“You were wonderful,” Evie exclaimed a short while later, as the four of them—Evie, Mabel, Theta, and Henry—walked the tree-shaded, narrow bend of Bedford Street in Greenwich Village on their way to a party one of the girls was hosting.
“Yeah. ‘Second girl from stage left’ is my specialty,” Theta deadpanned.
Henry took her arm in his. “Keep working, darlin’, and you just might be ‘first girl from stage left.’ ”
“Well, I thought you were the duck’s quack,” Evie said. “Mabel and I noticed you right away. Didn’t we, Mabesie?”
“And how!”
“You’re sweet to say so, kid. This is the joint, here.”
They’d stopped at a redbrick building. The party had spilled out onto the stoop, where a girl in a feather boa, a long cigarette holder angled between two fingers, was already drunk. She blocked their way with her leg. “What’s the password?”
“Long Island,” Henry said.
“You have to say it like this: Lawn Guy-land,” she instructed.
“Lawn Guy-land,” they all said.
“Entrez!” The girl let her leg drop with a thump and the four of them pushed their way into the foyer and up three flights of stairs dotted with birdlike clusters of people till they came to an apartment whose door was propped open by an ice bucket. Inside, the radio played a jazzy number. The hostess shimmied past them with a loud “You’ve arrived!” before disappearing into another room as if riding an unseen tide. There was a lamp on the floor, and a bust of Thomas Jefferson topped by someone’s cloche gazed at the four of them from one of the burners on the tiny kitchen’s even tinier stove. A fella crooned “I’ll Take Manhattan” for a few of the chorus girls and their friends, who sat at his feet singing along.
Mabel tugged on Evie’s sleeve. “I’m not really dressed for this party.”
“Nothing we can’t fix with a little smoke and mirrors, Pie Face,” Evie said. With a sigh, she removed her rhinestone headband with the peacock feathers and placed it on Mabel’s head. “Here, you go, Mabesie. You look like the Christmas windows at Gimbels. And who doesn’t love those?”
“Thanks, Evie.”
“Bottom’s up,” Theta said, handing them each a drink.
Mabel stared at hers. “I don’t really drink.”
“First sip’s the roughest,” Henry advised.
She took a sip and winced. “That’s awful.”
“The drunker you get, the better it tastes.”
Evie was so nervous that she downed her cocktail in two stiff swigs, then refilled her glass.
Henry arched an eyebrow. “A pro, I see.”
“What else is there to do in Ohio?”
An argument was heating up in the parlor, and a woman’s shrill voice rang out. “If you don’t pipe down about that, I’m going to call that occult killer myself and ask him to do you in, Freddie!”
Everyone began chattering about the murder under the bridge and the latest warning.
“A pal of mine who has a cousin who’s a cop told me it was a sex crime.”
“I heard it’s a beef between the Italians and the Irish mobsters, and she was somebody’s moll who got too friendly with the wrong fella.”
“It’s definitely some kind of old-country hoodoo. They shouldn’t keep letting these foreigners into the country. This is what happens.”
“Evil’s uncle is helping the bulls try to find the killer,” Theta informed them.
Everyone crowded around Evie, badgering her with questions: Did they have any suspects? Had the victim lost her eyes, like the papers said? Was it true the girl who’d been murdered was a prostitute? Evie had barely had a chance to answer even one of their questions when a girl shouted from the doorway, “Ronnie’s got the ukulele out! Boop-boop-a-deet-deet-doh-doh-da!”
And just like that, they were on to the next thing, from one thrill to the next with no time to stop. Evie felt small and dull beside their wattage. They were all so glamorous and exciting. Theater people who could sing and dance and act, who knew bankers and high rollers. What could Evie do? What talents did she have that made her stand out?
Evie was vaguely aware that she had one toe over the line of drunk. A tiny, urgent voice of reason told her to slow down and keep quiet. That what she was about to do was probably a bad idea. But since when had she ever listened to reason? Reason was for suckers and Presbyterians. Evie downed the rest of her martini and slithered closer to the smart set singing along with the ukulele.
