The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

by Genevieve Valentine

  She had a bathrobe over her frock, just in case her father came up, and she tied and untied the belt for something to do with her hands.

  As the clock in the front hall struck midnight, Lou and Ella and Doris stepped out of their rooms.

  They were soundless, dresses gleaming in the feeble moonlight that turned them all to ghosts.

  Lou went down first. After Doris vanished, Jo saw a brief flash of gold that meant Rebecca was following, and then came the rest of the girls from the third floor, dots of white and green and purple that took their places on consecutive stairs.

  (This was a dance all its own; Jo had trained them for this, too.)

  Jo waited, so she could make sure they were safely in the stairwell without anything crashing down. If there was any sound, it would be Jo running down into the kitchen to make some excuse about being hungry, tugging her robe around herself as if she’d caught a cold.

  (Mary had, once or twice, left a ribbon tied to the banister when she knew Mrs. Reardon, the housekeeper, would be up late in the kitchen.

  Mary had been dismissed a few years back, when the household had retrenched. Violet, who called her Aunt Mary by then, had cried.

  Jo was surprised she’d been allowed to stay as long as she had.)

  All the years they’d been going out, Jo had only had to make that lie once; the girls were quiet when they had to be.

  Lou was waiting by the door that opened to the alley. When Jo was down the stairs, Lou disappeared into the dark. Ella and the twins followed—they made up the first cab.

  The other eight waited for the rumble of an engine.

  A few minutes later, it came and went. A moment later, Doris motioned to Sophie, Rose, and Lily, and they slid into the alley.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Violet sighed softly, once, and shifted. This wait scraped at her patience.

  A car came and went, at last. Then it was Jo’s turn to slip into the alley, slip on her shoes (not bothering with straps), walk down the block, and look quietly fetching until a cab pulled over.

  Often it was quick, but she’d waited an hour, sometimes, for a taxi to take them.

  The last three girls were in the alley, a tight and terrifying wait. Violet was at the door, holding it not quite shut—if something happened and they had to run inside, they couldn’t risk being locked out.

  After less than ten minutes, a cab appeared.

  Jo waved him over and gestured behind her until the girls appeared, their stocking feet damp from the grass.

  In the cab the younger girls talked to each other—Jo was chaperone, and they knew better than to gossip with her. Jo caught Rebecca telling Violet, “Keep talking like that and I’ll marry you to someone myself,” but didn’t intervene. Let them tease, if it helped.

  Once, Araminta said, “Jo, I wish you’d let me take up your hem. It would look so pretty at your knees.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Jo.

  • • •

  Though Jo had started everything, though she had given her sisters the hunger, Jo didn’t dance anymore.

  Dancing made Jo nervous. She knew what it could do.

  Jo had almost run off with the first man who danced a good foxtrot with her.

  • • •

  She was nineteen, too old and too young for her age, and still getting used to going out at night.

  He was a deliveryman, sneaking barrels into the Kingfisher’s basement; then he was staying to dance with her, and staying, and staying.

  His name was Tom, and he was just shy of handsome, and when he smiled she felt like an only child.

  She’d never told him (thank God she’d never told him), but he’d talked about being the only living person on the road at night like he knew she wanted to hear about being alone.

  Then he’d said, “Come with me.”

  “Where do you go?”

  He smiled, drew her closer in. “Everywhere.”

  Jo rested her forehead on his cheek and imagined sitting in the car beside him, driving down a road that had no end.

  She thought about what would happen to her sisters (a reflex), but in her daydream she was free—she had served her time as overseer, and the world was wide and waiting.

  (It was only a dream, she thought; what was the harm?)

  • • •

  She danced with him for months, caught up in the music, the sharp smell of sawdust and bourbon that lingered on her hands where she touched him, the tips of her fingers tucked under his collar as they danced.

  “When I’m finished here,” he murmured into her hair, “won’t we have a time!”

  One night, he didn’t come.

  She waited three weeks for any sign before she got up the nerve to ask Jake.

  “Is this the same stuff you always have?” she asked as she picked up a round of champagne.

  “New stuff,” he said. “Our alderman changed, and suggested a new distributor. Just as well—that other one was a racket.” He paused, as if she had her ear to the ground and he hoped she’d approve.

  “Huh,” she said, when she could speak. “Well, if that’s the pace of politics, I guess it’s for the best I stick to dancing.”

  “Come on, you know all the real deals happen after dark.” Then he frowned. “Is it no good?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s lovely. I could hardly tell.”

  The first thing she felt was a sharp stab, a sudden loss.

  The second thing she felt was relief.

  By the time she got back to the table, Jo had hold of herself. The future had narrowed until it was only Lou and Ella and Doris waiting for sips of champagne so they could cool off for a moment before going out to dance.

  It was lucky. It was the luckiest strike in the world she hadn’t had a chance to get carried away over some boy. If dancing was going to go to her head, she’d sit things out until she was less foolish.

  Two weeks after that, Lou sat out a waltz with her. Doris was at the bar, trying to get a drink out of Jake with what looked like a presidential address, and Jo and Lou were alone.

  “Go on,” Lou said. “That milk truck is never coming back.”

  Jo had never mentioned him. Still, no surprise Lou had seen. They kept sharp eyes out for each other.

  “It’s probably not a good idea,” she said.

  She had to keep control of herself. Everything depended on her.

  Lou frowned. “You might as well dance,” she said. “Unless you want to sit here and get old.”

  She wondered if Lou was being cruel or kind. With Lou you could never tell.

  (Jo had kept a canvas bag packed, just in case one night she got up the nerve to be free.

  Long after Tom disappeared, Jo kept the bag, a reminder that a Hamilton girl should never take a man at his word.)

  • • •

  Jo didn’t dance much after that.

  Even in those first wild years she spent out dancing, with Lou and Ella and Doris, she’d never danced like they had, a T-strap seared onto the tops of their feet like a brand. She’d never gone so wild for a dance that men started to remark, or that she’d lost track of what time it was.

  She’d never gone overboard, except the once; she didn’t dare get taken off guard again.

  Sometimes a girl would drag a young man to the table and say, “General, you must dance, truly, he’s divine.”

  Jo would give in for a waltz, and they would say he must have been something if she was willing to break her rules and dance.

  It got easier just to have rules that never broke.

  • • •

  Once, Rebecca asked the others if they thought Jo was just embarrassed because her dancing wasn’t very good.

  “Watch it,” said Lou.

  No one asked after that. Lou was the other sister not to be cross
ed.

  Lily had asked Jo for a tango once or twice, with no luck, but Lily had a feeling Jo was holding back. Jo could teach the lead perfectly; you didn’t come by that by accident.

  • • •

  Jo hadn’t danced at all in three years.

  Every night they snuck out, the sisters slid on their spangles and their pearls and their sequined headbands, a tumble of girls against the two good mirrors.

  (“Sophie,” Hattie snapped, “those are my good shoes, you sneak!”

  “I need them! The colonel stepped on the others.”

  Three of them groaned.)

  Jo, who put on her lipstick in the reflection of her bedroom window, felt that sometimes, even this close, her sisters were like a foreign country whose language was always changing before she could learn it.

  All night they beat feet with this fellow or that, and Jo waited quietly in the corner, keeping an eye out, just in case.

  • • •

  It was only ever when they pulled up in front of the Kingfisher that Jo felt she was home.

  It was home when the men raced out to greet them, five men escorting the girls across the pavement, ready to offer in case any of the princesses wanted carrying.

  It was home when Jake had a tray of drinks ready as soon as they took a seat. (Lou gave him a smile that sent him pink at the temples.)

  It was home when the girls buckled their shoes and slid their bangles up their arms so they wouldn’t lose them during the Charleston, and met the waiting men.

  It was home as the band struck up a tune nearly as old as Violet, and the sisters sighed and smiled at each other and clapped before they took their partners’ arms, moving under the lights in sharp, glittering strikes, because there was nothing like old times.

  It was home, until that night, when the cops came.

  eight

  That's What I Call a Pal

  The cops burst in just after a quickstep.

  Most of the sisters were making their way back to the table. The sisters who abstained from the quickstep (Araminta and Lily) were at the bar, and Jo was in her place, watching them move through the room.

  Their booth was the same one they’d had since the beginning—close to the back door that led out the alley to the street. It had become Jo’s favorite table ever since those first days; men knew to look for them there, and Jake always managed to keep it for them, somehow.

  It served them well when the cops knocked down the front door.

  There were only three at first—too anxious for the score to wait for cover—and over the last brave chord from the band, two of the cops fired into the air.

  One of them shouted, “Everybody on the floor!”

  “Beat it,” breathed Jo.

  (She knew they’d all hear, even over the chaos; she knew when they were listening.)

  The sisters scattered like leaves.

  It was a matter of seconds—Lou leading a contingent out the back door, Jake shoving Araminta and Lily and Violet into the cellar tunnel. Sophie, who’d been dancing with an older gentleman they’d known for years, got hustled out under his arm like his daughter or his wife.

  They were all so good at disappearing that the only one of them left, when the dust cleared and the cops had flooded the room, was Jo.

  By the time she was sure the others were safe, it was too late to run. They had a cop stationed outside the back door, and she wasn’t about to try anything with cops.

  There was nothing to do but stay in the booth with her hands in plain sight and watch as the Kingfisher’s patrons, staff, and musicians got arrested one by one.

  It seemed, at least, to be a business-hearted affair rather than someone in the precinct setting an example. Jo knew about raids that went sour. (Salon Renaud was dust.) This was just reminding a delinquent about payment due.

  There were no shots fired after the first warning round, and they were taken out by tables rather than dragged to this side or that side of the room. Most of the women were brought out without handcuffs, and aside from a few unnecessary comments to the prettiest, there wasn’t much roughhousing. Even Jake got by with only two or three clobbers, when he didn’t take the stairs fast enough to please the cop escorting him.

  (Still, Jo watched them carefully—she could guess what the police were like when they knew they could get away with it.)

  Eventually, an overgrown boy in a police uniform stopped by Jo’s table (gun in the holster).

  “Miss, you’re under arrest for—for imbibing.”

  Imbibing. She debated a crack about arresting everyone in New York who’d ever had a drink of water.

  Then she thought what would happen to her if she disappeared for mouthing off to a cop, and she couldn’t get word to the others, and her father came looking for her.

  When she stood and offered her wrists, he flushed; instead, he kept his hand hovering just above her elbow as he escorted her outside.

  She risked a glance under the streetlights—someone might have stayed behind to look for her—but she didn’t see anyone.

  Panic rose in her throat. She forced it back. If the others weren’t within sight, it was because they were out of reach of the police, already on their way home.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” the young officer said as he passed Jo into the police van with the dozen other women who hadn’t gotten out in time.

  “You and me both,” she said.

  • • •

  At the precinct’s holding cell, Jo sat in uneasy silence with the other women who had been picked up.

  Two policemen took turns bringing them for the bail-money call at the sergeant’s desk at the end of the hall. One by one they clicked away on their dancing shoes, and laughed over the line with whoever was awake at three in the morning and willing to come to the station.

  One of the women, a sharp-looking lady with a curly black bob and a dress studded with sequins, walked out with a grin and asked the desk sergeant to dial a Fred for her.

  He gave her a look up and down that made Jo want to shrink back in her skin, but if the woman noticed, she didn’t say.

  “Darling, come and bail me,” she said into the line. Her voice rolled down the hall.

  There was a short pause, and then she continued, “Well, if he won’t bail me out, would you mind? Thanks a million, doll.”

  “Who was that?” asked her friend, when she was back.

  “My husband’s girl on the side,” said the woman, brushing some invisible dust off her skirt.

  The friend gasped. “Myrtle, no! What will you do to her?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “She’s bailing me out. She’s not the one who’s in deep with me.”

  When Jo’s turn came, she asked the officer (a new man, older and kinder) if she could have a little while, just to make sure someone would be home.

  “Maybe even until morning,” she added hopefully.

  “Sure thing,” said the officer, but he added, “Your mister’s bound to be angry no matter what. Better just call him and get it over with. This is no place to spend a night.”

  Jo didn’t have much choice. Even if Lou could make it to the house, there might not be enough savings for bail (she didn’t know how much bail was for imbibing), and Lou still had to find out where she was. It could take a day just to visit every jail in the city, assuming you were allowed outside at all.

  Jo decided she might as well get comfortable; she’d rather take her chances in jail than ever call her father’s house.

  But what would happen to the rest of them if she was discovered missing?

  She fought against tightness in her chest. They were clever. They’d come up with an off-putting illness for Jo, if anyone asked for her. It would give them a day, maybe, before she had to find out a way to get home.

  She pressed a hand to her sternum—it f
elt as though some air needed forcing.

  Over the next few hours, the other women went home. They went out joking or yawning, shuffling out in unstrapped shoes. One girl, still drunk, gave the officer a kiss on the cheek as he walked her down the hall to meet the man who’d come to bring her home.

  Jo watched them going, her panic growing. Was their father even now sending a message upstairs that Jo should come to the library? When he found out she wasn’t there, he’d think she’d run away. What would happen to the rest of them, if he thought his oldest and steadiest offspring had made a mockery of his authority?

  He’d bar the back door. He’d give them all away to the first eleven men he could find.

  Jo leaned her head back, the cool brick wall scratching her clammy neck, and closed her eyes.

  When the kinder cop came back and called for Myrtle, the woman with the curly black bob stood up.

  “Who’s outside for me?” she asked.

  “A young lady.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Myrtle nodded, unsurprised, and adjusted her headband before the walk down the hall. Jo guessed it wouldn’t do to show up disheveled in front of the husband’s new girl.

  “Myrtle,” called her friend as Myrtle moved past the bars, “I’ll come down to the store tomorrow and hear about it?”

  “You might as well,” Myrtle said. “I’ll probably be selling her T-straps at a discount when you get there.”

  Her friend gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

  Jo wondered what shoes were so delightful that the idea of a discount was so horrifying.

  “I’d say she’s earned it. At least she’s smart enough not to play around close to home, which is more than I can say for myself.” Myrtle shrugged. “Get home safe, Agnes.”

  • • •

  The kind cop came back four more times. At last, Myrtle’s friend was called up.

  Then Jo was alone.

  “You want to make that call now?” he asked.

  He was a middle-aged man, a career uniform (the nameplate that read CARSON was well worn). Some of the younger cops were gruff when they took a woman out, as if they were embarrassed on behalf of the boyfriends outside and were making sure the women felt suitably sorry, but Carson had walked Myrtle out to her husband’s girl.