“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 one another 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.
eight
THAT’S WHAT I CALL A PAL
The cops burst in just after a quickstep.
Most of the sisters were making their way back to the table. The sisters who abstained from the quickstep (Araminta and Lily) were at the bar, and Jo was in her place, watching them move through the room.
Their booth was the same one they’d had since the beginning—close to the back door that led out the alley to the street. It had become Jo’s favorite table ever since those first days; men knew to look for them there, and Jake always managed to keep it for them, somehow.
It served them well when the cops knocked down the front door.
There were only three at first—too anxious for the score to wait for cover—and over the last brave chord from the band, two of the cops fired into the air.
One of them shouted, “Everybody on the floor!”
“Beat it,” breathed Jo.
(She knew they’d all hear, even over the chaos; she knew when they were listening.)
The sisters scattered like leaves.
It was a matter of seconds—Lou leading a contingent out the back door, Jake shoving Araminta and Lily and Violet into the cellar tunnel. Sophie, who’d been dancing with an older gentleman they’d known for years, got hustled out under his arm like his daughter or his wife.
They were all so good at disappearing that the only one of them left, when the dust cleared and the cops had flooded the room, was Jo.
By the time she was sure the others were safe, it was too late to run. They had a cop stationed outside the back door, and she wasn’t about to try anything with cops.
There was nothing to do but stay in the booth with her hands in plain sight and watch as the Kingfisher’s patrons, staff, and musicians got arrested one by one.
It seemed, at least, to be a business-hearted affair rather than someone in the precinct setting an example. Jo knew about raids that went sour. (Salon Renaud was dust.) This was just reminding a delinquent about payment due.
There were no shots fired after the first warning round, and they were taken out by tables rather than dragged to this side or that side of the room. Most of the women were brought out without handcuffs, and aside from a few unnecessary comments to the prettiest, there wasn’t much roughhousing. Even Jake got by with only two or three clobbers, when he didn’t take the stairs fast enough to please the cop escorting him.
(Still, Jo watched them carefully—she could guess what the police were like when they knew they could get away with it.)
Eventually, an overgrown boy in a police uniform stopped by Jo’s table (gun in the holster).
“Miss, you’re under arrest for—for imbibing.”
Imbibing. She debated a crack about arresting everyone in New York who’d ever had a drink of water.
Then she thought what would happen to her if she disappeared for mouthing off to a cop, and she couldn’t get word to the others, and her father came looking for her.
When she stood and offered her wrists, he flushed; instead, he kept his hand hovering just above her elbow as he escorted her outside.
She risked a glance under the streetlights—someone might have stayed behind to look for her—but she didn’t see anyone.
Panic rose in her throat. She forced it back. If the others weren’t within sight, it was because they were out of re
ach of the police, already on their way home.
“I’m really sorry about this,” the young officer said as he passed Jo into the police van with the dozen other women who hadn’t gotten out in time.
“You and me both,” she said.
• • • • • •
At the precinct’s holding cell, Jo sat in uneasy silence with the other women who had been picked up.
Two policemen took turns bringing them for the bail-money call at the sergeant’s desk at the end of the hall. One by one they clicked away on their dancing shoes, and laughed over the line with whoever was awake at three in the morning and willing to come to the station.
One of the women, a sharp-looking lady with a curly black bob and a dress studded with sequins, walked out with a grin and asked the desk sergeant to dial a Fred for her.
He gave her a look up and down that made Jo want to shrink back in her skin, but if the woman noticed, she didn’t say.
“Darling, come and bail me,” she said into the line. Her voice rolled down the hall.
There was a short pause, and then she continued, “Well, if he won’t bail me out, would you mind? Thanks a million, doll.”
“Who was that?” asked her friend, when she was back.
“My husband’s girl on the side,” said the woman, brushing some invisible dust off her skirt.
The friend gasped. “Myrtle, no! What will you do to her?”
Myrtle shook her head. “She’s bailing me out. She’s not the one who’s in deep with me.”
When Jo’s turn came, she asked the officer (a new man, older and kinder) if she could have a little while, just to make sure someone would be home.
“Maybe even until morning,” she added hopefully.
“Sure thing,” said the officer, but he added, “Your mister’s bound to be angry no matter what. Better just call him and get it over with. This is no place to spend a night.”
Jo didn’t have much choice. Even if Lou could make it to the house, there might not be enough savings for bail (she didn’t know how much bail was for imbibing), and Lou still had to find out where she was. It could take a day just to visit every jail in the city, assuming you were allowed outside at all.
Jo decided she might as well get comfortable; she’d rather take her chances in jail than ever call her father’s house.
But what would happen to the rest of them if she was discovered missing?
She fought against tightness in her chest. They were clever. They’d come up with an off-putting illness for Jo, if anyone asked for her. It would give them a day, maybe, before she had to find a way to get home.
She pressed a hand to her sternum—it felt as though some air needed forcing.
Over the next few hours, the other women went home. They went out joking or yawning, shuffling out in unstrapped shoes. One girl, still drunk, gave the officer a kiss on the cheek as he walked her down the hall to meet the man who’d come to bring her home.
Jo watched them going, her panic growing. Was their father even now sending a message upstairs that Jo should come to the library? When he found out she wasn’t there, he’d think she’d run away. What would happen to the rest of them, if he thought his oldest and steadiest offspring had made a mockery of his authority?
He’d bar the back door. He’d give them all away to the first eleven men he could find.
Jo leaned her head back, the cool brick wall scratching her clammy neck, and closed her eyes.
When the kinder cop came back and called for Myrtle, the woman with the curly black bob stood up.
“Who’s outside for me?” she asked.
“A young lady.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Myrtle nodded, unsurprised, and adjusted her headband before the walk down the hall. Jo guessed it wouldn’t do to show up disheveled in front of the husband’s new girl.
“Myrtle,” called her friend as Myrtle moved past the bars, “I’ll come down to the store tomorrow and hear about it?”
“You might as well,” Myrtle said. “I’ll probably be selling her T-straps at a discount when you get there.”
Her friend gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
Jo wondered what shoes were so delightful that the idea of a discount was so horrifying.
“I’d say she’s earned it. At least she’s smart enough not to play around close to home, which is more than I can say for myself.” Myrtle shrugged. “Get home safe, Agnes.”
• • • • • •
The kind cop came back four more times. At last, Myrtle’s friend was called up.
Then Jo was alone.
“You want to make that call now?” he asked.
He was a middle-aged man, a career uniform (the nameplate that read CARSON was well worn). Some of the younger cops were gruff when they took a woman out, as if they were embarrassed on behalf of the boyfriends outside and were making sure the women felt suitably sorry, but Carson had walked Myrtle out to her husband’s girl.
“I don’t have anyone to call,” Jo admitted.
Officer Carson didn’t seem surprised.
“Well,” he said, “the sergeant is the one who made the bust, so I can’t just shuffle you out of here off the books. He’ll have my head.”
She was touched it had even occurred to him. “I understand.”
He frowned and gnawed on his lower lip, where a little salt-and-pepper stubble was beginning. “Tell you what. Why don’t you sit in the lobby while I book you for your overnight stay? I’ll take my time, and you can see if a friend might be around to pay your fine.”
It would have been a more useful trick several hours past, when people’s husbands’ mistresses were swarming the place looking to post bail left and right, but Jo was grateful for the sentiment.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” she said, and managed a smile around her sour stomach.
The front of house was still pretty busy for four in the morning. Apparently when a man called his wife telling her he had been out drinking and dancing, it took her a while to find the energy to bail him out, and the penitents piled up.
The place was a crush of made-up women in morning suits walking from the front desk to the collection area and back, with rumpled, sheepish men following behind.
Officer Carson got her settled on a bench in the center of the room and said something in a low voice to the desk clerk, who seemed to be even younger than Violet. Carson hooked a thumb in her direction, then disappeared into the crowd.
Jo smiled at him as he rounded the corner. This wasn’t quite a ticket home, but it was nicer than cuffs.
She watched the crowd, regretting that she didn’t dance much. She was a stranger to all the men here. She’d have to hope that one of the dozens of men in love with Araminta was willing to do her a good turn in hopes it would work in his favor.
After half an hour of scanning the room for anyone who might be inclined to part with twenty dollars for her sake, the panic began to rise in earnest.
Oddly, without this chance she might have been more stoic (it was easy to be stoic in a cell all alone), but to look at every face and see a stranger who might have helped her, except except except, was more than she could bear after a sleepless and terrified night.
Their father got up early, and he never hesitated when it came to business. If he called for her before the girls could disguise her absence—
Across the precinct, someone laughed.
It was a man’s laugh, carefree; someone who had come to rescue, rather than be rescued.
The man was saying to the desk clerk, “What, you wanted him to pour you a drink?”
His voice fell out of her hearing, but a moment later the desk clerk laughed, too.
The man was wearing a long black coat and a fedora that cast shadows over his face. Between Jo and the man there was a constant stream of strangers that blocked any glimpse of his face, but something about him caught her attention, held it.
It was too loud,
she couldn’t place the voice, just knew it was familiar—
Someone beside Jo cleared his throat.
It was Jake. He looked a little worse for wear, a dark circle under one eye where he’d been socked.
“You all right, Princess?” he asked, frowning.
Relief washed over her, and she gave him a smile that felt like it would split her face. “Not really. I thought your boss had worked things out with the cops.”
“Me too,” he said. “Either they upped their rates, or the boss got on the wrong side of a congressman.”
“Are you all right?”
He half-shrugged. “Around cops is a bad place to be Chinese, sometimes.”
She had wondered before about his parentage, and how it had brought him to the Kingfisher, but never asked; she was sorry this was the way she’d been admitted into confidence. She tried a smile. “Guess nobody at the Kingfisher knows the mayor?”
“The mayor’s even worse,” Jake said with a rueful smile. “You got a ride home?”
“I don’t even have a ride out the door. There’s no one to pay my fine.”
Jake didn’t seem surprised. (Jo felt like the only person in the world who was ever taken by surprise any more.) He nodded, glancing across the crowd.
“I’ll get my friend to post you,” he said. “He’s got money to spare, and he likes playing the gentleman.” Jake waved over his head at the clerk’s desk.
The man in the fedora seemed to cross the room by magic—one moment he was standing at the desk, and the next he was in front of them, laughing and shaking hands with Jake.
“Told you to come work with me instead,” he said. “The police call me in advance when someone’s out to look righteous. This low-blow stuff is a waste of everybody’s night.”
(Jo couldn’t breathe.)
“The bosses like a little excitement, I guess,” said Jake, shrugging. “Say, I have a friend who needs bail. Could you spare twenty?”
“Sure thing, you sly dog,” the man said, and absently looked over at Jo.
After a second, he recognized her.
His shoulders stiffened under the coat, and he shifted his weight evenly onto both feet.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel Page 6