The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  She fought the feeling. Vanity wasn’t going to get them all back home safely, and the last thing she needed was to get carried away.

  “Hey there, Princess,” he called over the crowd of men clamoring for drinks. “What are you having? I’ll start a tab until the gentlemen start buying them for you.”

  A few of them glanced over their shoulders, as if sizing up how long it would be. She ignored them. As soon as they saw Ella, it would be taken care of.

  “I’m surprised to see you here so soon,” she said, smiling, when she managed to belly up to the bar.

  “Ditto,” he said, and slid the glasses across the bar with a sidelong glance at Lou.

  • • • • • •

  By the end of the night, Jo knew three things.

  First, his name was Jake.

  (“Oh,” she said—she’d expected something different—and he smiled and said, “I have a name back on Mott Street, but Jake suits me in this neighborhood,” and she wasn’t going to question having a name you kept at home.)

  Second, he already knew her sisters well enough to pick them out from the crowd.

  (Lou smiled at him a little too long.)

  Third, “Princess” was going to stick.

  That suited Jo. It was as close to a real name as the men would get; maybe it would keep them from asking.

  • • • • • •

  The Kingfisher was the first place Hattie and Mattie (two years later) and Rebecca (the year after) ever danced.

  “They have it so easy,” Doris said, sighing, “they don’t know any other way,” as if two weeks of dancing halfhearted grizzly bears at the Funeral Home Supper Club had been a crawl through the trenches under enemy fire.

  “You’re hopeless,” said Lou, yanking the triple knot on her laces.

  (It was the only way to keep them on. Later, they learned to look through the catalogs for ugly, thick-strap shoes that would last a little longer before they started to wear thin.

  “It’s amazing we ever get called Princess in these,” Rebecca said sometimes as they flew down Fifth Avenue on Ladies’ Mile, and a streetlight would illuminate a shoe store as if to remind them of what they couldn’t have.)

  Lou stood and tugged at her skirt. “Right. Jake can’t get away, it looks like. Doris, show me that boy you were dancing with. Let’s see if he’s better at the waltz than the foxtrot.”

  “Come on,” said Doris, blushing at the edges, “Sam does his best. People can’t be good at every dance.”

  “Certainly not him,” said Lou.

  (“Those girls have tin hearts,” someone had told Jake. Jo was pleased when he passed it on—she’d worked to keep them a little cold.)

  They lasted nearly four years there, before the bust.

  • • • • • •

  The night the Kingfisher got raided was rainy. Jo had almost kept them home.

  The weather was Jo’s second thought when the bouncer banged on the door and the place erupted into chaos and she grabbed Rebecca and bolted out the back, through the alley and out to the street.

  (Jo’s first thought had been for Lou, but that wasn’t a thing you ever admitted. She had a job to do; she couldn’t afford to play favorites.)

  From the shadows, Jo watched the police vans rattling away with her heart lodged in her throat.

  When she saw a glimpse of red hair two blocks down—Lou, it was Lou—she clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out.

  Behind her came Ella, Doris, the twins, and Jake.

  Jo’s knees nearly gave out.

  She and Rebecca crept around the block to meet them, and Lou was already looking when they came into sight.

  “See,” she told Ella, “I don’t know why you worry.”

  “Where were you?” asked Rebecca, jogging over to Doris and lost in the glorious practicalities of engineering an escape. “Where’s the secret door? Is it a tunnel? Where did you go underneath? How are you?”

  “It’s a long tunnel,” said Doris. “I thought we’d run to Vermont already, and I’m covered in spiderwebs, but I’ll probably be fine.”

  “It’s just a precaution,” Jake told Jo. “Tunnel’s been there for ages.”

  Jo was trying hard not to shake. “And how often does that come in handy?”

  Jake shrugged. “Generally the cops leave the place alone—out of sight, out of mind. It’s more lucrative busting my neighborhood than some two-bit operation like ours. I bet Simmons just forgot to pay protection this month.”

  It didn’t feel like “just” anything, but in front of the others Jo didn’t dare look worried.

  Lou came over, brushing the last of the cobwebs off her elbow, stopping just within Jake’s reach.

  “You can show a girl a good time, I’ll give you that.”

  “Hope this doesn’t scare you off the place,” Jake said. “I know you sometimes disappear.”

  “You’re a nosey parker,” said Lou, but he shrugged with his hands in his pockets, met her eye, smiled.

  Lou’s face fell.

  (Jo knew Lou knew better than to make men promises.)

  “We should get home,” Jo said.

  • • • • • •

  In the cab, Lou said, “We’re not going back, are we.”

  She sounded sadder than Jo expected, and Jo was kind when she answered, “No.”

  • • • • • •

  Pete’s: at the seaport, where a man got rough with Ella when she wouldn’t dance with him.

  Hattie and Mattie appeared as if by magic.

  “Not sure what port you’re from,” said Hattie, and Mattie said, “But when a lady says no, stop asking.”

  He frowned, spat out, “You girls have a pretty high opinion of yourselves,” and dropped Ella’s wrist with a flourish.

  “Let’s go home,” Hattie said when he was gone.

  Jo said, “That’s up to Ella.”

  Ella looked around the room (which was slim pickings, and a lot of guys who looked like trouble), but then she squared her shoulders and said, “I want to dance.”

  Jo was pleasantly surprised. “Then we dance,” she said, and cast a look around the room that dared anyone to make something of it.

  And dance they did, all night, to spite the devil.

  Still, that was the last time they ever saw Pete’s.

  • • • • • •

  The next time they drove past the palace (the Vanderbilt house, she had a name for it now; people knew the oddest things), all the lights were out, the rows of windows like empty eyes shrinking back from the life on the street.

  It’s not a sign, she told herself, and hoped it was true.

  • • • • • •

  Fine Imports: a basement off Fulton Street, with shipping crates stacked to one side and a subbasement from which gin magically appeared. It felt, somehow, like dancing in an old tomb.

  Not that there was anything wrong with old tombs, until you tried to dance in one.

  “If this place gets any more cramped,” Doris said, “I’ll have to dance on my knees to keep from knocking my hair off.”

  They didn’t last long at Fine Imports.

  • • • • • •

  The Baltimore: half a block away from a print shop in Chelsea, just far enough west that the Flatiron Building blocked the moon.

  The machines shook the sidewalks for three blocks in every direction.

  “You’re joking,” said Jo, before the cab even stopped.

  Doris laughed so hard it nearly drowned out the presses.

  They never set foot in the Baltimore.

  • • • • • •

  The Swan: a supper and music club nestled three blocks from the Waldorf-Astoria, with a double-door entryway, and a stream of businessmen and their respectable mistresses going past the doorman in his smart coat.

  This time, Jo saw the photographer.

  The cabs didn’t even slow down.

  • • • • • •

  By then, Ara
minta was starting to hover at the mirrors, watching them with big, hungry eyes.

  She never asked—Araminta wasn’t reckless enough to ask Jo for favors—but Jo knew what was fair.

  Araminta had earned the right; there had to be a place for her to dance.

  Two weeks after the raid, Jo told Ella, “Tell Araminta to bring up a dress and some half-decent shoes.”

  A minute later Araminta appeared, clutching a catalog dress and a pair of thick-strap shoes, smiling so broadly Jo hardly recognized her.

  Araminta powdered up in the crowd alongside Rebecca, applying rouge with shaking hands until Rebecca took pity and did it for her.

  “You’re such a ninny,” Rebecca said, “it’s a wonder they’re letting you out. Hold still.”

  Araminta said, “No need to be a wet blanket, Rebecca, it doesn’t become you any more than your dress does.”

  “Don’t be mean to the girl who’s doing your makeup,” said Mattie, and Hattie said, “You’ll end up looking more like a clown than Mattie, even—ow!”

  “Where are we going?” Lou asked.

  Lou had probably guessed, Jo thought; for girls who had to wait as long as they did, who had to strike so suddenly and then vanish, where else was truly theirs?

  Jo sighed. “Home.”

  Lou grinned.

  • • • • • •

  When they nodded their way past the doorman (“Been a while, Princesses!”), the others vanished onto the dance floor. Lou made a beeline for the bar, where Jake looked up and saw them.

  By the time Lou had crossed the room, he was already pouring the first of their drinks, and when she leaned against the bar with folded arms and tilted her head as if she was wishing him hello, he grinned, gave her a look that held.

  Soon the only sisters left at the table were Jo and Araminta, who was shyly marveling.

  “What now?” she asked Jo.

  Jo said, “You know how to do this. Now find someone who can keep up.”

  For a moment Araminta frowned, and Jo realized with a pang of dread that she’d sounded like their father.

  But it was all right; Araminta didn’t know what their father sounded like, and her shyness disappeared as she evaluated the floor with the eye of a collector.

  By the next waltz, she was off.

  So Jo sat at their table and watched her sisters wildly dancing, and thought that maybe, maybe, things would turn out all right.

  six

  AIN’T WE GOT FUN?

  Lou will dance anything, with anyone; she needs only a partner to be happy. She’d wear out a pair of shoes a night, if Jo would let them stay long enough.

  Lou drinks like a fish and never gets drunk, as if her body burns it just to keep her going.

  Lou kisses her first boy when she’s eighteen. He says he’s an actor, which Lou can tell is a lie (so much for acting), but she likes the look of him, and he isn’t the only one who forgets the truth in a dance hall.

  She avoids the bar for two nights. Jake shouldn’t be upset—he has no right—but still, the next time he hands her a drink, his fingers brush hers and hold on.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” he says. His eyes are dark and still. “Some of these men aren’t to be trusted.”

  He’s not jealous; he’s just earnest, and willing, and somehow that’s worse. She’s never promised him anything.

  “As if I’ve ever trusted a man,” Lou says, and takes the drink too fast.

  (When the Kingfisher was raided, Jake grabbed for her wrist without looking, and the idea that he had known where she was made her heart tight in her chest for a long time after they were safe again.)

  Better to kiss boys she doesn’t really like. She sees how badly it can go; no thank you.

  Lou misses the old waltz, when the leader’s fingers just touched her waist, the way Jo taught her back when they were the only two.

  (Lou sometimes hates that Jo taught her first. It’s tied them together some way she can’t shake.)

  “It was sweeter,” she tells Jo, once. “Grander somehow, to be held that way. But you can’t get something back once it’s out of fashion.”

  She sighs, breathing smoke through her lips. “Might as well dance.”

  • • • • • •

  Ella loves foxtrot. She’s not above begging the bandleader for one more, just one, before they have to go. She’s the prettiest, with bow lips and blond hair, and she smiles so sweetly that the band obliges.

  (Ella knows that when you ask for a favor from a man, you must always be smiling.)

  If the girls have a mother, it’s Ella, who’s handy with a blister or a broken heart, and who can charm their father into little intercessions.

  Jo sends her; Jo’s the one who warned her to smile.

  The Christmas the dolls come, Ella takes them all.

  (“You’re kidding,” says Doris.)

  She pities the dolls. They have empty eyes, blue and heartless, and when she looks in the mirror and sees the resemblance, she worries.

  (It’s a fear not even the dance floor can shake; growing up with Jo and Lou makes you worry about getting heartless.

  Jo sends her to the bar when the Kingfisher’s full of strangers and they need a round of drinks: she’s the ringer, every time.)

  Ella sneaks Shakespeare from the library and acts to them, sometimes. They’re the only audience who sits still—the trouble with sisters who care only for dancing.

  She likes Shakespeare something awful.

  She falls in love every night for a while. Then she learns that if you’re quiet, they talk, and you can find something to dislike about anyone.

  But sometimes a young man will look like a Photoplay cover, and she wants to ask about movies, if they’re as wonderful as the papers say they are. She hopes so.

  Because it was never any good seeking favors from Jo, she never asked to go to the flicks. Then it was too late.

  Ella’s learned. Now she asks for foxtrots.

  You can’t expect people to give you the things you love, unless you know how to ask.

  • • • • • •

  Some man calls Doris “old girl” the first time they go out, even though she’s fourteen, maybe not even that.

  Doris almost likes it—she’s so young that looking older is the best thing she can think of—but he seems so smug about it that she stops the dance early.

  You can’t let a man get the better of you; she learns that in a hurry.

  On one of their first nights at the Kingfisher, a quiet young man asks her what he should call her—the first time anyone’s asked for her preference, instead of pushing for her name.

  “Whatever you call everyone else,” she says.

  (She’d wanted to give him her name—she liked him already, something awful—but Jo had given orders.)

  The first time a man calls her “Princess,” she smacks his arm.

  “What am I, a Hapsburg? Watch your mouth. And pick up your feet, would you? This is twice as fast as you think.”

  About some things, Doris has always been picky.

  At the table, Ella tells her she was rude. (Not news.)

  “At least my hem isn’t up to my knees,” Doris says, and watches Ella turn red and tug at her skirt.

  Doris’s hems crawl up with everyone else’s, eventually, but only because someone else makes her hand a dress to Araminta or Sophie for tailoring.

  Doris never pays much attention to the fashion papers. When Jo asks her to make her choices in the catalogs, Doris would be happy to close her eyes and point.

  If Doris can’t be dancing, she’ll settle for reading. Beyond that, she can’t think of much to care about.

  (Doris never thinks what she’d have done if there hadn’t been dancing. She just remembers wanting to be free, and then being free.)

  She isn’t caught up with men. Sam, the quiet boy from the Kingfisher, is her only favorite, and even then she doesn’t mention it. She knows she’ll never hear the end of it from Lou.<
br />
  Lou wants Doris to be wilder and rougher, always, and Sam smiles too much for Lou to think he has any flash.

  (When he stops coming out a few years later, Doris doesn’t let Lou catch her missing him. Lou’s as bad as Jo when it comes to broken hearts.)

  Doris doesn’t stand for smooth dances. Doris has to be moving, as fast as possible, as much as she can.

  “Oh, Lord no,” she says when a man asks for a waltz. “Come back and chase me for the Charleston, that’s a boy. God, this music is sad stuff!”

  • • • • • •

  Hattie and Mattie live for the Charleston.

  It’s fine in partners, if a man can dance it really well, but they love being each other’s mirrors more than anything in the world.

  (“Charleston!” they begged, as soon as they were old enough for the word.)

  They have the look of the age—striking, bold, with large eyes and heart-shaped faces and dark bobbed hair in combs.

  They have the look for the Charleston. When they take the floor, their feet flash and their bangles clang together as they pass their hands back and forth in the air with the abandon of rioters.

  They wring joy out of anything. They rise late and laugh that they’re not stuck in school—Doris made them do their math and Ella makes them read, but in every novel schools are dreadful things, and every girl’s out to poison you. Better to be here, with only Jo to poison you, and dancing every day.

  They partner each other in practice with grins that look like they’re hiding something.

  (They are. They’re the real twins—the younger ones don’t have what they have.)

  They fight. They wring joy from that, too, pulling nasty faces and cuffing each other like it’s choreography.

  To the world, they’re a pair of clockwork dollfaces who dance like a dream, if you dare to ask.

  If you’re unlucky, they’ll send you away. If you’re really unlucky, they’ll run back to their marble-faced sisters and laugh so hard the whole place can hear.

  (It’s from Hattie and Mattie that people start to get the idea that all the sisters are cruel.)

  Hattie and Mattie, when they’re dancing with each other, feel they’re the only ones who matter, the only two girls in the world at all.