Whatever had happened, it was nothing to do with her.
FOUR
New York was a city of streetlights now, puddles of gold breaking through the shadows, leaving the spaces in between even darker than they used to feel. Factories sent clouds of smoke sweeping across the sky, even at night when they were shut for a few hours. Soon their workers would stumble, yawning, in to work.
Maybe there were parts of the city that fell quiet at night, but there was never silence in the New York that Vivian and Bea walked through. Music drifted out from restaurants and clubs, from the speakeasies that were written up in society columns instead of tucked into alleys. The wealthier the patrons the louder the laughter, because folks that rich didn’t need to time their lives around the factory bell and could afford to drink and eat and dance late into the night. The streets were filled with people, even as the moon rose and sank and the stars tried to push through the grimy sky. There were always people singing and laughing, people calling for cabs in slurred voices, people crying for help from the shadows.
Their steps took them straight home, to the crowded, teeteringbuildings wedged too close together, west and south of Central Park, where Vivian and her sister could just afford two rooms and there was sometimes a little hot water in the shared hallway washroom. The noise changed here, to the sound of too many people with too many troubles living too close together.
Vivian knew what it sounded like when Mr. Mulligan across the way had too much to drink, knew the pitch of his sobs when he hadn’t had enough. She could tell the difference between the cry of Mrs. Thomas’s youngest baby and Mrs. Gonzales’s oldest. She knew the sounds of arguments and lovemaking and shady deals and desperate pleas for more time, more money, more kindness, more everything. They were the sounds of home.
“Night, Viv,” Bea said. She had two more blocks to walk until she reached home; the girls blew goodnight kisses as they went their separate ways. Bea’s brothers and sister would be asleep, all tucked into one bed where they shared covers and dreams, only hours to go before they needed to be up for what school they could manage to squeeze into their lives. Mrs. Henry would be waiting for her oldest daughter, unable to sleep until all her children were safe at home.
As Vivian climbed the stairs of her own building, she knew where the steps rattled and creaked, the spots to skip over if she didn’t want Mr. Brown’s mangy dog to wake up and start yapping his head off. She knew the sound of stylish Will Freeman’s snores, and smiled to herself as she tried to imagine what jaunty new outfit he would have managed to cobble together for himself that week.
And she knew what her own home would sound like if her sister were asleep, peaceful and oblivious and uncritical.
Vivian paused with her hand on the knob, listening. A deep sigh, the creak of a chair, the snip of scissors.
She scowled at the ugly wood of the door. Florence was awake.
FIVE
Florence only glanced up briefly as the door swung open before looking back down, her fingers still busy with needle and thread as she attached glass beads to the hem of a dress with nearly invisible stitches. In front of her, three trays of beads in different shapes and colors were laid out. Their single lamp was drawn close, illuminating her work and leaving the rest of the room in shadow. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes.” Vivian eased the door shut behind her so it wouldn’t wake any of their neighbors and locked it, proud of how calm her voice sounded. The last thing she wanted tonight was an argument with her sister. “Couldn’t that wait until we’re at the shop tomorrow? You’ll ruin your eyes sewing in this light.”
“Beads are as much by feel as by sight, you know that. And it needs to be finished before opening tomorrow. Mrs. Parker’s coming to pick it up first thing.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be finished until next week!”
“The Parkers changed their plans. They’re leaving town tomorrow, and Mrs. Parker wants the new dress to take with her.”
“And is Miss Ethel paying you extra to finish it at home?”
“You know she’s not,” Florence said, her voice unruffled as she stitched another circle of beads into place. “It doesn’t matter. At least it gives me something to do while I wait for you to stumble in.”
“I don’t stumble, Flo, and it does matter,” Vivian said, kicking off her shoes and tossing her purse down on the table where Florence was sewing. “It’s flat wrong for her to make you do extra work without pay, and you know it. God, I want to just march down there and—”
“And what?” Florence asked sharply, looking up again. “Get both of us fired? Take a job at the Palmolive factory instead? You’d hate that even more. The one good thing they taught us at the home was how to sew, and—”
“And dressmaking is respectable, and we need all the respectability we can manage,” Vivian finished for her, slumping into the chair across from her sister. “But it isn’t fooling anyone, you know. Anyway, why are we arguing about Miss Ethel?”
“Because you’d rather do that than argue about how late it is and what you’ve been doing all night,” Florence said, setting down her needle as she looked her sister up and down. Her forehead creased in concern. “What happened tonight?”
Vivian handed Florence the scissors before she needed to ask. “I went out dancing, of course.”
“I know that. I mean what happened that upset you?”
Vivian scowled, a pang that was equal parts gratitude and anger thumping through her chest. Somehow, Florence could always tell when something was wrong with her little sister. When they were children at the orphan home, Florence knew when Vivian had a night full of bad dreams, even if she didn’t say anything in the morning, or if Vivian had been in trouble with one of the nuns, even if Florence hadn’t seen it happen. It made Vivian furious that she was somehow so transparent. And it soothed the places that had been rubbed raw by a childhood where no one ever quite wanted them. “Nothing upset me.”
“Some man got fresh with you?”
“I like it when they get a little fresh, Flo,” Vivian said, trying to make her sister blush and feeling spitefully glad when she succeeded. “And if I don’t like it, I know how to make them stop just fine.”
“All right then, don’t tell me.” Florence leaned back, setting down the scissors and rolling out her neck as she yawned. The lamplight gleamed across the long braid of dark hair that hung over her shoulder. In the morning she would unbraid it and pin the wavy coils ruthlessly back. Florence hadn’t said anything the day Vivian had come home with her own hair, true black and stick straight, bobbed like a Hollywood starlet. She hadn’t said anything about it in the two years since, either, and her stubborn, disapproving silence made Vivian want to scream. “You should get to bed.”
Vivian sighed. “I’m wide awake. You sleep, I’ll finish this up,” she said gently, reaching out to slide the pile of fabric from her sister’s grasp.
