Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book)

by Duncan, Alice

  I nodded. “Yes. Since last Saturday, when she went to her job at the Kit Kat Klub.”

  Harvey and Mr. Easthope exchanged a speaking glance. Harvey said, “The Kit Kat Klub? She works there?”

  “According to Barbara-Ann, she does,” I affirmed, my gaze slipping between the two men. “Do you know the place?”

  “Oh, yes,” muttered Harvey. “We know it, all right.”

  “Dreadful dive,” said Mr. Easthope.

  Oh, dear. More than ever, my insides felt sick, and I carefully returned to my plate the spear of asparagus I’d been about to stick in my mouth. “I promised Barbara-Ann that I’d go there tonight and ask about her mother.”

  Although I’d spoken softly, all three of my fellow diners turned to stare at me. It was rather as if I’d dropped a bomb.

  “You what?” Chloe asked, astounded.

  “Never!” That was Harvey, and he’d spoken very loudly. His adamancy surprised me, since Harvey was generally an easygoing sort of fellow.

  “My dear, you can’t!” said Mr. Easthope, his handsome cheeks pink and a look of real distress in his magnificent brown eyes. “It’s a terrible place!”

  It was the wrong reaction, and Chloe, at least, ought to have known it. Opposition was what had goaded me into taking typewriting and shorthand classes at the YWCA. Opposition was what had impelled me to move to the West Coast. And now opposition was making the sick feeling in my middle recede and a sensation of rage and purpose subsume it.

  Because he was a kind man and truly believed in what he’d said, I addressed my first comment to Mr. Easthope. “I know it’s an awful place, but that’s where the poor woman works. I have to start somewhere, and that seems like the best place.”

  “But what about Mr. Templeton?” Mr. Easthope asked. Reasonably, curse it. “I thought he was the investigator and you were his secretary. Isn’t it his job to do the investigating?”

  I felt my cheeks get hot. “Well, yes, but he was unable to attend to this matter.” I couldn’t make myself tell these people that Mr. Templeton had flatly refused to assist a poor little twelve-year-old girl in her hour of distress and had chosen instead to sneak about, trying to find that fat man’s fiancée, who had probably run away because who’d want to be married to that overweight, sweaty man, who was a toad? “So I volunteered.” That last was the absolute truth.

  My dinner companions looked at each other and then at me. “It … um … might be an unwise thing to do, Mercy,” said Chloe, choosing her words carefully. She had begun to remember how opposition affected me, I guess.

  “I forbid it,” stated Harvey. Instantly Chloe reached out her hand and covered his. She shook her head slightly.

  I smiled at Harvey, knowing he’d only spoken from a feeling of brotherly responsibility. “I’m sorry, Harvey, but you can’t really forbid me, you know. As Chloe reminded me this morning, I’m free, white, and twenty-one.”

  Again, a fairly anguished exchange of glances took place. I felt kind of bad about that. I mean, I didn’t want to upset anyone. But I had told Barbara-Ann I’d help her and, by golly, I was going to help her.

  Mr. Easthope cleared his throat. Folding his napkin and placing it precisely beside his plate, he smiled at me kindly, rather as if he were a zookeeper attempting to placate a fretful chimpanzee. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Allcutt. Since you seem determined to assist this child in distress—”

  I nodded and said, “Yes, I am.”

  “Right. Well, then, why don’t I accompany you to the Kit Kat Klub? I’m sure it would look much more natural for a young woman to attend a nightclub accompanied by a man, even such a one as I.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I thought he was a peach.

  “Oh, Francis! Would you do that for Mercy?” Chloe gushed appreciation.

  “Happy to,” said Mr. Easthope nobly.

  I was feeling pretty gushy myself. Mr. Easthope’s offer of assistance made all my sick feelings vanish in an instant. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to inconvenience him. “Are you sure, Mr. Easthope? If you have something else to do …”

  “Oh, no!” he assured me. “Not at all. I was looking forward to a dreary evening at home after this delightful meal.”

  “Truly?” I was skeptical and made sure he knew it. I couldn’t imagine so magnificent a specimen of manhood as Francis Easthope spending an evening alone.

  He patted my hand. “Absolutely. Why, it will be an adventure.”

  An adventure. Hmm. By golly, I suppose it would be. “Then … thank you. Thank you very much.”

  The gust of air released as they all sighed in relief made the candle flames flicker.

  Four

  Chloe insisted I wear one of her evening ensembles to the Kit Kat Klub. “Even if it is a dive, I’m sure there will be people there who know Harvey and me, and I won’t allow my sister to go out on the town looking like a librarian from Bean Town.”

  I squinted into the mirror. “Do I really look like a librarian?”

  “Yes.” No equivocation. No mitigating adjectives.

  Hmmm. The notion didn’t appeal, probably because the only two librarians I’d ever known had been old, gray, stuffy and mean. Since then, I’ve learned that not all librarians are like Miss Hatchett and Mrs. Trevelian, but I knew to whom Chloe referred and, therefore, I submitted meekly. “Thanks, Chloe.”

  “Don’t mention it, kid. Besides, you want to look your best when you go out with Francis, don’t you?”

  There was a valid point if ever I’d heard one. “Yes.”

  “Good. Let me see now.” She patted her lip with her finger and looked me up and down. I stood before her in my virginal white combinations, feeling a little silly. “First of all, we have to do something with your bosom.”

  My hands flew to the protuberances on my chest, and I felt even sillier. “What?”

  “We’ll have to bind them. Don’t worry. I have everything we need.” She went to her bureau and fished in it, coming away with a band that she wrapped around me, squashing me almost flat. I wasn’t overly endowed there, but I didn’t like the feeling, and said, “Ick.”

  “Don’t ick at me. You’ll wear a corset, too.”

  “Ew.”

  “Listen, kid, you’re going to be a credit to Harvey and me, or you’re not going. I’m not going to have my sister’s extraneous parts bouncing up and down when she does the Charleston with the most gorgeous man in town.”

  “Yes, Chloe,” I said humbly, thinking that the sacrifice would be worth it if I could help Barbara-Ann Houser find her mother. Even a rotten mother, which I feared Mrs. Houser might be, must be better than no mother at all, if you’re twelve years old.

  After Chloe had succeeded in all but mummifying my entire torso, she strode to her closet and flung the door wide. I gaped, amazed, never having seen such a large closet or so many clothes. Why, you could walk right in and move the racks! “Aha!” she cried after a few moments of reflection. “This is it. It’ll go perfectly with your coloring.”

  I’d never thought much about my coloring before that evening. I had brown hair with a few red highlights, dark blue eyes, and a fair skin. I’d never thought of myself in terms of coloring, except that I’d rather have been a natural blonde, like Chloe. Her skin was a little fairer than mine, too, but she had the same deep blue eyes. I thought she was beautiful—and that I fell far short of that designation.

  I liked our eyes better than any other of our features. They were large and rimmed with dark lashes. Occasionally, when Chloe and Harvey had been going out for an evening’s entertainment, her eyes had stood out starkly against her white face. She’d told me she was trying to achieve the “pale and interesting” look. As far as I’m concerned, she did. I hoped she wouldn’t want to make me look like that, but I didn’t say so, fearing such a comment would provoke a cutting reaction.

  Chloe marched back to me bearing a scrap of a dress, sleeveless, with a low, scooped neck that would reveal more of me than had ever been revealed in my
life. “Good Lord, Chloe, I can’t wear that!”

  “You can, and you will,” she insisted. “It’s perfect for a nightclub.”

  It crossed my mind to wonder why women who bound their breasts wore such low-cut tops. I mean, you’d suppose that by wearing such tops, they were enticing men to look at their bosoms, but if their bosoms were squashed flat, what was the point? Again, I didn’t ask Chloe, since she’d only have given me one of those looks that I so dislike.

  Aside from the skimpiness of the dress, it was awfully pretty, with a patterned silk-and-velvet bodice. The colors were kind of wild, being yellow, orange, and brown, but they didn’t scream at one, if you know what I mean. An orange velvet sash was threaded through lappets at the low waist, and the dress had a gold-colored, satin under-bodice and skirt with a scalloped hemline. It was lovely, but not exactly me, at least not the me I knew. I looked at the garment askance.

  Chloe didn’t give me an opportunity to object. She said, “You wear this, or you don’t go. I can pick up that telephone and call Boston, you know.”

  “Chloe! You wouldn’t! Anyhow, you can’t. It takes hours to make a long-distance trunk call.”

  She stuck her face in mine, until we were nose to nose. “You’re going to wear this, and you’re going to be a credit to Harvey. Do you understand me, Mercedes Louise Allcutt? My husband is an important man in the motion-picture industry, and I’ll not have people laughing at him behind his back because his sister-in-law is a dowdy prude!”

  “I’m not a dowdy prude,” I cried, stung.

  “You are, too. And come Saturday, we’re going to fix that. I don’t mind all that much that you insist on working, but I’ll be darned if I’ll let you look like a frump. And we’re going to get your hair bobbed, too. God alone knows how I’ll fix it for tonight.”

  Humbled—or perhaps humiliated was a better word for it—I decided to bow to my fate. After all, Chloe was really being splendid, letting me come out here and live with her and get a job and all. “Yes, Chloe. Thank you, Chloe. You’re very kind to me, Chloe.”

  She slapped my arm lightly. “Don’t be stupid. You’ve got to wear a pair of my shoes, too. I have some that I had made for the dress.

  “You had shoes made to match the dress?”

  “Well, I had them dyed to match it.”

  Good Lord. “Don’t you want to save the outfit for yourself? It must have cost a fortune.”

  “It did, but it didn’t become me because I’m too blond for the colors. But I loved the fabric so much, I had it made anyway. It’ll go much better with your dark hair.”

  Boy, I wonder what Lulu LaBelle would think if she could hear my sister talk about expensive clothes as if they were something you could just toss aside if you made a mistake and ordered the wrong color. Anyhow, I’d venture to bet that Lulu bought her clothes off the rack.

  If I were to guess, I’d say this entire outfit Chloe was allowing me to borrow probably cost close to a hundred dollars. Maybe more. Some people didn’t make that much money in a month. A year even, maybe.

  I did look mighty spiffy when Chloe and I walked down the main staircase in her house and Francis and Harvey met us at the foot of the stairs. Chloe had twisted my hair up and stuck some jewelry in it, and it looked good even if it wasn’t bobbed. I felt a trifle self-conscious in Chloe’s flesh-colored silk stockings, but Chloe told me I’d get used to them. I had flatly refused to roll them down and rouge my knees.

  Harvey grinned and whistled.

  Mr. Easthope bowed like the gentleman he was. “You look perfectly charming, Miss Allcutt. It will be an honor to accompany you out this evening.”

  Chloe had touched up my face with powder and my eyes with mascara, and had dabbed a touch of rouge on my cheeks and lips, and I smiled at Mr. Easthope, feeling shy all of a sudden. “Thank you very much.”

  And, after Mr. Easthope had led me to his automobile, an absolutely gorgeous Duesenberg that looked large enough for a family of ten to live in, opened the door for me, got in on the other side, and started the engine, and I realized I was being swept away to a real, honest-to-goodness nightclub, I began to understand the lure of the pictures. There was such glamour in them. I mean, who else could afford to live like this? My parents could, I suppose, but they wouldn’t do it, because they were “old school,” and they’d shun such ostentation.

  No. This way of life had been spawned by the so-called movies, and it was being perpetrated by those who made and lived by them. Maybe Ned wasn’t such a sap. Maybe there was something to his ambition, although hiding in a closet all day didn’t seem like the most effective way to achieve his aim of being discovered and turning into a moving-picture star.

  But what did I know? According to my sister, not a blessed thing. And I guess she was right, if this was the way she lived. And I guess it was, since I was wearing her clothes, and she had more where these came from. I began to look forward to Saturday. It would be fun to update my wardrobe!

  My enthusiasm dwindled as Mr. Easthope drove farther into the shabby part of the city. From the glories of Bunker Hill, we drove downhill and through Chinatown, which looked kind of seedy at night, and down some small, dark streets until we got to a place where several large, expensive cars were parked. They looked out of place there on the dingy street.

  A big galoot stepped out from the shadows, saw Mr. Easthope and his Duesenberg, and gestured for us to follow him down another dark, narrow street.

  “Who’s he?” I whispered, although I’m not sure why. Nobody could hear us.

  “The parking guard. The speaks hire them so that the neighborhood kids don’t steal people’s tires.”

  “Oh.” Those speakeasy people were sure organized. Imagine that. They had a man to direct people where to park and to make sure the cars were safe. I wondered if the police knew about this racket. Recalling the conversation at dinner, I supposed they did.

  So Mr. Easthope parked his wonderful car, the galoot watching all the time, then he got out, opened the door for me, and I got out, and the galoot said, “Youse guys come with me.”

  I hadn’t realized people actually talked like that. Another new experience! Mr. Easthope took my arm and we followed the galoot down a dark alley to a dark doorway, where the galoot banged on the door with a fist that looked rather like a roasted leg of lamb.

  We heard a scratching noise, an eyehole appeared in the door, and an eye appeared at the eyehole. The galoot said, “Guests,” and stepped aside, I presume to assist more illegal customers to safe parking places.

  Someone—it sounded like another galoot—said, “Yeah?”

  Mr. Easthope whispered, “Oh, you kid.” That must have been the password. He’d told me about passwords on the way to the speakeasy. I didn’t quibble that, in this case, entrance was granted by the speaking of an entire phrase rather than one word, because that would have been so utterly Boston, even I could recognize it as such.

  The eye disappeared, and the door opened.

  Golly, what a difference between outdoors and indoors! Of course, I’d had no idea what to expect, since I hadn’t habituated speakeasies in Boston, but this one surprised me. It looked like a bordello designed by a color-blind seventeenth-century French courtesan.

  Red-and-black flocked paper covered the walls. Plush red carpeting had been laid upon the floor beneath our feet. The decor was undoubtedly meant to impart the impression of opulence, but it gave me a queasy feeling in my tummy, perhaps because the red clashed with my orange sash. Crystal chandeliers with dangly ornaments were supposed to shed light on all below, but cigar and cigarette smoke was so thick, everything looked merely fuzzy. A jazz band blared away in the main room, which lay straight ahead of us and sported a polished wooden floor suitable for dancing. It was being used, too. A row of dancing girls was executing intricate tap steps and kicks to the evident joy of the patrons.

  I’d never seen girls in public in so few clothes. Even at the seashore, women covered up more than those girls did.
I tried not to exhibit my state of shock, since I didn’t want Chloe to be ashamed of me, but I found the spectacle embarrassing to watch, especially when the girls grabbed the tails hanging from the backs of their skimpy costumes and twirled them. I guess they were supposed to be cats or something.

  The noise was ghastly. While I waited for my ears to adjust, I stared around me in fascination. A long bar had been built against the right wall, behind which stood what looked like a battalion of bartenders mixing and shaking and handing out drinks, all of which I presumed contained alcohol. A huge mirror backed the bartenders, reflecting the revelry going forward in the main room. More girls in skimpy outfits, net stockings, and shingled hair walked here and there with trays loaded with cigarettes and cigars and matchboxes strapped to their shoulders.

  Approximately three million people swarmed around the place, dancing to the music, laughing, chattering, and screaming. I think they were screaming because it was the only way they could make themselves heard over the band, which was playing “Baby Face.”

  Almost everyone who wasn’t actively dancing held both a drink and a cigarette or a cigar. Most of the ladies (I use the word loosely) had holders for their cigarettes. I guess that was supposed to be sophisticated. I knew for a sinking certainty that Chloe’s beautiful dress was going to smell like an ashcan when I got home.

  The atmosphere was supposed to be festive, but it appeared only sordid to me. Maybe that’s my Boston upbringing talking, but I don’t think so. I doubted that any of those people were truly happy. Then again, maybe I was wrong. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

  Whatever the mood of the “guests,” you should have seen their clothes. I’ve never beheld so many beads in my entire life. Or so many knees, most of which were rouged. And everybody who wasn’t drinking was dancing the Charleston with an air of devil-may-care bravado.

  All the band members were dark-skinned. They also appeared a good deal happier than the people dancing and drinking, although that impression, too, might have been colored by my proper Boston upbringing.