“I’ll have the lasagna,” I said to the waiter when he came by. “And a peach Melba.” I smiled. “For after.”
Ruthie glared.
“What?” I said. “I’m hungry.” I’d been dancing so much I could eat anything I wanted—in fact, if I didn’t, I’d start to see my ribs, and Ziegfeld didn’t like his girls too skinny.
“The shrimp cocktail for me,” Ruthie said.
“And a gin cocktail for me,” I added.
“Sorry, madam, you’ll have to go elsewhere for that,” the waiter said.
“Don’t worry, Olive.” Lawrence leaned across the table and spoke in a mock whisper. “As soon as you’ve had something to eat, Ernest and I will take you to one of downtown’s finest tearooms. You won’t go thirsty.”
Ernest grinned. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist.
“Have you been out in these parts before?” I asked him.
“Not really. Lawrence is such a man about town, he’s been promising to take me out with him for a while. I usually have dinner athome,” he added. “With my mother.” I smiled and patted his hand, then devoured the lasagna and the peach Melba, bless him.
It was hardly worth getting back in the car to drive just a few blocks to our next destination, but we did it anyway, pulling up to the Pirate’s Den, a teahouse on Gay Street. There was barely anyone inside; it was late and dark. One man sat writing feverishly in a corner booth, while on the other side of the room a couple smooched over tea and candles. Lawrence led us through the tearoom to a back door, up a flight of stairs and through another door, where we knocked and waited. I could hear music coming from the other side. A peephole slid open. “Lawrence Long and three guests,” he said. The door slipped open and we were in.
Inside was a lively, raucous scene, darker, much grittier and less dazzling than the uptown clubs, but buoyant and magnetic somehow. Ruthie and I lingered at the entrance and took it all in while the gents headed straight to the bar. There were groups of people lounging around freely, some in deep conversation, others in deep intimacy. There was a freedom about the place that I sensed immediately, though I couldn’t quite grasp what was going on.
Uptown it was dancing and drinking, dancing and drinking. You just kept going until you could no longer stand on your own two feet. Here there was a jazz band playing, but I could hear people talking, too. Some were dancing, others were lying horizontal on Moroccan beds and smoking from a tall metal instrument with pipes coming out of the side.
“Cheers,” Ruthie said, handing me a china cup and saucer.
“Where’d you get that from and what is it?”
“Who cares? Come on, let’s have some fun.”
Ruthie led the way, weaving us through the crowd toward the bar, where Ernest and Lawrence were already watching the band, but a stranger with big paws reached up and grabbed my hand, pulling me down into the banquette where he was sitting with a group of people.
“I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share the midnight orgies of young men,” the man whispered into my ear, the smell of liquor thick on his breath.
“Excuse me?” I said, pulling away. He pulled me back.
“Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank.”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. He might’ve been—his hair was wild, and he had a sheen of perspiration across his face.
“You must be a poet,” I said. “Or a madman.”
“I am, indeed,” he said. “I’m Frank. I dance with the dancers, I drink with the drinkers.”
“Like I said, a poet, a drunken one.”
“And you must be a dancer.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m a performer, I sing and dance, yes. How did you know?”
“I can tell a dancer’s body when I see one.”
I rolled my eyes and a gentleman across the table poured a glass of water from a pitcher and placed it in front of his friend. “Drink this.” Then he turned to me. “Please ignore him, he’s out of his mind.”
This gentleman was far more respectable looking than the first and devilishly handsome. His eyes were so dark they looked almost black in the dim light, with hair to match, dark brown and wavy, brushed back from his face but a little wild and unruly.
“He’s quite the poet,” I said, looking back to the first guy, Frank,who now had his head leaning back and appeared to have fallen asleep.
