Moonshine (2010)

by Johnson, Alaya

  In the end, those assembled voted to investigate the matter further and reconvene at a later date.

  “A fine waste of a meeting,” Iris grumbled to me, as we left the back room in the Jewish Russian coffee shop that hosted our monthly gathering. “You’d think we were selling twopenny romances on the streets!”

  I thought of Aileen and Verity Lovelace’s popped cherry. “I imagine if we were, there’d be a great deal more demand for prophylactics,” I said, valiantly suppressing a fit of the giggles. Iris, with a yawn, pulled back a chair from an empty table in the front shop, and sprawled into it. For a moment, I was afraid that the spindle legs might crack under her bulk, but it managed to hold her up.

  “I believe I shall revivify with some coffee,” Iris said. “Should I order two?”

  I shook my head. “I’d love to, but I have to leave. I have . . .”

  She nodded knowingly, which thankfully saved me from concocting some inadequate excuse. “The energies of youth, I see. Well, take care. I daresay I’ll see you at some event, soon. And it seemed you and Lily got on swimmingly. Perhaps there’s hope for the darling little closed-minded debutante yet, eh?”

  Iris winked at me and I felt such an overwhelming burst of affection that I nearly hugged her. I managed to make do with pressing her hand and promising to see her at the Socialist Worker’s Party meeting next week. Just as I turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of a tall figure walking out of the shop. His hair was dark and curled, his attire several degrees more refined than the average in this Lower East Side haunt. I ran from the shop and onto the sidewalk, where snow I hadn’t even known was expected covered the ground two inches deep. Through the blanketing white, I attempted to catch a glimpse of the man I had just seen leave, but it appeared that the only people on the sidewalk beside myself were two respectable Hasidim in beaver hats and heavy black coats.

  “You’re losing your mind,” I said. I hadn’t even buttoned my coat or replaced my hat and gloves. I did so before the snow made me even colder and went to fetch my bicycle.

  I pedaled home quickly, even though I had nearly two hours before I was expected at the club. I would need at least that much time to get ready. My encounter with the incomparable Lily had at least proven that. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in this adventure any more than strictly necessary. And in any case, this might be the last chance I had to, well, go dancing, as Aileen would put it. Amir hadn’t found me, and without him as the miraculous source of my financial reprieve, I would have to take other measures. And seeing as how those measures either involved telegraphing Daddy back in Montana to ask for a loan or selling my soul to the Citizen’s Council . . . obviously, I would have to take the Citizen’s Council. Oh, Daddy had the money. He stockpiled as if Yarrow was Fort Knox. But I would die before I asked him for help. It would just prove that he was right, that I couldn’t make it on my own in this city as a useless “do-gooder.”

  They would probably make me teach hygiene and nutrition courses. I hated those. Marching into people’s homes like some Bible-spouting missionary to tell them that the food their grandmothers’ grandmothers made is scientifically inadequate. Fewer cheap vegetables, more meats. As though they could afford them. Damn Amir for getting my hopes up.

  It was early, yet—just half past seven—but Aileen was waiting when I made it home.

  “Thank God!” I said, shutting the door behind me.

  She looked up from her book, a different one from last night. “You didn’t think I’d make it?”

  “I thought you might forget. It is Friday.”

  “How could I miss your big debut?” She held up a flapper dress of patterned rose silk with long fringes.

  I tugged off my boots and ran to touch it. “I can’t believe you got this! How could you even afford—”

  She shrugged her shoulders languidly. “Oh, this girl I know. Spends all her money on clothes, and this is at least three years out of date. That whole flapper thing, just a touch passé. Still . . .” She held it up against me. “It will look très chic on you.”

  “I promise I’ll pay you back tomorrow. Horace said he’d give me something for this.”

  Aileen rolled her eyes. “If that fat bootlegger actually gives you a dime, you had better buy some food. You look scrawnier than my grandmother during the potato famine.”

  “Aileen, how could you know what your grandmother looked like during the potato famine?”

  She dropped the dress on her bed and held her arms akimbo. “I’ll have you know the Sight hasn’t skipped a generation of Dunne women since St. Patrick himself drove the snakes out of the Emerald Isle.”

  Her accent had grown so strong as to be nearly unintelligible by the end of the sentence. “Goodness,” I said, “does your family keep a leprechaun too?”

  Her mouth twitched dangerously. “We gave him to Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

  “And yet they didn’t think to plant some rutabagas.”

  We both started laughing. “Oh, get ready,” she said, gasping. “I sense dramatic changes for you to night.”

  I shook my head. “I just hope I don’t get jeered off the stage. Have you heard they actually use a hook up at the Apollo?”

  “Take a bath! You can be nervous after I make you look ravishing.”

  I followed her orders, and when I returned to the room she had laid out what looked to be her entire cosmetic collection. It was extensive—being a true vamp in this city required rigorous maintenance. She sat me on our wobbly chair in front of the cracked mirror.

  “Don’t overdo it,” I said, nervously, when she picked up a jar of flesh-colored cream.

  “Ah, don’t worry, chick,” she said, in an uncanny impression of an old Irish fortune-teller, “I’ll be gentle as a lamb.”

  I had to close my eyes.

  “There!” she said, after half an hour. “Perfection. Well, open your eyes. You can always wipe it off if you truly hate it.”

  Thus fortified, I saw what Aileen had wrought. A strange, fey face stared at me from the mirror. Her eyes seemed impossibly large, and lined with just barely less kohl than your average vamp. High cheekbones delicately emphasized with a light flush. Glossy red lips with a distinct impression of a pout from the full bottom. I had never liked that tendency of my lower lip to protrude. Now, Aileen had somehow turned it into something almost . . . sexy.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I am a genius. When do you have to be there, again?”

  “Eight thirty. The set starts at nine and I have to practice with the band.” Just saying that out loud sent a colony of butterflies to my stomach. I could hardly believe that Horace had agreed to let me sing the opening set at his nightclub. Admittedly, almost no one showed up at such an early hour on a Friday. And he owed me a favor after I had saved his favorite trombone player from being staked by one of Troy’s overzealous Defenders. Still, I had secretly dreamed of a chance like this for most of my life. I used to sing in our church choir until Daddy appropriated Sundays for my training (over Mama’s objections). Afterward, my vocal exertions were mainly confined to the backyard during chores. If Harry was in a good mood, he’d sometimes sit and listen with the chickens, but mostly he and the others would make fun of me. Mama says I have a great voice, but then again, she’s my mama and the competition isn’t exactly fierce in Yarrow.

  Aileen picked up an egg I hadn’t noticed lying on the dresser and cracked it on a bowl.

  “You don’t want to cook that first?”

  She grinned, and began separating the white from the yolk. “I read about this hairstyle in a glossy last year and I just had to try it out.”

  I turned to her, my mouth open in horror. “Putting egg whites on my hair?”

  “Josephine Baker does it.”

  I closed my mouth and faced the mirror again. Josephine Baker was about as close as I came to worshipping a person, and Aileen knew it.

  “Have you done this before?” I asked, when she started smearing the clear goop over my c
urls.

  “It didn’t sound very hard in the article.”

  I closed my eyes again.

  As long as you didn’t actually touch my head—which felt like nothing so much as a hair-textured helmet—the effect was unusual and striking. The egg whites had hardened my natural curls into tight, cherubic ringlets that clung close to my scalp. It also drew out the natural red of my color, so that in the lamplight my hair appeared fiery. It complemented the rose of the dress, which stopped a daring two inches above my knees. I wore Aileen’s rayon hose and her best pair of heels, just slightly too small. I completed the outfit with a doubled rope of real rose pearls—a gift from Mama just before I left—matching ear bobs, and a simple lace bandeau.

  I tossed my all-too-tattered and pedestrian coat on top of this splendor and enjoyed the ignominy of riding my bicycle in a flapper dress through the snow to reach the club a few minutes late. Aileen had promised to come by later to hear me sing.

  I locked my bicycle to the fence outside a neighboring church and then walked down the steps at 201 East Twenty-fourth Street. They were no different from any other in this quiet, supposedly residential neighborhood, but anyone could tell you where to find Horace’s. At the bottom was an equally featureless green door with a slide for the mailman.

  I knocked. “Hey, it’s me!” I called. “Let me in, it’s freezing out here!”

  From inside came the muffled sounds of someone shuffling to the door and shunting aside several bolts. It was Horace, dressed to the nines in tea-green tails with outrageously padded shoulders and matching hat. He looked mildly surprised to see me.

  “Thought you turned chicken,” he said in his rumbling southern drawl. I imagined it could be made to sound threatening, but Horace was like a personification of a swing jazz riff—far too concerned with beauty and aesthetics to reach beyond the mellow rhythm of his natural state. Of course, he was also famous for being one of the most tight-fisted bootleggers in Manhattan, but he never raised his voice while conducting business.

  “And I hope you got some decent glad rags. Schoolmistress is cute, but not very smooth.”

  Horace poured himself a glass of something amber (and blazingly alcoholic, from the smell). I shook my head when he offered it to me and removed my coat and gloves while he sipped.

  “This okay?” I asked, tossing my jacket over a chair.

  Horace looked me up and down and smiled. “All right. Well, copacetic, honey. You sure clean up. Get on stage, why don’t you? The boys are almost ready.”

  Horace’s place wasn’t very large—the stage was only twenty or so feet from the bar. “You’re going to pay me for this, right?” I said, after I climbed the stage.

  The piano player—a sub, I guessed, since I didn’t recognize his graying widow’s peak or blue eyes—laughed, and played a little riff. I had never seen a white musician at Horace’s before.

  Horace smiled and raised his glass. “Tips, doll. You’ll get tips.”

  Great. A big load of help tips would be when Mrs. Brodsky came a-calling on Sunday.

  The drummer sat down and beat a three-quarter rhythm on his snare. “You ready, Zephyr?” he asked. I looked at my little band: piano, drums, bass and trumpet. I might not be Josephine Baker, but they were good players. It would do.

  People began to trickle in a few minutes after nine. Horace was presiding on his throne in front of the band, and waving to the regulars. The patrons at this honorable establishment tended to be the white upper class looking for a thrill (and, occasionally, good music) and middle-class blacks. Almost no one from my neighborhood could afford Horace. Rinaldo’s gin joints were much less classy and far more convenient.

  The band played light, upbeat versions of new songs like the “Gin House Blues” and “Muskrat Ramble.” I tapped my foot absently to the music and scanned the crowd. Aileen showed up twenty minutes after nine and made her way like a magnet to a table of apparently unattached men. She was wearing enough makeup to make mine seem like a dab of powder, and her knee-length dress revealed an astonishing amount of skin. It seemed like half the back was out! I shook my head. Go dancing, indeed.

  It was only when Horace waved his hand and announced me as the opening act that I realized why I was still listlessly scanning the crowd. For some reason, I still expected to see Amir. But I hadn’t even told him I’d be singing here. The chances of him coming on his own were astonishingly slim. What was wrong with me?

  “And now I give you the vampire suffragette herself, Zephyr Hollis.”

  Aileen cheered very loudly. I knew she was only being supportive, but the sound seemed to drown out the rest of the polite applause. A steady hum of chatter replaced the noise as I adjusted the microphone. Vampire suffragette. Damn, damn, damn. I have a head full of egg whites. My dress is three years out of date. Oh, fucking bleeder, what possessed me to think this was a good idea?

  Panicked, I looked at the band. They took it as a cue and launched into the first number, Irving Berlin’s “Remember.”

  The intro was just a few bars long. I took a breath and focused on the shiny floorboards of the small stage. Not exactly a crowd-winning technique, but I was afraid the other option might be just passing out.

  “Remember the night, the night you said I love you . . .”

  It wasn’t great, but at least the notes were mostly in tune. By the time I made it through a few lines, I had found my confidence again.

  “Remember we found a lonely spot,” I sang, finally managing to lift my head and look at the audience. A lot more people seemed to have arrived since I began singing. And most of them were actually paying attention to me, instead of chatting with their neighbors. And no stage hooks! Encouraged, I managed to embellish a little as I reached the coda.

  “You promised that you’d forget me not, but you forgot to remember.”

  I glanced at the band and finished my triumphant high note just as they cut out. Smiling (seductively and serenely, not like a giddy five-year-old), I turned back to the audience.

  And there he was, lounging in the front row in a fashionably ostentatious tuxedo with knee-length tails, a patterned red handkerchief and patent-leather shoes, smiling up at me as though I hadn’t last seen him with a blood-mad child vampire slung over his shoulder. And though I’d been looking for him all day, I realized that the sight of him lounging so casually made my latent stage fright roar like a cornered lion. He nodded at me.

  Oh, bloody stakes.

  The next few numbers had a bit more bite.

  We ended at half past ten, when the main act was getting ready backstage. A few people besides Aileen actually stood up to applaud, which astonished me. I should have been happier, but the image of Amir reclining languidly, his eyes half-lidded, made me clench my teeth.

  “You were good,” Horace said, as soon as I walked back into the club. He sounded surprised. I didn’t blame him. “You can do it again next week.”

  I looked up at him. Aileen hadn’t really been unfair when she called him a fat bootlegger. “How much?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Four dollars.”

  “I bet I could get a few other joints interested in the singing vampire suffragette.” I almost gagged on the name, but I could see that I had hit upon my major selling point. Horace actually put down his drink.

  “I made you . . .”

  “I’ve only sung here once! Ten dollars, plus two for encores.”

  “Five, and no encores.”

  “Six, and you had better pay two for encores.”

  He stuck out his hand. “All right, birdie. Deal. I give you three tonight.” He held up his hand to forestall my objections. “ ’Cause you’re just starting out, you understand. In this business, you gotta learn to negotiate before the performance.”

  He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket that almost made me salivate just looking at it. But then he fished out three silver dollars and pushed them across the table.

  I shook my head ruefully. “Good advice.”

>   I stood up and ordered a glass of water from the bar. Around me, the dense crowd of people chatted and drank Horace’s bootleg gin. In places like this, you’d never know that alcohol had been illegal for the last six years. Even a pair of nearby vampires—a man and woman staggering a little as they passed me—seemed to have caught the drunken mood. I assumed they hadn’t imbibed, as they both had that healthy fingertip flush that indicated a recent feeding. Alcohol would have made quick work of that. I drank another glass of water, hunting for Aileen in the sudden press of people. And Amir, of course, if he wasn’t planning to vanish. Someone in front of me sat down, and the answer was immediately obvious. Aileen always did have a tendency to accost the most handsome man in the room. Maybe she was even now hinting that she wouldn’t mind if he popped her cherry.

  I stalked toward them, barely acknowledging the compliments a few people gave me as I swept past. I would absolutely not allow . . . well, I had no idea, but apparently I felt quite strongly about it.

  “You’re from Arabia, you say?” Aileen was corked, drinking something clear from a tumbler and swaying. Her face was very prettily flushed, but Amir’s eyes were straying to the decadently large ostrich feather that she had fastened to the purple turban wrapped around her head. And well he might, for each time she swayed forward, the rather worse-for-wear fringe would tickle his nose.

  “My father is a king in my homeland,” he said, gently pushing aside the frond.

  “A prince!” I exclaimed, walking up to them. I had never actually heard Dorothy Parker speak, but I imagined that at this moment I could probably match her for brittle sarcasm. “How lucky, Aileen. If his majesty overheats, you can fan him with your feather. Or would the ostrich like it back?”