Ten Cents a Dance

by Christine Fletcher

  "Hey, Yvonne, I forgot to ask you. How'd it go with the suckers last night?" Stella said.

  "Those chumps?" Yvonne said. "Me and Gabby took 'em to the El Palacio. Kept 'em there until they were plastered. Then we let on that we'd go back to their hotel to . . . you know."

  "Twenty each, up front," Gabby put in.

  "They kept saying"—Yvonne dropped her voice low, like a man's—"'You'll get the money after, not before.' No sir, we told 'em, you gotta pay to play. Then we made like we were gonna walk out. That greased the skids plenty."

  "They forked it over?" someone asked.

  "Cold, hard cash, chickie. On the way out, they turned left, we turned right, slipped a buck to the waiter to zip his lip which way we'd gone, and out the back door we went. Slick as a goddamn whistle."

  "I bet they spent half the night looking for us!" Gabby crowed.

  Most of the girls whooped with laughter—although I noticed a few pretending not to hear. Alice actually turned her back. I snapped my garter purse closed and stood up, letting the blue silk unfurl to the floor. I raised my voice over the commotion. "How do you know they won't show up tonight to get their money back?"

  The laughter trailed off into giggles. Yvonne swung her legs to the floor. "Because, Bo Peep, the chumps had to catch a plane back to New York first thing this morning." Clapping, more laughter. She sauntered away to a chorus of snickers.

  "Well, I think it's disgusting," I said to Peggy. "Cheating fellows out of their money."

  "Spoken like a true Girl Scout," Peggy said. "I guess you think the girls should've gone through with it, then."

  "Of course not!" At her sudden grin, I shook my head. "Stop trying to confuse me. What I mean is, those men were nice enough to take them out on the town. And then they got cheated. It's not right."

  "Uh-huh," Peggy said. "You pay Tom back his money yet?"

  I'd bent down to adjust a garter; at that, I snapped my head up to look at her. "I borrowed that, it's not the same thing at all! And yes, for your information, I did pay it back. Last night, when he took me out to eat."

  The surprise on Peggy's face was satisfying enough— almost—to squash the twinge I felt at the lie.

  Tom had showed up about ten thirty, without Jack this time. The blue silk gown made an impression—it was an hour, at least, before he raised his eyes enough to look at my face. At midnight, he clocked me out and took me to a steakhouse to eat. Just like that louse Artie had promised. But Tom was the real deal.

  I meant to pay him back. I did try. I had a whole week's wages in my change purse. In the cab, I counted out three fives and five ones and gave it to him. It was one of the hardest things I'd ever done: taking that money out, handing it away. Money I'd danced myself into blisters for, money we needed.

  Tom took it. Riffled through it. But he didn't put it in his wallet. "You're so pretty in that dress," he said. "Did you . . . did you think of me, when you bought it?"

  It took me a second to remember; I was staring at the bills in his hand. "Mmm? Oh. Sure. Of course I did."

  Tom tucked the money back into my palm, folded my fingers over it. I closed my hand tight, crumpling the thick paper against my skin. It felt just as wonderful as the first time. He put his arm across my shoulders. Drew me close. "Buy something else pretty," he whispered, and kissed me.

  I didn't tell Peggy any of this. Ma believed I'd taken a whole week's advance on my pay. Tom wouldn't take his money back. That meant every penny in my change purse was mine. Entirely mine. Thirty-four dollars and seventeen cents. The sight of it made me dizzy.

  The next day, I told Ma I was going to a matinee with a friend from work, and Peggy took me to Reinhard's on Madison.

  Reinhard's was a tailor's shop, not five minutes from the Starlight. The front room looked like any other tailor's: shelves with boxes stacked high, a counter strewn with scissors and tape measures. The tailor, a thin man with small, watery eyes, nodded at Peggy.

  "I ain't seen her before," he said, jerking his chin at me. "She okay?"

  "Paulie Suelze sent me," I said. Right away, the tailor waved us to come back.

  "Well, isn't that the magic word," Peggy murmured as we followed the tailor into a back room. I smiled but didn't answer.

  The back room was tiny, stuffed with trunks and boxes and racks of clothes. Curtains hung against the far wall— changing rooms, I guessed. We wandered between the racks: every kind of smart outfit you could imagine, matching skirts and jackets, day dresses, and—dear Jesus—two whole racks just of gowns. Angie would die if she saw this. Betty, too. Not a plain housedress in the bunch, not a single one with a label. I pulled out a backless metallic gray sheath, held it up against myself. Paulie stole this. At the thought, the cold-shivery thrill bloomed again under my ribs. I hadn't seen him since he'd knocked on the bedroom window, a week ago. Betty made sure to whisper to me every scrap of gossip she heard at school: Paulie had been seen at this tavern or that poolroom; he was buddying up to a bunch of tough Lithuanians from Forty-fifth Street; no, he was in with an Irish outfit from Canaryville. It seemed like he was everywhere but near me. Did he like me or didn't he?

  I wished I could talk it over with Angie. But Angie and I weren't talking.

  The cleaner had gotten most of the stains out of Clara's dress, but a ghost of pink still splotched one hip. You could barely see it, but of course Angie noticed. We'd had a screaming fight, and she hadn't spoken to me since.

  Well, she'd come around. She always had before, when we'd fought. She'd say she was sorry, and then I'd say, "Me too"—I'd already apologized a dozen times, but still, this was what you did, for friendship's sake—and everything would go back to the way it was.

  I held the gray sheath up to myself, turned to Peggy. "What do you think?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "Not your color. Try that navy one, with the gold skirt."

  I bought the navy gown and an adorable red wool jacket and skirt to wear out after hours. Peggy told me all the savvy girls bought their duds from places like Reinhard's. Not just Starlight girls, either—taxi-dance halls and after-hours joints were thick as a caterpillar's eyebrows in this part of town. That meant a lot of competition, with every girl trying to look more smashing than the next—at swag prices—because all of us were after the same pool offish.

  You could play taxi dancing two ways. Straight, like Alice and a few others. Wear your feet down to stubs at a nickel a dance, go right home afterward. But even if you had a string of regulars—fellows who were each good for ten or twenty tickets a night, every night—well, you'd work and work and work and still your best coat would be a black wool with a Persian lamb collar, and you'd have to take the streetcar everywhere. No, if you wanted to win at this game—really win—you needed men who would do more than dance.

  You needed fish.

  Fish were easy to catch for a single night. They'd buy you a meal at a chop suey joint or an all-night diner or, if you were lucky, a swell after-hours club, and that would be that. Sometimes a fish might stick around for a few weeks, or a few months. A girl never knew how long it might last, so she got what she could. Cash, if she could manage it. If not, then meals. Gowns. Jewelry.

  There were different ways of getting fish, I learned. Peggy liked Filipinos—most of them had money, she said, and they didn't mind spending a little extra on a girl if she treated them nice. Nora, on the other hand, wouldn't have anything to do with Orientals. But anytime Del and O'Malley, the bouncer, had their backs turned, she was waltzing her customers into dark corners. Why not? she said. It's only a bump and tickle, it pays better than fox-trotting, and I don't wear out so many shoes.

  A lot of the other girls played customers off each other, to make them jealous. Keeps 'em on their toes, Gabby said. Makes 'em think they gotta win. Or, a girl might play it the other way. Stella, the redhead, once threatened to cut a fellow's throat if she caught him dancing with anyone else. She got a new dress and a gold necklace out of that.

  And Yvonne? H
er fish weren't the handsomest; in fact, a few of them were downright ugly. I watched her, though. Saw how, when she was dancing with them, it was like no other fellow was in the room. Maybe that was why they'd wait all night, sometimes, for a chance to get in with her.

  They ought to hear how she talks about them in the Ladies', I thought. Calling them chumps and suckers, laughing at their looks or how they talked. She didn't laugh at their money, though. Yvonne hadn't bought that fox fur. She didn't even pay her own rent. Her fish took care of that. Four of them, Peggy told me, whom she'd had on the string for years. Not only did they pay her way, but each thought he was the only one who had a "special arrangement" with her.

  "I figure maybe she hires a social secretary, to keep 'em from bumping into each other in the hall outside her flat. So," Peggy said, "still want a fur coat of your own?"

  "I never said I wanted one at all." When Peggy started laughing, I turned my back and walked away.

  Somewhere between straight-arrow Alice and Yvonne's scams and schemes—and worse—there had to be a middle way. I still hadn't figured out what it was, though, when, the night after we'd gone to Reinhard's, Peggy set us up on an after-hours date with a couple of Filipino men.

  So far I'd managed to avoid dancing with the Chinese and Filipinos. It wasn't hard, with practice—all a girl had to do was pretend not to see them. But this all happened so fast—Peggy introduced us, and then she was dancing away with the one named Alonso, while Manny stood in front of me, holding out his ticket. Obviously, I'd seen him. That and the fact that I knew his name made it seem unspeakably rude to turn my back and run.

  Manny was shorter than Alonso, and if he wasn't as slim, he wasn't heavy, either. He was dressed a lot better than my usual customer: snazzy pinstripe suit, spectator shoes. Flip or not, I had to admit that after all we did to put on the dog, it was nice to see a man make a little effort.

  We danced a little bit without talking. Then Manny asked, "You dig music like this?"

  "Oh, I don't know. It's a little sweet for me," I said. Sweet was the nice way of saying cornball. "I like swing best, but if the band plays too much of it, the geezers won't dance, and then they complain to Del. A lot of them can't hoof it to anything faster than this."

  Actually, I'd already come to hate most of the music the Starlight's band played. I wasn't the only one, either.

  One night last week, Yvonne hadn't let up on me all evening, plus my head was fit to split from all that tinkly stuff Del insisted the band play. At break time, I'd headed for the Ladies'. From behind the door came the usual babble and laughter, Yvonne loudest of all. To my right, the hall stretched down to a far window. It was dark. It looked quiet.

  I just got to the window when I heard what sounded like a taaaah . . . I stopped. Nothing. I must have imagined it. I laid my hand on the glass, and the cold seemed to jump into the bones of my fingers. And then I heard it again, coming from a dark room off the hall. Humming—no, not humming, not exactly—more like notes being sung. Do-re-mi, only this wasn't any baby music, and it was no baby singing. I'd only heard his voice once. But I recognized it.

  He paused in midnote, then started over, the same melody. Slowed at a tricky spot, then pushed past to end on a high taaahh . . . Then over again, faster. And faster. I could imagine the same notes flying out of his trumpet. Feel the music waking up my bones.

  I glided to the doorway and peeked inside. Another window in here, and next to it, I could make out the pale glimmer of a shirt. A long gleam of brass and, on the windowsill, in a sliver of light from a streetlamp, papers covered with scratches and musical notes.

  "Are you going to play that after the break?" I asked.

  The brass gleam shifted. Scrape of a match. I glimpsed him in the tiny sudden flame, bending to it with his cigarette. Strong curved cheeks, blunt nose. Eyelashes curling up, almost as pretty as a girl's. I wondered if he'd ever gotten teased about them.

  Ozzie shook out the match. Behind me, up the hallway, I heard girls' chatter loud, then faint. Girls coming out of the Ladies'. I eased inside the doorway so they wouldn't see me.

  Ozzie said, "You ever hear anything like that in this dump?"

  "No," I said.

  "Then no. I'm not playing it after the break."

  "Where, then?"

  "Lily's. My cousin's joint."

  The flyer he'd given me, my first night at the Starlight. Yvonne threatening to have him fired if he bothered the customers.

  "Hottest jazz in Chicago," I said. "You're in the band."

  "That's right," Ozzie said, surprised. By this time I could make him out pretty good in the dim light: he'd taken off his too-small tuxedo jacket, loosened his tie. He tilted his head back, looking at me more closely. "Okay, I know you. You almost slugged one of the customers."

  The silver dollar. I decided to ignore that. "Can I have one of those?" I asked, pointing to his cigarette.

  Rustle of a pack. He leaned forward, the cigarette in his hand. I took it and put it in my mouth and bent to the match and lit it. The flame snuffed out. Prickly scent of match smoke.

  "You just flick your ashes on the floor?" Ozzie said.

  "No," I said, even though I had.

  "That pipsqueak Del sees ashes on the floor, he'll chase me outta here. Then I'll have to sit with those geezy old-timers in the band, listen to them jawing about the old days until I'm about to pull my own head off. Maybe you better get back where you belong."

  "Maybe I'll invite all the girls back here. It gets awfully crowded in that Ladies' room."

  Ozzie could've been a dragon, he blew his smoke that hard. His chair creaked, and an ashtray thumped onto the windowsill. I stepped over and tapped my cig against the rim. Before I could thank him, he started humming again, his fingers floating over the trumpet keys. Message plain as day: shut up. So I did. I laid my aching head back against the wall, and I listened. My fingers caught the beat and tapped in the air, silent.

  The rap on the door almost made me gasp. I was standing behind it, and it swung inward, toward my face. "Man, what you always got to be sitting in the dark like this for?" The voice rusty-old. Not Del. "You want to write music, ought to do it in the light."

  "I think better in the dark," Ozzie said. Scraping his papers together fast. He grabbed his trumpet and his jacket and then they both were gone.

  I wondered what Del would do, if he caught a girl talking with a colored musician. It seemed like one of those things you wouldn't have to make a rule about, because nobody would dream of doing it.

  So I hadn't gone back to the little room. Ozzie and I kept catching each other's eyes at least once a night, though, usually when Hamp, the bandleader, struck up groaners like "Sweet Sue, Just You" or "Champagne Charlie." Ozzie'd make a face, or I would. Once he let his eyes flutter upward, like he was dying. I'd busted up into giggles just as I was taking a fellow's ticket. He'd snatched it back and walked off, muttering he didn't see what was so danged funny.

  Manny steered me smooth and easy across the floor. "I bet we can find you some real music," he said. "What do you say?"

  He had a nice round face. Lively eyes, a sweet smile. A lot of snap in his moves, too. I bit my lip and glanced away. Saw Nora slip into the shadows with a customer, his hand already gripping her keister. Across the hall, Yvonne tipped her head and smiled at one of her fish. Not an hour ago, in the Ladies', I'd heard her call him a toad with the brains of a brick. The song ended, and from the bandstand came the first strains of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

  I looked up at Manny and smiled. "Sounds swell," I said.

  I didn't worry anymore about getting home late. Overtime, I'd told Ma. At first she made a fuss, but that didn't last long. I think she was secretly glad—not only because overtime meant extra wages, but now she had an excuse not to sit up for me. Night after night in the parlor chair was making her joints hurt so bad, she could barely walk.

  By the time me and Peggy changed our clothes and cashed in our tickets, Manny and Alonso had a
cab waiting. We ran for it through stinging sleet, jamming in together, us girls sandwiched between the men. Once we were in the cab, Manny pulled a hip flask out of his pocket. He offered it to me. I hesitated, then tipped it back.

  It was all I could do not to cough. My eyes watered and I blinked back tears, afraid if they fell they'd take half my mascara with them. I passed the flask to Peggy.

  "So where you boys taking us?" she asked, after she'd taken a slug, her voice gaspy and hoarse as if it'd been squashed by a car.

  "If you want a black and tan," the cabbie called over his shoulder, "then you want the Hoot Owl." He shifted the cab into gear.

  "Hold your horses, we haven't decided yet," Alonso said.

  The cabbie threw his elbow over the seat and hoisted himself around. "Look, Pinoy," he said, "you know damn well you ain't headed nowhere with these girls but to a black and tan. Now, the meter's running, the Hoot Owl is the best in town, that's all there is to it." He shlumped around again and pulled into the street. I wondered what a black and tan was, but Peggy was talking to Alonso and I couldn't ask her.

  "Hell with him," Alonso said. "I'm not going to the Hoot Owl just so he can get a kickback for steering us there."

  The swallow of whiskey had turned into a small sun in my stomach. Warmth oozed into my muscles, and the aches in my feet turned dull and distant, as though someone had swathed my feet in cotton. The buildings on the street seemed to float past, blurry from sleet.

  "I want someplace different," Alonso was saying. "Someplace with real wild jazz."

  Real wild jazz. Where had I heard that before? Best jazz in Chicago . . . you got a customer wants to hear real music, you bring him down.