Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

  41

  There are no homosexuals in this family.

  Grant Avenue’s red-and-gold banners celebrating the Year of the Sheep sagged damply overhead, dripping on Lily as she crossed the street. A group of boys pushed past her with their arms full of unlit firecrackers, shouting and laughing.

  There are no homosexuals in this family.

  Portsmouth Square was ahead. She wished she had put on a coat, and her canvas shoes were getting wetter with each step, but she couldn’t go back.

  Kath had been arrested. Lily’s stomach clenched.

  There are no homosexuals in this family.

  She kept walking. Past the International Hotel, past the gaudy lights of the International Settlement. The neon sign for the Barbary Coast nightclub, built in the shape of a woman’s naked leg, glowed through the dusk, advertising dancing girls.

  Are you my daughter?

  Lily went left along Columbus, walking quickly in an effort to warm herself up, and then she came to Broadway, and down the street she saw the lighted sign. The letter l in the word Club was on the fritz, blinking out every so often as if it were tapping out a message in code.

  In a daze, she angled across Broadway, narrowly missing a taxi that honked at her as it swerved around her. She slowed to a halt in front of the club. She noticed for the first time a small window to the left of the door. It was filled in with glass blocks so that she couldn’t see inside, but it must overlook the end of the bar. She began to take in the other details around her: the stained concrete beneath her feet, blackened in spots as if people had stubbed out countless cigarettes on the ground. The faint smell of alcohol and smoke, like a bitter perfume, hanging in the chilly air. A layer of filth seemed packed onto the lower extremities of the building’s wall, which was covered in a dirty stucco that once might have been white, but had turned grayish brown over time. A particularly disgusting puce-colored patch spread over part of the wall beneath the glass-block window. The black door itself looked like it had come out of a fire, sooty and beaten, and there was a small white sign affixed to it.

  She had to walk right up to it to read it in the gray light: closed by order of the san francisco police.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised by the notice, but she was. She realized that she had stupidly thought she might go to the club—that Mickey might open the door for her, that someone might help her, or at least allow her to sit there while she figured out what she was going to do. Abruptly she became aware that she was standing right in front of the club on the sidewalk in full view. Once again she was putting herself in danger of being seen.

  She turned away in a panic, not caring where she was going as long as she put distance between herself and anyone who might know her. She went uphill, racing up the steep sidewalk, and at the top she was forced to pause to catch her breath. When she raised her eyes and saw the nearest street sign, she was startled to discover it was the street that Kath lived on.

  She had completely forgotten about that scrap of paper with Kath’s address, but she remembered the details: 453 Union Street. It couldn’t be far.

  * * *

  —

  Kath’s house was a three-story building with a central entrance and bay windows stacked up on either side. In the cloudy afternoon, a lamp glowed in a first floor window, but the top two floors were dark. She went up the stairs to the entryway and looked at the three doors, examining the nameplates beside each buzzer. There it was on the right: miller. She raised her finger to press the button.

  It sounded distantly inside the building—too distantly to be attached to the first floor with its lighted window.

  No one answered the door.

  She pressed the buzzer again, and leaned forward to listen carefully, but no one was coming.

  She retreated down the steps and stared fiercely at Kath’s building, as if that would conjure her out of thin air, but of course it did not. In the first floor window she saw an old woman looking out at her suspiciously. She couldn’t stand here forever. The woman would call the police.

  Lily turned her back on the building and continued downhill, walking aimlessly into the heart of North Beach. The neighborhood was a maze to her; some of the streets turned into dead ends, while others culminated in steep wooden steps climbing up the side of Telegraph Hill. Eventually she went all the way up to Coit Tower, joining the tourists who gathered at the overlook to gaze out at the misty city. She lingered there for some time, her mind going as numb as her feet, and then she went into the gift shop to lurk in the warmth. She used the public restroom and pretended to consider buying a miniature Coit Tower, but when the clerk started walking past her repeatedly, she left.

  Maybe you should go home, she thought, but immediately recoiled from the idea. She couldn’t face her mother—her father—the entire family. There are no homosexuals in this family.

  She headed downhill, taking random streets, until she emerged in Washington Square Park. She remembered that sunny September afternoon again: Kath’s legs stretched out on the grass; the cold sweet sorbetto; the wooden spoon scraping against her tongue.

  The memory hurt almost physically. She went to the nearest bench on the edge of the park and sat down.

  She felt hopelessness creeping upon her. The fog was rolling in; it seeped through her thin cardigan and blouse and crawled beneath her cotton skirt to settle on her skin. No matter how much she rubbed her hands along her upper arms, she was still cold. Washington Square Park was quiet. The afternoon was darkening into dusk, and few people were out, but she gradually became aware of the presence of others. There was the lumpy shape of someone stretched out on a bench not so far from her; it had been motionless when she arrived, but after some time it twitched, startling her. Then the shape seemed to ripple and roll, and she realized it was a man shifting over onto his back. He was sleeping there, exposed to the chilly air. He didn’t even have a blanket.

  The sound of glass rattling against metal caused her to look to her right. Someone was rooting through the trash can. They were wearing a long woolen coat beneath a blanket that kept slipping, its ragged edges trailing on the damp ground.

  She crossed her arms and legs, hugging herself closer, trying to ignore the fear that was rising inside her. She called up the memory of Kath’s mouth against hers as they kissed beneath the stairs at the club. Last night. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Kath there.

  She heard footsteps coming from her left. They slowed down, and then someone sat on the bench beside her. She blinked her eyes open as a man said, “Nay ho, little girl.”

  He was lanky and scraggly looking, with an unshaven chin and a stink about him, and she realized he was trying to speak to her in Chinese.

  The fear she had been trying to keep at bay flooded through her. She jumped up and ran, and she heard him calling after her, laughingly, “I’m not gonna hurt you, China doll. Just saying hello. Nay ho, nay ho!”

  Her skin crawled and she ran faster, leaving the park behind as she fled uphill. Coit Tower loomed in the distance. She remembered leaving Tommy’s party with Kath that night, Coit Tower a candle behind them as they emerged from Castle Street.

  Castle Street. Lana and Tommy lived there at number forty-something.

  The idea was so startling, and it felt so right that she almost laughed out loud. But her relief was short-lived; she suddenly remembered that the Chronicle had said Tommy had been arrested. She was probably in jail.

  But Lana might be there, and Lana would know what to do.

  Lily glanced up at Coit Tower, trying to remember where it had been in relation to Lana’s apartment. North Beach wasn’t that large, but it wasn’t her neighborhood. At the next corner store, she went inside and asked the man behind the counter where Castle Street was. He gave her a funny look, but he also gave her directions, and then she headed up the steepest part of Green Street, passing slivers of dark
alleys on her left—one of them might have been the one that Kath had pulled her into—and then there it was.

  She turned onto the block and started studying the building numbers. She was afraid she wouldn’t recognize Lana’s building, but when she came to it, she was certain. She remembered the front stoop and the way the curtains hung over the window. Light shone through a crack in the curtains. Someone was home.

  She hesitated. There were plenty of reasons she shouldn’t knock on the door. Lana barely knew her. She would be a virtual stranger showing up like a beggar on her front step. And if Tommy was in jail, this had to be a terrible time for Lana. The wind whipped around her, plastering her fog-dampened hair across her eyes so that she had to scrape it aside with freezing fingers.

  She had nowhere else to go.

  She climbed the three steps and found the button labeled jackson and pressed it. She heard it ring. Just when she was about to try peeking through the crack in the window curtains, the door opened.

  There was Lana, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in slim blue checkered pants, a pink sweater, and a pair of red-and-gold Chinese slippers.

  Her penciled eyebrows rose in surprise. “You’re that girl from the club—Lily, isn’t it? My goodness, you look like a drowned kitten!” Lana glanced behind her at the empty street. “Well, you’d better come in.”

  42

  Take off that sweater—you’ll catch a cold,” Lana said. “And leave your shoes there. I’ll bring you a blanket.”

  There was a gently compelling quality about Lana, and Lily felt a sense of relief in surrendering to her orders. She peeled off her cardigan and took off her wet shoes and socks, putting them in front of the electric heater. Lana returned from the bedroom with a crocheted purple-and-white blanket, which she wrapped around Lily’s shoulders. She stepped back and gave Lily an appraising look, as if she were examining a rather sad work of art, and said, “Take a seat. I’ll make you something hot to drink.”

  “You don’t have to,” Lily said.

  “I’ll just reheat some coffee.”

  Left alone in the living room, Lily sat down on the rust-colored sofa, tucking her cold feet under the edge of the blanket.

  “Do you want cream and sugar?” Lana called from the kitchen.

  “Yes, please.”

  A pile of unopened mail on the coffee table bumped against a dinner plate stained with the remains of what looked like scrambled eggs. A half-filled ashtray squatted nearby, along with a smudged wineglass, a half-empty bottle of wine, a table lighter in the shape of a nude woman, and a pack of Lucky Strikes. The record player was standing open on the octagonal table in the corner, and a few records were leaning against it on the floor. Only one lamp was turned on, giving the living room a warm, golden glow. It felt different than it had the night of the party—cozier, more like someone’s home—and when she remembered Sal and Patsy dancing together in the small open space between the bench and the kitchen door, it seemed like a strange fantasy.

  Lana emerged from the kitchen carrying a mug of coffee, and when she handed it to Lily, she said, “I added a little whisky. I think you need it.”

  “Thank you.” Lily sipped the coffee hesitantly. It was hot and sweet and left a pleasant warmth in her stomach.

  Lana took a seat across from Lily. She reached for the Lucky Strikes and pulled one out, holding it between her lips while she thumbed the lighter. A flame shot out of the nude woman’s head. “This was a gag gift from one of Tommy’s friends,” Lana said. “It’s awful, isn’t it? At least you don’t have to squeeze her breasts to get it to work. I’ve seen one of those too.” She put the lighter back on the table and pulled the ashtray closer to herself. “Sorry for the mess. It’s been quite a day. But I think it’s been one for you too.”

  Lily cupped her hands around her coffee mug. “I’m sorry to barge in on you uninvited.”

  Lana waved her hand, the cigarette trailing smoke. “I have a feeling you wouldn’t be here unless you had to be.” She leaned forward to pour some wine into the smudged glass, then sat back, kicking off her slippers to tuck her feet up beside her, and took a sip. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  It turned out, to Lily’s surprise, that she did want to tell her. The living room felt so intimate, and Lana seemed like someone who had heard everything and would be surprised at nothing. Lily found herself spilling out the whole story, from the moment she left Kath at the Telegraph Club to her confrontations with Shirley and her mother, to her chilly trek through the city to Lana’s front door.

  “Do you think I should have done what my mother wanted?” Lily asked when she came to the end. “She kept saying that it was a mistake—as if everything would be fine as long as I called it a mistake. But that would be a lie. I don’t want to lie about it, but I can’t help thinking it would be easier if I did.”

  Lana had listened quietly the whole time, smoking while Lily talked. Now she stubbed out the end of the cigarette in the ashtray and said, “If you lie about it, it’ll make it easier in the beginning, but your mother will never trust you again. Because she’ll know you lied to her. And every time you speak to her she’ll wonder if you’re lying—even if you’re talking about what you had for dinner, and especially who you went to dinner with. It’s better to be true to yourself than give her a reason not to trust you.”

  Lily took another sip of her coffee. Maybe the whisky was working because she felt more at ease now, as if the clenched fist inside herself were loosening. “But she doesn’t trust me anyway,” Lily said.

  “No, she trusts you. She’s having a hard time right now because you’re not what she expected. But we’re never what our parents expected. They have to learn that lesson.” Lana gave a short laugh. “My brother and I both taught our parents that lesson, and they didn’t like it with either of us. He was supposed to grow up and become a lawyer, just like Daddy, but instead he decided to go to New York to become an actor. They thought for sure it meant that Russ—my brother—was a homosexual, but it turned out I was the homosexual, and they didn’t like that either.”

  “Did they—do they still not like it?”

  “Oh, they’re coming around. It helps that Russ married a lovely woman and they have a beautiful little boy now. They’re still working their way around to me. At least they write to me now. For several years they didn’t.”

  “They write to you—you mean they’re not here?” Lily asked.

  “No, in Detroit. That’s where I grew up. I moved here when I was seventeen because I heard San Francisco was friendly to people like me. Russ said our parents were afraid I’d become destitute and end up working the streets.” Lana spoke dryly, but when she reached for the cigarettes again there was a touch of nervousness to her movements. “They’re happy I have a steady job now. Maybe if I looked like Tommy, they’d give up on me, but they keep hoping I’ll meet the right man. My mother tried to set me up on a date last week with a banker here who’s the cousin of one of her bridge partners. They won’t give up.”

  Lily looked down at her coffee. “My mother said there are no homosexuals in our family.”

  “Maybe there aren’t, but there might be a lesbian.”

  It was a terrible joke, but it seemed so painfully funny to Lily in that moment. To think that she was sitting in Tommy Andrews’s girlfriend’s living room, hearing her life story! And then the reality of her predicament came crashing back down, and it wasn’t funny anymore. Here she was, in a near-stranger’s home, with nowhere to go.

  The expression on her face must have been plain as day, because Lana gave her a sympathetic look and said, “You’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Lily said. The words came out, embarrassingly, like a plea for help, and Lana said nothing in return, only took a deep drag from her cigarette and considered her, giving her that same look from when Lily first arrived. But now Lily
thought it was more as if Lana were trying to determine what to do with her: as if she were an unexpected package that had at first been interesting, but was rapidly turning into a burden.

  The doorbell rang, and Lana straightened up. “That must be Claire. I forgot she was coming. Hang on.”

  Lana went to the door, and Lily set her half-finished coffee on the table, getting up. A moment later, Claire came in bearing a brown paper sack with a wine bottle tucked under her arm.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late,” Claire said. “The deli took forever.”

  “It’s all right, and look, we have a surprise guest.” Lana took the wine and the paper sack, nodding in Lily’s direction.

  “Hello!” Claire exclaimed. “Lily, right?” She unwound the scarf from her hair. Lily had never before noticed that it was quite red, and her face was scattered with light brown freckles.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” Lily said, gathering up the blanket to fold it. “I can go now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Claire tugged off her rain boots and removed her coat. “The sandwiches are huge—you should join us.”

  Lily protested again, but weakly. The next few minutes were filled with the mundane tasks of taking the food and wine into the dining room, turning on the lights, bringing out plates and cutlery and glasses. Claire opened the wine and poured three glasses full, not even asking if Lily wanted one, and Lana unwrapped the two sandwiches on a cutting board. They were indeed huge. Claire had bought them at an Italian deli and said there was salami and mortadella and fontina and something else she couldn’t remember, all piled onto chewy sourdough bread spread with grainy mustard and layered with pickles. Lana cut each large sandwich into three smaller ones, and brought out a bag of potato chips from the kitchen and a pile of napkins from the antique sideboard. By the time the three of them sat down at the table, Lily felt almost normal again, rather than an interloper at someone’s private party. Claire claimed Lana’s attention now, and they spoke in shorthand like old friends, which meant Lily didn’t understand a good part of their conversation and could eat her sandwich without having to say much.