The Boy in the Red Dress

by Kristin Lambert

  I’d always been deeply curious about the life he’d led before us, and what terrible event had sent him running away from home, but I also knew Marion’s history was something I should hear from him, not a stranger. I pressed my lips together, trying to keep my curiosity from taking over for once.

  Then the girl’s date barged between us and clapped a hand on her shoulder.

  “Arimentha, darling!” he said. “Getting us another round?”

  “Fitzroy! You scared the daylights out of me!” She surreptitiously wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

  Arimentha and Fitzroy? These couldn’t be real people. Those names belonged to porcelain dolls or racehorses.

  Fitzroy laughed heartily and looked from her face to mine and back. His lips curled upward. “Making friends with the locals?”

  “No,” she said, not even sparing a glance my way. “She’s some kind of employee here.”

  My face hardened. I regretted feeling even a moment’s pity for her.

  “Then let’s have a dance,” Fitzroy said. “What do you say, darling?”

  Arimentha glanced toward the stage, where Marion was still singing. “Maybe later.”

  “Millie!” Duke barked from down the bar. “Icebox sprang a leak. Get back here!”

  I wanted to tell him to fix it himself. Or to go to hell. But it was New Year’s Eve, and he was too busy with the customers to visit with the devil tonight.

  I straightened, and my eyes met Arimentha’s in the mirror. She smirked and made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go on, do what you’re paid to do.”

  Rage bloomed hot in my chest. I rose from my barstool, fists curling at my sides.

  “Want another round then?” Fitzroy said, ignoring me entirely, and Arimentha’s gaze flickered away from mine, too.

  “I’ve had enough,” she said. “Get yourself one.” She fished a dollar out of her beaded purse and stuffed it into his hand. She turned to me. “Do you have a ladies’ room in this . . . place?”

  Her tone made me want to push her into the john myself, but I grinned back like a shark. “We have an everybody’s room,” I said brightly, and pointed the way. “But I’m warning you—it ain’t that clean.”

  Arimentha shoved herself away from the bar. “That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

  * * *

  Marion finished his set while I was on my hands and knees fixing the icebox before the leak could spread out onto the dance floor. When I finally stood up, a streak of black sullied my clean shirt, and Duke told me I looked like a shoeshine boy. I resisted punching him in the nose, for now, and climbed up on a barstool on my knees to scan the crowd for Arimentha’s fair hair. There were other blondes in the club, but none with hair quite so pale as hers, and few that hadn’t obviously paid for the color.

  I finally spotted her in the back corner, near the hallway that led to the stairs and the john. Her date, Fitzroy, was there, too, hovering behind her elbow. And right in front of them sparked the red of Marion’s dress.

  Marion and Arimentha stood close, shoulders curving inward so they almost touched, like friends or even lovers. Then Marion shifted, and I glimpsed his face, wrenched into an ugly mask, his red lips twisting around ugly words. He was angry. My mouth fell open. Marion and I had fought our share of battles, but never like this.

  Arimentha’s shoulders hunched up toward her ears, like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell. She didn’t look like the haughty girl I’d spoken to minutes before. She looked crushed and beaten.

  I slid off the stool, shoved aside a big oaf blocking my way, and started toward the corner. I called out Marion’s name, but my voice drowned in a blare of sound from the cornet. A girl in gray trousers and a matching vest grabbed my hand and yelled, “Wanna dance?” over the music, but I didn’t have time for that now. I mimed maybe later and kept moving.

  I emerged from a knot of Red Feather Boys to see Fitzroy take Arimentha by the elbow and begin tugging her away. Her powdered face was streaked with tears, and she kept looking back over her shoulder toward Marion as he whirled and, hiding his own face with one gloved hand, skirted around the edge of the room in the opposite direction.

  I pivoted and shoved through the crowd that had closed up in his wake, but he’d still made it all the way up the stairs and into his dressing room before I got there. The door was shut tight, and no sound came from the other side.

  “Marion?” I said. “You all right?”

  No answer. I tried the knob, but it was locked. I pressed my forehead against the door. He’d never locked me out before. Not me.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Let me in. Tell me what that girl said, so I can go smack her for you.”

  “She’s not worth it.” His voice sounded muffled, dense. Like he’d been crying.

  “That was the same girl who was showing around your picture,” I said, my lips almost touching the door. “You know her.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. Who is she?”

  His voice hardened. “Don’t worry about her. She’s gone now, and she won’t be back.”

  “What’d you say to her?”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Mar?”

  “Nothing. I said nothing.”

  “Then how—”

  “You better get back out there. Duke’ll be needing you.”

  I hesitated, scratching at the loose paint on the door with my thumbnail. Should I tell him I’d spoken to her? That I knew her name?

  “Will you be okay for your next set?” I said, stalling, hoping he’d let me in once the storm had passed. “The Red Feathers’ll cry a river if you don’t come back out.”

  A sound filtered through the door, either a sniffle or a laugh.

  “And Lewis—” I said, “oh boy, he’ll be out there looking like somebody stole his lollipop.”

  This time it was definitely a laugh. A small one. Then a sigh.

  “I’ll be okay, Millie.” Another sigh. “I’m always okay.”

  “O’course,” I said, trying to sound cheery. “Never doubted you.”

  There was another pause. Then, “Love you,” he said, his voice close to the door. It sounded so weary, so sad.

  “Love you, too, kid.” I laid my hand flat against the wood, wishing I could put my arm around his shoulders. Something was definitely wrong, and it was all that rich girl’s fault.

  CHAPTER

  4

  WHEN I GOT back to the bar, Duke and I kept up the steady flow of alcohol into the hands of our increasingly sloppy customers. Every time I got a second to spare, I peeked at the hallway, waiting for Marion to return, trying to gauge what each minute that passed signaled about his state of mind.

  I checked the stock of clean glasses stacked under the bar—we were getting low, but I thought we’d probably make it. The flow of customers would slow once Marion’s second set started and most folks settled into their seats. After midnight, a stream of people would start trickling out of the club, though there were always stragglers hanging on until the very end when we closed at two. But by then, business at the bar would be slow enough that we could wash glasses if we had to and catch our breath.

  I glanced up at the hallway again, and this time, Marion was there. According to my watch, it had been exactly twenty-nine minutes since I talked to him through the dressing room door, and now he looked exactly as glamorous as he had at the beginning of the night. No puffy eyes or red blotches on his cheeks to show he’d been crying, but then he was an expert at makeup. You couldn’t tell he had a spray of freckles across his nose either, or that he’d over-plucked his left eyebrow the other day.

  I started to put down my bar rag and grab my top hat, but this time Marion didn’t wait for my announcement. She strode right up onto the stage, swished her red skirt, and kicked out one silk-clad
leg. Hoots and whistles went up from the crowd. Marion leaned over the piano and gave an instruction to Lewis, who deftly changed direction mid-song. The band followed behind a beat later.

  Marion led with a splashy song she usually saved for last and performed the second set even more fiercely than the first. Her voice was always throatier by now from the heavy smoke in the room, her body always looser from the single shot of honey-and-whiskey she’d sneak between sets in her dressing room. But tonight, every smile was a little too intense; every word she sang teetered on the brink of too much. Something was off, and I knew it had to do with that girl.

  I slipped away from the bar when Duke wasn’t looking and braced my shoulder against a brick column in the middle of the room to watch the show, and the audience. A nervous energy built in my stomach, like I was waiting, though I didn’t know for what.

  “Marion copacetic?” Olive slouched against the column beside me, with one hand in the pocket of her dress and another propping a tray against her waist.

  Anyone else, and I would’ve lied and said Marion was aces. But Olive’s eyes said she already saw the truth.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s putting on a good show, but I think he’s rattled.”

  Olive jerked her chin toward the piano. “Look at Lewis. He sees it, too.”

  Olive was right. She usually was.

  Lewis’s fingers played the piano, but even from across the room, it was plain his mind was on Marion. And not in the usual way. His thin shoulders were tense, and he wasn’t just watching—he was watchful. Protective. I knew that feeling, and I was glad someone else shared it. Two someones, or else Olive wouldn’t be over here.

  “He knew that blonde girl asking around with the picture,” I said. “But the stubborn fool won’t tell me how.”

  Olive laughed. “I think Cal made that rule about secrets just for you.”

  “Hey!” I made a face at her and folded my arms across my chest. “I was right next to that girl, could’ve asked her anything I wanted to know, and she would’ve spilled it all. But I didn’t say a word.”

  “You’re a real saint, Millie Coleman.” Olive’s gaze slid sideways, her mouth curving upward. “You should see if Ursuline is looking for any new nuns.”

  I nudged her shoulder with mine. “I do hear there are some perks to the nunnery.”

  “Oh, really? What sort of perks?” Her body moved closer, and I wasn’t inclined to get out of her way.

  But over her shoulder, I saw Frank let Fitzroy return through the front door, without Arimentha, his hair no longer perfect, and an irritated expression on his face. He weaved through the crowd, smoothing his stray hairs back in place, and sat down with the rest of the Uptowners, who gave him odd looks. He’d probably stuck Arimentha in a cab and come back to watch the last minutes of 1929 drain away without her. Clearly, owning a tuxedo did not make him a gentleman.

  The two girls at the table abruptly stood up, clutching their little handbags, and navigated single file between the tables toward the back of the club.

  Olive thumped my arm. “You see someone you’d rather be talking to?” Her eyebrows were raised in neat, incredulous arches.

  “Than you?” I forced my attention back to her face. “Hardly.”

  “Then what’re you looking at?”

  “That rich girl’s date is back.”

  Olive cast a surreptitious glance at their table. “But she’s not back, is she?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t see why you should care. A table’s waving for drinks. Talk to you later.”

  “Later,” I mumbled. I looked at my watch. Eight minutes till midnight.

  Marion and the band were performing the final bars of a slow song. Next up, they’d do a real toe-tapper to draw everybody out on the dance floor ahead of the big countdown, and at midnight, Marion might lean down and give Lewis a kiss, and they’d both pretend it was for show. I’d get a bottle of terrible champagne from the bar and pour it in glasses, while the band started up “Auld Lang Syne,” and people would hug and cry like they even knew what those words meant.

  That’s how it was supposed to happen. But between the slow song and what was supposed to be a fast one, there came a three-second breath of silence.

  And in that silence came the scream.

  Long and shrill and terrible, too strangled with emotion and fear to be a joke.

  My head shot up. Every head shot up. More screams pierced the air from the same direction as the first. My eyes darted toward the back hallway, where those two raccoon-coat girls had gone.

  The screams were coming from there.

  I looked back at the Uptowners’ table. Fitzroy and the two other boys stared at one another with wide eyes and leaped to their feet. They’d obviously come to the same conclusion. Fitzroy grabbed his coat off the back of his chair, knocking it over in the process, but the other two left theirs and started weaving through the crowd.

  Some of the customers stayed in their seats and craned their necks to see what was going on, but a good many downed their drinks and surged toward the exits in case this was a raid. Marion stood stock-still on the stage, mouth open in an O. The band members froze in place, too, embracing their instruments protectively. Olive and the other waitress, Zuzu, were in the middle of the crowd, holding on tight to their trays as overly excited customers jostled around them.

  Instinctively, I looked around for Aunt Cal and then remembered she wasn’t here. I caught Lewis’s eye and gestured for him to start up the music again, and he played the first notes of “Auld Lang Syne,” even though midnight was still at least five minutes away. The cornetist lifted his instrument to his lips and joined in a beat later, and someone popped premature confetti into the air.

  I spotted Frank pushing his way through the crowd toward the back hall, and I fell in beside him.

  “I’m going with you,” I shouted over the din, and he nodded, his face solemn.

  Whatever trouble was happening with those two girls, it was my responsibility tonight.

  * * *

  Frank’s shoulders were wider than a lot of doorways in the French Quarter, and the skin of his neck bore a fine horizontal scar from a past knife fight. Just looking at him was enough to deter many a potential troublemaker.

  But this time the trouble had already been made.

  We went through the doorway into the back hallway, Frank first and then me. The door to the john was shut, and a line of women snaked around the corner waiting to use it. One wide-eyed girl stretched out a long thin arm and pointed.

  “That way.”

  Frank and I turned left past the stairs that led to Marion’s dressing room, past the alcove underneath where I stored the mop and bucket. At the end of the hallway, a door opened onto a small, weedy courtyard between the Cloak and the building behind it, where I lived in an apartment with Aunt Cal. Usually, we kept this door locked, and only Cal and I used it when we were coming to work from home. But now it stood open, letting in a gust of cool, damp air, like breath from a tomb.

  One of the rich boys—probably named Vanderbilt or Rockefeller—stood there, propping it open with his shoulder and blocking my view of what was beyond him in the dark alley.

  The two girls weren’t visible and weren’t screaming anymore. But I heard crying, one voice soft and gulping, the other shrill and continuous.

  Dread curled in my belly like smoke. Frank and I shared a look, his mouth set in a grim line.

  “What’s going on here?” I called out, and Vanderbilt turned to stare at me, his face pale in the light of the two naked bulbs hanging from the hallway ceiling. His mouth opened, but no sound came out, and he pressed a fist against it as if he might be sick.

  He turned away again, doubling over and retching. And then I saw the bright shape under the silvery moonlight, motionless on the damp gray cobblestones.
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br />   My footsteps slowed. The night enveloped me like a giant clammy fist. A cacophony of champagne pops, happy shouts, and jazz rose up to meet midnight in the crowded streets all around us, but here in this sheltered courtyard, no one acknowledged the time. The air smelled sharply of vomit, thanks to Vanderbilt, and something else underneath it I couldn’t place and didn’t want to name.

  I knew this courtyard at night. It was the place where rats skittered when I dumped the mop water or took out trash to the burn barrel. It was the place I trudged through to get home after closing, when my feet were tired and my eyes barely open. The place we were supposed to escape through if Prohibition agents or cops came through the front.

  Beyond the slanted rectangle of yellow light from the open door, just past the dark shadow of the balcony above, Fitzroy and Rockefeller crouched over the shape on the ground, two black hulks in their dark suits. Rockefeller was touching the shape gently and murmuring something.

  It was a person. A body.

  “Who . . . ?” I said, my voice catching in my throat, coming out small.

  No one heard me except Frank, who touched my arm as if to stop me moving forward, stop me getting involved, make me let him go first. None of which I was going to do.

  “Who is she?” I said, louder. The body, it was obvious now that my eyes were adjusting to the dark, was a woman’s. A girl’s. Her beaded gold dress and brilliant hair spread out across the cobblestones beside the dry fountain like a shining puddle. A beaded handbag lay a few feet away.

  No one answered me. I looked to my right at the two girls, clinging to each other and crying, both studiously not looking at the body.

  I didn’t want to look either. At least I didn’t think I wanted to look, knew I shouldn’t want to look, but my eyes were drawn back to it. My feet carried me closer.