by Renée Rosen
Meanwhile, the doorman had approached us and now got Shep’s attention. “Good evening, Mr. Green.”
“How are you tonight, Ralphy?” He handed him a twenty.
“Good to see you tonight, sir,” he said, holding the door for us. “Have a wonderful evening.”
Part of me felt embarrassed but a bigger part of me felt wildly excited to be on the arm of such a powerful man. And okay, so Shep was a gangster, but he wasn’t hurting anyone, and the guy waiting in line was twenty dollars richer for it all. We waltzed right inside and were seated at a front table.
Another time I met Shep at a café in the Loop. When I got there, I couldn’t find him. Noticing me searching around the room, the maître d’ approached me.
“May I help you, miss?”
“I’m looking for Shep Green.”
He smiled. “Ah, yes. We’ve been expecting you. Mr. Green is running a few minutes late, but please follow me.” He helped me off with my coat and showed me to a corner table. I had just sat down and a waiter appeared with a glass of champagne. As soon as I took out a cigarette, a young waiter appeared with a match. Later, as I drew my last puff, he quickly whisked away the dirty ashtray, replacing it with a fresh one.
Although I loved the attention, at first I felt foolish about their making such a fuss over me, treating me like I was a motion picture star. But as the weeks passed, I became comfortable being waited on and fawned over and it didn’t take long for me to think I deserved this special treatment. I couldn’t help it: Being with Shep was intoxicating. He’d walk into a room and people would turn and stare. Women—beautiful, stunning women—would bat their lashes and push out their hips, doing their best to catch his eye. But he wasn’t looking at them; he was only there for me. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out what he saw in me. But when his eyes landed on me and he said, “Dollface, I couldn’t be more proud than to be with you,” my self-doubt vanished. It was there, in his reflection, that I found my worth.
Shep said I needed to be spoiled and he was just the man to do that. He loved to surprise me with flowers, a new hat, a pair of leather gloves. I’d never thought anyone could get such pleasure from making me happy. It made me feel lovable in spite of my past.
THREE-DIAMOND LEGS
Thanks to Shep, by the end of February I was able to quit my night job. Amazing how much money a girl could save when she got taken out for dinner four or five nights a week. And it didn’t stop there. I never asked for money but whenever I was with Shep I’d find a ten-dollar bill in my coat pocket, or a twenty next to my pocketbook.
“What’s this for?” I asked the first time I pulled a five from my pocket.
“Go treat yourself to something nice.” He winked.
“Just like that, he gave me five dollars,” I said to Evelyn later that night when I got home. We were sitting cross-legged on her bed, looking through a fashion magazine. “If my mother knew about this, she’d call me a prostitute.”
“It’s okay to take the money,” Evelyn said, closing the magazine. “Lots of girls let their boyfriends buy them fancy dinners and clothes, even jewelry. They take money from them, too.”
I stretched out and yawned. “If only our mothers knew . . .”
She laughed. “And they thought suffrage was a big deal. Imagine if they knew what we consider freedom nowadays.”
“You mean it’s not just about getting rid of corsets?” I teased, placing a hand over my chest.
She laughed. “They thought girls drinking liquor and bobbing their hair was daring.”
“My God, a bare shoulder or kneecap is mild compared to what’s really going on.”
Night after night the girls in the rooming house stayed up late, swapping stories about boys and the things they did with them.
“So when he unbuttoned his trousers,” explained Betsy Freelain, demonstrating with a banana, “I grabbed it like this.” She had firm hold of the fruit, making the rest of us roll around on the parlor rug, giggling until our sides ached.
“So that’s all there is to it?” someone asked. “How long did you hold it like that?”
“No, silly. I didn’t just hold it. You have to go like this, see?” Betsy ran her hand up and down the banana, setting off another round of giggles.
Another night I was in Barbara’s room polishing her toenails when Evelyn and Helen burst through the doorway, howling. “We just heard that Ginny Sparkus put Aaron’s penis in her mouth and then she turned around and put it right here!” Helen bent over and pointed to her rear end.
“No!” Barbara gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth.
I almost dropped the bottle of nail polish. “I didn’t even know you could do that.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to,” said Evelyn.
We were laughing so hard that Barbara Lewis snorted, which only made us laugh harder.
I knew most of the girls were more conventional. Sheila Schwartz told me it hurt only the first time and that lots of girls hardly bled at all.
“Everybody’s doing it, Vera,” she said. “You ought to try it.”
• • •
One night not long after that, Tony and I were parked along the lakefront in his car. It was the beginning of March, still wintertime in Chicago, and we should have been freezing, but we were generating enough body heat to steam up all the windows. The lighthouse was off in the distance, dancing its spotlight on us from time to time. Tony had a way of touching me in all the right places. In between my moaning I heard the waves breaking along the shoreline. His breath was hot on my neck when he put his hand under my dress.
He murmured, “God, you make me crazy. You gotta let me have you.”
I heard the passion in his voice, felt the urgency of his touch. It made me want him as badly as he wanted me. I couldn’t hold out anymore. I needed to feel him inside me. My mind went blank and my body took over. As he unbuttoned his trousers, I reached for him. With my back pressed against the door handle, my dress hiked up to my waist, and my stockings sliding down my calves, he entered me. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out and as he moved on top of me, a thick wetness oozed from between my legs. Once the initial pain subsided, my hips rose up to pull him in closer, and I no longer cared that my back was banging into the door or that his motorcar was rocking back and forth from the rhythm of our bodies.
After that night, we didn’t bother with movie houses or the backseat of his car anymore. Instead I’d go straight to the Hotel Twenty-nine, where he was living. I saw him fully naked for the first time in his room. His body was as perfect as his face, lean but solid, and his skin was smooth as marble. I never thought a man’s body could be beautiful, or could be something that I’d want to touch and kiss, but just the feel of his muscles gave me a thrill. And when I cried out his name, it was because I never knew a man could do that for you—give you such pleasure.
The next time I saw him, two nights later, he answered the door and pulled me inside. “Wait till you see what I’ve got in here for you.” He grabbed the bulge in his trousers with one hand and reached under my skirt with the other.
“Well, maybe I’ve got something for you, too,” I said, coaxing his fingers toward me. He closed his eyes and let his mouth drop open as he ran his fingers through the slick, wet parting between my legs.
Afterward, as I lay in his arms, Tony lit a cigarette and blew out the match, filling the air with the smell of sulfur. The bedsheets were damp with our sweat.
“I have to get going.” I sat up, but he pulled me back onto the bed.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Stay. It’s early.”
“It’s late, and I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Long day—you’re going out with him tomorrow, aren’t you?”
Tony wouldn’t say Shep’s name. I wasn’t sure how he figured out that I was dating Shep again. But he’d asked about it once and I didn’t deny it.
“I don’t get why you’re still seeing him,” said Tony.
I twisted arou
nd and reached for the cigarette propped between his lips. “Because you disappear on me for days at a time.” And it was true. No telephone calls. No messages. When I left his hotel room I never knew when I’d see him next. For all I knew, Tony was dating other women, too. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. I took a draw off his smoke.
“I don’t disappear. I’m working.”
I placed the cigarette back between his lips. Whenever Tony said he was working I knew that meant he was probably at the racetrack or else at the Four Deuces playing poker or craps. In his mind, gambling was working. It was easier for him to say that than admit he had a weakness. Especially to me.
Tony leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. With the cigarette still bobbing in his mouth, he said, “You think he has any idea you’re seeing me?”
“No.”
“You’re sure about that?” Tony sat up and rubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
I looked at him, at his beautiful body, his lips and eyes, and I knew I had it bad. “No one knows I’m seeing you.” I didn’t tell a soul, not even Evelyn. I was afraid she’d slip and say something to Izzy and that it would get back to Shep.
It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of losing Shep, but rather, I was just afraid, period. I had no idea what Shep would do if he found out I was seeing someone else. And I did understand Tony’s concern. Tony may have been a tough guy who could take care of himself but still, Shep was a gangster.
• • •
A few nights later, Shep took me back to his apartment for the first time. Moonlight flooded in through the bay window, casting an ambient glow over the mahogany furniture, the Tiffany lamps, and the plush Persian carpets.
“This is some place you have here, Shep. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
As if by magic, the Victrola cranked out a soft jazz number and the candles seemed to have lit themselves.
Slowly Shep came over to me. I was breathing hard and standing motionless while he unbuttoned my dress, slipping it off my shoulders and down my hips.
He reached for my hands, brought them to his lips. “You’re beautiful, Dollface.” Taking a step back, he studied my body, his eyes moving from my shoulders to my flat chest and down the length of my body. “You’ve got three-diamond legs.”
I glanced down. “I have what?”
“They’re rare.” He started at my ankles and slid his hand in the opening between my shins, making my insides tingle. “There’s one diamond.” His hand rose up to the opening above my knees. “There’s two.” And ever so slowly he inched his hand up higher, slipping his fingers through my thighs as I trembled. “And here’s diamond number three.”
Then he kissed me and led me to his bedroom.
Afterward I was quiet, staring at the ceiling, feeling a little sad, or maybe disappointed. Making love with Shep wasn’t what I’d been expecting. With Tony, he didn’t let up until I was dizzy and my ears were ringing and my legs were too weak for standing. But with Shep I hadn’t reached a climax. I kept waiting for it, but it never happened.
He did hold me afterward. Oddly, with Shep, that part—the cuddling and the kissing—was in some ways just as satisfying.
A GANGSTER’S GIRL
Saturday nights could have been tricky, but as luck would have it Tony had a standing poker game, and by ten o’clock, he was either broke, passed out or both. That freed me up to go out with Shep. No excuses, no explanations required.
It was a damp rainy Saturday night. I had been seeing Shep again for almost six weeks when he took me to dinner with some of his friends at Legends down on Monroe and Dearborn. I’d passed by that restaurant hundreds of times, wondering what kind of people could afford to dine there, and now I was about to find out. The interior did not disappoint. There was a harp serenade as you walked inside and a fish tank, big as a bathtub, loaded with lobsters. The waiters all wore tuxedos and carried silver trays with folded monogrammed towels strung over their forearms. It was crowded when we arrived with customers waiting a good hour or more for a table.
“You think you can fit us in?” Shep reached into his pocket and held out a fifty to the maître d’. “There’s six of us. We’re just waiting on the other girls.”
“Of course, Mr. Green.” He smiled and bowed slightly.
Was there anyone Shep couldn’t sway with money? I wasn’t sure if I found this trait of his annoying or incredibly sexy.
“Good.” Shep tore the bill in two and slapped one half in the maître d’s palm. “You get the other half when we get the table.”
Shep’s buddies busted out laughing but I was still shocked that he’d torn a fifty-dollar bill in two. Meanwhile the maître d’ made the people at the front table move, and a buxom woman eyed us, saying we had some nerve. Her companion whispered something that made her jaw clamp shut as she pressed her fingers to her mouth like she was blowing herself a kiss.
“Ah, here comes Dora and Basha,” said Shep, gesturing toward a tall blonde and petite brunette coming our way. “Wait till you meet these two. You’re a cream puff compared to them.”
“Is that Chanel?” Basha asked, eyeing my dress after we were introduced. She leaned over and pinched the fabric of Barbara Lewis’s favorite loaner dress with the beading down the front. “Oh, well.” She frowned.
“Oh, cut it, Basha.” Dora snickered. “You wouldn’t know Chanel if it bit you in the ass.”
“I’ll have you know,” said Basha, “this is a Jeanne Paquin.”
Dora rolled her eyes and pulled out a gold compact and a tube of crimson lipstick from her pocketbook. She didn’t notice—or maybe she didn’t care—that people were staring. I stared, too. It was the sort of behavior reserved for the powder room, and I couldn’t believe she was doing it in the middle of an elegant restaurant.
Dora was married to a man named Nathan Sloan but everyone called him Knuckles. “He’s my little roly-poly, aren’t you, sweetie?” she said with a wink.
Knuckles was short and thick around the middle with a bald head and a bulbous nose. But Dora, she was something else. She was a tall, striking blonde with fluttery blue eyes that rivaled a kewpie doll’s. The rock on her finger was enormous, and so was the diamond in her matching necklace.
Basha stood next to me, barely coming up to my nose. I thought she had something on the side of her face before I realized it was a beauty mark. And she was beautiful, but not in the same way as Dora. No, Basha’s beauty sneaked up on me, and I noticed then that a lot of men were looking at her, too, admiring her permanent marcel-waved hairdo, or maybe it was the mink stole draped over her bare shoulders. She had a cigarette holder with so many gems on it, it practically blinded me each time the light caught it just right. Basha was with Stanley, a handsome man they called Pip Squeak, or Squeak for short.
“How long have you and Stanley been married?” I asked.
“Oh, boy!” Knuckles started to laugh.
“Shut it,” Basha snapped, and with her jaw set and her lips barely moving, she said, “I’m not the wife.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my face flush red. “I didn’t know. I’m so—”
“Shep”—Knuckles was still laughing—“didn’t you tell her Squeak’s double-breasted?”
I turned to Shep, bewildered.
“Squeak here’s got two sets of breasts,” said Shep. “One set belongs to Basha and the other pair belongs to his wife.”
Basha drew a long, luxurious puff from her cigarette before dramatically tilting her head back as she blew a stream of smoke toward the chandelier.
As I looked at Dora’s sparkling diamonds and Basha’s mink, I felt like a schoolgirl in comparison. I was still cursing myself over my earlier blunder with Basha, afraid I was making a horrible first impression. I hoped I hadn’t embarrassed Shep.
Dora poked her platinum blond hair with a handful of red-lacquered fingernails and said, “What’s taking them so long to get our table ready?”
&
nbsp; “What’s your rush?” said Basha. “You gotta train to catch or something?”
Just then, the maître d’ came to seat us, and everybody in the restaurant turned and looked, thinking they were somebodies. I felt like a tagalong, someone’s kid sister who had wandered in behind them.
I watched how Dora sat, so easy-like, her elbow resting on the back of her chair, her fingers dangling down, fluttering as she flashed her rock. Basha was just the opposite. She leaned in on one elbow, keeping her chin cradled in the heel of her hand. In her other hand she held her cigarette holder, using it as a pointer each time she talked. I liked the effect. It made everything she said seem important.
The restaurant owner came over and shook Shep’s hand. “I’m gonna take special care of you and your party.” Without our even ordering, two waiters brought out big round trays hefted on their shoulders, loaded with fancy salads, lobster tails, and prime rib. The food kept coming and the men dug in.
Everyone was clowning, having a swell time, until a tall, dark-haired man came into the restaurant. He was well dressed and wore a bright red bow tie with a matching handkerchief peeking out of his jacket pocket. The blonde on his arm sported half a dozen strands of pearls, one of which had lassoed her left breast.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” said Knuckles.
“Shit!” Squeak threw his napkin onto the table.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Dora silenced me with a look.
Shep, Knuckles and Squeak stood up as the manager rushed over, waving his arms. “Please, Shep, eh? No trouble tonight, huh?”
“C’mon, ladies.” Basha dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin and rose from her chair. “Time for us to powder our noses.”
I followed Basha and Dora into the ladies’ lounge, a big pink velvet room with gold statuettes mounted on marble pedestals and a long, mirrored wall. We were the only ones in there aside from the bathroom attendant, a middle-aged black woman in an aproned dress to her ankles. She’d just cleaned the sink and was standing to the side with a bar of soap in one hand and a towel in the other. Her tip jar was filled with nickels, pennies and a few dimes.