The Diviners (33 page)

“Do I look like I work for you? Get your own damn coat.” Memphis tossed the quarter back, and it fell at her feet.

“Well, I never…”

“And you never will,” Memphis grumbled. Off the hallway was a sitting room with club chairs and Persian rugs where couples went to neck or smoke. Memphis walked past a petting couple and settled into his favorite chair to read.

“Do you mind?” the man called.

“A little. But I’ll be just fine,” Memphis shot back, along with his widest smile. He opened his book. The man swore under his breath and called him a name Memphis didn’t like. Memphis stayed put, and after a moment, the couple left. Alone in the room, Memphis lost himself to the pleasure of the book.

“Let’s dance,” Sam said.

“With you?” Evie scoffed. “Just so you know, I left my money with Theta for safekeeping.”

“Come on, doll, I’ll be as good as a Boy Scout.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Feel that rhythm, kid. Doesn’t it work on you?”

Evie looked in the direction of the dance floor. A crowd of flappers, lost to the booze and the beat, were tearing it up. Evie wanted to be in the thick of it. To let herself go under the lights.

“One dance,” Evie said and dragged him toward the gyrating crowd. Sam pulled Evie into a waltz. His hand was warm at the small of her back.

“What are you doing?” she said as they twirled softly in place.

“Going against the grain,” Sam answered.

“Maybe I like going
with
the grain.”

“You? I don’t see it.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Evie yelled close to his ear. It was hard to hear over the orchestra and the dancers.

“We could work on that,” Sam said, pulling her into a twirl. He was a good dancer. Graceful and quick-footed, he knew how to lead without being overbearing. On the dance floor, at least, they were swell together.

“You smell good enough to eat,” Sam said so close to her ear that it made the skin along her jaw buzz.

“Just like the Big Bad Wolf,” Evie murmured.

“Say, about that ghost business—does your uncle believe in that, or is he just making a buck?”

“How should I know?” Evie asked. She didn’t want to think about Will just now. “Why? Do you believe it?”

Sam forced a smile. “Man’s gotta believe in something.”

He twirled Evie around and around under the lights.

Mabel had gone to the restroom and returned to an empty table. A minute later, she’d been corralled into dancing with a fella named Scotty who had managed to step on both of her feet three times and who insisted on calling her by the wrong name. Now she sat at the table vacated by the others listening to him prattle on about stocks and bonds and finding the right sort of girl to take home to Mother. She guessed the right sort of girl was not the daughter of a Jewish socialist and a society girl turned rabble-rouser.

“You’re a swell listener, May Belle,” Scotty said. His tongue was thick from Scotch.

“Mabel,” she corrected. She squinted in the club’s atmospheric glow and allowed herself to pretend this boring idiot was Jericho. Out on the floor, Evie danced with Sam—and after swearing to deck him.

“Why, you’re just like…”

“A sister,” Mabel finished for him.

“Exactly so!”

“Swell.” She sighed. The Scotty fellow continued rambling, making Mabel feel smaller and plainer. Her dress was all wrong; she looked like she was auditioning for a Christmas pageant somewhere. She was tired of being overlooked or compared to someone’s sister or passed off as a sweet, harmless girl, the sort nobody minded but nobody sought out, either. How had she allowed herself to be talked into this misery? It was different for Evie. Evie was born to play the role of carefree flapper. Mabel wasn’t. In nightclubs
or at dances, she was out of her element. Just once, she’d like to be the exciting one, the girl somebody wanted.

“Isn’t that right, May Belle?” the idiot said, finishing some painful thought about fishing or motorcars, no doubt. He clapped her on the arm a little hard.

“That’s it,” Mabel said, getting up. She tossed her napkin on the table. “No. That is not right. I don’t know what you just said, but whatever it was, I’m pretty certain it was pure hokum. I don’t want to dance. I don’t want to hear about your plans for a summer house. I am not your sister. And if I
were
your sister, I’d have to tell people you’d been adopted as an act of charity. Please, don’t get up.”

“I wasn’t,” Scotty said.

Mabel marched up to Evie and tapped her on the shoulder. “Evie, I want to go home.”

“Oh, Mabel, no. Why, we’re just getting started!”

“You’re just getting started.
I
am finished.”

Evie stepped to the side with Mabel. “What’s wrong, Pie Face?”

“Nobody wants to dance with me.”

“I’ll get Sam to dance with you.”

“I don’t want you to make someone dance with me. You know perfectly well what I mean. It might be different if Jericho were here.”

“I tried to get him to come, Pie Face, honestly I did. But he’s pos-i-tute-ly
allergic
to having a good time. Why don’t you order another Orange Juice Jazz Baby?”

“They’re five dollars!”

“Come on, Mabesie. Live a little. It won’t kill you. Oh, they’re playing my favorite song!” Evie dashed out onto the dance floor before Mabel could stop her. It probably wasn’t her favorite song; she just needed an excuse to get away and avoid Mabel. Sometimes Evie could be so selfish.

Mabel saw the drunken Scotty lurching toward her with a
sloppy “Heyyy, Maybeline, honey,” and ran and hid behind an enormous potted fern, plotting all the ways she was going to kill Evie when this evening was finally over.

Theta walked the corridors of the club, dragging her fur wrap behind her. Some people recognized her with a “Hey, aren’t you…?” To which Theta would say, “Sorry. You must have me confused with another party.”

Behind her, a man called out “Betty!” and Theta turned quickly, her heart beating fast. But he was calling to a redhead, who yelled back, “Hold your horses! I need the little girls’ room.”

Theta had had enough. She didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t want to stay, either. She wasn’t sure what she wanted except something new, something that made her feel anchored to her life. She felt like she could float away at any moment. Sure, she had Henry, wonderful Henry. He was like a brother to her. It was Henry who had saved her life when she’d first come to the city, desperate and starving. And it was Henry who’d saved her life a second time. They’d always be together. But lately, she’d felt a hunger for more. It had the shape of destiny about it, this feeling, though she couldn’t begin to put a name on it.

A crowd of revelers caromed down the hall, and Theta ducked into the first room she saw. It appeared empty, but as she came around the side of a green wingback chair, she saw that it was occupied by a handsome young man with a book of poems. He was so absorbed in his reading that he didn’t even notice her.

“Must be some book,” she said, startling him.

Memphis looked up to see a striking girl with jet-black hair smoking a cigarette and watching him.

“Walt Whitman.”

“Mmm,” Theta said.

“I’m a poet myself,” Memphis said. He held up his small leather journal. Theta took it and flipped through the pages, opening to a series of numbers written in the back. She raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like poetry to me. More like a bookie’s tab.”

Quickly, Memphis grabbed the book back. He gave her the full-dazzle smile that worked on chorus girls and jumpy gangsters. “I’m just holding that for a friend.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“My name’s Memphis. Memphis Campbell. And you are?”

“Just a girl in a nightclub.” Theta blew out a stream of smoke.

“You shouldn’t smoke those. Sister says they’re poison.”

“Your sister’s a barrel of laughs.”

Memphis laughed. “She’s not my sister. We call her sister. Sister Walker. And she could rival a pickle for pucker.” That got a smirk from Theta. It was all the encouragement Memphis needed. “You French? Got a French look to you. Maybe even a little Creole.”

Theta shrugged and tapped the end of her cigarette into a tall silver ashtray. “I look like everybody.”

“Well, I’m gonna call you Creole Princess.”

“You can call me whatever you like. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

“I’m still gonna keep calling.”

“You’re persistent, Memphis Campbell, I’ll give you that. What are you doing here besides reading library books?”

“Oh, you know. A little of this, little of that.”

Theta arched one thin brow. “Sounds like trouble.”

Memphis spread his arms in a gesture of innocence. “Me? I’m the farthest thing from trouble you’ll ever know.”

“Mmm,” Theta said, walking around the room.

“Why aren’t you upstairs in the club?”

Theta shrugged. “I was bored.”

“Bored! That’s a first. Don’t you know the Hotsy Totsy is supposed to be the swankiest club in town?”

Theta shrugged again. “I’ve been to a lot of clubs.”

“That a fact?”

“Yep.” She dragged on her cigarette. “Poet, huh? Why don’t you read me something?”

“Whatever you say, Creole Princess.” Memphis opened the book and read while Theta once again flipped casually through his journal. He had a nice voice, one well suited to poetry. “ ‘I sing the body electric/The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them/They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them/And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul….’ That’s Mr. Walt Whitman. One of our finest poets.”

Theta had turned another page. Now she stared at the radiant eye-and-lightning bolt symbol somebody had doodled in the corner of the page. Her heart beat faster. “Did you draw this?” She tried to keep her voice even.

“That? Oh, just something I saw in a dream.”

“In… a dream?” Theta repeated. She felt hot and dizzy. “What is it? What do you know about it?”

“Nothing. Like I said, just something I saw in a dream.”

The drawing seemed to have upset the girl for some reason. Memphis wanted to ask her why, but he also didn’t want to scare her off. “Here, let me show you around the club.” He reached for his notebook, but Theta held on to it. She looked right at him, but she didn’t seem angry; she seemed astonished, maybe even a little scared.