The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  “Or I can dance with you,” he said to Jo, “if you’d rather. This is too nice a foxtrot to waste, is all.”

  It was a joke they were sharing, somehow, and she smiled without meaning to.

  (She could have told him he was wasting his time with Ella. Ella liked matinee idols, and he was too lived-in; there was a little stubborn sawdust still clinging to his jacket, a little distinction lacking in the line of his jaw.)

  “I promise I’m not as dull as I look,” he told Jo, half-laughing. He ran a hand through his sandy hair; when he smiled, his eyes turned into crescents.

  Jo gave Ella the go sign. Ella flashed a grateful smile and disappeared into the crowd.

  He didn’t turn to watch her go.

  Jo wanted to tell him he was wasting his time. They came out to dance, not to make goofy eyes at young men. If he was looking for a girl like that among them, he could hit the road.

  But he was still smiling, soft eyed, like she was a welcome friend.

  (It made her feel as though she was really his choice; it was the first time she’d felt that way.)

  And what Jo said instead was, “So let’s dance.”

  He smiled wider, and it was just like the first time she had seen people dancing when she was a girl, just like the first time she and Lou had crept into the movies, and her heart turned over.

  They danced almost every dance, all night; turned out he wasn’t very good at the breakaway, so they sat those out at the bar.

  (It was the only time they sat at the bar. She felt too exposed, she could hardly see the dance floor, and she worried about her sisters seeing them together. That was her first hint, later, that things had gone too far.)

  “You can dance it with someone else if you’d rather,” he said. “Not fair to make you sit just because I can’t figure out how to do it.”

  She didn’t know how to explain that it was all wonderful even if she was sitting out, that she had as much happiness watching her sisters dance as she did dancing herself. There was no point, anyway, even if she’d had the words. It wasn’t as though she could tell him a thing. She had sisters to think about.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “I never figured out how to do this one without losing a shoe,” and he laughed.

  She caught him looking at her a lot that night, in a way she wasn’t used to seeing. A lot of gents looked at you a certain way when they were guessing their chances for a kiss (zero), but this wasn’t it.

  He watched her like he had come home after a long absence and had missed her most of all.

  • • • • • •

  “You made a good trade from Chicago,” she said. “This place is really something.”

  Tom nodded without demurring or boasting. After a moment, his gaze dropped to her shoes, and he frowned.

  “The next dance is a foxtrot, if you’d like to?”

  Jo was a little ashamed that the question could still surprise her.

  It was the Charleston now, and in the middle of the floor Hattie and Mattie were holding court, their silver shoes a blur moving in time to the trumpets, bracelets sparkling as they threw their hands into the air.

  “We’ll see,” she said. Then, “What brought you back from Chicago?”

  He shrugged, tried a smile. “There’s only so much you can do in a city like that. I did it all. I wanted something a little quieter in my dotage.”

  “And that’s New York?”

  He laughed. “You ever been to Chicago?”

  “No.”

  Something about the way she said it must have struck him, because he didn’t ask why not.

  They stood side by side looking out at the dance floor, the only people in the place standing still.

  Doris and her partner were pressed cheek to cheek, popping up and down on their toes. Lou was tapping a rhythm on the floor with her free foot, her arm curled around her partner’s back; Hattie and Mattie skipped side by side, laughing brightly, white teeth behind red lips.

  Dancing was the only time any of them ever really smiled. They were never alive until the music was shaking the floor under their feet.

  She wondered, sometimes, if they would still have been this way if they’d had a world of freedoms, or if she had sculpted them as surely as their father had.

  The first, she hoped; she hoped desperately.

  The band finished with a last bright chord, and the place applauded (either for the band or for the twins), and laughter swelled up in pockets from the dance floor, the buzz of a satisfied crowd.

  The next dance was a foxtrot after all. Tom had the band well trained.

  Jo knew better than to say yes; she knew how bad an idea it was to dance with him after so long. She had stopped dancing because it so easily overwhelmed her. What would happen to her if she agreed now, and danced with him after eight years? Did she even remember how, or had her feet rusted over?

  What would the others think, to see her dancing after so long?

  The singer stepped up to the microphone and sang the first bars of “Forgetting You.” There was scattered applause, and then the shuffle of finding pairs. Doris was in a corner begging off, but Ella and Violet and Sophie and Rose were being scooped up by ecstatic young men and being absorbed into the crowd.

  A gentleman at a table on the floor smothered a yawn. It was getting late. Soon the night would be gone.

  When Jo looked over, Tom was watching her. She got the feeling he’d been watching her for a long time, and she tried not to flush. She was too old for it.

  “So let’s dance,” she said.

  twelve

  IF YOU HADN’T GONE AWAY

  On the dance floor, Jo had a heart-stopping moment of worry that she really had forgotten how to dance.

  Her shoes didn’t quite fit (catalog shoes never did). Her dress was too long and too old. She had put on some perfume without examining why, but it had gone sharp in the bottle in the last year or two, and now she smelled too much of bergamot.

  This was a terrible idea.

  She opened her mouth to say she’d changed her mind, but he was already standing in front of her, and his arm was already around her, and he was looking at her with the same smile she remembered.

  She slid her hand into his waiting one, and they were dancing.

  He was a careful dancer; without falling behind the beat, he still took his time. It was a rare thing. More often than you could bear, you raced around the floor trying to keep up with a leader who forgot a dance required a partner.

  Not Tom. Tom moved around the line of dance with measured steps, never bumping another couple even on the packed floor, and though he kept an eye on the crowd, she still felt his gaze every now and then.

  When she’d first met him, that night he was giving Ella the eye, she’d tried to dismiss him as fickle, as reckless. Then she’d danced with him.

  That was her first mistake.

  This was a close second.

  Tonight he smelled faintly of smoke. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to rest her forehead on his cheek, or lower her head to his shoulder, where his lapel trapped the remnants of his cologne. (He’d never worn cologne on his neck; it was aggressive to a partner’s nose. He wore it on the skin under the right side of his collar. Jo remembered just where. She could have rested her fingertip over the spot.)

  She wondered if everyone was so marked by what they did. Maybe, despite any perfume she’d ever put on, she smelled like a dusty book locked up too long.

  “Your friends are looking,” Tom said.

  She didn’t open her eyes. If she thought about them, the dance was over. She’d deal with it after the song.

  “I don’t dance much,” she said, half an explanation.

  He made a wondering noise that hummed through her hand on his shoulder. “You really cut a rug, back when I knew you.”

  When he’d known her, she was younger, and barely taking charge. When he’d known her, only four of them were going out to dance.

  When he�
��d known her, her fawn and purple dress was just coming into style.

  (Then, Tom had smelled like sawdust and asked her to leave everything, and she might have. No telling.

  She tried not to think about it.)

  “People change,” she said.

  She must have sounded sad, because he didn’t answer; he only curled his fingers around her fingers, wrapped his arm tighter around her.

  She must have been sad, because when he pulled her closer she sighed into his neck, tilted her forehead until it rested on his jaw.

  The hem of her dress swung gently against her ankles as they danced, a feeling she’d forgotten. Every so often, when the trumpet trilled, his fingers tapped against her ribs as he kept time.

  When the song ended, and the crowd clapped, Jo startled. For a moment she’d been nineteen again.

  It was a feeling she couldn’t afford.

  He was still a stranger, and she was no longer a stupid girl whose lapses were forgivable.

  When the waltz began, she dropped his hand and pushed away, gently. He frowned and let her go without a fight, though his fingers brushed her waist as she stepped back.

  “You don’t like the waltz any more?”

  She smiled tightly. “I just want to sit down awhile.”

  “I could keep you company?”

  It was a question but didn’t sound like it; he’d already guessed something was wrong, and that he was probably it.

  “I brought company,” she said.

  As she turned to go she added, “Thanks anyway,” and winced at how it sounded.

  She didn’t look behind her again; she picked up her hem and pressed her way through the crowd to the safe darkness of the mezzanine.

  She stayed in a little alcove, her eyes closed, until the waltz was over.

  Back at the table, Doris was already parked, drinking from Ella’s champagne (you could tell by the lipstick) and bumming a smoke off one of Araminta’s men.

  “Wait one dance and I promise I will,” she was saying as Jo climbed the stairs. “I just can’t stand these droners. Got a light?”

  Jo sat. The others were all dancing—even Rebecca had found a man she liked the look of—and Jo sat as far back in the shadows as she could and tried to get hold of herself.

  It was foolish, this whole business. Her dress, the dance, the whole night. The plaintive notes of the waltz sank into her skin, and she folded her arms like she was fighting a chill in the sweltering, smoky room.

  “You still look good on the dance floor,” said Doris, exhaling smoke when she smiled. “Nice to see you come out of retirement.”

  “Thanks,” Jo said.

  She wondered how much Doris remembered of Tom. Doris had been a baby, and caught up in the thrill, but maybe Doris had seen more than Jo had guessed, sitting out the slow dances, sizing up the room.

  Doris took a sip of something new, set it down. “Lord, that’s strong. One of us is a lush, you watch and see.”

  “That’s mine.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to it, you big lush,” Doris said. She took a puff of her cigarette and a sip of champagne, which seemed a bit much just to get a taste of whiskey out of your throat.

  Doris sat back and sighed contentedly. “Not a bad night. How’d you find this place?”

  “He paid my bail,” said Jo. “He’s a friend of Jake’s. He’s in good with the cops, so I figured we’re safer here than the Kingfisher, for now.”

  Doris nodded. “He looks familiar.”

  “He was around for a while when we were first going out,” said Jo. “Then he disappeared.”

  Doris dropped her eyes to her drink. “That happened a lot with boys back then,” she said.

  That struck Jo. Doris wasn’t moony, and Jo had kept a sharp eye on them all for a long time now, but that first year she hadn’t seen what she might have seen. Had Doris’s heart been broken?

  Before she could ask, the song was over and the other girls descended like a flock of birds.

  Sophie said, “Nobody dance with the one in the white vest, he’s got wandering hands.”

  Lily gave the white vest an appraising look. “When you look like that, your hands are welcome to.”

  Araminta frowned. “Lily, that’s disgusting. Don’t let him get away with anything.”

  “I won’t! I’ve found one I like. He’s a lieutenant.”

  “In the Two-Left-Foot Army?”

  “Very funny, Rebecca.”

  Hattie and Mattie were laughing too hard to speak, but they both pointed their votes to Rebecca.

  Lily smoothed her hair in the reflection of the brass trim of the booth. “As if I’m dancing with him for his floorcraft,” she said as she moved for the stairs.

  “Oh lovely,” Hattie said, and Mattie said, “You’re the queen of good taste.”

  “Everyone’s judgment slips,” said Lou from the edge of the crowd, not quite looking at Jo.

  Jo didn’t answer. She didn’t like being on shaky ground when it came to things like this; it was the reason she’d retired.

  She kept her eyes on the dance floor, tracking her sisters one by one as they skipped across the dark wood, wearing out their shoes with dancing shines. Hattie and Mattie were so rough on their T-straps that they had to tie ribbon knots where the leather was most likely to give out.

  Jo pretended she didn’t know when Tom’s eyes were on her; she pretended not to know when he was behind the bar or at the door.

  He didn’t dance with anyone else.

  The music thrummed under her feet, and she didn’t look at him, all night long.

  • • • • • •

  Jo summoned them just after three.

  By the time Ella and Hattie had undone their shoes and scrambled last up the stairs, three cabs were waiting.

  “I thought you’d prefer not to linger,” Tom said.

  It was halfway between hospitable and hurt; Jo didn’t want to know.

  Rebecca blinked at the cars. “That one’s not letting the grass grow under his feet, is he?”

  “Ladies,” said Tom. “Does anyone require carriage? There are a dozen willing men inside, or this one, until his achy old knees give out.”

  “We’ve got it handled,” said Jo.

  Hattie frowned. “But my stockings—”

  “Move it.”

  “Yes, General,” Hattie said through gritted teeth, and began to pick her way across the sidewalk. The other sisters followed.

  Tom looked over. “ ‘General’?”

  “You try getting eleven girls to do what you say and see how long you stay nice,” she said.

  He bit back a smile.

  Doris stood outside one of the cabs, Lou outside another, shepherding three girls into each, and in ten seconds they were all in place, and Jo moved to the last cab, which had an empty seat.

  Tom followed her. When he offered her a hand up, she took it without looking. (She hated that she knew he’d be offering.)

  He closed the door and the cabs pulled away from the curb, and a breath later they were gone.

  “That was a genius night,” said Rebecca. “Well chosen, General. How’d you find the place?”

  “He sprung me,” said Jo. Outside, unfamiliar streets sailed past.

  Hattie smacked Mattie on the shoulder. “Told you,” she said. “You owe me a dollar.”

  “Not yet,” said Mattie. “General, is that why you danced with him, though? He sprung you?”

  “I owed him one, I’d say.”

  “Ha! Hand over the dollar.”

  “I don’t have a dollar!”

  “Then don’t make bets,” said Rebecca.

  “Useful advice four hours ago,” muttered Mattie.

  The buildings had the corona of morning that streetlights sometimes gave, the white stone fronts looking iced over in the retreating dark. Jo counted the streets as they climbed closer to home.

  She could still feel the press of his fingers from the moment he’d gripped her hand, just befo
re letting go.

  • • • • • •

  They crowded up the back stairs, the rasping of their dresses the only noise in the house.

  At last, it was only Lou and Jo left.

  “Saw you dancing with the delivery boy,” Lou said. “You looked pretty comfortable for someone who hasn’t danced in a while.”

  In the dark hall, Lou’s hair was an angry halo, but her face was in shadow, and Jo couldn’t see her expression.

  Jo shrugged. “Just like old times, I guess.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Lou.

  She disappeared into the bedroom.

  When Jo rubbed her forehead, where a vicious headache had begun, the crook of her elbow smelled faintly of cologne.

  thirteen

  IS EVERYBODY HAPPY NOW?

  It’s the second night she’s known him.

  It’s an unbearable day between seeing him the first night and seeing him the next, his eyes skipping over the crowd looking for her.

  (Looking for her.)

  She’s dancing with someone else, and when he sees her, he grins, slows down, reshoulders his crate, and half-turns to keep her in sight until he reaches the cellar door.

  He makes an endless number of trips. She takes dances—she’s not about to waste a minute when songs and partners are good—but underneath the din, she can hear the cellar door opening and closing, little ticks marking time.

  Eventually she gives up, sits, and watches her sisters. It’s a good night; they’re deliriously dancing, betraying a panic they never quite get over. (By the time the younger ones began to come out, there was a sense of order, but the four oldest always knew how close they’d been to the edge.)

  He appears at their table, still brushing sawdust off his jacket.

  “I hoped you’d be here,” he says. “Care to dance?”

  She’s out of her seat before he’s finished talking; he has her hand before she’s out of her seat.

  “Missed me, I guess,” she says, half-teasing, but he doesn’t deny it.

  She closes her eyes against the smoky air, smells the cedar and whiskey that cling to him.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “The back alley?”

  She squeezes his hand, and he laughs into her hair. “Near Philadelphia,” he says. “I picked up this route as a favor to a friend.”