by Tracey Ward
The man tsks, shaking his head dramatically. “I know how you hate hiccups.”
“Sometimes they can’t be avoided.”
The man’s eyes fall on me and his smile falters for a half a second. “And sometimes,” he says quietly as he offers me his hand, “they are too beautiful to be angry at.”
I smile as I give him my hand and he kisses the back of it regally, his sausage sized fingers nearly blotting out my own. “Addy,” I introduce myself. “Nice to meet you.”
“Eugene, and, Adrian, it is my honor to meet you.”
“Easy,” Drew warns.
“She’s a gem, Andy! Too pretty for a sour face like yours.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Eugene laughs loudly. “Just pray she doesn’t!”
“I’d like to get her inside, it’s cold.”
“Of course, of course.” Eugene steps out of the way and lets us come into the dark hallway behind him. He closes the door, latches it, and motions for us to follow his massive frame as it lumbers toward the light. “The place is closed, of course, but you can show her the layout. Let her see the sights, smell the smells.”
“Where are we?” I ask, stepping around a mop and bucket blocking part of the hall.
Eugene glances over his shoulder at me. “He hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
“You’ll see,” he laughs. “I don’t want to ruin Andy’s big surprise.”
We exit the hallway and enter a dining room that reminds me instantly of the Cicero CC, and immediately my heart starts racing. It smells the same. The tables without the linens, the floors with the cleaning solution and the wax on them to dry overnight, the scent of pot and booze and perfume still hanging faintly in the air as though the place is remembering the night and the lights and the sounds. I spin around, searching, and then there it is at the edge of the darkness. The stage.
“Drew?” I ask hesitantly, an amazed smile spreading across my face. “Are we where I think we are?”
“Eugene!” he shouts in reply. “Hit the lights!”
The room echoes with a loud snap!, followed by the hum of lights coming to life, then it explodes with an unnatural glow and my shrine stand before me, golden and glittering. I release Drew, stepping toward the stage and putting my hand over my mouth in awe. It’s everything I thought it’d be. It’s more than the fuzzy snapshots had promise. It was elegant and ornate and larger than life itself, and I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be here on a night when the entertainers took the stage.
I turn to smile at Drew with all the gratitude and childlike excitement I have in my body. “This is the Harlem Cotton Club,” I whisper.
He nods, an amused grin on his lips. “I made you a promise.”
“And you made good on that promise.” I turn around and head for the stage, running my hands over the smooth, black surface. “Oh brother, did you make good.”
“Try it out.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m happy just to touch it.”
He laughs and I hear the clatter of chair legs hitting the floor as he takes a seat. “That’s how I felt the first time I stepped on the grass at Fenway.”
I look over my shoulder at him, not yet willing to relinquish my hold on the stage. “I thought you were a Yankees fan. Fenway is Boston.”
“I never said I was a Yankees fan.”
“Yes, you did. You told Rob—“
“I told Rob I get tickets to every single Yankee game. I never said I wanted them.”
“Then why buy them?”
He knocks out a cigarette, sitting back in his seat. “I don’t. They’re gifts.”
“Dare I ask why?” I ask, eyebrow cocked.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“No. I don’t need to know.”
“That’s a shame,” he comments, releasing a white plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “It’s one of my few noble stories.”
“Tell it to me next Christmas over eggnog.”
“And whiskey?”
“I’d rather drink turpentine.”
“Quit stalling. Take the stage.”
I turn back to the black beast, running my hands over it lovingly. It’s bathed in the hot spotlight that feels so much bigger and brighter than the one at its Cicero sister’s house. Everything here feels bigger. More alive. Everything but me. I feel small standing at the foot of this stage, as though it’s a mountain to be climbed but I don’t think I brought the right gear. I’m not equipped for this. Maybe at one point I was, but not anymore.
“Can you ask Eugene to kill the lights?” I ask Drew.
“You don’t want the spotlight?”
“No.”
Drew snaps his fingers twice, shouts out to Eugene, and the lights go dead. He leaves on the dim row of clamshells burning at the foot of the stage, and I’m grateful for that. Without them I wouldn’t be able to find the edge. I’d walk right off into infinity, probably snapping my neck, and that is definitely not part of my dream.
As I take the steps up to the stage, I wonder for the fiftieth time in the last few days what it is that I really want. Is it Harlem? Is it the CC and my name in lights outside? Is it the Hudson and the Yankees and Broadway? Or is that all residual stardust in a young girl’s eyes, a girl I don’t even know anymore. Maybe it’s time for a new dream. One full of sickness in the morning that foretells sleepless nights in the future. Small hands with impossibly tiny fingers, raven hair, and shocking blue eyes. Is it the man in the smoke and the shadow that I can barely see, but I can feel like he’s standing right next to me? Is it something tangible, something real, something I already have in my hands and I’m risking it every second I don’t look at it and acknowledge it and do everything in my power to possess it? To protect it.
When I reach the center of the stage, I sing for Drew. I sing for me. I sing for our baby waiting in my belly, and I do it in the dark where no one else can hear, and it’s the most intimate, fulfilling moment of my life. I feel whole with my hand on my stomach and my heart in my throat, and I know this dream is done. When I leave here tonight, this star will snuff out. It will disappear from my sky, and that’s okay. It’s good, because once it’s gone the others will shine more brightly. I’ll see them more clearly and I’ll reach for them and strive for them the way I did for this.
Some of them I’ll reach, some of them I’ll lose sight of, and some of them I’ll steal from the sky to put in my pocket, keeping them with me forever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“All aboard!” the conductor calls.
Drew growls low and annoyed in the back of his throat, his presence more sound and feel for me than sight in this dark corner. We’re hidden behind a series of pillars, completely unseen from the bustling crowd coming and going from the train station. Turns out a torpedo in his home town is privy to all of the hiding spaces in all of the hotspots, and I wonder about this one. How does he know about it? When has he used it? And with who? Or on who, I suppose.
Questions I don’t want answers for, that’s for sure.
“You’ll be careful?” Drew asks for the millionth time.
I grin. “I’m always careful.”
He doesn’t smile.
“I will be careful,” I promise, also for the millionth time. “I promise. I’ll tell Ralph I’m quitting the second I get back to Chicago.”
“And you’ll avoid Tommy.”
“Yes. I already do that anyway.”
“You won’t tell them about the baby.”
“No.”
“You’ll meet me at your apartment immediately after.”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head, his mouth pulled down in a tight frown. “I should go with you.”
“Not inside the CC, you shouldn’t,” I insist. “You know you can’t be seen in there with me. It will make things worse.”
“I don’t feel right about this,” he says for the millionth and one time. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Ralph has been really good to me. I owe him this much. I owe him an explanation face to face. He won’t be angry with me.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about.”
“You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“I worry about everything. It’s how I’ve made it this far.”
“Last call! All aboard!”
I take his face in my hands, holding his eyes. “Drew, I’m going to be fine. You’ll be nearby, I’m going there in broad daylight, what could go wrong?”
His eyes search my face, his frown etched into his skin like carvings in immovable stone. “Everything, I imagine.”
He kisses me goodbye before we both board the train – him in the back, Lucy and I toward the front. He’s traveling with us but not with us. He’s playing it low key coming to Chicago with me, hoping no one will see him or place him there with me, but he refused to let me go back alone. We agreed last night that I’d go back, say my goodbyes to Ralph, the club, and the girls, pack my things, and we’d be on the next train out of town two days from now. It’s a tight timeline, but Drew lives on a tight ship. One he isn’t happy about docking in Chicago again so soon.
Lucy is full of sour looks and silent treatment once we sit down together. She doesn’t like Drew, and it’s not because there’s nothing about Drew to like. It’s because she knows he’s a gangster and that’s all that matters to her. That right there tells her everything she needs to know about him and she’ll never bother looking any deeper, and that’s alright because I’m not sure Drew would let her see any of it. Any of him, the real him that’s hidden just below surface and shines his eyes when he’s looking at me.
Lucy finally starts talking to me again when we wake up on the train the next morning. She has to. I nearly vomit on her face.
“Adrian, what is happening with you?!” she demands, jumping from our sleeper and rushing into the hall to avoid the waterfall of disgusting I’m spewing.
“I have the flu,” I mumble weakly.
“You shouldn’t have come on this trip. Now we’ll all be sick.”
“I didn’t want to miss my chance to see New York.”
She hands me a washrag, careful not to step in the mess I’ve made. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
I flop back on the bed, closing my eyes and willing my stomach to settle. “Don’t start.”
“On what? The fact that you’re seeing a mobster? That you’re doing everything you said you’d never do?”
“Yes. That. Don’t start with that.”
“Is it because he brought you to New York? Is that why you’re sleeping with him?”
“Who said I’m sleeping with him?”
She doesn’t respond and when I roll my head to look at her, I get her ‘Don’t lie to yourself’ expression. It’s famous. And effective.
“It’s not why I’m sleeping with him,” I tell her quietly. “It’s because I love him.”
Her shoulders slump. “Oh, Aid.”
“Try to be a little happy for me, please?”
“I am,” she insists, reaching for my hand. I give it to her and let her squeeze it tightly. “I want to be, but I’m scared for you.”
I nod slowly, my eyes brimming with tears I refuse to shed. “I’m a little scared for me too.”
“Because he’s dangerous?”
“Not for me he’s not. I’m scared because… because everything is changing. Everything is different than I thought it was going to be and I don’t know… I guess I’m scared because I don’t know. Not about anything.”
“It’s okay to not have a plan.”
“I know.”
She shakes my hand roughly. “Do you? Because for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had a plan. You were going to make it to the Harlem Cotton Club and that’s all that mattered and all you cared about. You never made time or gave chances to anything else because you were so dead set on this goal of yours, but don’t you wonder if you missed out on anything great by wearing those blinders?”
“Maybe.” I close my eyes and absently rub my free hand over my stomach. To Lucy it probably looks like I’m trying to sooth the angry storm raging inside me, but in reality I’m reaching. I’m trying to touch what I can’t control, this curveball with a life of its own because that’s exactly what it is – life.
And I’ll be damned if I miss out on it.
***
We share a cab back to Cicero, but when Lucy goes home, I go to the club. The driver drops her off first and she takes my bags inside for me, telling me to take it easy and ask for the night off since I’m sick. I promise her I will, but I won’t. I’ll perform tonight for the last time. I’ll take the stage and I’ll stand before the world as Adrian Marcone for the final time, and when the lights go out, so will she.
I swing open the front door to the CC, and as the sunlight sweeps across the scuffed floors, the dark bar, and up to the small stage, I feel like I’m seeing it both for the first and last time. It’s the same as it’s always been, exactly the same as the day I walked in six years ago and nearly cried with excitement and awe at the fact that I would make my mark here, but it feels different now. It’s lost its luster. The shine is off, and even the CC in Harlem didn’t hold the same power over me that this building did the first time I walked inside. I’m not as impressed by this world as I used to be. There are dark corners everywhere, shadows lurking and secrets hiding, and no matter how bright the spotlight is, they’ll find you eventually.
I know now that all that glitters is not gold. More often than not, it’s a lure in a trap that will spring when you least expect it. One you may not even notice until years and scars later when it’s too late.
When I hit the back hallway, I head straight for Ralph’s office and my heart is in my throat worrying Tommy will be there. His door is open, and when I poke my head in, I sigh with relief to find Ralph alone.
“Hey, doll,” he calls, waving me in. He stands and comes around his desk to hug me firmly. “We missed you. Glad to see you back.”
“Thank you.”
“Sit down, sit down,” he insists, waiting for me to sit before taking his place behind his desk. “How was New York? Was it everything you dreamed it would be?”
I smile, genuine and strong. “It was. It was even better, actually.”
“Uh oh. We haven’t lost you to it, have we?” he jokes.
“Not to New York, no, but I did want to talk to you about—“
“You’re quitting,” he interrupts, heading me off.
I nod, biting the inside of my lip nervously, but I keep my face composed. Blank. “I want to settle down. Take a shot at a different kind of life, not that this hasn’t been a wonderful place to work! It’s only that there are things I want… things I never thought I’d want, and now that I have a chance at them, I can’t walk away.”
Ralph sighs heavily, sitting back hard. “I knew it. I knew it!” he laughs gruffly. He points at me, grinning slyly. “It’s a fella, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He slaps the desk, repeating, “I knew it. And I know who.”
My brows drop. “You do?”
“I’m not blind, Adrian. I know what goes on in my club, even the things no one wants anyone to know. It’s someone I know, isn’t it? Someone you met here?”
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
He laughs, nodding his head knowingly. “We won’t say anymore than that. You both deserve to keep your secrets, but I have to say, hon, I’m not surprised. The way you two look at each other, well, you can’t miss it. Even when you’re trying to hide it.” He continues to grin at me, his face almost giddy with excitement. “You love him, dontcha?”
I smile. “I do.”
“He loves you too, kid. Always has. Ever since the day you first set foot in this club, Tommy’s been head over heels for ya.”
My heart plummets into my stomach. “No, Ralph, I—“
“I said to
o much, I’m sorry. You’re right. You keep your secrets. Can’t have it getting’ around that you’re connected to him. These are dangerous times and Tommy is an important man to the Outfit. Puts you in the crosshairs if anyone knew, so don’t worry, kid. Your secret is safe with me.” He stands and I do the same, meeting his second hug of the afternoon with a stiff compliance. “You two take good care of each other, alright? We’ll see you around the club? Maybe finagle a song or two out of you now and again?”
I give him my stage smile as he releases me. “Sure. Of course. I’ll sing tonight. One last time.”
“Beautiful. I’ll make sure to be on the floor to see it.”
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur. Word spreads quickly that tonight will be my last performance and I’m surrounded by friends and enemies alike, all of them smiling and hugging me and wishing me well. Even Clara is there with a fake grin on her face and a cigarette girl’s uniform on her body. I think it suits her.
Rosaline shows for work, hears the news, and weeps as she hugs me.
“You’re going to keep it?” she whispers in my ear.
I smile, nodding my head against hers. “I am. We are.”
She squeezes me hard, laughing. “I’m so glad. You’re going to be a great mom, Aid.”
“Thanks, Rose.”
I don’t know that that’s true at all, but I’m grateful to her for saying it but I’m sure as hell going to try. That’s all any of us can do anyway, is try.
I get hugs from Rick and Mickey and even Hal. The bartenders, the orchestra. Ralph appears on the floor when I’m being swarmed and makes it clear he’s happy for me before he disappears into the casino, but two faces are mysteriously missing. Eddie and Tommy.
One I’m sad about, one I’m relieved.
“Where’s your dad?” I ask Elisha.
She looks around, shrugging her thin shoulders. “I’m not sure. He was here a minute ago. Maybe he went out back to have a smoke.”
“I’ll check, thanks.”
“Congratulations,” she says quickly, her hands wringing nervously in front of her. “I heard you’re settling down with a guy. That’s wonderful.”