My head is killing me.
It’s not the first time this week but I really hope it’s the last. I must be coming down with something. I think about asking around to some of the girls, see if they’re feeling under the weather as well, but I don’t want to cause a fuss. I don’t want people knowing I’m getting sick because it will only get back to Tommy or Ralph and they’ll flip their lids. Rescheduling acts during the holiday season is tough. One night with me out of commission will be a huge headache for them, so I keep mine to myself.

“Do you wanna switch the order of the songs around?”
Smitty asks.

I take a long look at the drummer. I don’t know what I want to do other than go home and sleep this thing off. But the show must go on and for that to happen so must I.

“Yeah.” I tell him, rubbing my face briefly. “Let’s bring the slow number to the close. Tone the place down a bit.”

“When are we starting with Christmas songs in the act?” Cla
ra asks from the chorus lineup.

She’s a young girl with wild red hair but shapely hips and ankles. The ankles are what got her hired. That and Hal’s strange obsession with them. He begged and pleaded
with Ralph to give the girl a chance and lucky for her he did. Lucky for me she has talent and two days later she was in the show. It only took Hal two more to get in
her
.

“Not until it’s actually Christmas time.” I mutter.

“Amen.” Smitty says quietly, making me smile.

“It’s practically Christmas now.” Clara whines. “Don’t ya see the snow outside? It’s the season. Yo ho ho.”

I grit my teeth. “It’s ‘ho, ho, ho.’”

“Huh?”

“What you said. It’s not ‘yo ho ho’. You sound like a pirate. Santa—you know, never mind. It doesn’t matter. No Christmas yet.”

She
looks past me and grins like a viper out into the darkened dinner area. Either she’s nuts or she’s smiling at someone and I thought the place was empty except for us. I squint into the shadows so I can see what she’s looking at. There’s a man there. Sitting back perfectly shrouded in darkness as though he belongs there. Only the outline of his stocky frame is visible.

My heart skips in my chest. It’s
Drew.

I fight to hide my excitement. My sheer, unadulterated pleasure at him being here. Despite the way our last meeting ended I’m thrilled to see him. Relieved even.
It’s been weeks but I can’t get the guy out of my head. I was certain he’d never come around again, that whatever it was that had started between us was completely finished.

“She’s right, angel.”
the shadow speaks up.

My heart plummets. It’s not him. It’s Hal watching his taste on the sly practicing her dance moves. The fact that my pra
ctice is being used as foreplay on top of my crushed hope makes me shaking angry.

“Get out, Hal.”
I say severely.

“What?” he asks indignantly. “I sided with you!”

“I don’t care. Get out. No spouses, no girlfriends, no boyfriends, no paying customers allowed at rehearsals. You know the rules.”

“Alright, alright.”

I hear him chuckle as he walks through the room toward the side door. He’s heading to the back where the guys are playing poker. That’s their rehearsal. Trading greasy, wrinkled, ripped pieces of green paper back and forth in exchange for lies and empty promises. The same money traded back and forth between the whores for their time and valiant efforts. The same money I get paid in.

“I’ll come find ya when I’m done here, Daddy.” Clara calls after Hal.

Her high pitched baby-tone voice is grating on my nerves. She’s doing it on purpose which only makes it worse. Some men like that childlike attitude, I guess. Personally, I want to slap her silly every time she talks. Running around the club pouting at everybody and calling all the men ‘Daddy’.

“Shut up and get in line, Clara.”

She scowls at me. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

“Can’t I?”

“Hal!”

“Do whatever she says, Clara!” he shouts back, then disappears through the doorway.

I grin at Clara. “Get in line, Angel.” I tell her, my voice saccharine sweet.

She continues to scowl at me but she goes without protest. As I thought.

I get this a lot. More than you’d think with the way Tommy is about me. Most of the girls working in the club are attached to a gangster in some way, shape or form. It affords them certain rights. Certain status. As the main attraction of the Cotton Club here in Cicero, I have a certain status all my own. One I earned by myself that doesn’t depend on anyone else. Really what these girls are doing is riding the coattails of power trailing from these men. Not me. I own my own status. I’m afforded my own set of rights. I’m a rare female power and sometimes people forget that. Sometimes they have to be reminded, like Clara just was. I can’t say I mind watching it happen.

“Adrian!” Tommy shouts, bursting into the room through the door Hal just exited.

I groan inside. This rehearsal will never be allowed to start meaning it will never end and I’ll eventually die on this stage of either agony or old age.

“Yeah, Tommy, what?”

“I got a new girl for ya.”

He holds open the door for a young woman trailing behind him. She’s looking around nervously like a small bird that accidentally flew indoors and can’t find a way out. Her eyes are wide with shock and curiosity, her hands fluttering over the ends of her sleeves as she worries the fabric incessantly. She’s young, probably fifteen or so, and absolutely gorgeous. Her skin is ebony in color and pure perfection, smooth as silk. Her hair is pinned expertly on top of her head, not a strand out of place and her dress, though nothing but a cheap, thin cotton, is well maintained and perfectly pressed. I glance at Clara and a couple of the other girls where they st
and slouching, snapping gum in their mouths like cows in the fields in Nebraska slathering over a chunk of cud. Maybe a new girl isn’t the worst thing in the world.

“What’s your name?” I call to her, coming down off the stage.

She meets my eyes without an ounce of fear or hesitation. It startles me. When I get down to floor level with her and in better light I’m struck by how familiar she looks. Maybe she’s a regular performer somewhere else that Tommy has sweet talked away.

“
Elishia.” she answers quietly.

“Can you dance?”

“Would I give you a chorus girl who couldn’t dance?” Tommy asks, sounding annoyed.

“Yes.”

“Well this one can.” he says sharply, turning to leave. “Train her up, get her in the show.”

“As what and when?”

He turns to look at me, his annoyance clear in his face now. “I told you, as a chorus girl and immediately.”

“The chorus line is full. You want me to use her as an understudy?”

“Only if you don’t want her to get paid and then I’d wonder why we’re doin’ any of this.”

I frown. “What are you
talking about?”

He
stalks back to me, stepping into my space to whisper in my ear.

“This is Eddie’s daughter.”

“She’s what?!” I cry, shoving him in the chest hard.

“Easy.” he warns, his eyes igniting.

“Easy? You want me to take it easy?” I hiss. “You can’t put Eddie’s daughter in one of these outfits to dance in front of this crowd. Are you crazy?”

“You asked me to take care of that family. That’s what I’m doin’.”

“I thought you’d give them some money.” I whisper, exasperated. “Help them get by until Eddie is better and able to work again.”

Tommy shakes his head
, lighting a cigarette he pulls from behind his ear. “This ain’t a charity, Adrian. I’m not givin’ away anything for free, you got that? This is the solution. Take it or leave it.”

I hate it, but I have to take it. Eddie can’t work right now, his wife has to take care of their kids and really being in the chorus isn’t that bad.
She’ll get pawed at less up on stage than she would working the floor as a waitress or cigarette girl. Or in the kitchen. God help us if a pretty girl like this was working in the kitchen or anywhere else in this building with dark corners and lockable doors. Backstage is always swarming with people. She’s safer there.

I sigh heavily. “How long?”

“Doc says he’ll be right as rain in a few weeks.”

“Fine.” I mutter. I turn toward the stage. “Clara! Clear out. You’re on vacation for the next month.”

“What?!” she screeches.

“You heard her.” Tommy tells her
quietly but firmly, standing directly behind me. I can see the smoke from his cigarette blowing over my head and cascading in front of me like I’m standing behind a waterfall. “Scram!”

I step away from him when he shouts, the sound feeling like an ice pick in my temple.

“Come on,” I tell Elishia warily. “Come over here and sit down.”

“Don’t thank me or
anything.” Tommy says sharply.

I turn to him and give a theatrical curtsy, intentionally bowing forward to give him a good look down my sweater. Breasts. They can pacify the tiniest of babies and the biggest of men. “Thank you so much, Mr. Giordana. You’ve been a peach.”

He grins at my sarcasm, scans the girls in the chorus line who are watching and waiting, and then heads off toward the back. The women watch him leave with a mixture of lust, longing and fear.

I motion for Elishia to follow me toward the stage. “
You’ll watch this rehearsal and get a feel for how things work, get a chance to see the routine, then we’ll try and work you into it. You’ll be in the back or on the far side in the beginning since you won’t be very good but maybe we’ll work you in farther later.”

“Yes, Miss Marcone.” she agrees hastily
as she falls in step behind me.

“Call me Adrian.”

“Alright, Miss Adrian.”

“No,” I tell her with a smile. “Just Adrian.”

She looks up at me in surprise and shakes her head. “I coul—“

“Yes you can. I’ve been trying to get your father to do it for years but he’s a stubborn one.” I stop beside the table and look her up and down appraisingly. “Are you stubborn,
Elishia?”

She grins. “Wouldn’t be my daddy’s daughter otherwise.”

“Good.” I tell her, turning back toward the stage as she takes her seat. “Stubborn will keep you afloat.”

Chapter
Two

“You can’t do this, Tommy.” Hal protests.

Tommy shoots him a hard look. “I what?”

Hal pauses, rethinking his phrasing I imagine.
“Look, it’s not right. It’s not fair to Clara. She earned her spot on that stage. You can’t just take it from her and replace her with some charity case.”

“She only got a shot at that spot because you wanted to sleep with her.” Tommy reminds him.

“Doesn’t change the fact that she’s got talent.” Hal turns to me, his eyes pleading for me to see his side. “She’s a good dancer, ain’t she, Aid?”

“Yeah.” I agree heartily. “She’s a great dancer.”

Hal turns to Tommy. “You see?”

“But she’s a shit person.”

Tommy chuckles as Hal glares at me.

“That’s my girl you’re talkin’ about.”
he snarls at me

“Yeah, and she’s
my
chorus girl.”

“Excuse me.” Tommy cuts in. “
Your
chorus girl?”

I sigh. “Fine, she’s
Tommy’s
chorus girl and she’s got a bad attitude. The last three days without her has been a dream.”

“But she can dance, that’s what matters.” Hal insists.

“It is, you’re right. And Elishia can dance too. And she does it without being a pain in my side. I’m keeping her and that’s that.”

Hal turns to Tommy, changing his tactic. “What is she supposed to do for money, huh? Go get a job someplace else for a month? That’s crazy.”

“You mean to tell me you can’t afford your girl’s expenses for one measly month?” he asks quietly. “That’s pathetic. If you can’t float her for that long, you shouldn’t have her. Let someone who can take care of her have a go at her.”

“I can take care of her.”
Hal says angrily.

“Well then get the fuck out of my office and go do it. I don’t wanna hear any more
about it, you read me?”

“Yeah,” Hal replies morosely. “I
read ya. You’ll save a spot for her though right, Adrian? She can come back in a month?”

“Don’t hassle her with this.” Tommy says angrily. “Who knows what will happen in a month? Maybe we’ll all be dead.”

“That’s chipper.” I mutter.

Tommy frowns at me. “What I’m sayin’ is don’t worry about it right now.” He turns to Hal, looking at him seriously. “But speakin’ of worries, what’s the story with
the Tremblays? What was our discount on the late shipment?”

Hal shifts in his seat. “We didn’t get one.”

Tommy sits back hard in his chair, leveling his gaze on Hal. “Why not?”

“They gave us a few free cases of gin instead.” Hal shrugs. “I took it. I figured we can make more money off selling free gin than they ever would have given us in discount for the late bourbon shipment.”

“How much? How many cases?”

“6 with 12 bottles in every case.”

Hal waits patiently while Tommy thinks this over. I know he’s doing the math, figuring out what Ralph would have insisted on in discounts and what we can make off the free gin.

“How does it taste?” he finally asks. “Is it rotgut?”

“It’s legitimate gin, bottled at a distillery in Canada. No bathtub shit. I tasted it when they offered it.” Hal shrugs again. “It was good. Decent.”

“I’ve drank it.” I pipe up
, hoping to mend a few fences siding with Hal on this. “It’s fine. Better than the whiskey.”

“It’s gin, though.” Tommy mutters. “Not a lot of people drink gin.”

“We could put gin and tonics on special for the holidays.” Hal suggests.

“Yeah, I guess. It’ll make it go farther.” Tommy glances at me. “Is that how you’re drinking it or are you taking it straight up?”

“With tonic water.” I tell him.

“Alright. Tonic water is cheaper than gin. We’ll still come out on top
with this deal. Good work, Hal.”

Hal smiles proudly. “Thanks, Tommy.”

“Now get the hell out. Check the bar. Make sure they’re ready for the night.”

“You got it.”

Hal disappears from the room, the door closing behind him with a decided click. I stand up and start to pace, feeling caged all of the sudden.

“You’re scowling.”
Tommy scolds quietly.

“Am I?”

“This thing with Elishia, this is what you asked me for. Be happy.”

“Oh I’m thrilled.” I mutter, collapsing down on the side of his desk. I’m facing the wall behind him, looking at an ugly painting of an ugly woman and wishing for the fiftieth tim
e tonight that I could go home.

“What’s with you lately?” he asks, pouring himself a drink. It looks like bourbon. “You’ve been evil the last few days.”

I shake my head. The movement makes me feel a little dizzy. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

Tommy looks up at me sharply. “Are you gettin’ sick?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You better not be.” he grumbles, taking a sip of his drink. “You want one?”

“No.” I say with a frown. “It’ll make it worse.”

“Hmm.”

My eyes are drawn to the massive painting behind him again. The woman captured in it has a frown frozen on her face and it strikes me that this is how she’ll be seen for all of eternity. People who have never met her will look at her here in Tommy’s office and think to themselves that she looks like one mean, ugly witch of a woman. But is she? What if this was just a bad rendering and she’s actually sweet as pie, making cookies with her grandkids, attending church every Sunday where she tithes double to help out the single mother sitting beside her who lost her husband in the war? Suddenly I feel the compulsion to know.

“Who is this?”

“Who is who? What are you askin’?” he asks. He doesn’t look behind him, though. Instead he’s watching me. Examining me where I sit on his desk.

“The woman in this painting. Who is she?”

“How should I know?”

I glance down at him in his leather chair. “It’s on your wall. How can you
not
know?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t pick it. It was there when I took over the office.”

“Who was the last guy? Who’d you take over for?”

“None of your business.”

“Forget it.” I groan, moving to stand.

Tommy reaches out and grabs my wrist, pulling me back to the desk. I’m sitting in the center of it now. Directly in front of him. He looks up at me with his dark eyes and I know immediately what he’s thinking. What he’s feeling.

He rolls the chair forward, pressing his knees between mine and spreading them as far as my skirt will let them. His hands smooth out over the fabric on my thighs, running up and down slowly. I stare down at him, sure where this is going but unsure how I want to react. He watches me as he continues to move his hands slowly up and down my thighs.

“You want to know why I keep that ugly woman on my wall?” he asks softly, his voice deep and vibrating.

His fingers begin to gather the skirt, to pull it up with each movement.

“Why?” I ask breathily.

My knees are bare. Then an inch of my thighs. Another inch. Two more. He runs his fingers lightly under my garter then follows it around my leg. His hot hands make their way to my inner thighs, pushing against them to spread me wider.

“I keep it there,” he says, his right hand moving
higher. His fingertips brush across the thin fabric of my underwear and I jerk back slightly in surprise. “So when I’m having an off night,” His finger slips under the hem of my panties. “And I’ve got some ugly dame bent over this desk,” His finger tugs at me, opening me. “I can remind myself it could always be worse.”

I stare
over his head at the painting thinking what a horrible thing that is to do. Those poor women who look at this beautiful man and think his interest makes them beautiful too. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t because Tommy is rotten on the inside. He’s breathtaking on the outside, the poster boy for perfection, but inside he’s something ugly and wrong.

And what about me? What am I? I’m gorgeous in the mirror but what about what lies beyond that? Below the surface where
all the cracks are, where the darkness lies. Where the secrets eat at me like mice on Swiss cheese until maybe someday I’m just a hallow shell like Tommy. Maybe someday I’ll look in the mirror and I won’t see me anymore. I’ll see into me, the way Drew did the night I met him, and I’ll glare at myself and whisper—

“
You’re disgusting.”

“Am I?” he asks innocently. His finger
runs the length of me, from top to bottom, running a line of electricity down my center that I feel all the way into my toes. I breathe in sharply. “I can’t be too disgusting. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” He rubs my wetness across my opening, circling over and over. Around and around. “Or do you like disgusting, Adrian? Do you like ugly?”

“I don’t think I like you at all.”

He smirks. “You know what? I think I believe that.”

His finger slides inside of me slowly. I throw my head back, groaning.
I’ve never let it go this far with him and I shouldn’t be doing it now. But I haven’t been touched like this in years. Not since I first arrived here and learned early on that I needed to keep my legs together if I wanted to make it. If I wasn’t looking to be used and abused. That’s a lot of years with a lot of pent up energy. I’m dying to be caressed this way and even though it’s the wrong way with the wrong man, I’ll take that risk.

Tommy
flutters his finger inside of me. My breath catches as my hands grip the edge of the desk, my knuckles going white. When his thumb brushes my nub I shiver everywhere, a low moan escaping my parted lips.

“But you like what I can do to you, don’t you?” he asks darkly.

I ignore him. All I can think about is his hand and what it’s doing to me. Of what else it could do. I want this release so badly. It’s different when it’s someone else doing it. It’s better, more exciting. Scarier.

“Adrian.” he barks at me.

I snap my head up in surprise. “What?” I bark back.

“Answer me. Do you like how I make you feel?”

I stare at him, noticing for the first time how his demeanor changes in moments like this. How different he is when he’s alone with me compared to how he is with his boys. The way his speech shifts, becoming more eloquent. Some part of Tommy is an act. I just don’t know which one.

“Yes.”

He nods. “Do you want to feel even better?”

“Yes.” I whisper.

“Ask me.”

“More.”
I demand.

“No,” he says. He withdraws his finger leaving me feeling cold. Empty. “I didn’t say tell me, I said ask me.”

I glare down at him and I hate the look I see on his face.

Power. Control. Dominance. This is what it’s always like with him, with all the mobsters. They want control over everything they see and I refuse to play that game. I don’t care how unsatisfied I am. I’d rather have my pride than an orgasm.

I shove his hand aside and slip off the desk. He leans back looking surprised but amused as I smooth down my skirt and move to step around him.

“No thanks.” I say lightly.

“Really? You sure you feel alright?”

I turn to smile at him, my brighter than the city lights
stage smile. “I’m swell.”

Tommy, still grinning, gives me a salute, pressing his finger lightly to his head. The same finger he just used on me.

“Have a good show, Adrian. Make sure you stay focused.”

I slam the door behind me.

BOOK: Gin and Toxic (Swan Song)

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