by Sarah Jio
“Pull in your stomach,” the woman said. “This corset needs tightening if we’re going to get you into a gown tonight. Mr. Edwards will want you to look stunning on the dance floor.”
I took a deep breath and sucked in my stomach. I closed my eyes and thought of the last time I’d gone dancing. With Charles. I let the memory comfort me like a warm blanket.
Four Years Prior
A horn sounded outside. Caroline squealed. “Charles is here!”
I smoothed my hair before running to the window of the apartment I shared with three friends. I looked out to the street, where he sat in the front seat of his shiny gray Buick, dark hair slicked back, a quiet smile on his face. Dashing. It had been a month and a half since we’d met at the hotel. He’d walked me home that night and promised to call after his holiday in Europe. I thought about him often, despite my attempts to purge his memory from my mind—and my heart. He was wonderful, yes, but he belonged with the type of women I’d seen at the hotel—refined, dripping in jewels—not with someone who had a hole in her shoe and nary a nickel to her name. And yet when he phoned the apartment the week before, I couldn’t help but wonder, despite what he’d said at the Olympic Hotel, could a man from privilege really love a woman from poverty?
Georgia folded her arms. “It’s not fair,” she whined. “Does he have a brother?”
“Don’t distract her, Georgia,” Caroline snapped. “She has to get ready!”
I looked down at my dress, hardly what you’d call fancy, with its simple pleats and a hem I’d mended only that morning. I hoped the cobalt blue thread I’d used—the only I had—didn’t look glaringly obvious against the light blue of the dress. “Do I look all right?”
Caroline frowned. “Honey, you want to impress him, don’t you?”
I nodded.
Caroline began unfastening the buttons on my dress. “Of course you do, which is why you’re going to wear my red dress.”
“Caroline, I couldn’t,” I said. “It’s so…”
“Low cut?”
I nodded.
“Well, yes, my dear, that’s rather the point. We’re going to get you out of this potato sack.”
After Caroline had the final button undone, my dress fell to the floor, where it rested around my ankles. She walked to her closet and returned with the red dress. She held it up proudly. “He’ll love you in this.” Caroline had spent a month’s wages on it after seeing it in the window at a boutique in Pioneer Square. “Here,” she said, inching the frock over my head. It clung to my body like a tight bandage, and I tugged at the bodice self-consciously.
“There,” she said, taking a step back to gaze at me. “Stunning.”
“I don’t know, Caroline,” I said hesitantly. “Do you think it’s really me?”
“It’s you tonight,” she said, holding a beaded necklace against the nape of my neck. “They’re not real pearls, but no one will know.” I felt a shiver along my spine as she fastened the clasp.
“Perfect,” she said, stepping back again to take a final look at me. “Go on; you’ll be late.” She shooed me toward the door. “You look beautiful.”
I turned to face her. “Thank you, Caroline. I know this is your favorite dress. I’ll treat it well.”
“Spill wine on it if you want,” she said. “I’ll never wear it again, anyway.” She patted her belly. It swelled a little, revealing the early months of her pregnancy. “I had plenty of fun in it.”
In an impulsive move, Caroline had married a fisherman named Joe the week after the event at the Olympic. They’d been together, on and off, for a year, but when he’d shown up with his grandmother’s engagement ring, she’d said yes. And then, shortly after, he died in an automobile accident and she found out she was expecting his child. Caroline showed up at the apartment with all of her worldly possessions stuffed into a single suitcase. The one-bedroom flat was already cramped with three other women, but we took her in anyway. Her own parents had thrown her out.
“Oh, Caroline,” I said, tucking an arm around her waist. “You’ll wear it again. You’ll see.”
“Well,” she said with a sigh, “it’s your night. Live it up, honey.”
I nodded. “I’ll try.”
Charles waited for me on the sidewalk. He leaned against the car and watched as I walked outside.
“Hey there, doll,” an obviously drunk man called from the street. “Looking for someone to love?”
“Mind your manners!” Charles shouted to the man. “Where do you get off speaking to a lady that way?”
The man slunk back into an alley as I gave Charles a grateful smile. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said.
“Do you have to put up with this all the time?”
I nodded. “You get used to it after a while. Most of them are harmless.”
He shook his head, surveying the street. A homeless man kicked a tin can down the sidewalk, grumbling to himself. An old woman stood up from a bench and approached Charles. A vehicle that shiny in our part of town was a rare sight, and it attracted a crowd of onlookers like a juicy plum draws buzzing fruit flies.
“Excuse me, sir,” the woman said in almost a whisper. She held out her hand, displaying dirt-caked fingernails. “Could you spare a few cents for a hungry old woman?”
“Is that a real Buick?” a teenage boy asked, running his hand along the hood. Charles looked at me with a helpless expression.
I cleared my throat. “Pardon us,” I said with a firm voice. “We were just leaving.”
The woman nodded, taking a step back. The boy shrugged. The others continued on.
“Sorry about that,” I said once we were inside the car. “Rich people are a novelty around these parts.”
He looked conflicted. “Oh,” he said, pulling away slowly.
We drove in silence for a few moments, before Charles turned to me. “I wish I had given her something.”
“Who?”
“That woman back there,” he said. “I could have given her some money. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
I shook my head. “Well, it would take more than a few dollars to solve her problems.”
Charles nodded. “Do they hate people like me?”
“Of course they don’t,” I said, noticing the way the streetlights made his gold cuff link glisten. “You’re just from another world, that’s all. A world they don’t understand.”
Charles shook his head, as if trying to make sense of the differences between us. “I’m embarrassed,” he finally said, “that I’m so out of touch with what these people are facing.”
I touched his arm. “You’re different,” I said, looking at him in awe. Charles possessed a goodness that others in his position didn’t. His heart seemed to feel the pain of the poor—rare, when the trend among the upper class was to simply ignore them.
He stopped the car in front of a restaurant where a woman in a pale crepe dress stood outside smoking a cigarette. She puffed it elegantly through her crimson red lips, then dropped it to the sidewalk and stomped out its last embers with a thick, shiny black heel. “I thought we’d grab a little dinner at the Blue Palms,” he said. “That is, if you’re hungry.” His kind eyes smiled expectantly.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that would be lovely.”
Charles handed his keys to the valet before proceeding to the opposite side to open my door. I felt like an heiress stepping out onto the curb, tucking my arm in his. Two women gawked at us from the sidewalk. They looked at Charles and then at me, studying me from head to toe, then whispering among themselves. I could read their eyes. Fraud. They knew I didn’t belong. I looked straight ahead, following Charles into the club.
I felt the urge to peek into the mirror on the wall to my left just to make sure I was really the woman staring back. Caroline and I had dreamed of dining at the Blue Palms a thousand times before. We knew a cocktail waitress who worked there on weekends. She’d recounted stories of the socialites and celebrities who poured through its doors. I fol
lowed Charles inside the dimly lit foyer, where chic-looking couples handed over their coats to stoic doormen.
Charles whispered something to the concierge at the desk, and he jumped up with a nervous smile. “Yes, so nice to see you again. Your regular table is waiting.”
I tried not to think about all the other women Charles had brought here before me. And there must have been a parade of them. Instead, I looked straight ahead as we followed the host down a dark corridor, lights streaming up from the floor like in the movie theaters I’d snuck into as a child. Scores of curious eyes looked out from tables all around us, wondering, watching. A band played a ballad onstage, and I kept time with the trombone with each step. One foot in front of the other. What if I trip? What if I embarrass Charles?
I felt a gentle hand on my waist, then warm breath near my neck. “I just can’t bear to sit down when this song is playing, can you?”
Goose bumps covered my arms. I knew the song, of course. “Stardust.” Caroline and I had listened to it at the record store dozens of times, until the shopkeeper had told us we had two choices: buy it or leave. Lacking the funds to purchase the record, we’d sulked our way to the door.
Charles held out his hand to me. “Shall we?”
“I’d love to,” I said, following him to the dance floor. I felt eyes piercing my back, but when Charles wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close, my insecurities drifted away effortlessly.
“And you said you couldn’t dance,” he whispered into my ear.
“I can’t,” I replied. “You just make me look good.”
He shook his head. “You know,” he said with a serious face, “you’re really something, Vera Ray.”
Charles whisked me around the dance floor. His firm grasp and confident steps made me feel light on my feet, agile, as he dipped and twirled me. When the song ended, my cheeks flushed as he pulled me close. We stared into one another’s eyes for a moment.
“Let’s have dinner,” he said, just as the band started up another song.
We slipped into a private booth that provided a full view of the stage. The soft, tufted upholstery felt like a cloud to sit on, and with Charles by my side, the effect was otherworldly—at least, a world unfamiliar to me.
He ordered wine and rattled off a few selections from the menu to a waiter who stood before us with a crisp white towel folded across his arm.
“Have you tried oysters?” Charles asked me. “Caviar?”
I shook my head. Why pretend to have luxurious tastes when he knows I don’t?
“Good, then,” he said, turning to the waiter. “We’ll have both.”
Within moments, the waiter returned with a pewter bowl filled with what looked like shiny blackberries.
“Caviar,” Charles said, grinning.
I scrunched my nose.
The waiter next presented a platter topped with a strange array of mollusks resting on a bed of ice. A lemon wedge and an assortment of dipping sauces were artfully arranged on a second plate. I gulped.
“So,” Charles began, “you squeeze a little lemon on top, then pick up the shell, just like this. Then you let the oyster slide into your mouth.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
It occurred to me that all of this fancy food was quite silly. Why go through the trouble when you could have a fine ham sandwich? But I didn’t want to disappoint Charles. “All right,” I said skeptically. “If you say so.”
I reached for the plate and picked up one of the shells, eyeing the jagged texture and marveling at its sharp edges. My father, a fisherman, had brought an oyster shell home when I was a girl, and I’d cut my finger on its sharp edge. My mother, working the night shift at the factory, hadn’t been there to bandage it. So I tore a piece of fabric from a kitchen rag and wrapped it around the wound with enough pressure to stop the bleeding. When Mother returned from her second job, after spending her days tending to a wealthy family’s children in a privileged Seattle suburb, I held the injured finger before her. “It’s your own fault!” she barked without looking up. “You’re five years old; you should know better.” Dark shadows of fatigue hovered under her eyes. She didn’t mean it. She never meant anything she said after a long day at work. I forgave her, as I always did. And when she fell asleep in the parlor chair, in her work clothes, I pulled a blanket over her.
I held the oyster shell in my hand, feeling the sharpness on my skin, and recoiled, dropping it back onto the plate. I rubbed my index finger and eyed the jagged scar that anchored me to my past.
“Everyone’s a little bashful when they try their first oyster,” Charles said. “Let me help you.”
I let my eyes meet his, so warm, so welcoming. I’m not that little girl anymore. He put the shell to my lips, and I opened my mouth as the oyster’s cool, silky flesh rolled onto my tongue. I tasted the salt of the sea, its briny pungency, followed by the tartness of the lemon. The bite awakened my senses, opened my eyes.
“That was surprisingly good,” I said, reaching for another.
We ate. We drank. And we danced. With Charles leading, my feet carried me around the dance floor with an agility I hadn’t known I possessed.
Just as a song ended, and after a round of applause for the band, a couple approached us. The woman, with perfectly coiffed hair dyed to a beige blond, waved hello to Charles, her hand displaying a diamond engagement ring the size of a nickel. It sparkled under the stage lights as she held her fingers out to me. The man beside her, presumably her fiancé, looked at me curiously.
“I’m Delores,” she crooned, turning to Charles with a wounded look. “Charles, you didn’t tell us you had a new girlfriend. I thought you were still dating Yvonne. The two of you were—”
“Yes,” he interjected. “This is Vera. Vera Ray.”
Delores looked amused. “Of course,” she said, scrutinizing me from head to toe. “Miss Ray. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you as well,” I said, feeling a tightness in my chest.
“How did you two meet?” she continued. “At the country club?” She eyed my dress. Something told me she knew I wasn’t a member of the country club.
“No,” Charles said, “Vera and I met at—”
“At the Olympic Hotel,” I interjected. “My friend and I were there for the opening.”
Delores raised one eyebrow. “Oh?” she said, as if trying to make sense of the very idea of me at the Olympic Hotel. “Dear, tell me something.” She clasped her hand on my arm. “How ever did you get an invitation to that party? I know at least a dozen of the city’s most elite who weren’t invited.”
Charles tucked his hand around my waist and gave me a protective squeeze. “She was my guest,” he said, the confidence in his voice snuffing out any further talk of my appearance at the hotel.
“Well, then,” Delores replied, tugging at her date’s sleeve, “we’ll leave you now.” She giggled. “The way you two have been dancing you’d think you were in that dance-a-thon over on Sixth Avenue.”
Charles looked confused. “Dance-a-thon?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have heard about it,” she said. “It’s not really your crowd.” Delores then turned to look at me.
“Perhaps it’s my kind of crowd,” I said in a moment of boldness. My cheeks burned. I knew what she was getting at: I wasn’t good enough for Charles. It was written all over my shabby dress, secondhand shoes, and unmanicured hands.
“Goodnight, Delores,” Charles said before nodding to her male companion. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to me as we walked back to the table.
I nodded. “Where to?”
“Vera,” he said, as if suddenly struck with a thought, “why don’t we go to that dance-a-thon?”
I shook my head. “You can’t be serious.”
“We’re an incredible dance team,” he said, grinning. “I bet we could win. Besides, I’m tired of this stuffy old place.”
“You do know what a dance-a-thon
is, right?”
He looked at me with naive eyes. Here was a man who could waltz—but swing? “I think I do.”
“Couples dance for hours—sometimes all night,” I explained. “The winners are the last ones standing.”
“I’d like to be the last man standing by you,” he said, reaching for my hand.
I could hear band music billowing out from the gymnasium onto Sixth Avenue. Charles and I stood on the sidewalk staring at the double doors, where a crowd of young men puffed cigarettes, wearing shabby suits sized too small or too large.
Charles rubbed his forehead nervously. What was I thinking bringing him here? Surely none of his polo-playing friends frequented the makeshift Friday night dance hall. The men eyed Charles suspiciously as we made our way to the entrance.
“Hey, dollface,” one of them said to me. “Looking for a dance partner?”
Charles held out his hand. “She has one, thank you,” he said, putting an end to the proposition.
“Some broad you got there,” I heard the man remark as we walked inside. His voice was swallowed up by the music. But it was the sight before us that captured our attention. Couples everywhere danced with such energy, such passion. I watched as a man lifted his partner into the air and then brought her down again, whipping her from left to right like a ball on a tether.
Charles’s mouth fell open. “Wow,” he murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“We can go if you want,” I said, looking toward the door.
“No, no,” he replied, watching a man dip his partner so low her hair skimmed the floor. “I’ve just never seen people dance like this. It’s…amazing. I want to try it. Can you do it?”
“Swing? Yeah,” I said. “Well, a little.” I took his hand, but before we could make it to the dance floor, an older woman tapped Charles on the shoulder.
“Did you register?” she asked.
“Register?” I replied.
“A nickel apiece,” she said. “Covers your admission, the cost of the photo, and a bowl of chili.”
Charles looked amused. “And a bowl of chili.”