The Glittering Life of Evie Mckenzie Read online

  ‘They might not mind speaking to you,’ she said, thinking. ‘Mother is upset, of course, but I think they’ll be all right.’

  ‘And you? Have you gotten any trouble at school because of it?’

  ‘No.’ Evie smiled. Roger always worried about her. It was unnecessary, but always nice to know he was thinking of her.

  His grip around her waist tightened and he leaned in and nibbled her neck, sending chills through her. ‘Do you think I can drive you home tonight before I head back to school tomorrow?’

  Evie glanced around to see if Tug would mind her leaving early, but she spotted her friend perched on the lap of an off-duty police officer who had been a regular at Evie’s for as long as she had been. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, anticipating time alone with Roger in his cozy car.

  Just then, a commotion arose near the entrance, and Roger jumped to his feet. They hadn’t been raided in months, but the club’s new popularity made it a ripe target for Prohibition agents to visit. As the crowd moved away from the entrance, however, Al Smith appeared, surrounded by an entourage of men in dark suits.

  Smith was governor of New York, and a well known anti-Prohibitionist who enjoyed his evenings out. The men he was with were those who strove to get close enough to enjoy the benefit of his favor, both at the clubs and in their daytime pursuits. He was red-faced and jolly, offering smiles and claps on the back to those he met. He sported a thin crop of dark hair parted down the middle, most of it showing signs of going gray.

  His eyes found Roger in the crowd and he made his way over, a broad smile bringing a gleam to his eye. ‘White!’ he cried. ‘There you are, you old bird! This place is quite the party, friend!’

  ‘Welcome, Governor. It’s wonderful to see you,’ Roger said. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, sir. Let me get you a drink.’ he winked at Evie, and moved to the bar where he liberated some seats for the governor’s party.

  ‘And are you the club’s beautiful namesake?’ Smith asked Evie as Roger moved off.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ she said, feeling the blush creep up her neck as every pair of eyes in the governor’s party turned to her.

  ‘Well, I am very pleased to meet you,’ he said, pulling her close in a somewhat surprising embrace. He smelled as if he’d been to several clubs already.

  ‘And you too, sir. Congratulations on your selection. You must be very excited about next month’s convention.’

  Smith regarded Evie with a wry smile. ‘A beauty and a brain,’ he said. ‘I am looking forward to it, actually. I relish the opportunity to push forward the interests of women and laborers and be rid of this ridiculous puritanical governance of morality.’

  Smith had been chosen to represent the conservatives as their choice of candidate for the presidential elections. To get to that point, though, he’d have to be voted onto the ballot at the upcoming Democratic Convention, which would take place at Madison Square Garden. His opponent was a well-respected western politician who refused to repudiate the Klan and was backed by the women’s temperance movement, as well as most southern and western voters who supported Prohibition and puritanical values.

  ‘There seems to be a bit of controversy brewing, wouldn’t you say?’ Evie hoped he wouldn’t mind her digging a bit.

  ‘I’d say, my dear! I’d definitely say so!’

  Roger arrived with a scotch for the governor and another cocktail for Evie.

  ‘Say, what am I drinking?’ Evie asked Roger with a grin. It was sweet and bubbly, and nowhere near as strong as the straight stuff she was used to.

  ‘Tug calls it a Fancy Lady,’ Roger laughed. ‘So I thought it fit.’

  ‘I don’t know about fancy,’ Smith said. ‘Smart, though, Roger. You’ve got yourself a handful here.’

  Roger nodded proudly.

  ‘The real issue here is the ridiculous notion that government should legislate morality,’ said Smith, swaying slightly. ‘That kind of thinking underestimates the voters of this great nation. The people who seek to ban fine establishments like this one would have immigrants slaving away in abhorrent factories for next to nothing while they build castles to celebrate the Protestant white man. And I can tell you’ – Smith paused and looked around to be sure he had the attention of those nearby – ‘that having the Ku Klux Klan in New York City will cause no small upheaval.’

  Evie was fascinated. ‘McAdoo really supports the Klan?’

  ‘Well, he won’t say that he doesn’t, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I just can’t imagine those men in white hoods marching around in the midst of actual politicians trying to get work done!’ Evie said.

  ‘Well there’s your first mistake,’ Smith replied.

  ‘They won’t be wearing hoods?’

  ‘No, politicians are hardly ever trying to get actual work done!’ Smith’s entourage laughed and slapped his back, and several of them made their way to the dance floor, urged forward by the fan girls who had come down from the stage. Before he was pulled away, Smith added, ‘It’s a proud day no matter what happens, though, Miss McKenzie. Having Ms Lena Springs nominated for vice president is a giant leap forward for women, and I’m proud to be witnessing it.’

  ‘Me too, sir.’ Evie watched Smith move away, pleased to have met him and doubtful that she could cast him in a negative light in her column, even if she wanted to.

  Chapter Ten

  Tug

  Tug’s ‘date’ with Sergeant Mulroney came sooner than expected, since he was at the club when she and Evie arrived. And though she had planned to circulate and entertain, as her idol always did at her own clubs, she quickly surrendered to his attentions. Tug talked a big game, but she had very little hands-on experience with men. She’d spent the first part of her life in chaste training for a second part that would never come. And here was a handsome man with a respectable job, interested in her and willing to educate her on the finer points of gaining the experience she lacked. Once she had been able to quiet her mother’s voice in her head, she realized she would be crazy to turn it down.

  She found herself seated in his lap almost as soon as she arrived, which was no part of her plans, and certainly due mostly to the revealing cut of her dress.

  ‘All this time I’ve been coming here, and I only just realized that I’m in love with you,’ Mulroney said, a wide grin on his face.

  Tug knew he didn’t mean it, but also knew he had no idea how those words pulled at her heart. Love wasn’t a sentiment that she’d had much opportunity to discuss, either with her family or with men. And she’d wished for it more times than she’d ever admit to anyone. ‘Maybe you just needed to see me in the right light,’ Tug said.

  ‘Well the light in here now is perfect. I think you’re the perfect woman.’

  ‘Applesauce!’ Tug laughed. ‘I think you’re just enjoying our fine liquor,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me your real name, Tug. I can’t stand using the same silly nickname everyone else does.’

  Tug hesitated. Her name was part of her persona. She didn’t share her real name with many people. ‘It’s Elizabeth,’ she said.

  ‘Would you like to take a drive with me, Elizabeth?’ Mulroney asked her.

  Tug looked around. She was supposed to be working, and she’d found herself sitting in Mulroney’s lap instead for the better part of an hour. She leaned in close to him, getting a strong whiff of the whiskey on his breath and simultaneously giving him a close view of the cleavage exposed by her dress. ‘I would love that,’ she breathed. ‘But I have to be here for another hour or so. Do you think you can keep yourself occupied while I do my job?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he smiled. ‘But let me ask you a question.’ Mulroney’s hand slid up the inside of Tug’s thigh, causing warmth to spread through her body like a slow-burning fire.

  Tug dropped a hand on top of his, the thin fabric of her dress between their fingers. She gazed around them at the other men at the table, but they were deep in conversation and paying no attention to Derek or to
her. Slowly, she moved her hand upward as his fingers climbed until they were slowly stroking her at her very center. Tug glanced around, but the nearby tables were filled with people too caught up in their own revelry to notice the indistinct location of an off-duty officer’s hand. Tug leaned her head forward as her breathing increased in speed.

  Tug struggled with herself. Despite her best efforts, she heard her mother’s voice in her head and knew that she should put a stop to what was happening. She had never done anything so completely inappropriate. But as much as the voice in her head was urging her to speak, the sensations rushing through her made it nearly impossible for her to do so.

  Her body was in the throes of something she had never felt, threatening to overtake any sense of propriety that she had left. She knew she shouldn’t be allowing Derek to touch her, not like this, not here. She was ashamed, but at the same time, she was excited that it was even possible that he could be stroking her very core in the midst of this crowd and noise, and no one even knew!

  Derek’s fingers were stroking her slowly, pressing small circles at her center, and Tug felt a pressure mounting within her. The hand atop his, which she’d placed there to cover the ridiculous impropriety of his attentions, was now pushing his hand down, inward, urging him for more.

  She let her head drop onto his shoulder, and was surprised to hear that his breath was coming almost as fast as her own. And just as the pressure began to feel as if it was building toward some kind of explosion, Mulroney pressed one long finger inside her, and Tug felt as if a switch had been flicked. That. That was what she’d been wishing for and not even realizing it. Feeling herself around him, with that terrible teasing movement just outside, it was all too much.

  ‘Oh. My. God,’ she breathed into his ear. ‘I … I … don’t know, I …’ She had no idea what she was trying to say or what she wanted, only that she didn’t want him to stop. And as she considered that they should stop, that whatever was happening – in the middle of a crowded club where she was employed – was probably completely off the spectrum of acceptable behavior by young unmarried women, something happened. Something exploded inside her and Tug’s body gave an involuntary shudder that she couldn’t have anticipated as waves of glorious spasms rocketed through her. She gripped Mulroney’s hand tighter, stopping its movement, as her other arm wrapped tighter around his neck and pressed his mouth to hers.

  When the earth had stopped shuddering and Tug came back slightly to her senses, she pulled her head back, gazing into Mulroney’s light copper eyes. ‘I … I don’t know what to say …’

  ‘You don’t have to say a word,’ he smiled. ‘That right there, Elizabeth? That was the best night of my life.’

  Tug laughed. ‘Mine too, maybe,’ she said, still feeling shaky. She glanced around again, but it seemed the club had gone on around them the entire time her world had stopped turning and then regained its momentum. ‘Wow.’

  ‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’ he said.

  ‘I never really felt that way,’ she said, vulnerability getting the best of her.

  ‘Well, you are.’ He released her and Tug slid back to her feet.

  ‘Hey, did you want to ask me a question?’

  ‘I thought I just did,’ he grinned. ‘But here’s one more. Can I take you out to dinner tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tug said. Her mind struggled to catch up to all that had just happened. She knew she’d enjoyed it, but she hadn’t had time to process everything else – what it might mean, what was the right thing to do. But she had liked it. She knew that much. ‘Pick me up here?’

  ‘Six o’clock?’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’ Tug pushed back through the crowd, smiling at those she knew and strangers alike. It was possible, she thought, that her reinvention was complete. The old Tug would never have done what she’d just done. She ducked behind the bar and poured herself a drink.

  *****

  ‘What’d the sergeant want?’ Chuck asked, breaking the daze that Tug had been in since leaving Derek Mulroney’s table.

  Suddenly she felt guilty. Had Chuck seen that whole thing? ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I just saw you at his table for a minute, wondered if he was giving you any trouble.’ Chuck stood taller and smiled at Tug in a way that she didn’t recognize. Was he being protective?

  ‘No, he’s harmless,’ she said. ‘I might have dinner with him, actually.’

  Chuck’s face fell, the blue eyes darkening. ‘Oh, dinner. I see.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not like that,’ Tug said, thinking that it was probably very much ‘like that.’ ‘It’s just dinner. It doesn’t hurt to get in good with the local law, you know.’

  ‘Of course,’ Chuck said.

  As Tug moved through the space, greeting customers and talking, she looked back at Chuck from time to time. His eyes were almost always on her. She had enjoyed their time together at Texas Guinan’s club. She’d even thought to herself that Chuck was more attractive than she’d realized before, hadn’t she? Maybe he’d had some similar thoughts. Was Chuck sweet on her?

  But as quickly as the thought had come, she pushed it away. Of course not. Chuck would no more consider her as his girl than Roger would. She was cut from the wrong cloth, especially now. She wasn’t like Evie, or even like Jane. She didn’t have the same opportunities they did, and she never would. Not now. She had to make her own chances, and that’s what she was doing. If Chuck was looking at her funny, he was probably just trying to get used to her new hair, or her clothes. And if it was anything beyond that, she guessed it was just a renewed interest based on her changed looks. Derek Mulroney seemed like a good fit, but she was not a match for Yale-educated Upper East Side Charles Merriweather Tate. She put the thought from her mind, flashed Chuck a smile, and got back to work.

  *****

  Mulroney arrived at the club the next night at six o’clock on the nose, and Tug was waiting on the sidewalk out front, Sal standing behind her protectively.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him as Mulroney pulled open the passenger door on a Ford Model T. The car was shiny and new, and she guessed it was a cherished possession by the way he carefully closed the door behind her.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, sliding behind the wheel.

  ‘You don’t look half bad yourself, Mulroney,’ she said, nerves pushing polite responses from her mind.

  ‘Please call me Derek,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this part right at least.’

  He pulled away from the curb and Tug realized that maybe he’d been embarrassed about how far things had gone the night before. ‘This part?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t mean to get so carried away last night, Elizabeth. I’m really sorry. I know you’re not that kind of a girl, I just …’

  ‘Look, Derek. I’m not any kind of a girl. I’m just Tug. You don’t have to be sorry, and you don’t have to worry that you had your way with me, or that I was pushed too far, or anything of the sort. If I hadn’t wanted it, I would have stopped you. Plain and simple.’ She stared out the front window as she spoke.

  ‘I just …’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘Well quit it. You’re making me nervous.’

  Derek smiled at her, something deep in the coppery eyes twinkling. ‘You can be as tough as you like, Elizabeth. I’m still going to treat you like a lady. That’s what you deserve.’

  Tug flushed at the words and pretended they didn’t mean much to her, huffing and rolling her eyes. She tried to ignore the sweeping relief she felt at the confirmation that Derek wasn’t just hoping she was going to be easy to get in the sack. He glanced at her as they drove, looking nervous, and Tug felt certain that there was more to his attraction than the thing that had happened between them the night before.

  Derek took her to a quiet restaurant, and over dinner she learned that his parents were immigrants from Ireland. He described the difficulties they’d faced upon arrival
– his mother’s younger sister was detained at Ellis Island and tested positive for tuberculosis. She never joined them in New York, but instead was held in the hospital ward and died within weeks of arrival. He’d been raised in a small apartment his parents shared with two other families – eight children and six adults in what should have been a space for one or two people and two children at most.

  Tug listened to his tales, the faint Irish brogue in his sad words making even the bitter tale of his childhood sound jovial. His eyes never lost their gleeful cast, and as dinner drew to a close, Tug found herself smiling at Derek with a genuine affection.

  ‘My own childhood sounds so posh in comparison,’ she said. ‘And I’d been feeling sorry for myself.’ She felt guilty for the way she’d allowed herself to mope about her mother’s abandonment and the subsequent dashing of her hopes to debut. Her mother left by choice; Derek’s mother had died in the influenza pandemic of 1918.

  ‘It wasn’t easy, but I was with my family,’ Derek told her. ‘We were grateful for a new start in the best country in the world.’

  ‘And you still feel like this is the best country? Even though it’s been so hard for your family?’

  ‘Perspective, Elizabeth.’ Derek winked a light eye. ‘I’ve got a job here, other opportunities have allowed me and my brothers to make extra money and help my da and little sisters move to a better home …’ His eyes misted as he spoke and Tug knew that he was seeing his family. ‘I couldn’t have done any of that in Ireland. I would have been one more desperate farmer, hacking at stones in the dry earth. Here? Well, I feel like a king!’ Derek spread his arms wide and grinned, leaning back in his chair.

  Tug smiled at him and thought about his story. It was true: so much about the way you viewed the world was in the lens through which you looked. She admired his optimism and humor. ‘It’s amazing,’ she told him. ‘That your life could be so different from one place to another. I knew this was a great country. It’s hard not to get caught up in the little day-to-day troubles, though. And we forget.’