The Girls at the Kingfisher Club (6 page)

• • •

Lily and Rose dance tango.

The Argentine style is a scandal at first, even underground, where the ballroom style's already known. A couple from Paris is brought in for an exhibition. The sisters watch, calculating; by the time the couple is taking their bows, they already know how it goes.

They bring it home.

“And you dance this with strange men?” asks Violet, the youngest, in a doubtful voice.

In Doris's arms, Ella is grinning and swooning like the performer did at the last moment, one arm flung out like a swan's wing.

It's two nights before the Kingfisher plays one. Rose and Lily tap their fingers on the table and sigh.

“Please, can we?” Lily asks, finally.

“Not with men,” says Jo. “It's trouble we don't need.”

They don't argue. (Jo's never made anyone sit home from spite, but she could, and they aren't taking chances.)

But it isn't disobeying Jo to dance with each other like at home, faces pressed cheek to cheek, arms outstretched, making fish faces at the sisters who are sitting.

(They act like twins whenever they can, even though they don't often feel like it. Sometimes they hate Hattie and Mattie for their ease; they'd never say it, even to each other.)

“When are you going to get a fella?” Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. “I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one.”

Rose flushes. “I don't think I'll ever have a fella.”

“Why not?” Lily bristles. “We're plenty pretty.”

“I don't like the look of them,” Rose says.

Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising.

After a moment longer, Rose says, “Any of them.”

Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate.

Then Lily shrugs and says, “Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?” and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back.

It's the closest they've ever been.

Rose is happy to dance tango with men as soon as Jo gives permission. Rose is happy to dance anything with men; it's perfectly safe, and most men are perfectly nice, and the music is perfectly nice.

If, between songs, she looks too long at bob-haired girls smoking at the bar, that's nobody's business.

Lily keeps leading, dragging this sister or that one onto the floor. (Sophie is the first to offer her hand, after Rose stops dancing with her.)

In her second year, she gets up the courage to hold out her hand to a girl at the bar.

“It worked,” she pants, back at their table, flushed from the thrill and smiling wide.

She tries more often, chatting up girls by the bar until they sigh and agree to just one Charleston—just one—and spend a dance laughing and kicking up their heels. Then they spend another, and another.

“Why won't you dance with men?” Araminta asks, just short of pique. The men crane their necks, waiting.

“None of them have the nerve to ask,” says Lily. “Rebecca, quickstep or not? If not, I'm asking the blond.”

“Stop it,” murmurs Araminta. “You'll get a reputation.”

“Too late,” Lily says over her shoulder, and picks up the blond on her way to the floor.

Rose doesn't know if Lily does it to cover Rose's secret for her, or to spite her for it.

Rose doesn't know much about Lily at all.

• • •

Violet thinks sometimes about being a boy.

It would've made their father happy, that's for sure, and would have spared them a bunch of this junk.

(She's never seen the front door of their house. Whenever she thinks about it, she itches everywhere.)

She's thirteen when they start taking her along.

“Remember,” Jo says in the cab, “don't tell anyone your name. If any man gets fresh, push—some of us will see you.”

She never says what they would do, but somehow Violet never doubts the man in question would be sorry.

(Violet doesn't doubt much that Jo tells her. It doesn't seem wise.)

Jo says, “I'll be at our table. Make sure you can see me, wherever you are.”

Behind Jo, the streets are flying past them, a tangle of lights and cars and storefronts lined with evening gowns and the roar of a city that's alive in every corner. For a moment Violet struggles to pay attention.

“Watch out for men without a cigarette in their hand,” says Doris. “They're looking to pinch your rear.”

“I'll crack
them,
” snaps Violet, and Doris says, “Good girl.”

“We're here,” says Jo.

Violet's night is a blur of sound and noise and smoke and champagne, men like catalog cutouts, and Violet in the center in a green dress, feeling like she's shouting so the world can hear, like she's one of them at last.

A man tries to pinch her on her way back to the table. She slaps him hard enough to leave a mark, and when she turns, she runs into Jo, who's appeared as if by magic.

“Beat it,” says Jo to the man, and the hair on Violet's neck stands up.

The man backs into the crowd. All night, he stares like a whipped dog from the bar, where the bartender Jake (who Araminta says is soft on Lou) looks like he wouldn't mind making the fella disappear for good.

Hattie and Mattie laugh at him, and Violet laughs too, shrill, because didn't she hold her own?

Violet's still laughing (and dancing with a handsome young man with dark skin—Charleston or Baltimore, she doesn't remember, something fast and wonderful) when Jo raises her arm and snaps her hand like she's snatching a key from the air.

It sucks all the sound out of the room until Violet can't even hear her own breathing, and even as she weaves her way back to the table, she moves like someone in a dream, because now it's over.

Violet realizes for the first time that she's never hated anyone before, that she can't imagine hating anyone as much as she hates Jo tonight.

The anger fades in the quiet cab ride home, Violet watching Jo's face across the dark seat. Jo's looking out the car window; her head never moves.

Violet pities Jo, who can't ever have felt anything wonderful, to pull them home so heartlessly; poor Jo, who's never felt anything at all.

seven

Sometimes I'm Happy

(Sometimes I'm Blue)

Jo was standing in the fourth-floor hall at five of midnight, at the back landing of the servants' stair.

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 crossed.

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.