by Lyndsay Faye
See me, young fellow, the constabulary has arrived and I’ve need of your strong arms.
“Say there, stranger!” he calls out. “You look in need of company.”
“Oh! Did I—I don’t mean to interrupt. Sorry, I’m Alice.”
He grins. His chin is dreadfully weak, but his green eyes are kind. “And I’m Gregory, and I’ve never found a partner this early. Have I got that right?”
“Beg pardon?”
“I mean, would you care to dance?”
“Oh! I’d like that awfully much. You’re sure I’m not intruding?”
“Just what is it you figure jazz bands are for, Alice?” But he smiles, and holds a hand out, and we’re off to the races.
Just try seeing me while I’m half tucked into a chappie’s neck, you unrepentant bastard.
“So what brought you here?” Gregory’s voice in my ear is like a faraway radio.
“Um, actually I’ve an ever-so-slight acquaintance with the singer.”
When I lift my jaw, Gregory’s has dropped perceptibly. “With Blossom Fontaine?”
“That’s right. I must say, she’s a marvelous performer, I just never dreamed!”
He whistles. “No kidding. I first saw her in San Francisco, if you can buy that, having dinner with my old man at the Palace Hotel. Never forgot her. I mean, the Blossom Fontaine. You couldn’t really, could you?”
“Goodness! I should say not.” I spin as he leads me. “What was she like back then?”
“The same, but with French songs. The frog stuff doesn’t play as well here.”
“Quelque shame.”
“You betcha. A girl like that had to have a powerful reason for quitting San Francisco for this place. Anyway, you can hear it, can’t you?”
“Hear what?”
“Why, that she misses something.”
I can, I realize as Blossom casts out a cobalt beam of melancholy sound, and I remember what she told me about her pilgrimage.
My true love left. My heart was broken. And what in the wide world was I to do?
Jenny Kiona, I muse, is destined to be a gramophone playing a cracked love song. There will be hisses and scratches aplenty.
Then another notion occurs, and at first I think little enough of it, watch as it whisks by like a bird glimpsed through tall trees. Blossom clearly toured at some point. And she’s been to France, all the best black artists have. Meanwhile, she told me she plied the melody trade at the Pied Piper lounge at the Palace Hotel, and that after love exiled her, she took up with her fantastically cantankerous uncle Pendleton. The columns add up.
Still. Something niggles at the grey matter.
“When was it you saw her?” I ask, gently squeezing.
Gregory presses back, friendly. “Gosh. Must have been nineteen eleven maybe? At least ten years ago for sure. Back when I was a kiddo, well before the War.”
“Do you know how long she played the Palace Hotel?”
“Nope, but she was real popular. Giant posters, marquee, the works. She really lit up the room.”
It takes another few turns on the waxed hardwood, but then it comes to me.
Davy’s age. He’s six. That is, if he’s still alive, as I so fervently hope.
If Blossom left San Francisco, California, for Portland, Oregon, in nineteen fifteen, and it’s nineteen twenty-one, why was she in Seattle, Washington, discovering a baby in the lee of a trash bin?
The song ends. I brush a curl from my brow, laugh absently. There’s an obvious answer here—but the obvious answer doesn’t exactly send a knife through the mustard.
So Blossom Fontaine could have gotten storked by a white suitor, hoisted mainsail, and convalesced in a neutral city, bringing her child back to the Paragon as a foundling. Davy and Blossom don’t strongly resemble each other, but that’s no proof where mixed races are concerned, and other details even support the theory: Dr. Pendleton could know she’d had a mixed kid out of holy et cetera, and be sore over raising the sprout in his hotel. Then again, despite Davy’s harrowing absence, she’s been up there for half an hour, serenading for her supper. Not terribly motherly. And I’m not stupid enough to suppose that the obvious answer is always the right one, especially in light of he isn’t my type, honey. So much is certain: Blossom is clearly dragging her guts around behind her, hollowed out from wanting Davy back.
Because she’s his mum? Maybe. Because she found a stray in Seattle? Equally possible. Is she hiding something?
As sure as it’s fixing to rain this week.
“Hmm?” I say when I realize I’ve drifted. “Oh, I . . . came over a bit dizzy. I haven’t danced in simply ages.”
“You’re all right, though?” Gregory asks, frowning.
“Peachy. Didn’t mean to alarm.”
“Well then, may I buy you a drink? If you’re not feeling well, they have lemonade here, or if you’re really not feeling well, just add a splash of gin, am I right?”
Despite the offense visited on his face by his lack of chin, I like Gregory. But when my eyes follow his to the bar, I see that Mr. Lucius Grint stands before a seated Officer Overton. The policeman samples a rocks glass, staring at Blossom as if he’s about to check the teeth on the mare he’s buying. Mr. Grint’s hands are spreading as dramatically as his mustaches in supplication.
“Excuse me, but I—I have to congratulate Blossom, that last number was just dandy as anything, and I’ll find you when I feel a bit better?”
“Sure, kiddo. Tell her she’s the jewel of the West Coast.”
I’m at the edge of the stage in under ten seconds. When Blossom glances down to adjust her microphone, she spies me, because I mean her to, and I angle my head.
“Company,” I mouth.
Blossom’s inky eyes slit to the bar. If she were less self-possessed, she’d arch like a cat hissing.
“The set has been . . . oh, just wonderful, really wonderful,” I gush aloud. “Thank you for bringing me. I’m awfully glad you did.”
“I’m glad I did too, honey,” she answers smoothly, pulling loose fingertips along her forearm. “There’s seven songs to go in this set. You get the most fun you can out of them, you hear?”
Blossom turns her back, gesturing lazily to her band. A smile tugs at my lips.
Seven songs, eh? Marching orders.
Officer Overton and Mr. Grint are still locked in a conversation that’s beginning to look dreadfully taxing to the ringmaster of the Rose’s Thorn. But with Overton facing out from the bar that way, eavesdropping is too risky. Meanwhile, seven songs will take at least half an hour.
And there’s more than one way of having fun, as Blossom so aptly put it.
I travel the length of the entertainment hall pretending to scan for a particular friend. Silent as a moth’s wing, I enter the vestibule where the coats are hung and open my beaded bag, searching. Mr. Grint is occupied. So much the better—it’s easier to use this racket on coat-check girls. They’re dreadfully sweet. They should come with toothache warnings.
“Can I help you, miss?” says an affable female voice around thirty seconds later.
I’m rooting through my bag like a pig in a pen. “Oh, thank you. I don’t . . . I’m such a tiresome little fool. This is positively the worst day of my life.”
“Oh, no. What can I do?”
Sniffling audibly, I glance up. She’s young, with auburn curls and an open face, and no ring on her left hand. She’s perfection.
“I get headaches, you see.” Dropping the arm that holds my reticule, I press the other wrist between my eyes. “Beastly ones. And like an idiot, I left home without . . . well, without anything practical. Just my money and my keys and powder. So now I’ll have to go home, and I was to meet a fellow here, and now . . . God, I’m sorry. . . . Now I’ve ruined everything.”
“Not yet, you haven�
�t! One of the girls upstairs might have something.”
“Do you really think so? I can pay for it. For anything—laudanum or, or maybe a headache powder? I’d be simply the most grateful girl in history.”
“Just wait right here.”
I intend to.
The instant she’s gone, I slide into a forest of coats. Fox furs, woolen overcoats, cape-backed numbers. There may well be another girl working for tips, so I haven’t long. But I don’t need long. My fingers skip over an ermine shoulder wrap, a duster, a tweed, and then.
Straight flush, ace high, and the casino erupts in applause.
There isn’t much light in here, but it’s definitely Officer Overton’s trench coat. The lining tells me that he smoked a cigar on the way here and the stitching and fabric inform me that this isn’t some cut-rate factory copy of a gentleman’s garment, it’s the straight goods. Not more than two years old. So Overton greeted Prohibition’s arrival as doth the wandering tribes manna from heaven.
I’d be annoyed about that, but hypocrisy makes me itchy. I move onto the outer pockets: matches, keys, and a few odd coins in the left. Two crumpled receipts for laundering in the right. I’m hemorrhaging time, seconds spilling through my fingers onto the worn carpeting, but then I spear my hand inside the garment, fumbling for the inner pockets, and on the left side, hey presto.
A gun.
That’s not part of the uniform for police. But it’s all the rage for feds, bootleggers, and the coppers who pay their bills skimming off hard-earned profits from fermented refreshments. It’s a Smith & Wesson M&P .38 caliber Special. I sniff the barrel, pop open the cylinder. Clean. Well-oiled. Six virgin bullets.
Fast as fox-trotting, I plunge my hand into the last pocket, which is the right inner. A piece of paper. It’s folded in quarters, edges soft as if they’ve been much handled.
When I open it, I fight the urge to tear it in awfully minute pieces.
Not that the contents surprise me. It’s a flyer for a concert here in Portland, dated some years previous. Standing in full-feathered regalia, with her face flung back and her arm outstretched as if she’s plucking a star from the sky, is an illustration of Blossom Fontaine, the headliner.
Voices. I start to duck out—but there isn’t time. Replacing the revolver, I take two long strides toward a hanger on the opposite wall and snatch my salvation from it, turning to face the music.
“Whatever are you doing in there?” the coat-check sweetheart demands. “Well, never mind, now I’ve caught you! Nasty trick, sending me off while you pickpocket our—”
“No!” Aghast, I clutch the coat to my bosom. “This is my own coat! I was just terribly desperate once you’d gone, and I wanted to check my pockets. And now I’ve gone and made you angry—see here’s the ticket—oh, I could just kick myself down the stairs, I—”
“All right, all right.” She sighs. “Here, I scared up morphine tablets. She wants two bits for them.”
I pay four instead and stage a strategic retreat. When I reach the bar, carefully distant from the long arm of the law, I request more of the bubbly goods and take the morphine, because my stitches really are starting to buck the reins.
Taking a deep breath, I look about me.
Ruby-toned light, painting the thickening crowds. Clinking of glasses, chattering of socialites, snap-clack of gambling chips, the intoxicating whirr of the roulette wheel. Blossom at the forefront. Arms wide now, making an ebony cross of herself, telling the rest of us what shattered hopes sound like.
Smile the while you kiss me sad adieu
When the clouds roll by I’ll come to you . . .
“May I beg a word, Miss James?”
Since I’m a positive ninny of a Nobody this evening, I startle again, nearly dropping the champagne. Lucius Grint deftly cups my hand. His mustaches twitch like the antennae of a grasshopper, and you could pluck out “Dixie” on his nerves.
“Oh, Mr. Grint!” I make a few pathetically humorous gestures at the flute, ordering it to stay. “Isn’t Blossom just an absolute peach of a singer?”
“Indeed.” He coughs, glancing behind. “She is a highly valued adornment here at the Rose’s Thorn, the very jewel in our diadem, and I wonder if I might ask you for a small favor, purely in her own interests? I wonder whether, with my humble apologies, you might await Miss Fontaine in her dressing room.” Mr. Grint’s snakes of hair writhe in a pond of pomade and sweat. “And then following her present set, escort her away. With great haste.”
Gaping at him, I finish my drink with a loud glug. “Golly. Sure. But why—”
“Nothing to worry about, Miss James!” he exclaims with a jaw-cracking smile. “An acquaintance of hers arrived, a rather . . . unsavory one. Run along now—you’ve only around ten minutes to await her. I’ll make it up to you in high style on the next occasion you grace us with your presence. If you experience the smallest hint of discomfort on your way out, call for me. At once.”
No further prodding is necessary; I make tracks.
When I barricade myself in Blossom’s dressing room, I realize there’s a last precaution to take before we pull any vanishing acts—I’d best partially switch Nobodies. I clutch a filmy grey silk scarf and tuck most of my curls away so the length isn’t visible, and I powder over the rouge I’m wearing. I’m very nearly Nobody the sober-faced journalist again when the door opens.
“All through?” I ask.
“I don’t think so, Miss James. Though I must say it’s a pleasurable surprise to see you here. A very pleasurable surprise.”
Instantly, I’ve whirled with my hands raised. Defensive, indignant, staring down Officer Overton in his pricey suit as he sends the door slamming shut with a decisive bang.
“Whatever are you doing in a lady’s dressing room, sir?” This Nobody’s voice comes out shaky with outrage.
“I think we can safely exempt a Negress who sings degenerate music for her living from the title of ‘lady.’”
“Splitting hairs doesn’t become a man of the world, Officer.”
Overton’s dark hair is carefully slicked, his darker eyes unreadable beneath. He lifts a dainty porcelain figure of a cat resembling Medea. “So this is Miss Fontaine’s private sanctuary, is it? I suppose I always expected bigger. She being such a notable performer.”
“Surely you don’t take an interest in notable colored performers?”
He smiles, recognizing mockery. “Well, I wanted to see her as soon as her set was finished, discuss a few things, but this is quite the unexpected happenstance. I supposed when working on your precious article, you’d stay put, Miss James. You and your typewriter and all those Negroes to fraternize with. Ought to be heaven for a lady journalist who wants to get her hands dirty. But it seems you want to get them even dirtier.”
Overton approaches me. He bends, plucks a piece of my beaded frock’s skirt and examines the curves of the shells. It’s only an excuse to fill my nose with the musk behind his ears and my eyes with the few black hairs that escaped being razored from his whipcord neck.
“I was raised in a Protestant orphanage—with an excellent private education, a thorough knowledge of Holy Scripture, and nothing more other than the uniform on my back,” I spit quietly. “I’ve met men like you. And you can’t frighten all of us. In fact, some women find your sort unbearably dull.”
He rises with a positively obsidian glare, sharp jaw twitching.
If I can take your mind off Blossom, then hip, hip, hurrah.
“Dull? Now, that’s mighty interesting. Dull, you find me?” he hisses.
“As paint.”
“In that case, since it’s sensation you’re after, sensation you’ll have—I’ll show you just the sort of establishment that darkie slut has landed you in.”
Nobody the bluestocking would be frightened, but she’d kick up a powerful fuss. So I do. Even though it pain
ts my arm in spreading purple watercolors as he hauls me out of the dressing room. Even though I know better, understand that this will stoke his coals. Even though grabbing the railing after he half drags me into a hidden staircase behind a red velvet curtain only serves to bash my shins against the steep steps.
“Shut up, you useless bitch.” Overton lets go for long enough to slap me, sending my jaw clanging, before yanking me up again like a child about to be switched. “You want to see where the oh so artistic, so very artistic, Blossom Fontaine works? That’s fine. Put this in your article—your harpy suffragette friends can read your titillating coon exposé while they frig themselves alone in their pitiful tenements.”
If the carnival ride gets any more thrilling, this Nobody is going to shriek her goddamn head off her neck.
Just about now, a weapon about the undercarriage would come in handy—but I never carry one. The cutthroats engaged gunning against Mr. Salvatici hardly ever paid Nobody any mind, thank Christ. But on the few occasions when some goon decided I was worth searching? They ain’t never found nuttin’, as Harry Chipchase would have said, and I’d slink off and live to write their proverbial obituaries.
But Officer Overton is proving to be Mr. Mangiapane. He is Dario Palma. He likes to hurt people. He is the worst blue button I’ve ever encountered, and his kind don’t bore me.
They liquefy my guts so thoroughly, they made Alice disappear.
As we crest the top of the stairs, I take in the infamous second floor. We’re in a hallway papered with cabbage roses that curl away from the walls as if they haven’t any awfully keen desire to stay put. Professionals of the mattress stare at us with glass-gleaming eyes—a brunette, a redhead with a daring bob, a black waif, an Oriental with her lips painted a vampirish scarlet. More behind closed doors, from whence thumping sounds emit.
Home, sweet home.
At the sight of Overton, they scatter, and he laughs in delight.
“Help!” I scream. “Someone, please, help—”
He claps a hand over my mouth and I can feel my teeth against his salty palm.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he says in my ear. “Poor, sheltered girl, having to live through books for so long. When you knew you could taste the real thing. It drove you absolutely wild, didn’t it?”