Speak Easy, Speak Love

by McKelle George

  A motor engine growled near the base of the hill, growing louder until a blue Lambda, covered in dust and smelling of petrol, crawled up to the gate. Beatrice went to her feet. The driver was alone—and a girl. She stood up in the roofless car and waved.

  This had to be Beatrice’s cousin, Hero, though she was nearly a woman now, stepping out of the car in a pair of heels and a skirt barely past her knees. She propped a pair of darkened driving glasses on her forehead and lit a cigarette. “Beatrice? My word, you’re tall as a beanstalk! I won’t reach your shoulder even in these shoes! Of course I’m not that tall anyway.”

  She wasn’t—a compact package of curves—but what she lacked in inches from the ground, she more than made up in sheer sparkling gusto. She strode over to Beatrice, not wobbling once. The ends of her curled bob rested on the high points of her cheeks and looked dyed: a stark shade of red that matched her painted lips, which were curved with the patient smile of someone used to dazzling people.

  Beatrice was indeed dazzled in spite of herself. Her cousin was more than beautiful; she was alchemical. It seemed impossible nature alone was responsible for so many assets in a single girl.

  Hero held her cigarette to her lips between two leather-gloved fingers, then whistled the smoke out in a pinpoint stream. Her eyes drifted to the lodge house. “There’s a rather birdish woman who keeps pulling back the curtain to watch us.”

  “That’s the gatekeeper. She lives there with her husband. You came by yourself?”

  Hero flashed a grin, revealing a gap tooth, and winked. “Sure did. Papa wanted to come, but he was feeling under the weather, so it was up to me.” She glanced at Beatrice’s trunk and the weathered suitcase on top. “Please tell me that monstrosity is stuffed with your collection of dancing dresses.”

  All of Beatrice’s clothes, dresses included, were in the suitcase. The only fabric in the trunk was padding for her human skull replica and a glass-encased dead frog. “It will be heavy,” she said grimly.

  “Well, we’re what we’ve got, so we’ll make do. Toss your suitcase in, and we’ll haul this sucker into the back.”

  Beatrice put her suitcase in the front seat. Hero removed her mauve jacket, pulled her driving gloves tighter on her hands, and waited until Beatrice came around the other side. Beatrice unbuttoned her dress shirt at the wrists and pushed her sleeves up. She eyed her cousin’s cream skin and tried not to doubt if Hero had lifted anything in her life.

  “On the count of three?” Hero asked.

  “One,” Beatrice said, “two, three . . .”

  They heaved the trunk up together and shuffled to the car. “What in God’s name,” Hero gasped, “is in here?”

  They got the trunk onto the backseat with some finagling and unladylike grunting, and Beatrice wiped her forearm over her temple. “A lot of books,” she said, “and a chemistry set, tools, a medical kit that’s nearly forty years old, but it was the only one they’d sell to me—”

  “Are you going to be a doctor?” Hero asked it casually, dusting off her hands and walking back to the driver’s door.

  Beatrice tensed but didn’t pause. “Yes.”

  “Well! How do you like that? Lord knows that’s a handy set of skills to have in our neck of the woods.” Hero bounced into the driver’s seat; Beatrice followed suit, climbing into the passenger seat next to her suitcase the way an ordinary person would. “Do you need anything else?”

  Beatrice looked up toward the main estate. “No.”

  “Then let’s blouse.” A second later the engine rumbled to life, and Hero adjusted her glasses over her nose. “We’re going to have a grand time!” she said loudly over the screech of gears as she shifted. “And I’m pleased as punch you’re going to be here for my birthday in a few weeks!”

  With that, Hero spun them around, tires spitting out gravel, and roared down the road. Beatrice lost her hat when Hero accelerated into a curve and Beatrice let go to grip the side of the door. Hero watched the hat spiral away (her eyes off the road for a solid four seconds; Beatrice counted) and shouted over the wind, “Good riddance, right? Feels good!”

  If Beatrice had Hero’s hair, maybe; there seemed to be a certain standard of glamour that no strand dared disobey. Beatrice’s curls followed no such master and in a few more miles would look like an electrocuted tumbleweed.

  However . . .

  It did feel good. Not the wind specifically, but rather not caring how messy her hair turned. After a while she shifted in her seat and came up on her knees to reach the trunk in the back. Hero obligingly slowed down until Beatrice found a pair of goggles. Hardly the fashionable driving glasses Hero wore (they were in fact the sort of bulky affair meant to guard against acidic chemicals), but they did the job. Hero grinned at her and shouted, “That kind of gear calls for more speed!” and Beatrice grinned back.

  The Stahr estate was on Long Island, her uncle had written, in a quaint district called Flower Hill. Beatrice’s memories of it were vague, but colorful and light. “What’s it called?” Beatrice asked. “The house, I mean. Doesn’t it have a funny name?”

  “Hey Nonny Nonny!” Hero replied. “Mama always said it sounded like somebody saying hello—something you have to shout or sing!”

  They sailed over the Brooklyn Bridge, through the motley streets of Brooklyn, and orderly rows and yards of Queens; then the road thinned, and they passed clusters of blossoming cherry trees and entered rural estates and fields. Beatrice took a gulp of the much fresher air, ignoring the uncertainty of it all, the way her entire life seemed to rattle behind the car as it traveled, like an empty can on a string.

  They turned onto a drive, and Hero said, “Almost there!”

  Beatrice straightened in her seat, surprised. The road winding in front of them was narrow and unkempt—barely a ribbon, choked with weeds, the gravel gone.

  Then it appeared: white siding and charcoal gray roof, mullioned windows reflecting the patchy lawns and terrace. Even signs of neglect couldn’t ruin the perfect symmetry. The garden had gone the way of the untended road. Long strands of ivy crept across the lawn and encroached upon the wraparound porch. Flowers, of course, but they looked vicious.

  Beatrice wondered if the state of the place had anything to do with her aunt’s recent death. There was no life behind the windows, the curtains limp on the inside of the dirty panes. No one is here.

  But then a portly man rose from a porch chair and waved tipsily at them. Bald as an egg, he’d compensated for the lack of hair on his head by growing a mustache thick enough to sweep the floor of a tavern.

  Hero parked the car by the porch and called, “Hi, Papa!”

  Beatrice stumbled out of the car pushing her goggles up. They proved necessary as a headband, since the wind had indeed torn her hair to utter lack of respectability. Her wrist buttons were still undone, one sleeve bunched past her elbow, the other dangling loose. She looked like a mess, and outside of Hero’s orbit she was suddenly embarrassed by it again; but she had no time to try to fix herself before her uncle was sweeping her up in a bone-crushing hug, lifting her a foot off the ground. “My girl, my dear girl!”

  Her eyes watered. The sharp scent of alcohol emanated off the damp pores of his skin like an exhaled breath. This must have been what Hero meant when she said “under the weather.”

  He set her down. “Thank you for taking me in, Mr. Stahr,” Beatrice said. “You can’t imagine how grateful—”

  “Horsefeathers!” he interrupted. “I’ll be Uncle Leo, nothing less. I was dreadfully sorry to hear about your mother. Such a tragedy.” Her uncle cupped her face in his hands. His eyes were blurred with drink, yet there was a spark of devilish charm in them that unlocked a memory, clear and preserved. Those same eyes and a voice (much less slurred) saying: “Even tricky girls can’t get the jump on me—I’m wily as a ferret; ask your old man.” He’d let her win three rounds of checkers, acting astounded each time.

  “You look just like your father,” Uncle Leo said after a mome
nt. “I see him sure as day. Anthony was tall, too, grew up lanky and tough like a weed. Except those freckles, ha! I’m glad you didn’t grow out of them. You were cute as a chipmunk back then.”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Papa.” Hero patted his arm, her nose wrinkling at the smell. She held Beatrice’s suitcase in one hand. “Come on, Beatrice. I’ll show you your room.”

  They reached the porch; a hand-carved wooden sign hung by the door: HEY NONNY NONNY. Below it, someone had nailed in a more homemade post: VACANCIES.

  “Vacancies?” Beatrice asked.

  “What?” Hero tracked the direction of Beatrice’s stare. She moved ahead. “Oh. We have a few boarders, is all.”

  Beatrice followed her through the door. She remembered the unassuming scale of the place. Only once inside did it become a mansion: the generous dimensions of hallway and stairway, the drawing room to the right, the dining hall stretching around to the left. The foyer was familiar—round, with a high ceiling, but the wood floor was dull, turned gray in the windowless lighting. Hero sighed and walked over to the light switch; she flicked it up and down several times but produced nothing more than an irate clicking sound.

  “Applesauce,” she muttered, then went to the end of the stairs and called up, “Hey, Mags?”

  A pretty black girl appeared over the railing above them, her long arms folded up in angles, and a nest of wild hair. “Well, look who it is. You get the stray?” Her eyes found Beatrice in the dimness and widened in amusement. “She looks this side of crazy.”

  Hero ignored her. “We need two dollars to pay the power bill, and I’m broke as the Ten Commandments,” she said. “Got any?”

  “Hold on.” The girl disappeared and returned a minute later. “One-sixty.”

  “Chuck it down, please. Are the boys back?”

  “Not yet.”

  A shout came from outside. Hero’s mouth pursed, and she set Beatrice’s suitcase on the floor. “I better help him—no, don’t even think about it. You’re the guest.”

  She huffed out the door, and Beatrice caught sight of a photograph hanging on the nearby wall. The scene looked to be a bar: half a dozen people dressed in finery, pale ribbons twirling from the ceiling, sloshing cocktails in most hands. The faces were caught mid laughter, and all were looking at a woman standing on top of a piano. She was dressed in sequins and positively glowed, even in monochrome, as if there were a spotlight shining from inside her. Her hip was cocked, her hands were out and extended. Her face manifested joy, a happy freedom that stirred Beatrice right to her center. Someone had scrawled in the white border: “Hello, suckers! Anna Stahr and Hey Nonny Nonny, 1925.”

  Two years ago. Beatrice’s eyes narrowed at the title. Either the owner of the bar had really liked Aunt Anna and Uncle Leo enough to name it after their house, or else . . . Aunt Anna and Uncle Leo were the owners.

  Already the idea fit Uncle Leo like a glove. Some of the girls from Miss Nightingale’s used to sneak into speakeasies in the city, and there’d been rumors of one of her stepfather’s farmhands running a still in an underused shed; but until now Prohibition had felt largely distant and irrelevant to her life.

  Something told her it had just gotten close enough to ask for a dance.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHEN THE AGE IS IN, THE WIT IS OUT

  Maggie stood beside Hero while she buttoned her father’s collar, as if she were sending a boy off to school. Hero tucked an envelope into his vest pocket. “There’s the extra money we need for the electricity this weekend. Don’t leave until you know it will be turned on before tomorrow. Papa?” Say what you like, but it was always the girls who rallied first.

  “Yes, dear.” Leo tried to tug her ear, but she moved out of reach.

  “Don’t forget, either,” Maggie said, holding up a piece of stationery. “You have to pick up Tommy and Jez from the station at five twenty. I wrote down the time for you.” That was more than five hours away, and dealing with the electricity shouldn’t take half that time; but there was no guarantee Leo wouldn’t take a few detours on his way there or back. He still had friends among Flower Hill’s estates, and most of them kept decanters of unaltered whiskey, imported straight from the Caribbean, behind locked cabinets. Leo had kept some himself, before Anna died. Maggie’s first real drink had been a finger he poured after her solo debut downstairs. “God forbid we toast your career with brackwater moonshine,” he’d said.

  Maggie put the paper in his other pocket. Sorry, she mouthed.

  This weekend was the first Masquerade without Anna. That truth hung around like a too-tight necktie. Early this morning they’d discovered Leo singing Anna’s favorite ragtime tunes on the porch, slurring the words. He’d used the last of his personal hoard, and there wasn’t a drop of extra booze in the house. On the outside he looked like hell’s dirty laundry, skin sagging, but soon, the lack of juice would begin to crack and splinter him inside, too. Edges that cut. Hero had stashed all the rest earlier. If he’d tried to wheedle some out of her, he hadn’t been successful. Hero loved her papa, but she loved her mama’s speakeasy, too.

  “Thanks, Mr. Stahr,” Maggie added.

  “Leo.” He corrected her with a sigh. “Don’t ‘mister’ me now. I’ll get your boys picked up on time. Girls,” he said to both of them, “you’ve done a lot of work getting this weekend ready, and I’m grateful.” He put his hat on and touched the brim, a diluted wink to his old charm and energy. “You can count on me.”

  “I know, Papa. Drive carefully.” Hero kissed his cheek.

  Only after the Lambda was puttering down the road did Hero turn to Maggie. “Only Tommy and Jez? Where’s your string instrument?”

  Geez, that girl. Hero was as sharp as a tack and, like Anna, knew the temperature of the speakeasy at any minute with her eyes closed and standing on her head.

  Maggie held up her hands. “Couldn’t find one. Everybody knows the pay is lousy. Tommy and Jez only come out of loyalty.”

  And even that was wearing thin.

  Maggie had been Hey Nonny Nonny’s headline entertainment for a year and a half, she and her three-man band—Tommy on piano, Jez on drums, and the third, whoever had given into her begging for that particular night. Sometimes a sax, sometimes a trumpet, but most often a guitar. Tommy and Jez did far more gigs in Harlem and were always on her to do the same. In their eyes, you could make a speakeasy’s stage hot, but sitting down to breakfast with the white owners of the joint the next morning was not part of the deal. Never mind if they’d become family the past few years.

  Hero put a finger to the center of her valentine mouth. “Mmm. What about that girl we saw last month in Harlem? You even said how good she was.”

  “The girl with the cello?” Hero had spent the evening with some Princeton boy, whom she’d eventually suckered into footing the bill for their May Day shindig. Maggie remembered because she’d been irritated at their presence. There wasn’t a finer girl in New York to hit the clubs with than Hero, but sometimes Maggie needed those nights to herself, with Tommy and Jez and the other musicians, without having to excuse the white couple as “cool” and “with her.” One of the best numbers of the night had been a girl who’d whipped out a jazz solo on an instrument nearly the same size as she was. “I never met her. I definitely don’t remember her name.”

  “I’d say there’s a good chance she doesn’t have a gig tomorrow night.”

  Maggie frowned. “Or maybe she’s in high demand.”

  Hero waved a hand; she knew she was right. Maggie only wished Hero was wrong. Most female instrumentalists had to join an all-girl band if they wanted their due, and a cellist would have it worse, since it took a lot of muscle to twirl one of those suckers through an improvised jam number.

  “I don’t suppose that cousin of yours has any useful speakeasy skills?” Maggie asked.

  “She’s studying to be a doctor, which will be useful if any of us get shot.”

  “Great. Now God knows we’re prepared.” Maggie knocked on o
ne of the wooden columns of the porch. “Did you tell her yet?”

  “No.” Hero sighed, dragged a hand down her face. She was still dressed in smart clothes from picking Beatrice up, as though she were about to trot off to a typing job. “I told her she should unpack and take a nap, maybe a nice bath. That’ll give me some time to get everything settled and give her a proper, unalarming introduction.”

  “Proper and unalarming, sure. That describes Hey Nonny Nonny perfectly.”

  Hero turned on her heel and sauntered back into the house. “None of your sass, Margaret Hughes,” she said. “Not until you get me a third member for your three-man band.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes but nonetheless went to the drawing room, where the ivory-handled phone was kept. She asked for the number to Tommy’s apartment building and waited for what seemed like thirty rounds of hollering back and forth before he was located.

  “Hello, sugar.” His rich voice came over the phone. “Couldn’t wait until tonight to talk to me?”

  “Do you remember that cello player last month at Goldgraben’s?” she asked.

  “I guess.” He was annoyed, wounded she’d ignored his question.

  “Think you could find her before you and Jez catch the train in?”

  “What for?”

  “What do you think what for? So she can play with us.”

  There was a long silence. “You want me to play with a girl?”

  “I want a cellist, who happens to be a girl.”

  Another silence, longer than before. “Mags—”

  “Just try for me, Tommy. Please. We could really use a third. There’s gonna be a big crowd tomorrow, Hero says.”

  “Hero says lots of things. But fine. I’ll ask around.”

  “Thanks, Tommy. I’ll see you tonight.” Maggie hung up before he could weasel a kiss out of the deal.