Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (5 page)

In the middle of that number I broke away from him and started doing a crazy little dance step, snapping my fingers and swaying my hips. I kept my eye on the boy as my borrowed pearls swung to and fro and my bobbed hair swished to the left and then to the right. The trumpeter gave me a wink, and people turned to watch as I circled around the college boy, who stood there like a maypole.

When the number was up, I thanked him for the dance and headed to the bar. As I was catching my breath, someone leaned in close and whispered, “You always dance like that in public?”

I turned and nearly lost my balance. Standing before me was the man with the widow’s peak from the Drake Hotel. I hadn’t expected to ever see him again and my heart took a leap forward. He reached across the bar for my drink and placed it in my hand.

“Well, fancy seeing you here,” I said, trying to play it cool by giving his martini glass a clink with mine. “You really helped me out of a jam. I never got to thank you for—”

“Not necessary.” He smiled. “Just please tell me you’re not still working for that
schmendrick
. You know what it is? A
schmendrick?
”

I nearly spilled my drink. “You know Yiddish?”

“What Jew doesn’t?”

I looked him up and down. “You’re Jewish?”

“You sound so surprised.”

He was nothing like the Jewish boys I’d grown up with. For one thing, he didn’t look Jewish. He had a strong chin and a slender nose. His hair was dark, almost black like mine, and he had that widow’s peak that I found sexy in a strange sort of way. I decided he was nice-looking. Maybe not handsome like that Izzy Seltzer, but he had a certain something. There was an elegance to him and he was wearing another expensive-looking three-piece suit. He had style—no doubt about that. He smiled and it sent a ripple of excitement through my body.

“What’s your name, Dollface?”

“Vera. Vera Abramowitz.”

“Well, there you have it. We Jews have to stick together, don’t we?” He rocked back on his heels, showing off his spats.

His name was Shep Green. He was older, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. Turned out that Izzy worked for him.

“He works for you, huh? Doing what?” I couldn’t help but think about Izzy’s run-in with Capone earlier. If Izzy knew Capone, chances were so did Shep.

“Izzy’s my right-hand man. He helps me run things around here.”

“Here?” I searched around the room.

“The Meridian,” he said with an easy hand gesture. “I own the club.”

My jaw nearly hit the floor. “You own this place? Do you know who’s here tonight? Charlie Chaplin!”

“Charlie always pays a visit when he’s in town. He just left or else I would have introduced you.”

“No foolin’? So you really do own this place?”

“Is that okay with you?” He smiled.

“I’ll say.” I did a half twirl, taking it all in, making him laugh.

Thanks to Shep, my martini was promoted to champagne and we spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing. And boy, did he know how to dance.

When the band went on break, I excused myself and went to the ladies’ lounge to freshen up. Evelyn followed me. It was crowded in there with dozens of women touching up their makeup, their hair, some even painting their fingernails. The air smelled of floral perfumes, nail polish and cigarette smoke.

“Oh, Vera, wait till you hear what Izzy called me.” The two of us pushed our way toward the mirror. “He said I was ‘a living doll.’ Do you believe that!”

“No fooling, huh? He called you a living doll, did he?” I twisted up my lipstick and shot her a glance through the mirror. “I’d watch him if I were you.”

“Aw, Vera, he’s the berries!”

I smiled. “Like I said, just be careful.” Evelyn was always falling for the wrong kind of guys, probably just to spite her parents. They never would have let her out of the house with a fellow like Izzy.

She glanced around and lowered her voice. “Too bad he’s a gangster. So is Shep, you know.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

She pulled me aside. “Izzy and Shep Green—all the guys here are members of the North Side Gang.”

I set my lipstick down, thinking about the bankroll Shep had on him the first night I saw him at the Drake. I knew no one legit walked around with that kind of cash on them. “Are you sure?”

“So help me God.” Evelyn held up her hand and swore herself in. “I overheard some girls here talking about it. Look at what just happened at the Green Mill with Capone. And you know
someone’s
supplying all the liquor here.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” I tried to laugh it off. “Everyone in this town serves liquor. And they’re not all gangsters.” And I told myself not all gangsters were thugs and criminals. Some of them, like Capone, were practically celebrities. Some might argue that gangsters like that were useful people to know as long as you stayed on their good side. So what if Shep rubbed elbows with some bad sorts every now and again. He wasn’t the only one. Especially in Chicago.

I turned around, patting my hair in place. “Well, one thing’s for sure, Izzy and Shep aren’t your typical boring college boys, now, are they?” I ran a finger across my front teeth to clear away any traces of lipstick. “C’mon, they’re waiting for us down there.” I took one last look in the mirror, thinking, So what if Shep knew Al Capone, he also knew Charlie Chaplin.

STARSTRUCK

I
was helping Evelyn get ready for a date. It had been a week since she’d met Izzy and already they’d been out twice, including New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Shep Green.

“Want me to ask Izzy about Shep?” She turned her back toward me and lifted her hair, exposing a dozen buttons needing attention. “I could find out if he’s seeing anyone.”

“No. No.” I worked my way up her buttons, starting at her waist. “Don’t say anything. But if Izzy asks, tell him I have a date tonight.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I had been asked out by one of the junior partners at Schlemmer Weiss & Unger but begged off, thinking a good night’s sleep sounded more appealing than an evening hearing about claims and contracts.

When I was younger, immersed in romantic novels and still living at home, I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to date. No one told me that all the anticipation, the trying on of outfits and the primping of hair, would be wasted on an evening of awkward silences and clumsy uncertainty. Then, to my mother’s dismay, the boys started coming around—older boys—and I went along happily, expecting so much more than what I got. Oh, how many times had I sat in soda fountains with nice young men, listening to stories of how they’d run varsity track in college or were captain of their debate teams. They’d nervously bounce their leg beneath the table, making the surface of my soda water tremble as they cleared their throat, licked the perspiration from their upper lip and asked if they could hold my hand. Would Rudolph Valentino have asked Gloria Swanson if he could sweep her off her feet? Where was my leading man? That’s what I wondered.

I fastened the last button on Evelyn’s dress. She’d borrowed it from Barbara Lewis, who in exchange had borrowed one of Evelyn’s hats for a date she had that night with her fiancé. I’d met Monty Perl only once, when he was waiting out front for Barbara. He had a good job, selling restaurant supplies, and was nice-looking with a full, dark mustache. They were getting married that spring, and Barbara was excited about quitting her job, counting the days until she could move out of our dump and into a real home.

Getting married and settling down—if that was all a girl had to look forward to, then cash me out now. I wanted to get married and have a family someday, but I planned on having a lot more fun and excitement before that happened.

Evelyn hummed to herself, irrepressibly giddy. “How do I look?” Her warm eyes fluttered at me.

“I already told you, silly. You’re stunning.” And she was. She wore her hair down that night, letting her light brown curls reach the center of her back, hanging loosely in a series of delicate spirals. “Your eye makeup is perfect and that shade of lipstick is going to drive Izzy crazy.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so.”

Evelyn never realized how attractive she was. I suppose that was what happened when you had four older sisters who’d all been crowned Queen Esther at those blasted tent dances.

“So, what are you going to do tonight?” Evelyn asked, coating her lips a second time with her beet-red lipstick.

“This right here.” I patted a stack of fashion magazines at the foot of my bed, all of them back issues that I’d found abandoned on streetcars or discarded in the downstairs parlor. It was my first night off in a week. It wasn’t even seven o’clock and I could barely keep my eyes open.

After Evelyn left for her date, I helped a couple girls with their makeup, including Helen, who no matter how many times I’d shown her still couldn’t put her lipstick on straight.

Afterward, I went to the luncheonette around the corner, ordered a bowl of beef stew and ate my way through the breadbasket. I should have brought a book or magazine with me; I felt self-conscious sitting by myself on a Saturday night. Each time I glanced up an older woman at the counter with a wrinkled face and bags beneath her eyes looked at me in sympathy, as if we had something in common. As soon as I finished my stew, I paid the bill and hurried back to the rooming house.

No one was in the parlor and the halls were all quiet. I tried not to think about the other girls out on dates, dancing and dining. I wished I’d had the money to go to the movie house with the single girls on the floor. Here I was, working myself to exhaustion and still I couldn’t spare an extra nickel for the movies. It didn’t seem fair.

I got undressed, crawled into bed and leafed through last October’s
Vogue
. It struck me that when that issue had been on the newsstands, I was still living at my mother’s, dreaming of being on my own and moving downtown. And here I was. I’d done it. But what was next for me? What was the dream now? I wasn’t ready to get married and have children. If I’d wanted that, I could have found a nice, decent fella, just like Barbara Lewis did. I wanted something more.

As simple as it sounded, I wanted to have fun! I didn’t have much of that growing up. While other children were playing, my mother dragged me into work with her. It wasn’t a place for children and I hated it. When I put up enough of a protest, she hired a housekeeper and left me with the emptiness of a fatherless house. I never felt safe, never felt protected, always burdened with worries and fears—both real and imagined.

But I’d broken free from my past and wanted to put it far behind me. Now I wanted just the opposite of what I’d grown up with. I wanted to lead a glamorous life filled with excitement and adventure, with fascinating people and interesting things. I wanted to find a place for myself and know that I belonged somewhere, to someone. I wanted to be important enough to command my own photographs in the society pages. I thought Shep Green might have been the answer, but clearly I was wrong about that.

I didn’t want to think about him. Or anything else for that matter. It was exhausting, making my mind grind over the same rough patches again and again. I turned to an article about Coco Chanel but didn’t even make it halfway through before I was out.

•   •   •

A
fter another couple days had passed, I had given up on ever seeing Shep Green again, when out of the blue, someone knocked on my room door.

“Vera? Vera! Telephone call for you. It’s a man!”

I went downstairs to the parlor, picked up the phone, held the receiver to my chest and took a deep breath before I answered. “Hello?”

“Is your dance card free Saturday night, Dollface?”

“Who is this?” I teased, shifting my weight back and forth.

He laughed. “Who do you want it to be?”

I caught my reflection in the mirror above the phone. I was smiling. “How are you, Shep?”

“I’ll be great if you let me take you out Saturday night.”

Three nights later Shep arrived out front in a fine automobile. He was impeccably dressed and I began doubting Barbara Lewis’s silk two-piece with the pleated skirt, thinking I should have gone for something more formal.

Shep took me to a wonderful restaurant with crystal chandeliers and gold-trimmed plates and water glasses. The linen napkin in my lap was softer than my bath towel. I’d never dined in such grand style before and tried to keep that to myself, not wanting him to see how unsophisticated I was. I could hear my mother saying,
Ach, who needs fancy-schmancy restaurants? Nothing but a waste of money
. But oh, how I loved it, even as I fumbled with the oversize menu and later hesitated over the assortment of silverware, waiting to take my cue from the women at neighboring tables.

“I don’t know about you,” Shep said with a laugh, “but I never know which fork to use. I just start on the outside and work my way in.”

I wondered if he’d said that because he noticed I was nervous, but it did help me relax. We chatted after placing our orders and once our dinner arrived, he told me how pretty I was and said I had a sweet voice. “Do you sing?” he asked.

“Poorly.”

“I doubt that.” He smiled and cut into a glistening rare porterhouse. “I do love the sound of your voice. I could listen to you read me an entire book, cover to cover.”

“Oh, yeah? What book?”

He puzzled over it for a moment and changed the subject, telling me about his childhood and mostly about his mother. “She was in a wheelchair from the time I was twelve.”

“What happened?”

“A streetcar accident.” He reached for his cigarette case, turning it over in his hand. “I always tried to take care of her. Did the cooking. All the cleaning. Hell, I even carried her to the water closet when she had to go. And we didn’t always make it in time,” he said with a sad smile. “She passed away two years ago.” He stared at the tablecloth. “I go to the cemetery every couple of months. Clear the weeds. I should go more often.” There was another, longer pause. He raised his eyes to mine and gave a slight shrug. “Sometimes I talk to her. Before I leave, I always place a rock on her headstone.”