock. Do you know her? She’s at Cal. This is my friend Lily.”

  Paula and Claire extended their hands, and Lily shook them awkwardly, as if they were all men, while Claire said, “I don’t think I know Jean. What’s her major? I’m at Cal too.”

  Lily took her glass of beer—it was cold and slippery—and lifted it to her lips so that she wouldn’t have to talk. It tasted frothy and a little like soapy water, but it was cold and went down more easily than she anticipated. Claire and Paula and Kath were all talking about Jean now, and Lily thought she had avoided their scrutiny until Claire said, “We don’t see many Orientals around here. Do you speak English?”

  Lily blinked. “Of course I do.”

  Claire didn’t seem to hear the umbrage in Lily’s voice. “Do you know Mary Lee? She runs the Candlelight Club down the block.”

  They all looked at her expectantly, and she swallowed. “No, I don’t know her.” The name Mary Lee was so common it seemed as fictional as her false identification. “What’s the Candlelight Club?”

  “It’s a tiny little place,” Claire said. “Very friendly.”

  “If you like this place, you’ll like the Candlelight,” Paula said, and raised her glass. She was drinking beer too. “Cheers to new friends,” she added, and Kath smiled and knocked her beer glass gently against Paula’s.

  Lily raised her glass too, because it seemed to be the thing to do, and as it clinked against Kath’s, a bit of beer spilled over the lip, running coldly over her fingers. There was nothing to wipe her hand on, and nobody seemed to be paying attention to her, so Lily held her hand down at her side, letting the beer drip from her fingertips onto the floor in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  Tommy Andrews was late for her second set, and the rumor was traveling around the club that she might not return that night. The stage room remained dark, and the husband-and-wife couples had all left but one—the one with the woman who had smirked at Tommy’s performance. Kath continued to talk with Paula and Claire; it turned out the movie they’d seen, Olivia, was quite famous in Europe but had just opened in the United States in a few select theaters. It was set in a girls’ boarding school where several of the female students and teachers had suggestive relationships with each other.

  “In one scene they even kissed,” Paula said, sounding shocked.

  “Not really,” Claire said, shaking her head. “The teacher kissed one girl on her eyes. Her eyes!” She laughed as if this was ridiculous.

  Lily drank her beer and stayed quiet. She had never drank an entire beer by herself before, and as her glass emptied she began to relax. She felt a little warm, but not unpleasantly so. The Telegraph Club lost some of its strangeness; the darkness started to feel friendly. The girls were friendly too. Claire and Paula tried to include her in their conversation; it wasn’t their fault that Lily felt as if she had nothing to say. After they’d exhausted the subject of Olivia, they talked about playing in a local softball league and driving up to Marin County to see the redwoods. Lily didn’t want to tell them about her weekends: helping her mother run errands around Chinatown, going to church on Sundays, occasionally seeing the Cathay Band perform or cheering on the YMCA basketball team. She thought of Shirley working at the Eastern Pearl, folding hundreds of napkins over and over, so that they might be used to wipe the mouths of Caucasians. And then she looked around the Telegraph Club and felt as if she had rocketed herself to a
nother planet; it seemed so far away from home.

  Still Tommy did not return to the stage, and Kath asked if anyone wanted another round of beers. Lily realized she needed to go to the restroom, and when she stood to excuse herself, Claire said, “Are you going to the girls’ room? I’ll come with you. I’m dying! Paula, get me a drink while I’m gone, will you?”

  Claire headed off and Lily followed her through the room. Just to the right of the archway, Claire veered into a dim passage that Lily had overlooked when she first entered. It turned into a hallway that ran toward the rear of the building, and on one side was a stairway lit by a single yellow bulb at the top, exposing a grimy whitewashed wall. Claire wobbled a bit on the stairs, grabbing for the railing, and Lily felt the wooden bar rock slightly beneath her own hand. At the top of the stairs, a narrow hallway ran along the side of the stairwell toward the front of the building, and half a dozen women were lined up outside the door to the restroom. Claire took her place at the end of the line, and Lily followed suit. Some of the women glanced at them briefly; others looked a little longer, particularly at Lily. She shrank back against the wall and wished she was invisible.

  “How long do you think the wait will be?” Claire asked the woman ahead of her. “Is it moving?”

  The woman, who was dressed in pants and a blazer, said grimly, “One of the toilets is stopped up. It’s slow.”

  Claire groaned. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to come up here. The line always kills me. You’d think they’d give us the men’s room too.”

  The men’s room was through one of the doors down the hall, though Lily hadn’t yet seen a man come or go from it.