The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  It was his nervous habit; that much she remembered.

  She said, “Good to see you, Tom.”

  nine

  BIG BAD BILL

  (IS SWEET WILLIAM NOW)

  It was a relief that Tom had changed.

  He’d gotten broader in the shoulders. The hawkish lines of his face had settled, less out-of-place than they’d been when he was young and gaunt. His eyes were ringed with lines that were turning to wrinkles. He moved more cautiously (though maybe it was just that she’d never seen him when he wasn’t dancing).

  Maybe he was just out of practice; maybe it was only that he hadn’t done so much running from the police in the last eight years.

  His eyes were dark green. She hadn’t really known; in the dance hall they’d looked gold, because of the lights.

  He stared at Jo as if he couldn’t believe it, like it was Christmas, or like he’d expected her to pine to death when he went away and he was shocked to see she’d made it to this ripe old age without him.

  She could slap him.

  She could kiss him.

  She had to get home.

  “Tom?” Jake prompted. “Would you mind? It’s only twenty. I’m good for it, if you don’t have cash to spare.”

  Tom shook himself a little, glanced between Jo and Jake as if trying to figure them out.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Happy to help a friend of yours.” He looked back at Jo. “What’s your name?” he asked, too innocently.

  He’d asked that question a lot, years ago; late at night, breathed against her hair.

  She’d almost told him, once, the first night he asked her to come with him. But as foolish as she’d been, she knew better than to break their cardinal rule (her cardinal rule) for some boy who could dance. She’d shaken her head no, every time, and he’d smiled and dropped it until some other night.

  Now he was looking at her with a Cheshire grin.

  She returned it.

  “Jane Doe Six. I was the last Doe in line.”

  He frowned for a split second before he smiled. “Be right back,” he said, talking to Jake, looking at her.

  When he was gone Jake turned to her, arms folded. “I didn’t realize you knew each other.”

  “We don’t,” she said.

  • • • • • •

  There were no taxis.

  By the quality of light it was close to sunrise, and Jo wondered how fast she could walk eighty blocks in her heels. (If she didn’t take a wrong turn; the city looked so different in daylight.) She could feel the chilly steps through her soles.

  “Let me give you a ride home,” said Tom, who had come up beside her like they were friends, like they were just picking up where they’d left off the night before.

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the bail,” she added, not quite looking at him. “I owe you.”

  “You could start with your name.”

  She looked over. “What would you do if you had it?”

  He seemed a little uneasy, his eyes moving over her face like he was looking for something. Jo realized that (of course) the years had changed her, too. She was older and heavier, with lines creasing her forehead from years of concern. Her hair was laced with a pinch of gray, and she answered questions with questions.

  He was facing a sour old woman he’d never expected to see again.

  This was like meeting someone you’d seen once in a movie when you were a kid—as unreal, as impossible to find what you were looking for.

  She must have looked sad, or disappointed, because he frowned and glanced away.

  Finally he said, “Jake tells me eleven girls follow you around at night now. Where do you find all those strays?”

  “It’s amazing how quickly you collect people when they stick around,” she said, glancing down the street at the sound of a motor. She couldn’t stand here any longer. She had to find a cab or a bus, beg or borrow. She had to get home.

  He shifted his weight. “Yeah, well, some absences aren’t your own fault. It’s easy for a guy to land in jail, just for being in the wrong place when the cops show up.”

  This morning, she couldn’t argue.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. “Glad you’re doing all right. Now I’ve got a cab to catch.”

  “I’ll drive you,” he said again, quietly, earnest. “Cabs don’t hang around at this hour waiting to take broke drunks home. You’ll walk twenty blocks just looking.”

  It was already lighter. Any minute the sun would be up. Jo had only a few minutes before her father was awake and looking for her.

  Tom waited, holding very still. He smelled like whiskey and soap now; gone was the cedar from when he unloaded barrels and boxes into the cellars of the Kingfisher.

  “Swell,” she said.

  • • • • • •

  When the police station dropped out of sight behind the jagged teeth of low buildings that lined Houston, and they were flying north over the cobbles, he settled back into the driver’s seat with a smile.

  It was almost how he had been, and for a moment she was dangerously close to being that girl again, her face pressed to his lapel.

  She fought it. It was a bad habit; it was a problem when you had too much nightlife and no daytime occupation. No one hung on this long to some crush they had when they were young and stupid. She was just tired, that was all.

  “No luck on your name, right?” he asked, glancing at her when they stopped at an intersection.

  She looked at him sidelong, and he laughed.

  “Can’t fault me for trying. Not like it’s a strange question to ask.”

  “Or a new one.”

  He didn’t argue. “Where are we going?”

  “Eighty-Second and Fifth,” she said. She’d slip through to her place somehow.

  There was a little silence.

  He drove the car effortlessly, which didn’t surprise her. Once he’d told her how he’d had to shake some cops downtown, driving through streets that weren’t meant to handle cars. He’d grinned as he told it, eyes gleaming, and she’d thought he was magic.

  She’d been young.

  “You still bootlegging?”

  The question was sharp, but he only grinned. “Nah. That’s a dangerous business for a guy my age. I have a dance hall of my own, these days. Just traded for it with the old owner—he gets my place in Chicago.”

  She wondered what had driven him from Chicago to New York. Probably a warrant.

  “How long were you there?”

  “Long enough to start missing things in New York.”

  She knew better than to take the bait and look over.

  “This is Eighty-Second,” he said a few minutes later, taking a corner onto a row of stately, silent houses whose windows gaped black. “Which house is yours?”

  “The stone one, thanks,” she said, swinging the door open before the engine was even off.

  He sprinted around the front of the car to help her out of the seat and made it just in time to take her hand once she was already on the sidewalk.

  This close, his eyes were startling, and his hand was warm. She fought against tightness in her chest.

  “I missed you,” he said, so low her heartbeat in her ears almost drowned it out. “I’ve wondered a lot about you, since we met last. How have you been?”

  “Stock market and hemlines both went up,” she said, pulling her hand back and turning down the street. “Thanks again for the ride,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Do you always go dancing at the Kingfisher?”

  She should say yes, and never go there again. She should say no, never to look for her. She should say she hardly remembered him, that this was getting him nowhere.

  “Sometimes,” she said.

  She ignored the smile that spread over his face, and turned on her heel and rounded the corner before he could get it in his head to follow her.

  He was dangerous, and she was off guard. No good could come of it.

  She slid i
nto the alley between two houses and, suddenly panicked by her proximity to home, ran fear-blind to Eighty-Fourth, where the loose gate latch on their neighbor’s fence led to the narrow scrap of common yard, and then the welcoming alley, where the new milk bottles were still waiting to be taken inside, and then (finally, finally) the back door of the house.

  Inside, she took her shoes off with shaking hands and scaled the stairs in stocking feet, forcing herself not to run, listening at the second floor for any sound.

  The house was silent.

  What if they had all gotten picked up?

  Oh God, what if no one else was home at all?

  There was nothing on the third floor either. She took the last flight slowly, her breath short, feet heavy with dread.

  Finally, with shaking hands, she opened the door to her room.

  Eleven girls were inside, baggy-eyed and too wrung out to even greet her when she stepped inside. They just grinned nervously and slumped back against the walls.

  Jo sympathized.

  Lou, who’d been pacing the room with a look of having done it all night straight through, nodded.

  “I was giving you until dawn before I started looking for you in jail cells,” she said.

  Jo didn’t question it. Lou had resources when she set her mind to something, and she was wearing a face not even Jo would argue with.

  “Who got back first?” Jo asked.

  Sophie raised her hand. “Mr. Walton put me into a cab and paid the fare. I was home in twenty minutes.”

  Araminta, Lily, and Violet raised their hands next.

  Jo looked over. “Lou?”

  “It took some doing,” said Lou, “what with all seven of us, but it was still dark, and we managed.”

  Violet spoke up. “Did you really get caught by the cops, General? We thought you were right behind us, but when I turned—”

  “It was fine,” said Jo. “Over and done.”

  Lou frowned. “How did you get sprung?”

  “It took some doing,” said Jo. “Now come on. Everyone back in bed. I have to get into a nightgown before breakfast comes.”

  They went, whispering about all the awful things that hadn’t happened to them but could have.

  Lou closed the door and turned to Jo.

  “How did you get out? Are they looking for you?”

  “No, the fine’s all paid.” Jo peeled off her stockings and hid them under the mattress.

  “Who paid it?” asked Lou, with narrowed eyes.

  “Jake took care of it,” said Jo. “Now help me out of this. They’ll come up with breakfast any second.”

  Lou eased the silk up off Jo’s shoulders. “Jake got picked up, too,” she said. “We saw it as we came around. He couldn’t have paid your fine from inside.”

  Jo sighed. “Let it alone, Lou. It’s done.”

  “Jo, are you in trouble?” Lou was frowning into their reflection in the mirror, Jo’s dress a pile of fabric in her hands. “When I got home and didn’t see you, I could have just—well.” She hooked the slip on the mirror’s edge. “How come you couldn’t run out with the rest of us?”

  “There wasn’t time for everyone to get out,” said Jo. “Someone had to make sure the rest were safe.”

  She pulled a nightgown from her wardrobe. Lou sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor.

  “There were seven of us,” she said, her voice tight. “We took two cars, and it couldn’t have been more than half an hour to wave them down, but the whole way home my heart was in my throat like it was trying to jump into the other car. I don’t—I don’t know how you do it.”

  Jo sat beside her, Lou’s warmth seeping into her skin. “You get used to it.”

  Lou sighed. “You’re out of your mind, Jo. If I’d been left alone, I’d be halfway to Boston by now.”

  Jo didn’t answer.

  Lou leaned closer in. “But I’m glad you’re home.”

  Jo smiled.

  Jo had a fondness for practical Doris, for proud Araminta, for brainy Rebecca. But it was with Lou that Jo had made her first waltz figures on some dark, quiet night in their room, nearly twenty years ago.

  It was for Lou she had first taken them out dancing, so Lou would stop her talk of leaving.

  Of all of them, Lou was the one Jo couldn’t lose; Lou was the only one of them who knew her.

  “Help me clean up,” she said at last. “Breakfast will be here any second.”

  • • • • • •

  The note came on Jo’s breakfast tray.

  Please bring two downstairs for interviews this afternoon. Love, Father.

  ten

  YOU WOULDN’T FOOL ME, WOULD YOU?

  After breakfast, Jo got herself in decent shape with rouge and powder, put on day clothes, and knocked at Doris and Ella’s door.

  As she read them the note, Ella frowned, as if finally realizing their father’s plan wasn’t a bad dream and that he intended to go about it with exactly this amount of empathy.

  Then Jo folded the note and regarded them levelly.

  “If you don’t want to go with me, I’ll ask a couple of the younger girls,” she said, “but you two are the oldest besides Lou, and I’m not sending Lou.”

  They didn’t ask why not; they knew.

  Jo looked from one to the other. “Doris, you know how to keep your head in the middle of something this stupid. Ella, he likes you most, and you know how to handle him. What we do today will affect the younger ones. I hope you’ll both come with me.”

  “Sure, General,” said Doris.

  Ella sighed. “Of course, if you need me. But this is horrible, Jo, what he’s doing.”

  “I know,” said Jo. “I won’t let him marry you off to anyone if I can help it, but I need to come up with something that will get us out of this, and I’m asking you two to buy me some time. Can you?”

  They nodded, Ella a moment sooner than Doris.

  “Wear something plain,” Jo said. “If you’re going to sell something, you need a product people are willing to pay for. We’ll give him the dullest girls on the island.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” asked Doris.

  Jo shrugged. “Then we pile on the ruffles and send in some twins.”

  • • • • • •

  Jo met them on the landing at one minute to two o’clock.

  Luckily, catalog shopping had given them plenty of chances to collect ugly, ill-fitting dresses that looked fine on paper and like monsters when you opened the mail. Some things not even Araminta could save.

  Jo was wearing a gray dress with a limp ruffle at the neck that made her look like a secretary. Doris had a dull-blue sack a size too large and had combed her hair so it clung harshly to her skull. Ella still looked lovely—she couldn’t help it—but she’d tried her hardest; the pale yellow suit almost washed her out, and it was an unfortunate length that made her look short.

  “Josephine,” Ella ventured, “what do I say to him to make him stop?”

  As if Jo knew what you said to a man like their father to get him to change his mind. If logic didn’t work, Jo was at a loss.

  Ella was better with their father than any of the others; if Ella didn’t know what to do, they were really in trouble.

  “Whatever Mother would have said,” she answered.

  No one looked comforted.

  • • • • • •

  Jo went first. It seemed only fair.

  Walters was waiting, and to Jo’s surprise he led them to the sitting room, where their father was seated in front of a modest tea spread for four.

  She had never been in the room, but Jo realized at once that it must have been their mother’s. The room, as pale and scalloped as a frosted cake, bore a woman’s stamp, and their father was perched on the very edge of his armchair, as if their mother had told him he must never ruin the furniture and he’d taken it to heart.

  That would have been one of the few wishes of their mother’s he had ever listened to.

&n
bsp; That thought bolstered her resolve, and as she stepped through the doorway she remembered there was no mother any more, no one at all to speak for them; Jo was their only line of defense, and this was an interrogation room, nicely furnished.

  There were footsteps behind her. Ella came in slipper-soft, Doris in four-four time like a marching band.

  “Father,” she said without turning, “this is Doris, and you remember Ella.”

  He half-stood, his hand out to shake like this was a business meeting before he thought better of it. When they came forward, he kissed them on the cheek instead.

  Doris and Jo sat on the couch that faced the windows (the curtains thoughtfully drawn against prying eyes), and Father took hold of Ella’s hand and guided her to the small settee, the seat closest to him. Ella sat, and let their father keep her hand, and smiled and smiled.

  Maybe Ella could manage something after all, Jo thought. A charmed man would agree to anything.

  Ella could plead the case for the ones who weren’t yet eighteen; they might go to school. He’d long been deaf to Jo, but maybe he’d listen, if there were concessions, and if there was Ella.

  “So,” said Father to Ella, “Jo’s told you why you’re here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Ella blushed and cast her big blue eyes down. “I’m not sure, sir. I haven’t thought much about—young men. I’m a little—a little afraid of it all . . .” She let her voice trail off, twisted her hands in her lap.

  Father frowned and leaned forward.

  “My dear girl,” he said softly, “I would never make you do something of which you’re afraid. I’m not a monster.”

  Doris and Jo exchanged glances without moving.

  “I only think, Ella,” he went on, “that you don’t wish to stay in this house forever, cooped up with your sisters and never really growing up.” He was stroking her hand now, gently, like she was a frightened animal. “I thought I could find you a nice young man, a man I can be sure is well suited to you, that’s all. I thought you might like him, and if you like him, well, then marry him.”

  Jo watched Ella and worried. Ella was a great pretender, but their father was just as great—he’d gotten their mother, after all, and tricked her into twelve of them. Ella couldn’t afford to believe, even for a moment, that their father was thinking of her happiness.