“Everything I write about is true. I think the lie comes from making everybody think it’s a swell way to live. Because lately it doesn’t seem so wonderful. Look where it got me.”
Samantha shrugged. “There’s worse places, I guess.”
“Maybe,” Monica conceded, “but there’s better, too.”
Officer Meeks was back with the girl who, after thanking him with exaggerated charm for his escort, revealed that she had taken the time to wipe the lipstick off her teeth at some point. He slid the door shut and locked it before looking off to the side and saying, “Five minutes, buddy. Not a minute more. I don’t know if the big boys want any of this in the press at all.”
“That’s all I need, Officer. Thanks.”
The familiar voice brought Monica flying from the bench to grasp the cold iron bars, pressing her face between them. “Tony!”
He turned to look at her, unbelieving at first, then put a finger to his lips and scurried over until he was nose-to-nose with her, speaking quick and quiet like a rat. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as everybody,” she whispered. “Family reunion.”
“Not so funny, sister. You know whose place this was?”
She shook her head as much as the bars would allow, and he dropped his voice even softer.
“King’s.”
“As in, Jim King? The guy who—?”
“Pffft.” Tony cut her off, but they were both thinking of the man who had come into the office a month ago. Obviously Hoofers had not been his only establishment.
Monica gripped the bars tighter, her hands now equally cold. “He’s going to think I tipped somebody off.”
“He’s not here,” Tony said. “You can bet if the Feds ever got ahold of him, they’d have someplace better to take him than a local lockup. Besides, you never wrote about the place, did you?”
“Not with any details.”
“And nobody knows you, so—”
“Hey, cop!” The girl with the newly clean smile was now standing right next to Monica, her face pressed through the bars. “How come the monkey girl gets a visitor? Maybe I wanna visitor too!”
“He’s not a visitor,” Monica hissed, hoping her hint would stave off further shouting. “He’s with the press. Same as me.”
“Oh, of course,” she said in a quieter, if still nasty, tone. “Journalism at its finest.”
It was all Monica could do to stop from kicking her and thereby giving Tony a new story to report. But there were more pressing questions.
“Does Max know?”
“That I’m here?”
“That I’m here,” Monica said, not at all certain of what she wanted the answer to that question to be.
“I don’t check with Max for all my stories. I figure I can sell this two ways. For the Chatter, it’s a cautionary tale of the evils of drink. For some bigger fish, it’s the story of the takedown of a gangster. Either way, I get a picture.”
He stepped back and began rummaging through the worn leather bag slung over his shoulder. “The light in here is lousy,” he said, producing a camera, “but sometimes ya gotta make do.”
“There’s a third story.” The words seemed to tumble through her lips no sooner than entering her head.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Monkey Business goes to jail?”
“Oh yeah?” He looked up from fiddling with the camera. “I can see that. Kinda cute, you standin’ there behind the bars. Then we’ll do one of them treatments—cut your face out of the picture and put a monkey’s there instead. Protect your anonymity, as it was. Might be a nice feature to add all around, the pictures. You could have Monkey at the park, Monkey at the White House. Even Monkey at the zoo. Feedin’ an elephant, maybe.”
She could picture it too. Her body, her clothes—finally getting the attention they deserved—posed all over the city. And just above her shoulders, maybe even under her hat, that doodled little monkey face that ran in place of a byline. What a fine joke. What a clever idea that would have been all along, but she hadn’t thought of it then, and such a monstrosity wasn’t her idea now.
“No, Tony.” She interrupted him in the middle of a delightful Monkey in a bathing suit. “My picture, my face. My name.”
“You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me, kid.”
She looked over her shoulder at Samantha, pale and puffy, sharing a smoke with another woman. What kind of girl had she been three arrests ago? Monica didn’t want to find out. Now she pulled her coat close around her, closing the collar up around her nose. The dying taste of her last drink lingered, a constant reminder of what brought her here. Not just that one drink tonight, but all the ones before. All the nights before. Maybe she’d just been lucky, beating the odds, keeping herself at the right places. Never going to the same place too often, never staying too long. Slippery—that’s what Edward Moore had called her. “Like the law don’t stick to you.”
“Nope,” she said, turning back to Tony. “I’m coming clean. Max can run it as a straight story, ‘Monkey Out of Business’ or something like that. I just think it’s time for me to move on to something more . . . I don’t know . . . responsible.”
Tony gave her an inscrutable look, but before he could say anything more, the police warden hollered again. “Hey, Mr. Reporter. You got one more minute.”
“I’m workin’ on it,” Tony replied, exhibiting the same impatience.
Monica was grateful for the interruption, thinking Tony might not be the best person to handle such a half-baked idea. Max deserved to be the first to know, both as her boss and . . . whatever else he’d become. If she was going to hand Monkey over to anybody, it should be him.
“Hold this, will ya?” Tony handed the camera to Monica while he rummaged in his bag for a new flash. It was heavy, boxy, and bulky. She’d never understand how Tony could handle it with such ease, let alone carry it around all day.
“Now,” he said with a glance up, “step back a little, and to the left.” He directed with one hand while looking down through the viewer. “Maybe one more step? I wanna get as much of you as I can in the shot. The way the light’s makin’ these shadows, it’s a beautiful thing, kid. Beautiful. You ready to hold nice and still for me?”
Behind her, her fellow prisoners caught on to what was happening, and whether it was to be included or excluded from the photograph, a mad scramble of women erupted.
Monica stood in perfect motionlessness. The flash exploded in a burst of cleansing light, taking with it her secrets. In just a few days, everyone would see her face, know her name. Well, everyone might be an exaggeration. Only those who’d been blindly following her all this time. She felt the weight of their adoration heavy on her shoulders for one burning moment, and then it drifted off with the light. For a full minute after, she stood, blinded, but as she blinked, the world came back into focus, and she stepped forward to grab the bars for balance, freer than she’d ever been.
There was a spot, dead center above her tailbone, like a button of pain holding together a body’s worth of dull aches. The room was cold with the same unchanging dull light. No windows, no clock, no reliable way to mark the passage of time other than asking, and nobody wanted to talk to her. Even Samantha had abandoned their budding friendship, having enticed all the girls to fill the bench, leaving Monica to sit on the cold slab of floor. Officer Meeks hadn’t made an appearance in ages, not since issuing the final “Pipe down!” after Tony left, taking his camera and notepad with him. A few of the men had been willing to talk—as unnamed sources, of course—and a few of the women thought it would be a gas to have their picture taken, but Officer Meeks had pulled him out before anybody got their full say. They’d been left with no recourse other than to voice their renewed frustrations.
Monica had jumped on the tail end of the shouts, hollering a plea for Tony to please not tell the boss, when she heard the sound of a key at the top of the passageway followed by the familiar squeaking step of Officer Meeks. He appeared at t
he door of the women’s cell, looking none the worse for wear for his shift, and read the name off a card in his hand.
“Elsa DiMonaco!”
A doe-eyed, round-hipped girl hopped up like she’d just won a prize and sashayed to the open door, blowing kisses as she left. A few of the men were called out too, chuckling profanities as they left.
“Now, see?” Samantha spoke from her perch in the center of the bench, the agreed-upon queen of the cell. “That’s nice. In Atlantic City they make you stay all night, no matter what. No one gets out until 7 a.m., when the shift changes. Keeps ’em from sending all us drunks straight out into the street.”
Monica wanted to say that she wasn’t a drunk, but the coating on her tongue wouldn’t let her speak such a thing. Besides, her throat clamped shut with the thought of staying for an entire night. Did Mrs. Kinship know she could come right away? Tonight? She’d seemed so calm on the telephone. Calm, and something else. Resigned? Unsurprised? She’d never been a fan of Monica and her late nights, her dates, her poorly concealed attempts at covering her boyfriends’ tracks. All this time, Monica had been dreading that moment when she would have to face her dour-mouthed neighbor with scraped-together humility and gratitude. Now she welcomed that moment. She practiced her smile into the darkness of her coat.
Again the squeak of Officer Meeks’s shoes. Meeks squeaks. She crossed her fingers and repeated it three times before realizing she had no reason to remember such a clever phrase. There wouldn’t be another column.
He called out three of the men, none of the women. Every muscle in Monica’s body protested as she shifted her weight, making her feel old. Everything about today made her feel old. That empty house. The way she’d left the train station wanting nothing more than a plate of stew and a good night’s sleep. The fact that she could sit here now and think about Max like he was some long-lost love.
And here she was, not yet one-and-twenty.
She may not have a home of her own, but as of today, she had money to buy one. She could find a new job, a new town, a new guy. Or none of those. She could go to college, or Paris, or South America—someplace warm.
She could write. That little bundle of stories belonged to a girl who wanted to be a writer. Now she was just a girl who made a joke of herself with her words. Maybe she could buy a cabin in Maine or a flat in London. Or California. Max had said she’d like it there. Everything was new, he’d said. Fresh. Fast. Perfect for a flirty girl. He didn’t know she had this old soul.
Then again, he didn’t know she was ready for a new one, either. And maybe, when he found out, it wouldn’t be too late to ask for his forgiveness.
Those Meeks squeaks, again. And this time he called her name. She had to lift her head from the tunnel she’d created with her coat collar and ask to hear it again.
“Monica Bisbaine. Right?”
Her cellmates echoed with “monkey girl” while Monica, muscles aching with cold and bones popping, unfolded herself from the floor. She ignored them. Two more minutes and she’d never see any of them again.
As she and Meeks passed the men’s cell, she heard Charlie call out—“Monica, Mousie, sweetheart”—but she looked straight ahead at the back of Meeks’s neck.
The cold went with her, seeped into her legs, her back, and places in between. She may have been walking with the gait of a crippled old woman, but it was the heart of a little girl beating within her. She didn’t want to face Mrs. Kinship, but she did want to go home. And after that, like any good child grown up, she wanted to go away.
Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
ANTI-FLIRT CLUB RULE #7
MRS. KINSHIP’S KITCHEN MONEY burned in his pocket. It might be the price to be paid for Monica’s crime; he just wished he could be the one to pay it. After all, he’d played some role in the crime’s commission. Had he tempered his kiss, had he censored his love, had he simply accepted an invitation for a dinner of beef stew, he might be walking away from her house under very different circumstances. Or maybe, given the coziness of the parlor, he might still be there.
It was quite a distance from the house to the station, but the only alternative was to ask Mrs. Kinship for car fare. He prayed with each step, asking God to protect Monica with every breath, both coming quicker and quicker as he closed in. He’d never been to the police station before, of course, and he’d never come close to seeing a jail cell. In his mind, Monica was cold and small, huddled in a dark corner, prodded and mistreated by moose-like prison matrons.
He broke into a run, dodging around strolling couples and parked cars with the passion and ease of his high school football days. Unfortunately, those days were long past, and by the time he arrived at the steps of the precinct office he had to bring himself to a stop, braced against a lamppost. A slow, wet snow had started to fall; when he looked up, he could see individual flakes dancing in the light. He stayed and watched, choosing a flake and then trying to match his breath to its descent.
Give her that kind of peace, Lord.
“That you, boss?”
The clipped, nasal voice of Tony Manarola interrupted his prayer.
“Tony?” He held out a gloved hand. “What in the world are you doing here? Who called you?”
Tony simply touched his nose in answer to the first question and shot the second right back to Max.
“I was at her house,” Max said, allowing Tony to intuit what he wished.
“She never mentioned she talked to you.”
“She didn’t—wait, you’ve seen her?”
“Yeah,” Tony said, and Max didn’t need to be a street reporter to know there was something Tony was holding back. He also knew no amount of peppering with questions would ever bring it out. “You here to bust her out?”
“Bail her out, yes.” Though the former wouldn’t be out of the question, if necessary.
“Good.” Tony sounded as protective as Max felt. “I’ll let her give you the details.”
Tony tipped his hat and was about to walk away when Max stopped him with a tap on his arm.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “Bail someone out, I mean. I’m not sure I know exactly what to do.”
“Look, boss. I’m press; I gotta stay out of it. You ever get a coat out of check before? Then you can do this. Give ’em the name, give ’em the money, and take her home. Big roundups like this? They don’t want no fuss.”
“All right,” Max said, slightly more at ease, though he couldn’t help cringing at the looming next question. “One last thing. I—I don’t have car fare. For her, not me. I’m fine to walk, but she won’t be in any shape for that.”
A slow grin unfurled across Tony’s grizzled face. “Well, ain’t you the attentive boss?”
“I can’t help but feel responsible. Because of the paper. If it weren’t for that column, she might not even be in those places.”
“Maybe so.” He delivered a light punch to Max’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the ride, boss. I’ll take care of it.” Within a few steps, he’d disappeared into the street.
Gathering courage, Max ascended the steps to the front door, holding it open for a man and woman exiting the station. She had dark hair and a sharp tongue, if her rapid-fire Italian words were any indication. Her companion—older, stooped, defeated—winced in their wake. It was a puzzle, who was the liberator of whom. Either way, they appeared to be in for a long, hostile night.
Inside, the station was a bustle of activity. A wooden counter stretched from wall to wall, and behind it, a dozen police officers manned their desks. The cacophony of ringing telephones and clattering typewriters underscored shouted demands for lawyers and quiet—all permeated with a fog of cigarette smoke and profanity.
Keeping Tony’s analogy of the coat check in mind, Max stepped up to the counter and drummed his fingers on its surface, waiting to be noticed. It didn’t take long.
“Who ya here for?” The offi
cer—Meeks, according to the colleague who’d shouted, “Hey, Meeks! Front desk!”—looked like a solid brick of a man, though worn a bit at the edges.
“Miss Bisbaine. Miss Monica Bisbaine.”
Officer Meeks muttered the name over and over, shuffling through a sheaf of papers in a folder before finding what he needed. “Ah, yeah.” He looked up at Max and smiled, revealing a row of strong, cinder-block-like teeth. “Monkey girl. Ain’t you the lucky guy?”
“Excuse me?” How could the officer have possibly known that? Unless they’d somehow worked it out of her. He was ready to jump over the counter and land himself in jail.
“She’s a corker, she is.”
Rather than risk his freedom for an explanation, Max calmly said, “I’m here to pay her fine.”
Officer Meeks studied him again, squinting. “Not sure you’re what she’s expecting. Talked to a woman on the phone. A Mrs.—”
“I’m here to pay her fine,” Max repeated, planting his palms on the counter and looming closer. “Does it matter whom she called?”
“No, sir.” There was a mocking element to Meeks’s response. “I see you’re not bailin’ out the fellow she came in with.” He tapped his cap. “Smart move, that. Leavin’ him locked up.”
Patience was about to lose the battle with prudence as Max worked to keep his voice calm. “I was told the fine is five dollars. Is that correct?” He pulled the money from his pocket, making a show of unfolding the bills, smoothing them on the countertop.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Officer Meeks said, reluctantly giving up his game. He opened a large, leather-bound ledger, made a few notes, then turned it for Max to sign. There was her name, and next to it, his. The purchase price noted in the column between.
“Wait here,” Officer Meeks said. “I’ll go get your girl.”
The wall behind him was lined with rough wooden chairs, most of them occupied with rumpled-looking women who appeared far too comfortable in this environment. He caught the eye of one, tipped his hat, and received a dismissive snort in return.
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