“Classy establishment,” she said.
He pulled a face and closed the door behind them. “Can’t say I spend a lot of time here. It’s good if you need a quick sleep, but I don’t like to be so close to work all the time.”
Just in case the cops changed their minds.
“About tonight,” Tom said, coming closer.
She slapped him.
The sound of her hand against his cheek echoed through the apartment, snapped his head around on his neck, and he had to take a half step to catch his balance.
After a second he looked back at her.
His expression was dangerous; the hair on her neck stood on end.
She would have been afraid, but she’d burned up the last of her fear for the night, and all she could think was, There you are. This is who you’ve been for all those years. The junior-gentleman bootlegger and the suave nightclub host who’s in good with the cops—those were only suits you put on and off.
She stood her ground.
Jo had guessed long ago that to survive in his business as long as he had, you probably had to be something more dangerous than you looked to be.
(She knew the feeling; it was the way you survived a dance hall, too.)
Even when she was young and foolish, she’d known there were things about him that she would never see in the false romance of a dance hall. There were things about him it would be better never to face.
This was the Tom she was meeting now.
(This was the Jo he was meeting now.)
He was quiet long enough for her to decide she was up for a fight, if he started throwing punches. She had the arms of a seasoned dancer; she could hold her own. Anything, anything to burn off this anger.
At last, he half-smiled as if accepting a compliment. “You’re not quite as I remember you,” he said.
“Good.”
“Are you done, Josephine, or should I sit in the kitchen? I can, if you don’t trust me.”
He didn’t say her name like a threat—it sounded more than anything like he was relieved to have something to call her—but she still crossed her arms over her chest to ward it off.
“Funny,” she said, “I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t trust you.”
He had the decency to flush. “Josephine, I—”
“It’s Jo.”
He blinked. “Oh. That suits you.”
She ignored the little heat that flared in her belly when his smile came and went.
“Tom, what were you going to tell my father when you came to the house, if you hadn’t seen me?”
She waited for him to lie.
She expected him to tighten his shoulders and grin and assure her he had never planned to say a word, that it was all a ploy, that he had known all along that she was in the house and had come only to rescue her.
But he didn’t. He slid his hands in his pockets and was quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was closer to the truth than she had expected. She didn’t know if that was better or worse.
She could punish a lie. She’d never anticipated the truth.
She didn’t know what to do about any of this.
(Anything, she thought. She was here alone. She was adrift, restless, exhausted, wild. There was no overseeing General here; tonight she could be anyone she wanted to.)
She sat on the edge of the bed. He moved to sit beside her but thought better of it, and instead he pulled the desk chair to face her and took a seat.
He was so close their knees were almost brushing, and in the dim glow of the bulb across the room, her handprint on his face looked like a shadow play.
“I didn’t even know who had placed the ad,” he said. “I just thought—it was so close to where I had driven you, who wouldn’t put two and two together—I wanted to see for myself what was going on. I mean, you never know what can come from these things. I got my job driving the milk truck because I replied to an ad for a barber’s assistant.”
He got an expression like a businessman hedging his bets. “I thought maybe there was some old banker who wanted to get those ten dancing girls to his place for a good time. I thought maybe there was some alderman sending you over from the Kingfisher to spy on us, and some councilman was fighting back.”
He looked up. “I thought maybe you had run, and there was a jealous husband looking for you.”
She dug her palms into the bedspread.
When she didn’t reply, he cleared his throat and sat forward, elbows on his knees. “I stay alive on information, Jo. Information is worth whatever it takes to get it. Whatever it was about you that you were keeping secret, I had to know.”
“That’s not your right.”
“I know. But that’s not how my business works.”
A lifetime ago, that might have stung.
“What would you have told him?”
“I dunno. I figured I’d go looking first. Whatever I got faced with would prepare me for the man I was dealing with, and then whatever happened after that, I’d be able to handle it. I’d find you, finally, and if there was going to be trouble we could get a fix on anything before—”
“What would you have told him, if I hadn’t been there?”
Now she was making fists in the blanket, crossing and uncrossing her legs at the ankles, pinned to the bed by the need to know.
(She knew, she knew, but she needed him to admit the danger he’d put them in.)
She stared at the flushing silhouette of her handprint on his skin, torn between the urge to cover it up and the urge to do it again.
At last, Tom shrugged.
“Whatever he wanted to hear.”
And there it was.
At least now she knew how he’d made it this long in his line of work.
Her dress was tight, suddenly—she could hardly breathe—and she stood up, just to get some air. There wasn’t any air left, where he was.
His gaze followed her, but he didn’t move. She wondered if he expected her to run for it, and this stillness was his way of assuring her he wouldn’t give chase.
She wasn’t going to run. She had nowhere else to go, and they both knew it.
“My head aches,” she said. “Do you have anything?”
“I can get aspirin,” he said, standing.
“I was thinking something with a proof.”
He grinned. “Attagirl,” he said, and moved to the kitchen. One of the cabinets (the least dusty) had a bottle of something unmarked in it, and he took it down and wiped off the cork with his cuff.
She stood at the edge of the dust, arms folded, watching him.
“It puts hair on your chest,” he said as he handed it to her. “Be careful.”
She drank, carefully, and let it coat her mouth and burn down her throat.
“Better?”
It didn’t feel at the moment like anything would ever be better again, but she said, “Sure thing.”
He smiled. This close she could see some familiar sadness seeping into his eyes, and something inside of her twisted and stung.
“I missed you,” he said. “I was worried for you.”
There was no sweeping declaration of love, no impossible promise, which was why she believed it.
It was worse, knowing she could.
She’d missed him, too. She didn’t say it.
“That so?” she said instead, and raised an eyebrow. “Poor Tom, crying into your pillow at night, having sweet dreams about that girl from the Kingfisher.”
His teeth were white when he smiled. “Some of them weren’t sweet.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. Her throat was burning.
(He’s the enemy, she thought.
She thought, He’s a survivor, and tried not to admit she understood how dee
p it went.)
“Well,” she said, “sounds like you’ve kept busy.”
It must have been his turn not to answer, because he only said, “You, too, with eleven at home.” Then, more quietly, “I can’t believe they were your sisters.”
“What, you thought we were a circus act?”
He gave her half a smile, but his eyes were serious. “I hadn’t thought about it. Now . . . I guess he must have locked you up something terrible.”
She shrugged. “I guess he must have.”
Her throat was dry from the drink.
“Well done,” he said.
He was too close all over—standing too close to her, asking questions too close to the mark. She didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t know how.
He was like a song she’d heard years back, played again in a quiet room; there was no telling if the song was any good, or if she only remembered it fondly because of the person she’d been long ago, when she heard it first.
She passed him the bottle. He rested his fingertips on hers longer than he needed to before he took it back.
She licked her lips and frowned at the floor just past his feet. His footprints were outlined in the dust, except for the point of his shoe past his toes. He danced heel-heavy, for balance.
“Was that dinner party an engagement party?” He was watching her closely now. “Are you supposed to marry that man who was beside you at the table?”
She set her teeth and met his gaze. He was too close, much too close. She was practically against the wall as it was; everything smelled like dust and whiskey, and she could hardly breathe.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So what will you do?”
It was the impossible question, but she was exhausted, and angry, and he was here and too close to ignore. She leaned in.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said.
Her voice cracked, but he was moving to meet her; then he was kissing her, so all she could think about was his hand against her neck, the sharp smell of alcohol (he must have dropped the bottle), his mouth on her mouth.
Then it was the bed; then it was the little puff of dust from the bedspread, his hands and his mouth and the sounds he made when she curled her nails into his back, because she needed to hear some other sound than the words pressing against her mouth, words she didn’t dare say.
• • •
“How much is he paying you?”
It was the first thing she’d said since he’d kissed her.
Tom frowned at her, exaggerated. “Is this some kind of pillow talk? I have to say it’s not my favorite.”
“How much is he paying you?”
He sighed. “More than enough for information like that. Enough that it feels like hush money. Why?”
So you can pay what you owe us for thinking you could solve any problem you made, she thought.
“We get four dollars a month,” she said. “It’s all we have in the world.”
For a moment he seemed on the verge of sympathy, but she didn’t go on—there was nothing to say—and the moment passed. Instead, he kissed her shoulder, the inside of her elbow, her collarbone.
(He struck such a balance between manners and selfishness, always; even in bed he had taken precautions, and she still couldn’t guess for whose sake.
His body was so warm.)
She closed her eyes, set herself against this. She couldn’t give in.
The madness was over. She was herself again, and there were sisters at home, and there was work she had to do.
He slid one hand across her stomach.
She caught his wrist, set it back on the bed, her fingers just brushing his skin.
She looked him in the eye and said, “I need a favor.”
• • •
Tom drove her straight to the back alley after dawn. There was no point in playing coy any more about where she lived.
The ride was silent; everything had been silent after she’d asked for the favor and they’d fought.
(“Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?” he’d shouted, after he’d stopped saying no, no, no; after he’d stopped trying to explain as he would to a child that what she was asking had risks.
“No worse than being trapped in that house,” she said, buckling her shoes. “No worse than that.”
If he thought she could be frightened into seeing the comforts of staying quietly at home, he’d picked the wrong fight.)
But either he felt guiltier than he let on, or he really loved her, because finally he fell silent and fastened his tie, and went downstairs to ask that his car be brought around.
From time to time, on the drive home, he looked at her as if he was hoping she might change her mind. Jo knew what that meant.
It meant that, against his own wishes, somehow, he must already have agreed.
After he’d turned off the car, she asked quietly, “How many men have you killed?”
He said, “Two.”
“Would you do it again, if you could go back?”
He looked at her as if the question surprised him, but he nodded.
“It was me or them,” he said.
After seeing him in her doorway, ready to betray them, sure he could rescue them later, she was beyond surprise at what he would do in his own interests.
It was such a terrible answer to be satisfied with, but these were desperate times; sometimes you had to pick and choose your vices.
He didn’t kiss her. After the favor she’d asked of him, she wasn’t surprised, but as she closed the door she could feel its absence in the way he looked at her.
Jo crept onto the third-floor landing just in time to hear the knock at the front door, and the butler scrabbling to answer.
Lou was sitting on the windowsill in their room, smoking a cigarette. She had upended a little tin compact, and a pile of butts balanced in a mountain inside it.
“Big show,” said Lou, without turning around. “You had the girls worried.”
(Lou had been her first and only; her very first friend in the world.)
“Promise me something,” said Jo, her voice stuck in her throat.
There was no hesitation. “Anything.”
“When they ask you, say yes.”
Lou turned to her, her frown washed out in the dawn light against the red corona of her hair.
“Jo, what did you do?”
It was impossible to explain—it was pulling the first brick out of the levee that would bring the waters down.
Jo said, “Promise me.”
Lou didn’t answer.
In the early morning, the house was so quiet that they could hear their father’s voice and Tom’s floating up from the hall as they went into their father’s office.
“And, sir,” Tom was saying, “while I’m here, I wanted to ask—that is, I don’t want to presume, but if your daughters are courting—”
Their father laughed. “An ambitious businessman, I see. It would depend, of course. They’re traditional girls, you know. None of this running around with men. They’re looking for homes, for real homes. You understand.”
Tom said something in a low voice that must have been encouraging. (Jo wondered if he was too embarrassed by her father to say it any louder.)
Lou stood slowly, dreadfully.
“You did this,” she said, so low she could hardly be heard. “You went out last night just to see him. You’re leaving all of us.”
“No,” said Jo.
Lou took a step forward, her index finger jabbing the air, little attacks.
“You made us all promise, Jo. No men, ever—never go home with a man, no matter what he tells you. Now look what you’ve done—this man who betrayed us—this man who thinks nothing of turning his back on you—”
“I’ll wai
ve my fee,” Tom said. “Call it a dowry.”
Lou stopped, horrified past words.
From downstairs, their father cleared his throat. “Well, that’s—a show of good faith. You’re an enterprising young man, I’ll say that much. I suppose there’s no harm in seeing what the girl in question has to say about it. Which of my daughters did you mean?”
Tom said, “Louise.”
sixteen
Me and My Shadow
Of all the sisters, Lou was the most contemptuous of tears.
They were a weakness; Jo had taught them that much, and Jo didn’t like them in front of her, but Lou despised them happening at all. The girls who ran to Ella were careful not to cry if Lou could hear; they’d catch a sharp remark if she ever knew they’d given in.
But once, when things had been too awful to bear and the music was slipping through the walls, Lou had gotten an angry, disbelieving look, and burst into tears.
It had been almost ten years, but it was hard to forget, and Jo could see Lou’s tears were threatening now.
“Jo,” Lou said. “Jo, what have you done?”
Jo entertained the idea of letting Lou find out on her own, just to make her sorry for doubting, but that was petty and dangerous. This wasn’t a punishment; Lou couldn’t look at it that way.
“It’s only to get you out of here,” she said, shucking the black dress. “Tom knows a place in Chicago that needs a hostess, some members-only club where men go with their mistresses when they’re trying to look rich and respectable.”
Even through her confusion, Lou looked wary of a place that sounded rough to manage. (None of them had patience for an unruly dance hall.)
“It’s just about keeping an ear to the ground,” Jo said. “This place is where the chief of police goes, so you’re safe on that count, and it pays plenty to get you in a good way, living on your own.”
“But, Jo—”
“I’d have gotten Jake for you if I could,” Jo said, “but this chance came, and I took it.”
Lou flushed a little at the temples, right where Jake flushed if you talked about Lou.
Jo pulled on the gray dress and smoothed her hair. “You’ll be out of the house as soon as Father can get rid of you,” she said. “If he’s as desperate as I think he is, that shouldn’t be long. He’ll send you off to Chicago with Tom, and you’ll start a life there.”
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club Page 13