A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald

by Natasha Lester

  ‘Someone like who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the same person who took her from Concord to the Foundling. Her father?’

  ‘Are you going to add playing detective to your list of extracurricular activities?’

  Evie laughed. ‘No. But who cares if I see Mary? Which is exactly why I have to see her: no one else cares about her. And I’ve been trying to remember every conversation I ever had with Rose, Mary’s mother, but I can’t recall her ever speaking about one particular man.’

  ‘Does anything ever go smoothly in your life?’

  ‘Living here with you is as smooth as a flapper’s bob.’

  ‘Amen!’ Lil hoisted an imaginary glass in the air and began to examine one of the pages of The New Yorker, as she was wont to do, studying ad copy the same way as Evie pored over anatomical illustrations. ‘I could do better than that.’ She pointed to an advertisement with the headline ‘Often a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride’. The words were emblazoned across a picture of a desperately sad-looking young lady by the name of Edna. There was a bottle of Listerine in the corner of the advertisement, a supposed cure-all for Edna’s dire unmarried straits.

  ‘I bet all she needs is to learn how to kiss properly. Bad breath probably has nothing to do with it,’ said Lil, as if she was an expert on the causes of spinsterhood.

  ‘You know Listerine used to be sold as a cure for gonorrhoea?’ Evie said.

  ‘No wonder it rips the lining off your tongue quicker than a stubbled chin.’ Lil closed the magazine. ‘I asked to do the copy for the Listerine ads. I wanted to do something other than terrify single girls into buying Listerine to cure them of being old maids. But they said no and told me to stick with the cold cream. Listerine is too scientific for a woman to write about, whereas cold cream is just fat in a jar.’

  Evie sat up and hugged her friend. ‘We’re not exactly succeeding in changing the world, are we?’

  ‘But we’re trying. That’s what matters.’ Lil looked at the clock. It was after midnight. ‘Game of mahjong?’ she asked, gesturing to the black leather briefcase and wooden racks stacked on Evie’s desk, next to her Gray’s Anatomy. Mr Childers had bought the mahjong set as a gift for Evie when he found out she’d taken her place at college. ‘Or lights out?’

  ‘Let’s play. Sleep is for those who aren’t lucky enough to live in Manhattan.’

  ‘And let’s listen to something else or you might find me dangling from the chandelier,’ said Lil as ‘Oh, Lady Be Good’ reached its dreary chorus and even Evie had to admit that the infantile ukulele was giving her a headache.

  Evie chose the ‘Charleston’, hoping the romping piano might dance her worries away, and Lil tipped the mahjong tiles onto the bed. It was a traditional set, made from bone and bamboo, and probably the most expensive thing Evie owned. Mr Childers had ignored her protestations that it was too much, telling her it would teach her two things: firstly, that it could quickly become ordinary to hold a bone in your hand, and secondly, that if one knew the rules and applied the right tactics, victory was possible. After starting at the college, she could see why he’d thought it an appropriate gift.

  As the girls sorted the tiles, Evie said, ‘I made a wish tonight. That luck would turn its face my way. Maybe my parents will forgive me. The sisters will let me see Mary. Kingsley will let me practise something. Tommy will forgive my nocturnal activities. And I’ll win at mahjong!’

  ‘I hate to get in the way of luck,’ said Lil, ‘but you might have to settle for four out of five.’

  Evie smiled as she drew a bouquet and a concealed pung of east winds from the wall and hoped Lil might be wrong, which seemed possible when Lil’s first discard was, inexplicably, a south wind.

  Evie picked it up to pung her pair. ‘Are you trying to lose?’

  ‘Special hand. I’ve got a good feeling.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Evie.

  ‘Let’s see who’s right.’

  After that there was silence until Lil clacked all her tiles onto the top of the rack. ‘I did it!’

  Lil had got herself a set of Heads and Tails, and Evie’s grand attempt at Four Blessings Hovering Over the Door was two winds short of completion.

  ‘I thought I’d win that,’ Evie said, downcast.

  ‘I could tell. You get quiet when you’re excited.’

  ‘No blessings hovering over my door tonight.’

  ‘Come out with us tomorrow night and we’ll find you a blessing to hang over your bed.’

  ‘Lil!’ Evie cried, and then yawned. ‘Four hours till I have to get up.’

  They threw on their pyjamas and jumped into bed. Evie remembered lying down and switching off her lamp but that was all until she awoke with a start, gasping, as if she’d forgotten to breathe while she was asleep. It took her a minute to stop snatching at air, to understand that she’d only been dreaming of blood and births. Lil was still asleep, her side of the blanket smooth as if she hadn’t moved all night. Evie, on the other hand, had lost her blanket; she was white-sheeted, tangled in the linen as if she’d spent the night with a hundred lovers, or perhaps just one lover, suitably wild.

  She rolled over and squeezed her eyes shut. The phosphenes beneath her lids glowed yellow, blue, red, a mass of galactic shapes that eventually settled into the image of her parents. Evie wondered how her mother was, her father, and Viola. Whether they missed her at all. Whether they ever thought about her at four o’clock in the morning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After a day of lectures at the college, it was time for Evie to roll up to the great circus of Forty-Second Street, where Ziegfeld reigned supreme as the ringmaster of tickle and tease, cracking his whip at his glorious girls so they performed their tricks with just the right blend of conceal and reveal. The first half of the show went off without a hitch. Evie was having her headdress fitted for the second half when Bea approached, looking over her shoulder as if pursued by something that she’d be happy to have catch her.

  ‘Gentleman caller!’ she hollered, whereupon a row of girls turned their heads towards Evie in a perfectly choreographed manoeuvre. ‘Been a long time since you had any gentleman callers,’ Bea went on. ‘Different to when you started.’

  ‘That was beginner’s curiosity,’ replied Evie. ‘I now know everything I need to know about men.’

  A la-di-da-boom-bing-bang of squeals and titters followed, Bea’s the loudest.

  Evie walked over to the door, where there was indeed a gentleman in a dinner suit. His head was turned away to protect the modesty that none of the girls in the room possessed, but Evie still knew immediately that it was Thomas.

  ‘You’ve come to warn me off, I suppose,’ she said.

  Thomas turned to her and smiled, and Evie couldn’t help but smile back, even though for all she knew he could actually be laughing at how ludicrous she must look – the girl next door transformed into the Queen of the Night.

  ‘I have,’ he said.

  Evie’s smile disappeared. She didn’t know why she’d expected anything different, but she was so disappointed in Thomas Whitman for being less than she’d thought he was. For being a stuffy Upper East Side banker who thought it was his duty to chastise Evie over the folly of what she was doing.

  She gestured at the corridor. ‘We’re in the way. You’ll have to come in,’ she said, wanting to see if he would. He did.

  Evie saw the room through his eyes – the racks of frocks cut up to here and down to there, revealing enough of the girl inside to make sure the seats of the theatre were filled every night of the run; vases of flowers, mostly chrysanthemums, from the men who cherished the frisson of buying flowers for someone other than their wives; ribbons sprawled immodestly across the counter top; hatboxes leaning in towers, ready to spill their secrets onto the floor; headdresses vying for attention from fur and beads and jewels. The lights above the mirrors showed all too clearly what wasn’t visible from the stage – that the girls were wearing too much makeup, that what looked like fle
sh was actually body stocking, and that you could light a fire with the stuff they put in their hair to make it do what Ziegfeld wanted.

  Evie sat down in a chair and left Thomas standing, wondering what he’d fix his eyes on: Bea in her knickers doing her best to show a hint of buttock as she bent over to buckle her shoe, a couple of pert breasts awaiting a costume, or Evie in her constellation headdress that made her temples ache. He chose the latter.

  ‘Forget you saw me,’ she said.

  ‘I wish I could,’ he replied.

  ‘I need the money,’ she said, and she might as well have been naked the way she was giving Thomas Whitman the truth.

  ‘I didn’t come to tell you to stop performing,’ he said. ‘I came to warn you that Charles is here. He was here last night too. Didn’t you see him?’

  ‘I only saw you,’ Evie said honestly. They were both silent a moment, watching each other, then she added, ‘Perhaps Charles didn’t notice me.’

  ‘How could he not?’

  As he spoke, Evie thought she saw admiration in Thomas’s eyes. Admiration for her as a woman. Not the girl next door any more.

  ‘The ship arrived yesterday,’ he said. ‘Charles had organised an evening out as a welcome home, and I thought, since he’d made the effort, that I should spend time with him. I didn’t know you worked here, otherwise I would have turned him around at the entrance and made him go somewhere else. He’s brought a group of clients back here tonight. I’ve come to try to limit the damage.’

  ‘Damn.’ Evie lit a cigarette and then studied the red ring she’d made around the butt; she’d have to redo her lipstick before she went on stage. ‘I’ll skip the solo, tell Ziegfeld I’m sick and hope he doesn’t fire me.’

  ‘Charles has already seen you. Pretending to be sick won’t change that. He’ll do whatever it is he’s come here to do whether you go back on stage or not.’

  ‘You know I’m supposed to have an unblemished reputation and not bring the college into disrepute?’

  ‘I thought that might be the case.’

  ‘Does Charles know?’ she asked, worried.

  ‘If he didn’t, he’s probably made it his business to find out.’

  She appreciated his honesty. But it made her so mad at Charles. ‘Why does he care what I do? Nobody knows I’m his wife’s sister, and if he keeps his mouth shut, nobody need ever find out.’

  ‘He’s angry. I went to London partly because my father wanted to test Charles’s mettle. He’s been making a string of poor decisions and has lately become so reckless that the bank could have suffered huge losses if we hadn’t found out what he’d done in time. And father wants to retire so I was made president of the bank today. Charles fights with Viola. He told the world he was going to marry you. But you refused him and he’s still resentful. And he thinks you didn’t marry him because of –’ Thomas stopped.

  ‘Because of you?’ Evie looked straight at him when she said it. She had to know how he felt. Whether he was as scandalised as he should be by her leotard and her spangles and her naked legs.

  But he only nodded, and a rush of relief made her say, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I worked here.’

  ‘I understand why you didn’t.’

  Right then, when it seemed as if Charles might be planning to threaten the life she’d made for herself over the past two years, Evie realised how much she loved it all. Even with the fatigue of studying at college and clerking at the hospital, backed up by long nights at the Follies, she wouldn’t change it for the world. She could never be Concord Evie again, whose parents gave her money to buy dresses, who had to request permission to walk to the main street, who didn’t know how much it cost to rent a room in New York City. She was doing what she wanted to do, living the life she chose to live, not the life someone else had chosen for her. And Thomas was back. That made her happiest of all.

  She put out her cigarette, leaned into the mirror and reapplied colour until her lips were as red as cherries, hoping that Thomas was watching. And he was.

  ‘I need to go wait in the wings. Will I see you after the show?’ she asked.

  ‘You will.’

  Evie couldn’t hide her grin.

  Now that she knew he was there, Charles was impossible to ignore. He watched Evie from the front row for the entire second half, eyes crawling down her legs, over her chest and up to her throat.

  Might as well go out with a bang, Evie thought as the moon was lowered over the stage and she began to sing, digging deep into her lungs so it wasn’t just another number but a showstopper. The applause at the end told her that the audience had loved every minute of her in a way that Charles, unclapping but giving her one slow wink, had not.

  When she went backstage there was a note for her in Charles’s handwriting: Charles Whitman requests the pleasure of your company on the rooftop after the show.

  Evie screwed it up. She scanned the costume racks, got dressed, added another layer of red to her lips, sprayed herself with perfume, then walked upstairs. She used the showgirl’s entrance, rather than the patrons’, which meant she had to traverse the glass runway Ziegfeld had installed to allow theatregoers the best view up the skirts of his girls. When she stepped out onto the roof, most heads swivelled her way.

  The costume she’d chosen had a polka-dotted silk bodice. But the fabulousness really began with the skirt, a waterfall of white feathers long at the back and short in the front so that trails of feathers covered only the tops of her thighs, leaving the rest of her legs on display. In her hand she carried a fan with feathers as long as her arms. It was a fan to be carried aloft, with her elbow bent and her hand raised as if she was soon to plant her flag in territory she intended to claim.

  The crowds had to part to let her through, because the skirt was as wide as the backsides of the Italian ladies serving up pasta on Bleecker Street. Charles was waiting for her, flanked by Thomas and a man she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Evie!’ called Charles. His voice was loud and she knew he wanted all the men on the roof to hear him, Charles Whitman, not just on first-name terms with a Ziegfeld Girl, but on shortened first-name terms, a sure sign of intimacy.

  ‘Charles,’ Evie said in a voice that had nothing of gladness about it.

  ‘This is Stanley Shields. A client of ours,’ he said.

  Thomas nodded at Evie as if they were barely acquainted, and she kept up the charade with a nod of her own. She could feel Charles watching them and she was glad Thomas had forewarned her.

  ‘Spectacular show,’ Charles continued.

  Evie fluttered her fan in reply and turned the full beam of her smile onto Stanley, who giggled like a little girl.

  ‘Stanley liked the look of the dark-haired one over there,’ said Charles, gesturing towards Louise Brooks, who, though only eighteen, worked harder than most to get her rent paid because her preferred domicile was the Algonquin Hotel. ‘Thomas, you should arrange an introduction for Stanley.’

  Thomas clearly couldn’t refuse, because Stanley was a client. And Evie also knew that Thomas couldn’t stop Charles from doing whatever he had planned just by his presence.

  ‘Say whatever you have to say, Charlie,’ she said, after Thomas and Stanley had moved away. He looked more thickset than when she’d last seen him, the skin on his face was pouchy and, were it not for the unmistakable quality of his suit and the diamond-studded signet ring that proclaimed his wealth, she’d bet that few women looked at him the way they used to, just a few years ago.

  ‘Always in such a hurry, aren’t you? I thought we were friends,’ he said.

  ‘Friends who haven’t seen each other for almost three years.’

  ‘You make it impossible for someone in my position to be your friend.’

  ‘I’m your wife’s sister. It’s not that hard.’

  ‘But your lifestyle isn’t what anyone would call desirable.’

  ‘It’s desirable enough for you when you’re sitting in the audience watching a line of thighs go by, b
ut not when you’re sitting in a drawing room on the Upper East Side?’

  ‘Watching the Ziegfeld Girls is an Upper East Side requirement. Being one isn’t. You wouldn’t have had to do this if you’d married me.’

  No. I’d have had to do a lot of other things that would have left me with less dignity than I have right now, Evie wanted to say, but she knew she couldn’t afford to make Charles angry. She said nothing.

  Then Charles surprised her. ‘I miss you, Evie,’ he said.

  For a second, beneath the bluster, she could see the boy she’d once had so much fun with, the humiliated man who didn’t get the bride he’d wanted, the disappointed man whose brother arrived back from London one day and was made president of the bank the next. But then she saw his eyes travel over her cleavage and down her legs and remembered the evening when he’d tried to take what he wanted from her. ‘Goodnight, Charles.’

  But Charles hadn’t finished. ‘I could be your patron,’ he said, his desire for her showing plainly on his face.

  ‘You’re married to my sister.’

  ‘Which is why I need a mistress.’

  Evie’s mouth said what it wanted to before she could stop it. ‘I came up here to see Thomas. Not you.’ She pulled a hanky out from between her breasts and passed it to him. ‘You’re salivating.’

  She’d underestimated him though because he leaned over and slipped the hanky back into her bodice, making sure his finger grazed the tip of her nipple. Evie backed away.

  ‘Rediscovered your morals?’ Charles asked. ‘Too late for the college though. Didn’t they ask you to uphold a good moral character?’

  ‘Why does it matter to you what I do?’ Evie demanded, suddenly angry, even though she knew that would just make things worse.

  ‘Quit the Follies. I’ll pay your college fees.’

  ‘I’ll never be beholden to you for anything, Charlie.’

  Charles smiled at her. ‘You don’t have to decide now. Come to dinner tomorrow night. Viola’s expecting and we’re having a celebration. You can let me know what you’ve decided then.’