Ten Cents a Dance (7 page)

"Yeah, okay, but . . ."

"Promise!"

Of course I'd promised. Angie was my best friend, and she'd come through for me like a dream. I'd never worn a dress where Ma didn't have to sew lace or an applique over somebody else's coffee stain, where the hems weren't ratty from years of taking up and letting down. I'd never worn anything so gorgeous.

I snagged the dressing table next to Peggy. Snuck peeks, copied what she did. Last night, I'd thought the girls looked clownish. But that was in the Ladies'. In the low light of the dance floor, I'd seen how their eyes seemed smoky, their lips full. Next to them, my face must have been pale, as babyish as the dotted swiss. So tonight, on the way here, I'd stopped at a drugstore and bought eyeshadow—two shades, I couldn't decide which was better—plus mascara, and a redder rouge. It had cost me most of what I'd earned the night before.

Well, Ma always said you had to give a little to get a little. And I hoped I'd get a lot.

I had my gown. Now I had to get my "wages." Every place I'd ever heard of, Saturdays were paydays. Ma would be expecting an envelope with eighteen dollars cash, and I had four nights to earn it. If that meant dancing with— well, with anyone, then that's what I'd do.

I leaned my elbow on Peggy's table. "Those fish you mentioned. I thought about it, and I've made up my mind. I'm in."

She glanced at me in the mirror. Her expression as uninterested as if I'd said it was raining outside. Cool as an icebox, she said, "Fish don't keep. Better luck next time." She zipped her makeup bag closed, stood up, and walked away. Leaving me leaning on her table like a fool, my girdle pinching my waist.

I grabbed my comb, yanked it hard through my hair. My cheeks burned red in the mirror, and not from the rouge. Who did she think she was? Who needed her anyway, with her fancy makeup bag and her garter purse and perfectly waved hair?

If only I'd been able to talk Angie into working here . . . Between the two of us, we'd rule this roost. We'd show them, Peggy and Yvonne and Gabby and all these other cats.

But I was on my own. I gathered my makeup and got up from the dressing table.

"Well, take a gander at the new baby!" It was Nora, the snub-nosed blonde who didn't want any Chinese in the Starlight. "I guess we can't call you Bo Peep anymore," she said.

"Guess not," I said. Going back to my locker, I passed behind the tables where Yvonne and Gabby were putting on their faces. Yvonne glanced at me in her mirror, then away again, fast as butter off a hot knife, like she hadn't seen a thing. Which told me she had, all right. I smiled, satisfied.

What a difference a dress made! The gown floated like a cloud against my legs, its beads flickering and flashing. I danced almost every dance, and I was happy enough about it to let it show. So many of these girls looked like they were taking a turn around their own kitchen. Where was their pep, their spark? Sure, Angie's shoes pinched like clothespins over my toes, and there were more sappy tunes than snappy ones. But then the band punched up "Sing, Sing, Sing," Ozzie's trumpet screaming, and I felt like I could dance up to the sky and kick a hole right through it with my heels. I grinned up at Ozzie on the bandstand, and he gave me the tiniest nod, just before the band slogged into "Cheerful Little Earful." Ozzie grimaced, then raised the trumpet to his lips.

"Now,
this
is real music," the geezer I was dancing with said. He dragged me from one end of the hall to the other, and at the end of the number he dropped a penny into my palm. I was staring at it—a
penny?
What did he think I was, a piece of candy?—when he tried
to
pinch my cheek. I'd learned a little about being a sport, and I wasn't playing for any measly cent. So I ducked out of his reach and almost fell over Peggy, right next to me.

"There you are! I couldn't imagine where you'd gotten to," Peggy said, as though she'd been looking for me all night. She turned to two men standing behind her. "Boys, this is Ruby. I told you she's a doll. Did I lie?"

"Hell, no," one of the fellows said.

"Name's Tom," the other man said. He held out a ticket. "Care to go for a spin?"

They were about twenty-five or so. Tom was the taller one. I would have rather had Jack; he was short but better dressed, in a chesty-front herringbone suit with a nipped-in waist, like a real swing king. Tom wasn't even wearing a tie, just slacks and a blue and gray zip-front sweater. But he wasn't bad-looking, he wasn't fat, and he didn't smell of sweat or cigars or garlic. I'd danced with worse.

He held me tighter than he should, for a fox-trot. When he said, "Slow down, honey, these dances are short enough as it is," and pressed me close, I figured he was trying to get the most he could for his dime. I could put up with that all right; those fellows almost always tipped. The next dance was a waltz, and Tom slowed down even more until we ended up barely shuffling side to side.

"Sure feels nice to dance with a nice girl," he said.

"Mmm," I answered. Up close, the wool of his sweater smelled doggy. What was Peggy up to? Was this another fish, or had she dumped Tom on me to get Jack for herself?

The waltz ended. A quarter tip, not bad. Then, even better: "Care for a coffee?"

You bet I did. I hadn't rested my dogs all night.

In the lounge, his friend Jack was already in line for drinks. Tom joined him. I found Peggy at a table near the back, where the light from the dance hall was even dimmer.

"What's the scoop?" I said.

"Dinner, if we play our cards right," Peggy said. "Don't say anything. Here they come."

They were steelworkers from south Chicago. "Tom's never been to a taxi-dance joint, if you can believe it," Jack said. "I thought maybe it was about time he met some nice gals, you know?"

Tom smiled, but uneasy, like it didn't come naturally. He had a long, serious face, his cheeks smooth and straight as walls.

"I bet you've been around the block a time or two," Jack said to Peggy.

"Me? No sir, I stick close to home. You two boys been pals long?"

We chatted maybe ten minutes. Then Peggy drained her coffee cup and set it down.

"Come on, Ruby," she said. "Time to hit it."

"Hey, don't break up the party," Jack said. He'd unbuttoned his swing-king jacket and stretched his legs under the table, one arm flung across the back of Peggy's chair. "We'll buy you another cuppa, how about that?"

Peggy stood up. "We're glad to take a break with you boys, but the management hired us to dance. How many numbers did the band play while we were here, Ruby? Five?"

So much for dinner. "Five, that's right," I said. Honestly, I thought it'd been only three, but I wasn't about to argue. The men tore off five tickets apiece and handed them to us. When Peggy put her foot up on her chair rung and lifted her hem to slip hers into her garter, I did, too.

"Well, this is kind of rough," Jack said. Peggy smiled at him and shrugged—
what can we do?
"Maybe you'll see us for a dance later," she said.

"Forget dancing," Tom said. "You gals want to grab a bite?"

I started to grin—
bingo!
—but at the doubtful look on Peggy's face, I stifled it. "We're working girls," she said. "If we stay out late, we'll be dead on our feet tomorrow."

Tom turned to me. "My mother waits up," I said truthfully. "I have to be home by two thirty."

"Then that settles it," Jack said. "Come on, girls, get your stuff. We're clocking you out right now."

SIX

" 'My mother expects me home by two thirty! '" she said in a fake-innocent voice, batting her eyes. She laughed. "Did you see the look on Tom's face when he thought you were going to throw him over for your
mother?
Like somebody'd pulled a steak right out of his hands. Here, unzip me, will you?"

A girl in a peacock blue gown and no shoes looked up from one of the wicker chairs by the door. "Clocking out, huh? Anyplace good?"

"Anyplace free is good enough for me," Peggy said.

"Lucky stiffs," the girl said, and went back to rubbing her feet.

I unzipped down the length of Peggy's back. "I wasn't making it up. My mother really does wait up for me."

Peggy laughed and shucked out of her gown, careful not to step on the hem with her heels. "Oh, yeah? And what does your mother think you do?"

"Telephone operator." I kicked off my shoes. My big toes felt like somebody'd been stabbing them with knives.

"Alice—you know her, the girl with the ringlets?— her parents think she works swing shift at the box factory," Peggy said. "Telephone operator's good, too, though."

"What about you?"

"The landlady doesn't give a rip what I do, so long as I don't do it in her rooms and I pay up the first of every month."

"No, I mean your mo—"

"I know what you meant. You're not wearing that to go out, are you?"

I'd pulled on my coat over the ivory gown. "You bet I am. I'm not going out on the town in this patched-up old thing." I rolled up the lime green dress and stuffed it into my bag. A quick change in the hall toilet as soon as I got home, and nobody'd be the wiser.

"A chop suey joint is hardly going out on the town," Peggy said.

Easy for her to say. If I had a cute outfit like hers—a herrringbone tweed skirt and matching jacket—it'd be different. But I'd never been out to a restaurant in my life, and I wasn't about to go in ashes and pumpkins. Although at least Cinderella had shoes that fit, I thought, easing my feet back into Angie's heels.

"Now listen," Peggy said as we walked out of the Ladies'. "Those two guys are out for more than a gabfest over chow mein, and they think they'll get it. But they won't. Not if you follow my lead. Get me?"

"I didn't figure Tom was looking down my dress to see where he'd dropped his keys," I said.

"Good. You're not as dumb as you look. Come on, let's cash in our tickets and blow this joint. I'm starving."

My haul for the night was seven dollars and sixteen cents. Clara's gown was the real deal, all right. My luck was finally changing. I was sure of it now.

"Shake a leg, kiddo," Peggy said. I stuffed the money into my pocketbook and followed her down the stairs. The men already had a cab waiting. They hustled us into the backseat: Tom first, then me, then Peggy, then Jack. I hadn't been in an automobile in years, not since Pop died, when I was five. I'd forgotten how smooth they were, how fast. I sat forward the whole way, so I could look out the window, see the buildings streaming past.

The restaurant was tiny, just half a dozen tables. But it had red paper lampshades and smelled wonderful, of meat and oil and spices I'd never smelled before.

"What'll you have, Ruby?" Tom asked.

I squinted at the menu, but it was hard to read, and anyway I didn't recognize any of the words. "I guess . . . chop suey?"

Peggy set down her menu. "Ruby, do you even know what chop suey is?"

"No," I admitted.

The men thought this was hilarious. Jack lifted his beer glass. "Here's to chop suey. And to the prettiest girls in Chicago."

"Hear, hear," Tom said.

I'd had a sip of gin once, from a boy who'd snuck a flask into school. I'd never had beer before, but now I had a whole glass of my own. I tried not to think what Ma would say if she knew.

Jack and Peggy were yakking a mile a minute about some Chinese dish that sounded like baby talk:
goo-goo
or
guy-guy.
I waited for Tom to strike up a conversation, but he concentrated on scraping at a black mark on his thumb.

Finally, I asked, "What did you think of the Starlight?"

"Tell the truth, I can't see why Jack's so gung-ho for that place," Tom said. "Before we met with you two, I wasn't having much of a good time."

"Really? How come?"

He dug a little harder at his thumb. "I'd heard the girls at those places are supposed to be pretty. Some of them are, I mean, you and Peggy sure are." He nodded in my direction. "But some of them . . . They're hard looking. Like they're"—he cut a sideways look at me—"well, never mind. And some are plain homely. How'd they even get the job, I wonder?"

"Good thing you met us then, I guess. Here, let me see," I said, reaching for his hand. I dipped the corner of my napkin in my water glass; three good swipes, and the spot on his thumb was gone.

"Seems like no matter how much I wash, I always miss something," Tom said.

"My pop was the same way. Ma wouldn't let him come to the table unless I looked his hands over good first. He worked for the railroads, before he passed away."

"Sounds like good honest people," Tom said. "That's the other beef I had with that place tonight. All those foreigners in there dancing with American women. How come that is?"

"All I know is, the first time a Chinaman tried to give me a ticket, I about died."

Peggy butted in. "I haven't seen you dancing with any Chinese men, Ruby."

"That's because I ran to the Ladies'!" I said. Tom and Jack busted a gut at that; Tom almost choked on his beer, he was laughing so hard.

"That's showing spunk! Good for you!" he kept saying.

This was just how I imagined it would be, out on the town: me, witty and smart, the whole table laughing at what I said. I gulped another mouthful of beer—why didn't the dance hall serve beer, anyway? It beat back the thirst a million times better than that kiddie orangeade— and said, "It does make it hard, though, all those Chinamen. I always have to look before I take someone's ticket."

"Now, Ruby, there's not
that
many," Peggy said.

"Listen to her!" I turned to Jack, laughing. "Just last night, she was sitting in the lounge with two flips!"

Jack and Tom both stared at her. Jack laughed along with me, but Tom didn't. Something pointy and hard dug into my ankle. "Ow!" I looked up from my beer to see Peggy glaring at me.

"I wasn't
sitting
with them," she said. "They came over and started talking to me. I left as soon as I politely could."

Under her glare, the beer fizzled out of my blood like a drop of water under a match. "That's right," I said. "I remember now. You walked out on those boys just as . . . just as cool as a cucumber." The pain in my ankle eased. I reached down and rubbed the sore spot.

The food arrived. Tom loaded my plate with noodles, some kind of meat in a red sauce, vegetables in a brown sauce.

"Now look, you've got to promise me," Tom said. "I don't care what your boss says you have to do, I don't want you dancing with any flips or Chinese or any of that kind. Will you do that?"

Who did he think he was, telling me who to dance with? I opened my mouth to tell him so, but Peggy's shoe dug into my ankle again.

"You fellows forget," Peggy said. She reached for the ashtray. Her sleeve turned a dull red under the lamp. "This is our living. Sure, we try to stay white. But if the boss gets complaints, we lose our jobs. And then what?"

"That's a shame," Tom said. "That's a damn shame."

"Well, look, we're here now, aren't we?" Peggy raised her beer glass. "Here's to a couple of swell fellows!"

"Hear, hear!" I said. I grabbed for my glass and drained the last of my beer. But when I went to put down the glass, nothing seemed to be where I'd left it. The bottom of my glass cracked hard against china and I caught a glimpse of my plate flipping up toward me like a jack-in the-box, and then Chinese food and plate and all were tumbling into my lap.

I shrieked and jumped to my feet. Red sauce, brown sauce, bits of food rolled down the front of my gown. Clara's gown. The one I'd promised not to get so much as a fingerprint on.

"Hold still, hold still," Tom said. He started swiping at me with his napkin, but even tipsy as I was, I knew I hadn't spilled food on my tits. I slapped his hand and stepped back. Then the floor seemed to upend itself, and I staggered. Tom grabbed my arm, and this time I didn't push him away.

"What am I going to do?" I said. "What am I going to do?"

"Cleaner's, looks like," Jack said around the two cigarettes he had stuck in his mouth. He lit both, gave one to Peggy. She drew a lungful, blew it out.

"Cleaner's, hell," she said. "They'll never get out that sweet-and-sour pork." She set the cigarette in the ashtray and pushed her chair back. "Come on, Ruby," she said. "Let's get some water on those stains before they set." I hardly heard her. She had to grab my hand and yank to get me moving.

Once we were in the ladies' room, though, she was no help at all. There were no clean towels left, so I dug a handkerchief out of my purse and blotted up every blot-table gob of food. From the mirror, where she was freshening her lipstick, Peggy said, "I wouldn't work those stains too hard, if I were you."

"But I've got to get this out. It's got to come clean!"

"Yeah, well, what I meant was, don't make it look too much better. Not yet." She turned away from the mirror and looked me up and down. "Oh, much worse. Good."

"You don't understand. This isn't my dress!"

"So what? Like Jack said, take it to the cleaner's."

"You said the pork wouldn't come out!"

"You ninny, of course I said that in front of
them.
That Tom's a fish and no mistake, and baby, you've about got him hooked. And here you are bawling about some dress. You wouldn't have dropped noodles on it if Tom hadn't brought you here, right?"

I must have looked as stupid as I felt, because she sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, exactly the way my math teacher used to in school, when she prayed for patience.

"Look," she said, "I know a cleaner who'll do that dress for a dollar and two bits, and get all the stains out, too. Well . . ."—she narrowed her eyes at the smear on my hip—". . . almost all. But you make Tom give you three. Men never know how much those things cost."

I looked back down at the ruin of the gown. . . .
If Tom hadn't brought you here, then . . .

"Oh," I said.
"Oh."

"Glory hallelujah, baby sees the light." Peggy snapped her pocketbook closed. "Word of advice, though? Don't wear a working gown out on dates. You ruin a four-fifty skirt, big deal. Ruin a gown, that's half a week's wages."

"You could have said something before!"

"Me? Not on your life. You're not the type to take advice, and I'm not the type to waste my breath. We're a perfect pair." She handed me her lipstick. "Come on, put on your pretty face. We've kept those boys waiting long enough."

We decided she should walk out first, me behind. The gown would make a better effect that way. The men stood up when they saw us coming. Tom blinked at the dress. "It'll come out okay, won't it?" he said.

"I was just telling her," Peggy said, "the cleaner's—"

"It's ruined, all right," I said. I dropped my gaze to the gray wool of Tom's sweater. I managed a little laugh, then looked back up at his face. "But really, I don't mind. I wouldn't have missed stepping out with you for the world. It's just a gown, right?"

Now, Peggy, I thought, you follow
my
lead.

"Oh, come on, now. What they can do these days, why, it's practically a miracle," Jack said. He held Peggy's coat for her; she slipped one tweed arm in, then the other. "I'll bet any amount of money a top-notch dry-cleaning man will have that dress good as new."

"I'll take that bet," Peggy said. "I never met a cleaner yet could get a nasty food stain out of silk." Playing along for all she was worth. Gotta hand it to her, she could roll with it.

"That's silk?" Jack said. Thank God, just then the waiter brought the check. He made a move for his wallet, but Tom beat him to it. I almost cried for real when he laid a five-spot on the table. What would it be like, to pay for something and not feel like you were handing over your own sweat and blood? Five dollars more or less must not make an ounce of difference to Tom. It wasn't a treasure, to him.

He lifted my coat off the back of my chair and held it for me. He wasn't even going to offer to pay for the cleaner's. Well, why should he? A baby, that's what he probably thought I was. Spilling food all over myself. A dumb squirt.

An hour ago, my biggest worry had been earning enough dough to buy my own dress and stuff a pay envelope for Ma. Now I had nothing. Again. Worse, if this gown didn't come clean . . . no. I couldn't even think about facing Angie.

At the front door of the restaurant, Jack said, "We'll flag a cab. You girls wait here."

Next to me, I felt Tom hesitate. Just a little, but—

I didn't stop to think what I was doing. I laid my hand on his arm. "Tom, wait." I glanced right and left. Saw a statue of a bald fat man on a shelf, pointed at it. "Look at that! Isn't it something?" Behind me, Peggy said, "Good Lord, there she goes . . . I never saw a girl so nutty about bric-a-brac. Come on, Jack, let's get that cab, or we'll be here half the night." The door tinkled open, then shut. Tom and I were alone.

Go on. Ask him for the dough.

Through the plate-glass window, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cab already pulling up to the curb. How long would Peggy and Jack wait for us? A minute? Two?