Moonshine: A Novel (7 page)

As long as you didn't actually touch my head--which felt like nothing so much as a hair-textured helmet--the effect was unusual and striking. The egg whites had hardened my natural curls into tight, cherubic ringlets that clung close to my scalp. It also drew out the natural red of my color, so that in the lamplight my hair appeared fiery. It complemented the rose of the dress, which stopped a daring two inches above my knees. I wore Aileen's rayon hose and her best pair of heels, just slightly too small. I completed the outfit with a doubled rope of real rose pearls--a gift from Mama just before I left--matching ear bobs, and a simple lace bandeau.

I tossed my all-too-tattered and pedestrian coat on top of this splendor and enjoyed the ignominy of riding my bicycle in a flapper dress through the snow to reach the club a few minutes late. Aileen had promised to come by later to hear me sing.

I locked my bicycle to the fence outside a neighboring church and then walked down the steps at 201 East Twenty-fourth Street. They were no different from any other in this quiet, supposedly residential neighborhood, but anyone could tell you where to find Horace's. At the bottom was an equally featureless green door with a slide for the mailman.

I knocked. "Hey, it's me!" I called. "Let me in, it's freezing out here!"

From inside came the muffled sounds of someone shuffling to the door and shunting aside several bolts. It was Horace, dressed to the nines in tea-green tails with outrageously padded shoulders and matching hat. He looked mildly surprised to see me.

"Thought you turned chicken," he said in his rumbling southern drawl. I imagined it could be made to sound threatening, but Horace was like a personification of a swing jazz riff--far too concerned with beauty and aesthetics to reach beyond the mellow rhythm of his natural state. Of course, he was also famous for being one of the most tight-fisted bootleggers in Manhattan, but he never raised his voice while conducting business.

"And I hope you got some decent glad rags. Schoolmistress is cute, but not very smooth."

Horace poured himself a glass of something amber (and blazingly alcoholic, from the smell). I shook my head when he offered it to me and removed my coat and gloves while he sipped.

"This okay?" I asked, tossing my jacket over a chair.

Horace looked me up and down and smiled. "All right. Well, copacetic, honey. You sure clean up. Get on stage, why don't you? The boys are almost ready."

Horace's place wasn't very large--the stage was only twenty or so feet from the bar. "You're going to pay me for this, right?" I said, after I climbed the stage.

The piano player--a sub, I guessed, since I didn't recognize his graying widow's peak or blue eyes--laughed, and played a little riff. I had never seen a white musician at Horace's before.

Horace smiled and raised his glass. "Tips, doll. You'll get tips."

Great. A big load of help tips would be when Mrs. Brodsky came a-calling on Sunday.

The drummer sat down and beat a three-quarter rhythm on his snare. "You ready, Zephyr?" he asked. I looked at my little band: piano, drums, bass and trumpet. I might not be Josephine Baker, but they were good players. It would do.

People began to trickle in a few minutes after nine. Horace was presiding on his throne in front of the band, and waving to the regulars. The patrons at this honorable establishment tended to be the white upper class looking for a thrill (and, occasionally, good music) and middle-class blacks. Almost no one from my neighborhood could afford Horace. Rinaldo's gin joints were much less classy and far more convenient.

The band played light, upbeat versions of new songs like the "Gin House Blues" and "Muskrat Ramble." I tapped my foot absently to the music and scanned the crowd. Aileen showed up twenty minutes after nine and made her way like a magnet to a table of apparently unattached men. She was wearing enough makeup to make mine seem like a dab of powder, and her knee-length dress revealed an astonishing amount of skin. It seemed like half the back was out! I shook my head. Go dancing, indeed.

It was only when Horace waved his hand and announced me as the opening act that I realized why I was still listlessly scanning the crowd. For some reason, I still expected to see Amir. But I hadn't even told him I'd be singing here. The chances of him coming on his own were astonishingly slim. What was wrong with me?

"And now I give you the vampire suffragette herself, Zephyr Hollis."

Aileen cheered very loudly. I knew she was only being supportive, but the sound seemed to drown out the rest of the polite applause. A steady hum of chatter replaced the noise as I adjusted the microphone. Vampire suffragette.
Damn, damn, damn. I have a head full of egg whites. My dress is three years out of date. Oh, fucking bleeder, what possessed me to think this was a good idea?

Panicked, I looked at the band. They took it as a cue and launched into the first number, Irving Berlin's "Remember."

The intro was just a few bars long. I took a breath and focused on the shiny floorboards of the small stage. Not exactly a crowd-winning technique, but I was afraid the other option might be just passing out.

"Remember the night, the night you said I love you . . ."

It wasn't great, but at least the notes were mostly in tune. By the time I made it through a few lines, I had found my confidence again.

"Remember we found a lonely spot,"
I sang, finally managing to lift my head and look at the audience. A lot more people seemed to have arrived since I began singing. And most of them were actually paying attention to me, instead of chatting with their neighbors. And no stage hooks! Encouraged, I managed to embellish a little as I reached the coda.

"You promised that you'd forget me not, but you forgot to remember."

I glanced at the band and finished my triumphant high note just as they cut out. Smiling (seductively and serenely,
not
like a giddy five-year-old), I turned back to the audience.

And there he was, lounging in the front row in a fashionably ostentatious tuxedo with knee-length tails, a patterned red handkerchief and patent-leather shoes, smiling up at me as though I hadn't last seen him with a blood-mad child vampire slung over his shoulder. And though I'd been looking for him all day, I realized that the sight of him lounging so casually made my latent stage fright roar like a cornered lion. He nodded at me.

Oh, bloody stakes.

The next few numbers had a bit more bite.

We ended at half past ten, when the main act was getting ready backstage. A few people besides Aileen actually stood up to applaud, which astonished me. I should have been happier, but the image of Amir reclining languidly, his eyes half-lidded, made me clench my teeth.

"You were good," Horace said, as soon as I walked back into the club. He sounded surprised. I didn't blame him. "You can do it again next week."

I looked up at him. Aileen hadn't really been unfair when she called him a fat bootlegger. "How much?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Four dollars."

"I bet I could get a few other joints interested in the singing vampire suffragette." I almost gagged on the name, but I could see that I had hit upon my major selling point. Horace actually put down his drink.

"I
made
you . . ."

"I've only sung here once! Ten dollars, plus two for encores."

"Five, and no encores."

"Six, and you had better pay two for encores."

He stuck out his hand. "All right, birdie. Deal. I give you three tonight." He held up his hand to forestall my objections. " 'Cause you're just starting out, you understand. In this business, you gotta learn to negotiate
before
the performance."

He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket that almost made me salivate just looking at it. But then he fished out three silver dollars and pushed them across the table.

I shook my head ruefully. "Good advice."

I stood up and ordered a glass of water from the bar. Around me, the dense crowd of people chatted and drank Horace's bootleg gin. In places like this, you'd never know that alcohol had been illegal for the last six years. Even a pair of nearby vampires--a man and woman staggering a little as they passed me--seemed to have caught the drunken mood. I assumed they hadn't imbibed, as they both had that healthy fingertip flush that indicated a recent feeding. Alcohol would have made quick work of that. I drank another glass of water, hunting for Aileen in the sudden press of people. And Amir, of course, if he wasn't planning to vanish. Someone in front of me sat down, and the answer was immediately obvious. Aileen always did have a tendency to accost the most handsome man in the room. Maybe she was even now hinting that she wouldn't mind if he popped her cherry.

I stalked toward them, barely acknowledging the compliments a few people gave me as I swept past. I would absolutely
not
allow . . . well, I had no idea, but apparently I felt quite strongly about it.

"You're from Arabia, you say?" Aileen was corked, drinking something clear from a tumbler and swaying. Her face was very prettily flushed, but Amir's eyes were straying to the decadently large ostrich feather that she had fastened to the purple turban wrapped around her head. And well he might, for each time she swayed forward, the rather worse-for-wear fringe would tickle his nose.

"My father is a king in my homeland," he said, gently pushing aside the frond.

"A prince!" I exclaimed, walking up to them. I had never actually heard Dorothy Parker speak, but I imagined that at this moment I could probably match her for brittle sarcasm. "How lucky, Aileen. If his majesty overheats, you can fan him with your feather. Or would the ostrich like it back?"

Aileen stuck out her bottom lip and sighed. "You're being rude, Zephyr," she whispered, quite loudly.

I turned to Amir. "I'm terrified. What's the punishment for rudeness in Arabia? Something terribly barbaric?"

Aileen took another drink and giggled. "Yes, is it? Do you cut off their hands?"

Amir looked as though he wanted to laugh out loud, but said quite gravely, "Oh, noses, for certain."

My extremely drunk--and extremely gullible--roommate gasped and put a hand quite comically to her face. "No!"

Amir nodded sagely and took a drink from his own glass. "I'm quite serious."

"You lop them off with your own scimitar, I'm sure," I said.

Amir gave me a long, amused look and my heart began to pound. I supposed I would have flushed, had I not been red already from the excitement. "Forged of the finest steel--" he began.

"And quenched in the heart of a virgin?"

Amir laughed out loud at that. The sound was even more affecting than I remembered. Surreptitiously, Aileen squeezed my elbow. I couldn't even feel annoyed with her, because I knew precisely how she felt.

His grin was distinctly predatory. "No, Miss Hollis. We only quench our blades in the blood of vampires."

Aileen finished her drink in one long pull and set it firmly on the table. "That is probably a load of bollocks," she declared, loudly enough that a few nearby people turned to hear what lady would use such language. "But you tell it quite well."

Amir bowed slightly. "You're very kind."

I grabbed Aileen's elbow and turned her away from Amir. "Do me a favor and flirt with some other eligible chaps? I need a moment."

"Oh, you two know each other?" she whispered. "Don't tell me he's that weird one from your class--"

I nodded.

She whistled. "Lucky Zephyr. All right, I'll back off. I don't stand by poaching, and never have. Good luck to you."

She tipped her feather at me and tottered off between the tables, and had no trouble at all striking up a conversation with a young gentleman of average looks who was perhaps made more appealing by his diamond cuff links and hand-tooled leather shoes.

When I turned to face Amir again, he had reseated himself at the table and was looking up at me with an expression I couldn't decipher. He seemed almost sad, which was odd. I leaned against the edge of the stage, where a much larger band was setting up, and faced him. I felt a little more in control of the situation when I could look down at him.

"You were excellent," he said, surprising me.

"Scimitars?"

He smiled. "Singing."

I bit my lip and looked away. "Right. Of course. Um . . . thank you."

He shook his head and signaled to a nearby waitress. "A gin and tonic, please."

When she returned with the drink, Amir handed it to me.

"But I don't drink," I said.

This seemed to delight him. "The tireless efforts of the Temperance Union, vindicated. I thought we'd have a toast. To the singing vampire suffragette."

He raised his glass. Bemused, I clinked his with mine and tentatively sipped. The alcohol was as vile as I remembered it, but it made my throat tingle and heat in a not unpleasant manner. I took another.

"What a bloody stupid name. Did you know they called me that?"

"Darling, who doesn't? And now you sing! It's a coup."

I frowned at my glass--much safer than staring for too long at his face--and took another gulp. "Is that how you found me?"