“Fitzroy! You scared the daylights out of me!” She surreptitiously wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
Arimentha and Fitzroy? These couldn’t be real people. Those names belonged to porcelain dolls or racehorses.
Fitzroy laughed heartily and looked from her face to mine and back. His lips curled upward. “Making friends with the locals?”
“No,” she said, not even sparing a glance my way. “She’s some kind of employee here.”
My face hardened. I regretted feeling even a moment’s pity for her.
“Then let’s have a dance,” Fitzroy said. “What do you say, darling?”
Arimentha glanced toward the stage, where Marion was still singing. “Maybe later.”
“Millie!” Duke barked from down the bar. “Icebox sprang a leak. Get back here!”
I wanted to tell him to fix it himself. Or to go to hell. But it was New Year’s Eve, and he was too busy with the customers to visit with the devil tonight.
I straightened, and my eyes met Arimentha’s in the mirror. She smirked and made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go on, do what you’re paid to do.”
Rage bloomed hot in my chest. I rose from my barstool, fists curling at my sides.
“Want another round then?” Fitzroy said, ignoring me entirely, and Arimentha’s gaze flickered away from mine, too.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “Get yourself one.” She fished a dollar out of her beaded purse and stuffed it into his hand. She turned to me. “Do you have a ladies’ room in this . . . place?”
Her tone made me want to push her into the john myself, but I grinned back like a shark. “We have an everybody’s room,” I said brightly, and pointed the way. “But I’m warning you—it ain’t that clean.”
Arimentha shoved herself away from the bar. “That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
* * *
Marion finished his set while I was on my hands and knees fixing the icebox before the leak could spread out onto the dance floor. When I finally stood up, a streak of black sullied my clean shirt, and Duke told me I looked like a shoeshine boy. I resisted punching him in the nose, for now, and climbed up on a barstool on my knees to scan the crowd for Arimentha’s fair hair. There were other blondes in the club, but none with hair quite so pale as hers, and few that hadn’t obviously paid for the color.
I finally spotted her in the back corner, near the hallway that led to the stairs and the john. Her date, Fitzroy, was there, too, hovering behind her elbow. And right in front of them sparked the red of Marion’s dress.
Marion and Arimentha stood close, shoulders curving inward so they almost touched, like friends or even lovers. Then Marion shifted, and I glimpsed his face, wrenched into an ugly mask, his red lips twisting around ugly words. He was angry. My mouth fell open. Marion and I had fought our share of battles, but never like this.
Arimentha’s shoulders hunched up toward her ears, like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell. She didn’t look like the haughty girl I’d spoken to minutes before. She looked crushed and beaten.
I slid off the stool, shoved aside a big oaf blocking my way, and started toward the corner. I called out Marion’s name, but my voice drowned in a blare of sound from the cornet. A girl in gray trousers and a matching vest grabbed my hand and yelled, “Wanna dance?” over the music, but I didn’t have time for that now. I mimed maybe later and kept moving.
I emerged from a knot of Red Feather Boys to see Fitzroy take Arimentha by the elbow and begin tugging her away. Her powdered face was streaked with tears, and she kept looking back over her shoulder toward Marion as he whirled and, hiding his own face with one gloved hand, skirted around the edge of the room in the opposite direction.
I pivoted and shoved through the crowd that had closed up in his wake, but he’d still made it all the way up the stairs and into his dressing room before I got there. The door was shut tight, and no sound came from the other side.
“Marion?” I said. “You all right?”
No answer. I tried the knob, but it was locked. I pressed my forehead against the door. He’d never locked me out before. Not me.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let me in. Tell me what that girl said, so I can go smack her for you.”
“She’s not worth it.” His voice sounded muffled, dense. Like he’d been crying.
“That was the same girl who was showing around your picture,” I said, my lips almost touching the door. “You know her.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. Who is she?”
His voice hardened. “Don’t worry about her. She’s gone now, and she won’t be back.”
“What’d you say to her?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Mar?”
“Nothing. I said nothing.”
“Then how—”
“You better get back out there. Duke’ll be needing you.”
I hesitated, scratching at the loose paint on the door with my thumbnail. Should I tell him I’d spoken to her? That I knew her name?
“Will you be okay for your next set?” I said, stalling, hoping he’d let me in once the storm had passed. “The Red Feathers’ll cry a river if you don’t come back out.”
A sound filtered through the door, either a sniffle or a laugh.
“And Lewis—” I said, “oh boy, he’ll be out there looking like somebody stole his lollipop.”
This time it was definitely a laugh. A small one. Then a sigh.
“I’ll be okay, Millie.” Another sigh. “I’m always okay.”
“O’course,” I said, trying to sound cheery. “Never doubted you.”
There was another pause. Then, “Love you,” he said, his voice close to the door. It sounded so weary, so sad.
“Love you, too, kid.” I laid my hand flat against the wood, wishing I could put my arm around his shoulders. Something was definitely wrong, and it was all that rich girl’s fault.
CHAPTER
4
WHEN I GOT back to the bar, Duke and I kept up the steady flow of alcohol into the hands of our increasingly sloppy customers. Every time I got a second to spare, I peeked at the hallway, waiting for Marion to return, trying to gauge what each minute that passed signaled about his state of mind.
I checked the stock of clean glasses stacked under the bar—we were getting low, but I thought we’d probably make it. The flow of customers would slow once Marion’s second set started and most folks settled into their seats. After midnight, a stream of people would start trickling out of the club, though there were always stragglers hanging on until the very end when we closed at two. But by then, business at the bar would be slow enough that we could wash glasses if we had to and catch our breath.