by Cole, Audrey
“That doesn’t matter.” Tommy interrupts. “Here’s what happened. Alice has been seein’ someone. He got her knocked up. She demanded he marry her. He’s already a married man with three kids so he says no fuckin’ way. She gets sad and scared. She gets a little too drunk, takes some sleep syrup to try and forget her troubles and BAM!” All three of us women jump in surprise. “Lights out. Permanently.”
Lucy glares up at Tommy. “You want us to say she committed suicide?”
“No. I want you to agree she took the wrong drug with her hooch and it killed her. You can call it an accident if you want, I don’t care, but that’s what happened. Some guy, you don’t know who,” he says pointedly, making eye contact with each of us, “Broke her heart and she made an emotional mistake. It happens a lot. It’s a damn shame and a terrible loss, but it is what it is.”
There are a lot of problems with this story. Problems like how drunk Alice was at the club before she took the sleep syrup. Like the fact that I don’t believe for a second that Alice was pregnant. Like the fact that she and I had the same headache and nausea symptoms just a couple weeks ago.
“Tommy, can I talk to you? Alone?”
Tommy shakes his head. “I don’t got time to listen to you cry over your friend, Adrian. There’s a lot still to do tonight, like call the cops and that chaps my ass.”
“Just for a second. With the doctor?”
Tommy frowns at me but then gestures for me to lead the way into the kitchen.
“What’s this about?”
“I don’t believe she killed herself.” I put up my hands asking them to wait when both men begin to speak, to tell me that’s the story and I need to stick to it. “I’ll say she accidentally did, that’s fine. Don’t worry about that. But she and I were both having headaches back before Thanksgiving. We were both feeling like throwing up then too. She actually did a couple times. Then we felt better around Thanksgiving but then, for me at least, it started back up again.”
“What’s your point?” Tommy asks impatiently.
“My point is, I’m worried.” I look to the doctor. “Could it be something else that killed her? Could I be sick with it too?”
He eyes me shrewdly, looking me over for signs of something I don’t understand. “Vhat are ze symptoms? Nausea? Headache? Is zis all?”
“I get dizzy sometimes too. It gets hard to focus.”
“Vhen do you feel zis vay? In ze morning? Afternoon? Evening?”
“Always in the evening, always after I’ve been at the club for a while.”
“Hmmm. And you are a performer? Up on ze stage all night?”
“Almost entirely, yes.”
“Alice was too.” Tommy tells him. “She was in the chorus.”
The doctor puts his hand on my throat and begins prodding gently. “You eat at ze club?”
“Sometimes.” I say with a shrug. “But not always.”
“Has anyone else complained of zese symptoms?”
Tommy shakes his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”
“Ze bright lights? Do zey hurt your eyes?”
I nod emphatically. “Yes.”
“Uh huh.” he removes his hand from my throat and steps back, speaking to Tommy. “It is headaches. A very severe headache can cause nausea, dizziness, ze sensitivity to light.”
“That’s it?” I ask, feeling annoyed. “You’re diagnosing my headaches as headaches?”
“Severe headaches.” he corrects, ignoring my tone and digging around in his bag. He hands me a brown bottle, one that looks eerily similar to what they found under Alice’s bed. “Zey could be brought on by ze lights or made vorse by zem. Ve don’t know. But I vill give you laudanum. It vill help. You take one dosage before you start vork. It vill keep ze headaches avay.”
“For how long?”
The doctor shrugs. “Maybe alvays. Or until you do not need it.”
“If I’m taking it to head off the headaches, how will I know if I don’t need it in the first place?”
“Some nights you do not take it. See how you feel.”
With that he tips his hat to Tommy, snaps his black leather bag closed and leaves the apartment.
I stare down at the bottle in my hand, wondering if it’s my salvation or my doom.
“I hate doctors.” I mutter.
“Me too.” Tommy agrees quietly. “But they’re a necessary evil. Like taxes and toddlers.”
Chapter Six
The night Alice died was the longest of my life. Tommy eventually called the cops and when they showed up they had an entire team with them. Our tiny apartment was filled to bursting with cops, doctors and a few nosy neighbors. Alice was photographed, examined and eventually carted off to the city morgue. There would be no autopsy. Based on the accounts of her state before her death the cops were pretty convinced it was an accidental suicide. She got too drunk, took too much sleep syrup and died almost instantly. Case closed.
By the time the last person left Lucy, Rosaline and I alone, the sun was already up. Lucy had to get to work in a couple of hours, something I actually envied. I was dying to be busy, to be thinking about something other than what happened to my friend but it wasn’t in the cards. For me or for Rosaline. We couldn’t sleep, no matter how tired we were, and there was cleaning up to be done. The medical team had taken Alice’s body but they’d left her mess. It was up to us to clean up the urine, feces and vomit that now saturated that small bed and dripped down onto the floors. We opened all the windows despite the cold and worked bundled up in our heaviest coats. We got some rubber gloves from our neighbors, promising never to return them, and took the mattress down to the ally. We left it there with a sigh that said Please burn.
After we cleaned up the room and ourselves we turned on the radio and sat down on the couch together. Neither one of us wanted to eat a thing so we took turns laying our heads on each other’s shoulders and drifting in and out of sleep. That’s how we stayed all day until Lucy came home and we knew it was time to get ready for work. During that entire time, neither of us said a single word to each other.
Now here I am at work and I’m still not speaking to anyone. Everyone must know what happened, the news traveling quickly along the gangster grapevine, because no one says a word about Alice being missing. No one seems to care Rosaline and I are dead on our feet either. Even Clara, that wretched little bitch, is leaving me alone. I almost wish she’d start with me so I can lay into her. So I have somewhere to go with all the emotions I’m feeling. I’m angry, sad, confused, and afraid. I don’t even know where to begin so I do what I’ve done for the last six years; I stomp it all down until it can’t touch me anymore. I ignore it. I stow it away and I try my hardest not to let it bubble up and smother me where I stand.
As I apply my makeup I realize that despite being too tired to think straight, I don’t have a headache yet. I’ve been here for hours but my head feels fine. I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened. Before Birdie left, I know that. I stare at the brown bottle the doc gave me, wondering if I need to take it or can I skip it. Can I avoid taking it all together? I’ve seen people get hooked on the stuff the same way some get hooked on the hooch. I’ve never had a problem with that before but then I’ve never taken laudanum either. I hear it makes you loopy. Sleepy and stupid, sloppy. I can’t be that way here. Not surrounded by secrets, lies and—
“Are you ready?” Tommy asks quietly from the door.
I look at him in the mirror on my vanity and I’m reminded of the night I first met Drew. Tommy is standing exactly the same; hands in his pockets, coat flared out over his perfect body, dark, handsome eyes staring into mine through the glass. It’s like looking into an alternate world or seeing into the past through the mirror. If I could go back and do it again, would I step through? Would I bring Alice back and start over with Drew? Would I wait at that table for him and get that taste of something I can’t understand but crave in my gut or would I save myself the trouble and tell him to beat it? I only got a small
sip of him, just a sample of something strange and new, but I can’t forget it and I can’t deny it. I glance at the bottle again thinking maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I have been hooked on something before.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Did you take the laudanum?”
“No. I don’t have a headache.”
Tommy strides into the room and uncorks the bottle deftly. He pours a small amount into a glass of gin I haven’t touched and pushes it in front of me.
“Down it.” he commands.
I look up at him with as much fire as I can muster. “I said I don’t have a headache. I don’t need it.”
“You also heard the doc when he said the lights could be what’s givin’ you the headache. Drink it.”
Too tired to fight and too sure he’s right, I take up the glass and swallow it all. The gin and tonic mixed with the laudanum is a terrible combination and I have to will my stomach to keep the mixture down. But I finish it all, slam the glass down on the table and glare up at Tommy. To my surprise he grins down at me, his face almost affectionate. Soft. He takes up the glass then leans down to lay a gentle kiss on my forehead.
“Good girl.” he mutters.
That night I don’t suffer a single pain and I go to sleep without trouble.
Alice’s body is transported back to Idaho. Her parents ended up buying her a ticket in the end, just like she said. There’s no funeral here, no mourning really. She was here one day and then she isn’t. Like magic. Empty, hollow smoke and mirrors.
Every night that I work, Tommy comes into my dressing room and makes sure I take the laudanum. Some nights I have a headache and an unsteady stomach already, some nights I feel fine. Some nights are worse than others, some nights I have no trouble at all. But every night without fail I take my medicine under Tommy’s watchful eye. I react to it pretty well, though I do feel a little loopy sometimes. I get tired after I take it and I feel drunk. On the second week, just days before Christmas, I stop drinking hooch altogether. The laudanum leaves me feeling strange enough. I don’t need the extra push. Tommy continues to be surprisingly sweet to me about the entire thing. He’s there watching closely when I take my medicine and he’s there to help me stumble off the stage some nights when it hits me harder than others. He’s also there when I’m hurting, from the headaches or the loss of my friend, and I’ve taken to leaning on him for support, something I’ve never done with any man.
And, of course, there are nights when the laudanum loosens me up and his whiskey makes his hands bold and the lines we’ve drawn over the years become blurry and indistinct.
“Your skin is like satin.” he mumbles against my bare shoulder.
We’re sitting on the couch in his office after everyone has gone home. I wanted to lie down for a moment before he took me home but one thing led to another and now I’m straddling his lap with my skirt around my waist and the shoulders pushed aside to expose my naked skin. His hands are holding onto my hips, grinding me into him in a steady rhythm that’s driving me crazy. I can feel his hardness through his pants, straining to get out. To get inside me.
I run my hand down his exposed chest, across his taught muscles and the thin trail of amber hair peppered over his skin until I reach his belt. He bites down on my lip as I slowly undo the buckle. Then the button. Then as the zipper comes down he buries his face in my neck, nipping at the skin and sucking hard. Hard enough to mark me but I don’t care. I take him in my palm and begin to caress the silken length of him, enjoying how hot he feels. How heavily he fills my hand.
“God, baby, yes.” he groans, letting his head fall back against the couch.
He looks at me with his hard eyes and they hold me steady. They pin me in place and I watch his face contort with pleasure as I rub him up and down, twisting lightly and pulling the moisture leaking from his tip down around the shaft and back up again. As his breathing changes, becoming spotty and hiccupping in his throat, he reaches out and tugs down on my dress. The front slips over my breasts and he yanks hard on the cup of my brazier to expose my flesh to the cold air. He takes the hard peak in his mouth, sucking aggressively. His teeth graze the tender skin lightly then pinch down hard, making me groan in pain and pleasure.
“Tell me no, Adrian.” he growls, pulling back and looking in my eyes. “Tell me no and walk away like you always do or I’m not stoppin’ this. Not this time.”
I want him but I don’t. Not really. I feel my body respond to him every time he touches me but I’m not there. I’m not in it, not in my heart or my head. But I want something, I want someone, and it’s like the Cotton Clubs. It’s like Cicero and New York. I want what I want and I have what I have and maybe it’s time I played the cards I’m being dealt instead of reaching for the deck trying to steal all the aces.
“Don’t stop.” I whisper.
He groans as he descends upon my skin again.
“You are so fucking beautiful.” he whispers against my neck. He reaches my ear and runs his tongue along the outside. When he dips the wet tip inside I shiver against him.
“Shut up and do it already.” I moan, writhing, working for friction against his rough pants between my bare thighs. I’m eager and burning, dying for this thing that I don’t actually want. Not from him. But I need a release. I need to forget, to pretend I’m back in that alley with that man and he’s going to finish what he started when he pressed his body hard against mine.
“Look at me.” he demands.
“Just do it.” I tell him, using my hand to try and push his onto me. Into me.
“Look at me.” he says more forcefully.
I don’t want to because it will be all wrong. The look in his eyes, the color, the shape, the set of his jaw. His smell alone, cologne of some kind that you can get in any drug store anywhere, is always in my nose. Always bothering me, irritating me. But if I want him to finish this, to finish me, I have to do it.
I open my eyes and lower my head to look down at him. His beautiful, violent face is staring back at me with such intensity I wonder if this will actually work. But it’s too different. It’s all longing and possession. Dominance.
“Look at me while I do this.” he says quietly. His hand slides forward, spreading me wide with his fingers. My breath catches in my throat and I want to close my eyes again but I don’t dare. He’ll only stop and I need him to get me there. To wipe my slate clean and let me know this is it. This is what’s what and nothing else. I feel the pad of his thumb move quickly once over my nub, making me jump and whimper. “Do you like that?”
I nod slowly.
“Say it.”
“I like it, Tommy.” I whisper, feeling small.
He does it again, more slowly this time.
“Do you want more?”
“Yes.” I mewl.
“Ask me.”
I shake my head, biting my lip.
He runs his fingers along the outside of me, tickling me. I breathe evenly, staring him down and refusing to beg. Then his fingers find the head of me again and they move in impossible ways that strum cords in me that have never been played before. It’s so sudden, so rough. But then he stops and I’m panting. And angry.
“Ask. Me.” he commands, his fingers motionless.
I lick my lips and swallow hard, staring into his eyes.
“I want you to fuck me, Tommy.” I whisper.
It’s not what he asked for. It’s not exactly what he wanted but it’s something he didn’t expect either. It’s enough to distract him from the fact that I won’t beg him and suddenly he’s spinning me around. He presses me forward so I’m bent over the arm of the couch. He moves quickly, efficiently, as he lifts the dress around my waist again and exposes me to the cold air. Then I feel him. Hard and ready at my entrance and I groan, pushing my hips back and trying to take him in. I just want this over with. I just want to feel it, to know it, to understand it. I need it to happen before I can think twice about it.
Then he pushes inside of me with a grunt and I
cry out at the intrusion. But it feels so good. So full. He stays seated there inside me for a moment. I can hear his breath coming in sharp gasps as though he was as surprised by his entrance as I was. Then he’s pulling out painfully slowly. I whimper at the near loss of contact when I feel his head at my lips, but before I can voice a protest he’s slamming back into me again. I cry out once more as the couch scratches across the floor beneath me. He retreats again then powers his way back in and I groan as I bite my lip to keep from screaming. It’s torture and it’s bliss and when his fingers reach around to pinch one of my nipples hanging hard from my swinging breasts I feel something start to build inside of me. I take his hand and bring it to my mouth, pulling his finger inside and biting down on it as he enters me forcefully again. I lick and suck his finger as though it were his length inside my mouth. I tighten my lips around it as I contract my muscles around him down below, making him groan.
“You’re killin’ me, doll.” he breathes. “You’re everything I knew you’d be.”
I squeeze him with my muscles again, enjoying his groans. Then his hand runs around the front of me to the top of my entrance and when his fingers rub across my nub I lose control. I spiral out, burning from the inside and moaning his name as he pounds in and out of me in a painful rhythm. But I love it. I want it.
“Fuck, Adrian.” he growls deep in his throat like an animal, sounding almost angry. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
As his body jerks behind and inside of me he continues to move his fingers to an easy beat that builds and builds and builds. His thumb is strumming over my head, hitting the snare that makes me jolt every time and then we’re reaching the crescendo. The beat is faster, faster, faster, the snare snapping over and over and then it’s chaos and a symphony of color bursting behind my closed eyes that can’t bare the sight of this man as he owns me, controls me, plays me. I fall off the edge, burning inside, biting his finger still in my mouth until I taste blood. His blood. He’s inside of me now, in so many ways. The thought makes me shiver.
I feel dizzy all of the sudden. Disoriented. Lost. When I turn to face him I find myself looking into his eyes. Hard and intent.
