The Diviners (32 page)

“Which one?” Evie said, craning her neck.

“Mr. Samson at table fifteen,” the waiter said, indicating delicately with a nod.

“Oh, brother,” Theta said.

“What is it?” Evie couldn’t see too well in the dark.

“See that fella across the way? Don’t be obvious about it.”

The girls peeked over the tops of their menus. Four tables over sat a heavyset man with a very full mustache and the smug air of Wall Street success. “The one who looks like a walrus without a zoo?” Evie asked.

“The same. He’s one of those chumps who wants to feel like he’s young and exciting. Probably got a wife and three brats up in Bedford and thinks we’ll show him a good time. Oh, he’s looking at us. Smile, girls.”

Evie flashed her teeth, and the older man raised his glass. The girls raised theirs in reply. The man blew a kiss and motioned for them to join him.

“What now?” Evie asked through still-smiling teeth.

“Now it’s really showtime.” Theta knocked back her champagne and let loose an enormous belch that drew disgusted stares from people nearby. “Nothing like a good glass of giggle water to help a girl’s insides!” Theta said loudly and patted her stomach.

Across the floor, the older man’s glass hung in midair. He looked quickly away.

“He’s scandalized!” Evie said on a giggle.

“Now he can go home to his wife in Bedford and
we
can enjoy his grape juice in peace.”

“How’d you get so smart?”

“Hard knocks,” Theta said. She and Evie toasted and sipped the man’s champagne.

Mabel signaled for a waiter. “Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?”

“What’s the point of that, Miss?” the waiter said.

“Tomorrow morning,” Mabel said.

“If you say so, Miss.”

“How’s Henry making out?” Theta asked, craning her head. Several tables away, Henry lounged in a chair wearing an expression of beautiful, bored elegance as he listened to the man with the parrot.

“He’s not really your brother, is he?” Evie said.

Theta smirked. “Now you’ve done it. People will talk.”

Theta was so deadpan that it took Evie a second to realize she was kidding.

“How did you meet?”

“On the street. I was starving, and he gave me part of his sandwich. He’s a real pal.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t the two of you…?”

Theta narrowed her eyes and blew out a thin stream of smoke. It felt to Evie as if she were weighing her answer. “We just didn’t go
for each other. He may not be my real brother, but he feels like one to me. I’d do anything for him.”

Henry sauntered toward them and Theta scooted over to make room.

“What did I miss?” he asked. “Say, where did the champagne come from?”

“Lonely walrus,” Evie explained and giggled. She was already feeling a little tipsy, more from excitement and optimism than from the champagne. She liked Theta and Henry. They were so sophisticated—not like anybody she’d known back home. She hoped they liked her, too.

“You’re just in time. We’re about to make a toast,” Theta said.

Henry raised his glass. “To what?”

“To us. To the future,” Theta said.

“To the future,” Henry, Evie, and Mabel echoed.

The orchestra segued into a hot, sensual number, and Evie leaned her head against Theta’s shoulder. “Don’t you feel like anything could happen tonight?”

“It’s Manhattan. Anything can happen at any time.”

“But what if you met the man of your dreams tonight?”

Theta blew out another plume of cigarette smoke. “Not interested. Love’s messy, kiddo. Let those other girls get moony-eyed and goofy. Me? I got plans.”

“What plans?” Mabel asked. A waiter had brought pâte on toast, which she ate with delight.

“Pictures.
That’s
the future. I hear they’re gonna start making talking pictures.”

Evie laughed. “Talking pictures? How awful!”

“ ’S gonna be swell. When my contract’s up, I’m heading to California with Henry. Right, Henry?”

“Anything you say, beautiful.”

“I hear they have lemon trees, and you can pick ’em right off and make fresh lemonade. We’ll get a house with a lemon tree in the backyard. Maybe even have a dog. I always wanted a dog.”

Evie wanted to laugh, but Theta seemed so serious, and even a little sad, so she just choked back her drink instead. “Sounds ducky.” She clinked glasses with Theta. “To lemon trees and dogs!”

“Lemon trees and dogs,” Theta and Henry said, laughing.

“Lemon trees and dogs,” Mabel slurred, her mouth full.

Evie leaned forward, resting her chin on her upturned palm. “What about you, Henry?”

“Me? I’m going to write songs for the pictures. Real songs. Not that gooey bushwa Flo Ziegfeld likes,” Henry drawled.

“To real songs!” Evie toasted. “Mabesie?”

“I’m going to help the poor. But first, I’m going to eat every bit of this.” Mabel swooned. “Heavenly.”

Theta cocked her head. “What about you, Evil?”

Evie turned her glass around slowly on the table. What could she say?
I’m going to stop having nightmares about my dead brother. I’m going to let the past stop haunting me like a vengeful ghost. I’m going to find my place in the world and show everyone what I’m made of.
She’d felt it from the moment she stepped off the train at Penn Station, a sense that she belonged here, that Manhattan was her true home. “This probably sounds silly….”

Henry let out a loud, dramatic laugh, then shrugged. “I just wanted to get it out of the way, darling.”

Evie grinned. Oh, she liked them both so much! “Ever since I got here, I’ve had the craziest feeling of destiny—that whatever is supposed to happen, whoever it is I’m going to be, is waiting just around the next corner. I want to be ready for it. I want to meet it
headlong.” Evie raised her glass. “To whatever’s around the next corner.”

“I sure hope it’s not a car bearing down,” Mabel joked.

“To the good stuff just out of sight,” Theta echoed.

“To Evie’s destiny,” Henry said and touched his glass to theirs in a satisfying chime.

Evie paused, her glass in midair. “I don’t believe it. Of all the gall!”

“What’s eating you?” Theta asked.

Evie slammed her glass down, sloshing champagne onto the tablecloth. “Theta, take my purse. It’s got twenty bucks in it. You might need it to bail me out.”

“For the last time, what is it?”

“
Sam Lloyd
,” Evie hissed. She marched over to where he stood, leaning against a marble column, talking up a blond with a red Cupid’s bow mouth.

“Excuse me, Miss.” Evie sandwiched herself between them.

“Hey!” the girl objected, but Evie stood firm.

“What are
you
doing here?” she demanded.

“What am I doing here? I come here all the time. What are
you
doing here?”

“Who’s she—your mother?” the blonde said in a voice so high it could break glass.

Evie turned. “I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Holy smokes!”

“You said it. Just to be safe, you might want to burn those glad rags you’ve got on. In fact, you might wanna burn them on principle.”

“Huh?”

Evie raised an eyebrow at Sam. “Why, Sam, she’s charming.” Evie turned back to the blonde, leaned in close and whispered, “You see that fella with the mustache over there?” Evie pointed to the walrus man. “He’s so rich he could buy Wool and Worth’s and still have enough left over for a steak dinner. Why don’t you go get him to buy you a drink?”

“You on the level?”

“And how. He’s a real Big Cheese. Trust me.”

The girl smiled. “Say, thanks for the tip, honey.”

“We Janes have to stick together.”

The girl looked worried. “You gonna be okay with his… typhoid?”

“It’s okay,” Evie said, glaring at Sam. “I’m immune to what he’s got.”

Sam watched the alluring blond wiggle her way toward the walrus man and shook his head. “Anybody ever tell you your timing is lousy, sister?”

“Where did you get that dinner jacket? It looks expensive.”

Sam grinned. “Back of a chair.”

“You
stole
it?”

“Let’s just say I borrowed it for the duration of my stay.”

“I oughta tell Uncle Will.”

“Be my guest. Of course, then you’ve gotta explain what you were doing here at a speakeasy in Harlem at eleven thirty in the
PM
.”

Evie opened her mouth to give Sam an earful just as the tuxedo-clad emcee stepped to the microphone. His white shirt was so stiff it looked bulletproof. “And now the Hotsy Totsy presents the Famous Hotsy Totsy Girls dancing that forbidden dance, the Black Bottom!”

The orchestra launched into the jazzy, uptempo dance tune.
With a loud whoop, the young and beautiful chorines strutted their way across the stage. They swayed their hips and stamped out a hard, quick rhythm with their silver shoes. With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling—an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.

The piano player called out to the girls, and they shuffled forward, hips first. They crooked their fingers and everyone raced onto the dance floor below the stage, caught up in the dance and the night.

Theta sat at the table, alone, behind an inscrutable cloud of cigarette smoke, watching. Henry had started up a conversation with a handsome waiter named Billy, and she wondered if he’d be coming home tonight. She watched the spoiled debutantes getting their kicks by coming uptown to hear jazz in forbidden clubs, just to make their mothers fret. She watched the bartenders filling glasses but keeping their eyes on the doors. She watched the lonely hearts mooning over the fellas who, oblivious, mooned over other dolls. She watched a fight break out between a couple who were now sitting in miserable silence. She watched the cigarette girls smiling at each table, extolling the health benefits of Lucky Strikes or Chesterfields, whichever company paid them a little more. She watched the girls dance onstage and wondered how old they’d been when they started. Had they been dragged from town to town on the circuit from the age of four? Had they lain awake on fleabag motel floors, then made the rounds of booking agents the next morning,
half-dead from exhaustion? Had any of them made a daring escape from a small town in the middle of the night? Had they changed their names and their looks, becoming someone completely new, someone who couldn’t be found? Did any of them have a power so frightening it had to be kept locked down tight?

A good-looking fella with a fraternity pin on his lapel stepped in front of Theta’s table, blocking her view. “Mind if I join you?”

Theta stubbed out her cigarette. “Sorry, pal. I was just leaving.” She grabbed her wrap and Evie’s purse and went in search of the ladies’ lounge.

Memphis had finished his rounds for the night. On his way through the Hotsy Totsy’s kitchen, he pocketed a few cookies for Isaiah, then set off to check out the action in the club. A drunk girl whose curls drooped from dancing called to him as he passed: “Oh, boy—get my coat, will ya?” She dropped a quarter in his hand.