The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  On the dance floor, Lily was dancing with Martha, as Rose looked on from the bar, grinning fit to burst.

  When Jo gave Jake the chance to dance, he handed her a whiskey and said, “With you?”

  “Best not,” she said. “You deliver bad news just so that I’ll swoon.”

  He laughed, but there was a flicker of something sadder behind his eyes. It shouldn’t have struck her (you had to make people sad to move on sometimes, that much she knew by now), but it did, a small jolt of surprise right between her shoulders.

  It was enough that when he asked, “Are you sure?” she somehow said, “Well, I wouldn’t mind.”

  It was a Baltimore, just right for them—not too romantic—and even though she and her sisters had been dancing for years by the time the Baltimore got popular, still it made Jo feel as if it was the first four of them sneaking out, the first time Jake had ever called her Princess.

  “Lou was really ace at this,” she said when the song was over, before she could stop herself.

  But he only smiled and said, “I remember.”

  She squeezed his hand, just for a moment, before she let go.

  Sometimes it was a relief to have old friends.

  With so many of her sisters clustered at the table or scattering over the floor, with Jake beside Henry at the bar and Sam’s laughing face bobbing along in the crowd as he danced with one of her sisters, Jo felt as if she had managed, at last, to find a home worth living in.

  She had even been able to think of Ella and Hattie and Mattie without worrying how far away they were. They were happy, and they were themselves, and Jo was learning not to ask for anything more.

  • • • • • •

  The next morning, Jo opened the paper and saw that Joseph Hamilton had passed away.

  If this had been the old days, she would have marshaled her sisters into her room and issued the announcement. She would have listened to some of the others debating the merits of staying or going. She might, if she was feeling generous, have taken a vote.

  By the end of it, she would at least have known what each of them wanted, and which sisters would be standing firm on one side of the question or the other.

  But those days were gone, and she sat in her little studio and sighed, and only hoped that none of them would choose something that would make them unhappy later.

  There was nothing else she could do for them now, except give them a place to dance.

  • • • • • •

  Doris called the Marquee to invite Jo to a makeshift wake, and by the time Jo caught a cab to the Lewisohns’, Rose and Lily and Rebecca and Araminta had already gathered.

  There was lots of coffee, and lots of food, and a few tears (from Violet, sadder for what she had missed than for who was really gone), and Jo watched it all and was surprised how little need she felt to interfere.

  She still wasn’t a mothering type (it was Araminta and Sophie comforting Violet when she cried) but when Rose said, “Lily and I want to go to the funeral,” Jo felt the urge to lay down the law and forbid it. She let it fade before she spoke.

  Jo only said, “Watch out for yourselves. We don’t know who will be there and you might not want to get in front of any cameras.” Then she asked Sam if he would mind pouring her another cup of coffee.

  It was an alien feeling to watch them making choices on their own, choices that might be wrong (were wrong—he didn’t deserve one damn daughter wishing him a fond farewell), but she was trying hard to be a sister now, and not a General.

  Some things you never stopped missing.

  • • • • • •

  Rose and Lily had apparently been speaking for the others; the night of the funeral, Rebecca came out dancing alone.

  Jo met her at the table, afraid to say anything one way or the other. Rebecca looked up, her jaw set tight.

  “I remember him watching us on the stairs that night he called us down,” Rebecca said, all edges. “That was the first time I’d ever seen him. I’m not too sad to go dancing.”

  Jo nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “You did us some good,” Rebecca said. “Even and all.”

  For Rebecca, that was a rousing toast.

  They sat for a moment in the quiet understanding of two soldiers, before a young man gathered his courage and asked Rebecca for the foxtrot.

  • • • • • •

  Every night that week, more sisters appeared at the door, and by Saturday night even Doris must have finished what she thought was their father’s fair share of mourning, and the Lewisohn-house contingent showed up early and restless, skittering onto the dance floor as if they’d been waiting for weeks.

  Doris hung back and looked ready to explain if Jo pressed her, but Jo said only, “It’s good to see you—what’s your poison?” and Doris smiled gratefully and answered, “Champagne.”

  Jake brought over the first tray of drinks himself, and kissed Sophie’s hand, which made her blush—Jake was too handsome for her to be comfortable with. Jo would have to explain to him, if he asked Sophie to dance and she turned him down.

  Then Henry was calling her to deal with a sharp-looking customer who didn’t feel Jake had the right to ask a banker for payment (he did, Jo assured him, and he’d get it or the doorman would escort the gentleman out and be instructed to remember his face), and Ames approached her about a raise for the musicians (bad timing, since she’d just upped her payments to Mr. Parker on imaginary approval from Tom, but she was happy to discuss it in the morning—their music was worth the money, and the Marquee had a reputation to protect).

  Then there were decisions to be made about what to pull from the cellar (a little of the top-shelf; it was Saturday), and her sisters were small points of happiness on the dance floor, and Jo was so content in all the bustle of usefulness that when she turned around and saw the front stairs, what she saw pained her as if she had forgotten and strained an old wound.

  She didn’t believe it for one full breath, one endless inhale where she struggled to reconcile the bright red hair and the drawn, worried face of the woman who stood all alone on the stairs—Jo had never seen her that way.

  Then came the exhale, and with it a shout that felt halfway between an accident and a curse.

  “Lou!”

  The bandstand was raging and the trumpets were going to town, and the call was lost in the noise, but Lou was her sister, and heard it.

  There wasn’t time to go around the dance floor, suddenly—Jo drove into the center, avoiding the shining couples, dodging the line of dance, shaving seconds off how long it would take—

  Then Lou had met her halfway, and when the music ended and the couples stopped Lou and Jo were stranded on the dance floor, embracing so tightly that the spangles on Jo’s dress dug into her skin.

  She didn’t care—nothing mattered but Lou, and her new, strange perfume, and the press of her forehead on Jo’s shoulder, and the hot, painful feeling that Jo was going to burst out of her own skin from joy.

  “We came back,” Lou was gasping, “we tried to stay, but I knew something was wrong and we had to come home again—Tom felt it too, neither one of us could sleep, we were so worried—and then we got here and saw that Father had died and the house was empty, and the Kingfisher is so different we didn’t know what to do—we thought you had all vanished, and I got so desperate and Tom said we should come here just in case—God, Jo!”

  Jo laughed through a few treacherous tears and held on to her harder, her knuckles getting scraped on the beads of Lou’s bronze dress.

  She said into Lou’s hair, “Took you long enough.”

  Then Lou was laughing, a sharp, low laugh that hurt Jo all over again (God, how badly she had been missed!).

  “I’ll tell my old man you said that,” said Lou, and it was only then that Jo put two pennies together and remembered that if Lou was here, so was Tom.

  She pulled back enough to look Lou in the eye.

  It was a Charleston already; t
he conversations had been drowned out by the bright blare of music, and the couples were swinging past to avoid the pair of addled girls who were embracing at the edge of the floor with no regard for the line of dance.

  At the edge of Jo’s vision, she saw that the others had gathered to welcome Lou but were waiting for the word. (Old habits died hard.)

  She stared at Lou a moment more, still as terrified as when she thought Lou was alone in the world, unable to bring herself to ask any questions with answers she might not like.

  “Stop it,” said Lou, and it might as well have been There was no funny business, you dope. “Go say hello.”

  When Jo looked up, Tom was standing on the stairs, hat in hand, watching the reunion.

  He had a ghost of a smile that got brighter when he caught her eye, and even brighter when she disentangled herself from Lou and slid through the edge of the crowd toward the stairs.

  His eyes never moved from her face, and when he saw her coming toward him, he took the stairs down, slowly, to meet her halfway.

  Lou must have been good company. He looked a little younger, or night made him younger, or Jo was always going to be young when she met him again. It was hard to tell.

  Her heart was a drum by the time she was close enough to touch him.

  He didn’t waste time with handshakes; he caught one arm around her waist and embraced her, and for once it felt like a beginning and not like an end.

  When they pulled back, he was grinning, and now, now, he looked like the young man she’d met eight years ago.

  “What in God’s name have you been doing with this place?” he asked.

  “Running it right,” she said with a raised eyebrow, and when he laughed she could feel his shoulders trembling against hers.

  (Across the room, Jake was hovering at the edge of the bar, looking at Lou like she was the moon.)

  Jo wrapped one arm around Tom and drew him closer, her fist fitting between his shoulders, his eyes bright, smiling like his face would split.

  She knew the feeling—her happiness was so sharp it stung—but she was still unsettled, still looking for Lou on the packed dance floor. (Lou hadn’t come so far to get lost in this crowd, not while Jo was watching.)

  His hand on her waist tightened for a moment, and she looked over at their table, where Lou was hugging the others one at a time and watching Jo over the heads of the younger girls, her smile a lamp that could light the whole room.

  “Save me a foxtrot,” Tom said, and let go.

  She grinned at him and gripped his shoulder like it was an answer.

  (There were a lot of things she couldn’t yet say, but maybe now, at last, they would have time.)

  She took the last few stairs down to the dance floor and up again to the mezzanine, sliding through the crowd to embrace the last of her sisters to come home again.

  Then Lou was holding her close enough to hurt, and the others were kissing Jo’s cheek as they passed by, as if they were all home at last, and underneath them the music was shaking the boards as the sisters, one by one, took to the floor to dance.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks are due, as always, to many people who gave of themselves to make this book happen.

  To my family, for their support (particularly Tally and my grandparents, whose encouragement means more than I can say). To Elizabeth, Veronica, Delia, Stephanie, Kelly, Lisa, Jeanine, and everyone who read it and shaped it; to my agent, Joe, who wanted it to see the world. To Daniel, who championed it all the way there, and all those at Atria, who have been amazing in their support. I would like to thank every amateur historian, professional association, national institution, and all others who make documents, photos, music, and ephemera available on the Web, allowing the hours at which research can be conducted to be Whenever O’clock.

  And finally, though this story has been a long time coming, I’d like to thank Anna for making me realize it was time to write this particular book, when she asked if I was ever going to write something in which not everybody died.

  GENEVIEVE VALENTINE is the acclaimed author of Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, winner of the Crawford Award for Best Novel, and a Nebula Award nominee. Her short fiction has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She lives in New York City.

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  ALSO BY GENEVIEVE VALENTINE

  Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Genevieve Valentine

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Atria Books hardcover edition June 2014

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  Interior design by Esther Paradelo

  Jacket image © Illina Simeonova/Trevillion Images

  Jacket design by Connie Gabbert

  Author photograph by Ellen B. Wright

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Valentine, Genevieve.

   The Girls at the Kingfisher Club : a novel / by Genevieve Valentine. — First Atria Books hardcover edition.

    pages cm

   1. Nineteen twenties—Fiction. 2. Young women—New York (State) —New York—Fiction. I. Title.

   PS3622.A436G57 2014

   813'.6—dc23              2013023870

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3908-3

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3910-6 (ebook)

  Contents

  Chapter 1: No Sir, That’s Not My Gal

  Chapter 2: That’s My Weakness Now

  Chapter 3: Charleston Baby of Mine

  Chapter 4: Positively, Absolutely

  Chapter 5: The Baltimore

  Chapter 6: Ain’t We Got Fun?

  Chapter 7: Sometimes I’m Happy (Sometimes I’m Blue)

  Chapter 8: That’s What I Call a Pal

  Chapter 9: Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)

  Chapter 10: You Wouldn’t Fool Me, Would You?

  Chapter 11: Forgetting You

  Chapter 12: If You Hadn’t Gone Away

  Chapter 13: Is Everybody Happy Now?

  Chapter 14: What Do I Care What Somebody Said

  Chapter 15: She’s so Unusual

  Chapter 16: Me and My Shadow

  Chapter 17: Some Sunny Day

  Chapter 18: There’ll Be Some Changes Made

  Chapter 19: What’ll I Do

  Chapter 20: My Regular Gal

  Chapter 21: Hop Skip

  Chapter 22: After You’ve Gone

  Chapter 23: Some of These Days

  Chapter 24: Lucky Day

  Chapter 25: It’ll Ge
t You

  Chapter 26: Show Me the Way to Go Home

  Chapter 27: The Song Is Ended (but the Melody Lingers on)

  Acknowledgments

  About Genevieve Valentine