by Libba Bray
Theta was so deadpan that it took Evie a second to realize she was kidding.
“How did you meet?”
“On the street. I was starving, and he gave me part of his sandwich. He’s a real pal.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t the two of you…?”
Theta narrowed her eyes and blew out a thin stream of smoke. It felt to Evie as if she were weighing her answer. “We just didn’t go for each other. He may not be my real brother, but he feels like one to me. I’d do anything for him.”
Henry sauntered toward them and Theta scooted over to make room.
“What did I miss?” he asked. “Say, where did the champagne come from?”
“Lonely walrus,” Evie explained and giggled. She was already feeling a little tipsy, more from excitement and optimism than from the champagne. She liked Theta and Henry. They were so sophisticated—not like anybody she’d known back home. She hoped they liked her, too.
“You’re just in time. We’re about to make a toast,” Theta said.
Henry raised his glass. “To what?”
“To us. To the future,” Theta said.
“To the future,” Henry, Evie, and Mabel echoed.
The orchestra segued into a hot, sensual number, and Evie leaned her head against Theta’s shoulder. “Don’t you feel like anything could happen tonight?”
“It’s Manhattan. Anything can happen at any time.”
“But what if you met the man of your dreams tonight?”
Theta blew out another plume of cigarette smoke. “Not interested. Love’s messy, kiddo. Let those other girls get moony-eyed and goofy. Me? I got plans.”
“What plans?” Mabel asked. A waiter had brought pâte on toast, which she ate with delight.
“Pictures. That’s the future. I hear they’re gonna start making talking pictures.”
Evie laughed. “Talking pictures? How awful!”
“ ’S gonna be swell. When my contract’s up, I’m heading to California with Henry. Right, Henry?”
“Anything you say, beautiful.”
“I hear they have lemon trees, and you can pick ’em right off and make fresh lemonade. We’ll get a house with a lemon tree in the backyard. Maybe even have a dog. I always wanted a dog.”
Evie wanted to laugh, but Theta seemed so serious, and even a little sad, so she just choked back her drink instead. “Sounds ducky.” She clinked glasses with Theta. “To lemon trees and dogs!”
“Lemon trees and dogs,” Theta and Henry said, laughing.
“Lemon trees and dogs,” Mabel slurred, her mouth full.
Evie leaned forward, resting her chin on her upturned palm. “What about you, Henry?”
“Me? I’m going to write songs for the pictures. Real songs. Not that gooey bushwa Flo Ziegfeld likes,” Henry drawled.
“To real songs!” Evie toasted. “Mabesie?”
“I’m going to help the poor. But first, I’m going to eat every bit of this.” Mabel swooned. “Heavenly.”
Theta cocked her head. “What about you, Evil?”
Evie turned her glass around slowly on the table. What could she say? I’m going to stop having nightmares about my dead brother. I’m going to let the past stop haunting me like a vengeful ghost. I’m going to find my place in the world and show everyone what I’m made of. She’d felt it from the moment she stepped off the train at Penn Station, a sense that she belonged here, that Manhattan was her true home. “This probably sounds silly….”
Henry let out a loud, dramatic laugh, then shrugged. “I just wanted to get it out of the way, darling.”
Evie grinned. Oh, she liked them both so much! “Ever since I got here, I’ve had the craziest feeling of destiny—that whatever is supposed to happen, whoever it is I’m going to be, is waiting just around the next corner. I want to be ready for it. I want to meet it headlong.” Evie raised her glass. “To whatever’s around the next corner.”
“I sure hope it’s not a car bearing down,” Mabel joked.
“To the good stuff just out of sight,” Theta echoed.
“To Evie’s destiny,” Henry said and touched his glass to theirs in a satisfying chime.
Evie paused, her glass in midair. “I don’t believe it. Of all the gall!”
“What’s eating you?” Theta asked.
Evie slammed her glass down, sloshing champagne onto the tablecloth. “Theta, take my purse. It’s got twenty bucks in it. You might need it to bail me out.”
“For the last time, what is it?”
“Sam Lloyd,” Evie hissed. She marched over to where he stood, leaning against a marble column, talking up a blond with a red Cupid’s bow mouth.
“Excuse me, Miss.” Evie sandwiched herself between them.
“Hey!” the girl objected, but Evie stood firm.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“What am I doing here? I come here all the time. What are you doing here?”
“Who’s she—your mother?” the blonde said in a voice so high it could break glass.
Evie turned. “I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Holy smokes!”
“You said it. Just to be safe, you might want to burn those glad rags you’ve got on. In fact, you might wanna burn them on principle.”
“Huh?”
Evie raised an eyebrow at Sam. “Why, Sam, she’s charming.” Evie turned back to the blonde, leaned in close and whispered, “You see that fella with the mustache over there?” Evie pointed to the walrus man. “He’s so rich he could buy Wool and Worth’s and still have enough left over for a steak dinner. Why don’t you go get him to buy you a drink?”
“You on the level?”
“And how. He’s a real Big Cheese. Trust me.”
The girl smiled. “Say, thanks for the tip, honey.”
“We Janes have to stick together.”
The girl looked worried. “You gonna be okay with his… typhoid?”
“It’s okay,” Evie said, glaring at Sam. “I’m immune to what he’s got.”
Sam watched the alluring blond wiggle her way toward the walrus man and shook his head. “Anybody ever tell you your timing is lousy, sister?”
“Where did you get that dinner jacket? It looks expensive.”
Sam grinned. “Back of a chair.”
“You stole it?”
“Let’s just say I borrowed it for the duration of my stay.”
“I oughta tell Uncle Will.”
“Be my guest. Of course, then you’ve gotta explain what you were doing here at a speakeasy in Harlem at eleven thirty in the PM.”
Evie opened her mouth to give Sam an earful just as the tuxedo-clad emcee stepped to the microphone. His white shirt was so stiff it looked bulletproof. “And now the Hotsy Totsy presents the Famous Hotsy Totsy Girls dancing that forbidden dance, the Black Bottom!”
The orchestra launched into the jazzy, uptempo dance tune. With a loud whoop, the young and beautiful chorines strutted their way across the stage. They swayed their hips and stamped out a hard, quick rhythm with their silver shoes. With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling—an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.
The piano player called out to the girls, and they shuffled forward, hips first. They crooked their fingers and everyone raced onto the dance floor below the stage, caught up in the dance and the night.
Theta sat at the table, alone, behind an inscrutable cloud of cigarette smoke, watching. Henry had started up a conversation with a handsome waiter named Billy, and she wondered if he’d be coming home tonight. She watched the spoiled debutantes getting their kicks by coming uptown to hear jazz in forbidden clubs, just to make their mothers fret. She watched t
he bartenders filling glasses but keeping their eyes on the doors. She watched the lonely hearts mooning over the fellas who, oblivious, mooned over other dolls. She watched a fight break out between a couple who were now sitting in miserable silence. She watched the cigarette girls smiling at each table, extolling the health benefits of Lucky Strikes or Chesterfields, whichever company paid them a little more. She watched the girls dance onstage and wondered how old they’d been when they started. Had they been dragged from town to town on the circuit from the age of four? Had they lain awake on fleabag motel floors, then made the rounds of booking agents the next morning, half-dead from exhaustion? Had any of them made a daring escape from a small town in the middle of the night? Had they changed their names and their looks, becoming someone completely new, someone who couldn’t be found? Did any of them have a power so frightening it had to be kept locked down tight?
A good-looking fella with a fraternity pin on his lapel stepped in front of Theta’s table, blocking her view. “Mind if I join you?”
Theta stubbed out her cigarette. “Sorry, pal. I was just leaving.” She grabbed her wrap and Evie’s purse and went in search of the ladies’ lounge.
Memphis had finished his rounds for the night. On his way through the Hotsy Totsy’s kitchen, he pocketed a few cookies for Isaiah, then set off to check out the action in the club. A drunk girl whose curls drooped from dancing called to him as he passed: “Oh, boy—get my coat, will ya?” She dropped a quarter in his hand.
“Do I look like I work for you? Get your own damn coat.” Memphis tossed the quarter back, and it fell at her feet.
“Well, I never…”
“And you never will,” Memphis grumbled. Off the hallway was a sitting room with club chairs and Persian rugs where couples went to neck or smoke. Memphis walked past a petting couple and settled into his favorite chair to read.
“Do you mind?” the man called.
“A little. But I’ll be just fine,” Memphis shot back, along with his widest smile. He opened his book. The man swore under his breath and called him a name Memphis didn’t like. Memphis stayed put, and after a moment, the couple left. Alone in the room, Memphis lost himself to the pleasure of the book.
“Let’s dance,” Sam said.
“With you?” Evie scoffed. “Just so you know, I left my money with Theta for safekeeping.”
“Come on, doll, I’ll be as good as a Boy Scout.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Feel that rhythm, kid. Doesn’t it work on you?”
Evie looked in the direction of the dance floor. A crowd of flappers, lost to the booze and the beat, were tearing it up. Evie wanted to be in the thick of it. To let herself go under the lights.
“One dance,” Evie said and dragged him toward the gyrating crowd. Sam pulled Evie into a waltz. His hand was warm at the small of her back.
“What are you doing?” she said as they twirled softly in place.
“Going against the grain,” Sam answered.
“Maybe I like going with the grain.”
“You? I don’t see it.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Evie yelled close to his ear. It was hard to hear over the orchestra and the dancers.
“We could work on that,” Sam said, pulling her into a twirl. He was a good dancer. Graceful and quick-footed, he knew how to lead without being overbearing. On the dance floor, at least, they were swell together.
“You smell good enough to eat,” Sam said so close to her ear that it made the skin along her jaw buzz.
“Just like the Big Bad Wolf,” Evie murmured.
“Say, about that ghost business—does your uncle believe in that, or is he just making a buck?”
“How should I know?” Evie asked. She didn’t want to think about Will just now. “Why? Do you believe it?”
Sam forced a smile. “Man’s gotta believe in something.”
He twirled Evie around and around under the lights.
Mabel had gone to the restroom and returned to an empty table. A minute later, she’d been corralled into dancing with a fella named Scotty who had managed to step on both of her feet three times and who insisted on calling her by the wrong name. Now she sat at the table vacated by the others listening to him prattle on about stocks and bonds and finding the right sort of girl to take home to Mother. She guessed the right sort of girl was not the daughter of a Jewish socialist and a society girl turned rabble-rouser.
“You’re a swell listener, May Belle,” Scotty said. His tongue was thick from Scotch.
“Mabel,” she corrected. She squinted in the club’s atmospheric glow and allowed herself to pretend this boring idiot was Jericho. Out on the floor, Evie danced with Sam—and after swearing to deck him.
“Why, you’re just like…”
“A sister,” Mabel finished for him.
“Exactly so!”
“Swell.” She sighed. The Scotty fellow continued rambling, making Mabel feel smaller and plainer. Her dress was all wrong; she looked like she was auditioning for a Christmas pageant somewhere. She was tired of being overlooked or compared to someone’s sister or passed off as a sweet, harmless girl, the sort nobody minded but nobody sought out, either. How had she allowed herself to be talked into this misery? It was different for Evie. Evie was born to play the role of carefree flapper. Mabel wasn’t. In nightclubs or at dances, she was out of her element. Just once, she’d like to be the exciting one, the girl somebody wanted.
“Isn’t that right, May Belle?” the idiot said, finishing some painful thought about fishing or motorcars, no doubt. He clapped her on the arm a little hard.
“That’s it,” Mabel said, getting up. She tossed her napkin on the table. “No. That is not right. I don’t know what you just said, but whatever it was, I’m pretty certain it was pure hokum. I don’t want to dance. I don’t want to hear about your plans for a summer house. I am not your sister. And if I were your sister, I’d have to tell people you’d been adopted as an act of charity. Please, don’t get up.”
“I wasn’t,” Scotty said.
Mabel marched up to Evie and tapped her on the shoulder. “Evie, I want to go home.”
“Oh, Mabel, no. Why, we’re just getting started!”
“You’re just getting started. I am finished.”
Evie stepped to the side with Mabel. “What’s wrong, Pie Face?”
“Nobody wants to dance with me.”
“I’ll get Sam to dance with you.”
“I don’t want you to make someone dance with me. You know perfectly well what I mean. It might be different if Jericho were here.”
“I tried to get him to come, Pie Face, honestly I did. But he’s pos-i-tute-ly allergic to having a good time. Why don’t you order another Orange Juice Jazz Baby?”
“They’re five dollars!”
“Come on, Mabesie. Live a little. It won’t kill you. Oh, they’re playing my favorite song!” Evie dashed out onto the dance floor before Mabel could stop her. It probably wasn’t her favorite song; she just needed an excuse to get away and avoid Mabel. Sometimes Evie could be so selfish.
Mabel saw the drunken Scotty lurching toward her with a sloppy “Heyyy, Maybeline, honey,” and ran and hid behind an enormous potted fern, plotting all the ways she was going to kill Evie when this evening was finally over.
Theta walked the corridors of the club, dragging her fur wrap behind her. Some people recognized her with a “Hey, aren’t you…?” To which Theta would say, “Sorry. You must have me confused with another party.”
Behind her, a man called out “Betty!” and Theta turned quickly, her heart beating fast. But he was calling to a redhead, who yelled back, “Hold your horses! I need the little girls’ room.”
Theta had had enough. She didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t want to stay, either. She wasn’t sure what she wanted except something new, something that made her feel anchored to her life. She felt like she could float away at any moment. Sure, she had Henry, wonderful Henr
y. He was like a brother to her. It was Henry who had saved her life when she’d first come to the city, desperate and starving. And it was Henry who’d saved her life a second time. They’d always be together. But lately, she’d felt a hunger for more. It had the shape of destiny about it, this feeling, though she couldn’t begin to put a name on it.
A crowd of revelers caromed down the hall, and Theta ducked into the first room she saw. It appeared empty, but as she came around the side of a green wingback chair, she saw that it was occupied by a handsome young man with a book of poems. He was so absorbed in his reading that he didn’t even notice her.
“Must be some book,” she said, startling him.
Memphis looked up to see a striking girl with jet-black hair smoking a cigarette and watching him.
“Walt Whitman.”
“Mmm,” Theta said.
“I’m a poet myself,” Memphis said. He held up his small leather journal. Theta took it and flipped through the pages, opening to a series of numbers written in the back. She raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like poetry to me. More like a bookie’s tab.”
Quickly, Memphis grabbed the book back. He gave her the full-dazzle smile that worked on chorus girls and jumpy gangsters. “I’m just holding that for a friend.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“My name’s Memphis. Memphis Campbell. And you are?”
“Just a girl in a nightclub.” Theta blew out a stream of smoke.
“You shouldn’t smoke those. Sister says they’re poison.”
“Your sister’s a barrel of laughs.”
Memphis laughed. “She’s not my sister. We call her sister. Sister Walker. And she could rival a pickle for pucker.” That got a smirk from Theta. It was all the encouragement Memphis needed. “You French? Got a French look to you. Maybe even a little Creole.”
Theta shrugged and tapped the end of her cigarette into a tall silver ashtray. “I look like everybody.”
“Well, I’m gonna call you Creole Princess.”
“You can call me whatever you like. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”
“I’m still gonna keep calling.”
