Chapter 3
“In a Mist”
E
ddie sat in Marian’s dressing room and watched her clean off her makeup. She smiled at him in the mirror and picked up a jar of cold cream. “How are you, Eddie, really? You’ve seemed sad the last couple of days.”
“I’m all right.”
“You want to go out tonight? I heard that there’s a good band playing tonight at the Shay Club on Fifty-third.”
Eddie did want to go out. Part of him was still thinking about Julian. Eddie was doubtful he’d see Julian again; if the cops were after the merry band of boys who occupied the park, it probably wasn’t safe to seek him out. Eddie wondered where he would go the next time the need struck, though. He said aloud something that had been on his mind. “I heard a new club opened on Forty-eighth, right off Broadway.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard.” Marian leaned closer to the mirror and appeared to inspect her face to make sure the makeup was gone. “Usually Walter Winchell or Lois Long writes about those places in their columns, but I don’t remember any mention of a new club recently. What’s it called?”
Eddie hesitated. He wondered if Marian would get it or if she would judge him. Or both. He suspected that she had some notion of what his inner life was like, but they’d never had a real conversation about it, despite their many years of friendship. “The Marigold,” he said.
Marian dropped the cloth she’d been wiping her face with and turned around. “You don’t want to go there, do you?”
So she did know about the club. “I just wanted to look at it,” he said.
Marian shook her head. “First of all, that’s an Epstein club, isn’t it?”
“So are a dozen clubs around Times Square.”
“He’s a real sleaze. I’m not so naïve that I don’t know most of the joints in this city are owned by the Mob, but everyone knows Epstein will do anything to make a buck, including swindling his customers. Second, that’s a . . . you know.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow.
Marian whispered, “It’s a club for fairies.”
Eddie bristled. That actually was contrary to what he’d heard. The buzz he’d overheard from a couple of the stagehands at the James Theater was that this place, like the Hotel Astor, catered to a wide variety of men who were interested in other men, so sure, there were female impersonators and probably a few fairies, but there were also rougher sorts, sailors and what he’d heard called wolves, the masculine men who liked to prey on the fey youths that often populated the seedier parts of the city. Eddie had been able to eavesdrop on those stagehands undetected long enough to hear one of them mention the password to get into the club.
“I’m not a fairy,” he said. It came out more defensive than he intended.
“I know.” Marian sighed. “That’s why I don’t think you should go there.”
“Fine, I won’t. Let’s go to the Shay. Which band is playing?”
“Not sure. A new one, I think. The pianist worked for Gershwin, I heard.”
When Marian finished applying fresh makeup, they left the theater together and walked arm-in-arm up Broadway to the Shay Club. The band was competent though not exceptional, but Marian made the most of it, talking Eddie into dancing even though her feet must have ached after the performance that night. Eddie’s certainly did.
Close to midnight, Marian said she was tired. Eddie offered to walk her home, but instead, she got in a cab and headed uptown. Eddie watched the cab disappear up Broadway before he walked back down to 48th Street.
He was greeted at the door of the Marigold Club by a woman in flapper garb—a long, shapeless dress covered in shiny fringe, chin-length curly hair, and a long string of metallic beads hanging from her neck. “Hello,” she said in a deep voice when Eddie smiled at her. “What can I do for you tonight?”
“Flo sent me,” Eddie said.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” The woman—the impersonator, Eddie clarified in his own head, for this woman had stubble and an Adam’s apple and an unmistakably baritone voice—pulled back the curtain behind her. “Go ahead in, my dear. My name is Etta, if you decide you need someone to dance with later.”
Eddie took a cautious step forward and was immediately pulled into a room full of hot air and cool tempers. Everything was draped in red velvet and blue fabric. Men around him danced and sang and cavorted. It was everything he expected and nothing like he could have anticipated.
He pulled down the brim of his fedora, took a look around, and tried to get a handle on the situation. Did anyone recognize him? It didn’t seem so; his arrival was unheralded and no one so much as spared him a glance. Was there anyone he recognized? Not for certain. A few faces seemed vaguely familiar, like they might have been stagehands or people he worked with at the theater. No one whose name he could recall. Did anyone there catch his eye? Wasn’t that the bigger question?
There was one man, sitting by himself at a table in the corner, smoking a cigarette. He seemed to be surveying the room as well. He occasionally put the cigarette in an ashtray and picked up a highball glass full of God knew what and took a slow sip. He was remarkably handsome, that was what Eddie noticed, with a shock of black hair on top of his head, dark eyes, and a shadow of stubble along his chin. He was athletic-looking, too; thin, but with broad shoulders. He had olive skin, like maybe he was Italian or Greek. He was a sheik, Eddie thought, like Valentino.
Eddie found himself drawn to this stranger for reasons he couldn’t articulate beyond that he liked the man’s face, liked his masculine carriage, liked the way everything around him seemed to spell
man
—and he wanted to keep looking at that face for a while, wanted to see what the man’s hair would feel like under his fingers, wanted to know what it would be like to kiss and taste this man.
Which of course was impossible. Or was it? There was not a single woman in this club. Eddie suspected that if he hadn’t known the password, he never would have been admitted. But
this
man was seated alone at a table. Maybe his date had gone to the men’s room. Maybe he was only there to look.
The man looked up and made eye contact with Eddie. He crooked his finger.
Come here
, he beckoned.
So Eddie went.
The man kicked out the other chair at his table. “Have a seat,” he said.
“Hello,” said Eddie as he slowly sat.
The man took a drag on his cigarette and squinted at Eddie. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Eddie considered asking if the man had ever been to the Doozies, but then the man would know for sure who he was. And Eddie was certain he had not met this man face-to-face before. This was someone he would have remembered. “I don’t think so.”
The man put his cigarette on the ashtray and took a sip of his drink. “You look a little lost.”
“I’m not.”
“You were looking at me.” The man picked the cigarette back up and took a long drag. The action drew a lot of attention to the man’s mouth, his thin but soft-looking lips, and Eddie couldn’t stop himself from continuing to look.
He blinked. He couldn’t figure this man out. Was he dressing down Eddie? Did he really recognize him? Was he a mobster who would take offense at Eddie looking? “You’re nice to look at,” he said with no small measure of defiance in his voice.
He braced himself for the impact of the man’s retaliation—for Eddie then recognized the small circular pin on the man’s lapel as marking him as a member of some kind of Mob organization—but the man laughed. “Well, thank you,” he said, still chuckling. “Are you sure we’ve never met? You look terribly familiar.”
“I’m sure.”
The man smothered the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray. He extracted a slim silver case from his pocket, opened it, and displayed a neat row of cigarettes. “You want?”
Eddie shook his head.
The man shrugged and selected one. He slid the case back into his pocket and picked up a matchbook from the table. He looked right at Eddie as he lit the cigarette. Then, as casually as Eddie had seen anyone do anything, he shook the flame off the match and said, “We don’t get many celebrities in here, Mr. Cotton.” He took a drag on the new cigarette. “I suppose it’s early days yet, but—”
“You recognized me this whole time.”
The man shrugged again. “Took me a moment, I admit. I’ve seen your show a time or two. Last year’s Doozies. You do that husband-and-wife act with Marian France.”
Eddie nodded. “Yes. But we’re not actually—”
“Sure, sure.”
Eddie grunted. He didn’t like the man’s dismissive tone. “Marian and I are close friends, but we’re not married. I know a great many queer men step out on their wives in order to come to places like this, but that’s not me.”
“Why
did
you come here?” The smoke from the man’s cigarette wafted over his face, obscuring the handsome features that were already half hidden in shadow.
Eddie wondered briefly if all the dim lighting was to fool potential raiders. If you didn’t look too closely, the individual in the sparkling champagne-colored gown dancing with the man in the gray suit might have been a woman. Eddie knew it wasn’t. He looked back at his table mate, who was still smoking with an amused expression on his face. “I . . .” Eddie started to say.
“Do the ladies here interest you?”
“No, not at all.” That, at least, was honest.
The man nodded. “Tell me what interests you.”
Eddie scanned the room briefly. He made eye contact with a few of the men, but most of them were either flamboyantly dressed or there to look at the flamboyantly dressed. Eddie looked back at the man at his table, still smoking, still smirking, and came to realize that this was the most attractive man in the club. The man’s gaze met Eddie’s. Some silent understanding seemed to pass between them.
“Ah,” the man said. He looked down and smiled.
“Who are you?” Eddie asked.
The man put down his cigarette and offered his hand. “Lane Carillo,” he said. “I run this joint.”
Eddie shook his hand but felt some measure of dismay. If Carillo ran this club, that meant he worked for David Epstein, and no matter how badly Eddie wanted this man, he did not want any part of Epstein.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Carillo asked.
Eddie’s first instinct was to refuse him. He didn’t like the push-pull his mind was going through, and everything was becoming muddled and confusing. Eddie wanted sex. He wanted to have sex with this man in particular. Carillo seemed interesting. But he ran a disreputable club and he worked for the Mob. His name might as well have been “Bad News.”
“See here, Mr. Carillo—”
“Call me Lane.”
Something about that completely disarmed Eddie. That Carillo—Lane—could so calmly offer his first name.
Before Eddie could speak again, a couple of fellas with their arms linked together stumbled into the table. Lane’s glass was jostled, but he simply moved it out of the way.
“Hey now,” one of the men said. Then he and his companion walked away, still engaged in conversation. They laughed, and one of them said, “You see the one in blue? What a dumb Dora!”
Lane put out his second cigarette. Eddie waited for him to reach for another, but he didn’t, just picked up his glass and let it dangle from his fingers. Very long, elegant fingers, it didn’t escape Eddie’s notice. Lane had big, strong-looking hands, but those fingers belonged on a piano player, not a mobster.
The band started playing, “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” The singer changed all instances of “girl” to “boy” as he blundered through the song.
Eddie sighed. “This place is something else.”
Lane laughed. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“All right.”
Lane waved his hand, gesturing toward the room. “This place was my boss’s idea. He seemed to think that the pansy clubs downtown were not properly filling this particular niche. Times Square is where everything is happening right now. Or so my boss says. I just ran with it. If he is letting me run this place, I will make it as outlandish as I can.”
“You’re not worried about getting raided?”
Lane raised his hand and snapped his fingers. He made some complicated gestures with his hands, and then pointed at Eddie. Eddie turned to look and saw a man in a black suit nod and vanish into a back room. “I’m going to get raided either way. I figure I’ll have some fun before I do.”
“This is your idea of fun? Men in dresses?”
Lane smiled and drank the rest of his drink. The man in the black suit appeared again, this time with two highball glasses on a small tray. He handed one of those drinks to Eddie.
“Don’t be such a wet blanket,” said Lane as the man walked away. He took a sip of his drink. “I do like the boys to have a good time.”
Eddie turned and watched a group of men dancing and singing together near where the band played. It was hard to deny that they were enjoying themselves. He turned back to Lane, who was looking at him intently.
“Why did you invite me over to your table?” Eddie asked. “Just because you recognized me?”
Lane pursed his lips and looked into his drink. “No, not at first. That is, I didn’t recognize you at first, I just thought you were a good-looking fella and you looked like maybe you’d walked into the wrong joint. I couldn’t imagine how that was possible if you knew the password, so then I thought you might . . . interest me. But then I realized who you were, and well, that’s pretty interesting, too.”
“I interest you?”
“Yes. You do.”
Eddie looked at Lane’s hands again. Well, that was just swell. Eddie was completely in Lane’s thrall. Mob or not, he was too intrigued to walk away.
Lane leaned forward. He looked up and Eddie met his gaze. It was like a bolt of lightning, the connection they seemed to have after just meeting, by chance, in a bar for queers. Here was a handsome man, and Eddie found he couldn’t look away.