“I say,” Florence snapped. “I won’t allow it.”
“Since when do you get to tell me where I can and can’t go?”
“I’m your older sister, aren’t I?”
“Yes. My sister. Not my mother.” Vivian pushed past and headed toward the bedroom. “I know you don’t like dancing and drinking, Flo,but there’s no real harm in it. Even poor girls are allowed to have fun sometimes, you know.”
“It’s not safe,” Florence insisted, following close behind her.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Vivian said, pulling off her sweater and skirt and dragging a clean slip over her head. “Folks there know me, and the owner looks out for the regulars. I’m probably safer there than I am here. God knows there’s enough sad drunks wandering this part of town looking for whatever rat poison they can get their hands on.”
“And what about people getting shot in alleys?” Florence demanded, throwing her words down like a challenge.
Vivian paused. “What do you mean?”
“For heaven’s sake, I heard you and Beatrice talking. And you said you found—How can you act as if—” She broke off and took a deep breath. Her voice was back under control when she spoke again. “I won’t have you getting mixed up in that.”
“I’m not mixed up in anything, I promise,” Vivian said, shimmying into her second dancing dress. It wasn’t as fashionable as the one she had worn the night before—she’d been meaning to take the hem up a few inches—but she refused to wear the same dress two nights in a row. “We’re just going to see some friends and listen to some gossip.”
“And what if people find out you had something to do with this, this dead man?” Florence looked as if just saying the words made her feel ill. “It’s not safe. You know what bootleggers are like—”
“In the first place, who said he was a bootlegger? If I have no idea who he was, I don’t see how you could know,” Vivian pointed out, eyeing herself in the mirror as she slid a feathered headband over her bob. “And in the second, I think I know a sight more about bootleggers than you do, considering where I spend my nights.”
“Where you spend your—! Well, you won’t spend them there anymore, because I forbid you to go to that dance hall ever again,” Florence said.
The desperation in her voice made Vivian pause in the middle oftying her shoes. She knew Florence was the timid one, the one afraid of causing trouble or attracting notice. She was probably safer that way.
But safety had never been what Vivian wanted, not at that price. She needed to feel like she belonged somewhere, to feel there was something in her life that actually belonged to her. She couldn’t bring herself to give that up, not even to make Florence happy.
She shook her head. “You don’t get to do that,” she said. “You don’t get to take the Nightingale away from me. And anyway, Bea’s expecting me, I can’t keep her waiting.”
“Vivian—”
“Nothing’s going to happen, so just quit it, will you?” Vivian was already pushing past her, heading toward the front door. She felt a sting of guilt as she caught a glimpse of Florence’s face, lit with angry patches of red on each pale cheek, but it wasn’t enough to make her stop. “No need to wait up tonight, I know how much you hate it,” she said over her shoulder before yanking the door shut behind her.
SEVEN
Come on, Danny,” Bea cajoled, leaning her elbows on the edge of the bar. “I know you know more than you’re letting on.”
The Nightingale was as crowded and noisy as ever that night, the band in top form as they swung their way through one fast beat after another, barely pausing to let the dancers take a breath before launching into the next song. The club’s patrons had caught the same energy, and even though the night was young, more than one fellow had already stripped off his jacket. Women stumbled off the dance floor, laughing and complaining of their aching feet as they called for something to drink, and every table was littered with empty glasses.
But to Vivian’s surprise, no one was talking about the dead man in the alley. A few people had mentioned “some trouble last night” when she and Bea said hello, but no one seemed to have any details about who or what was involved. Whatever Ms. Huxley had done, she had done it quietly.
Vivian scanned the faces in the room, many familiar, none worried. There were gang killings in New York what seemed like every week,ever since Prohibition had become law, and people always seemed to find out eventually. Maybe word just hadn’t spread yet.
“Hux doesn’t want anyone talking about it,” Danny said quietly. Vivian looked back in time to see him glance down the bar, toward where the other bartender was mixing drinks for a laughing group, before dropping his voice even lower. “And that means you too, Bea. You should know better than to ask questions like that.”
“I’m not planning to tell anyone,” Bea protested. “I just like to know what’s going on.”
“Yeah, well, you should like to keep your job, too.”
They continued sniping at each other as the band finally took pity on the dancers, slowing the tempo of the music down and sliding into the sultry opening bars of a tango. A collective murmur went around the room, mixed with breathless laughter. A new style of tango had been making the rounds in New York’s underground dance halls, and it was considered shocking even in places like the Nightingale. But that didn’t stop couples from slinking onto the floor.
Vivian closed her eyes, drinking in the music with a small smile on her face, until a quiet voice spoke next to her ear.
“You look like you’d love to be on that dance floor.”
Her eyes snapped open.
