The woman is a real peach pit, though, Stella.
“We’re seeking rooms, please.” Pax’s smile is like a photographer’s flash, and Miss Beverly is unimpressed. I remind myself not to get too used to that smile—it is the kind of smile that erodes barriers.
“Who they for?” she grumbles.
“Why, these two fine young… women, of course.”
Nirav shifts, lowers his head so his long hair falls over the peach fuzz on his upper lip.
Miss Beverly pushes her spectacles up her nose by shifting her puckered lips to and fro. “This here’s a fine home. We expect excellent behavior from our girls.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” he says. “These are my sisters, visiting from Ohio for a few weeks. My apartment is simply too small to contain us all.”
Sisters. I blink. Swallow. Right. The focus here is Daisy. Never lose that focus.
Aw, Stella. You’re allowed to live for yourself, ya know?
Miss Beverly crinkles and shifts her lips again, and her glasses inch up her nose. Silence. She’s not buying hisyes, ma’amact. Pax senses her hesitation.
“Imagine if all our siblings were to come!” he says, whirling to face me. The cock of his grin is devilish and showcases a dimple in his right creek. “Jenny would have a fit if she had to share a room with me, her only brother. Spoiled princess, our Jenny.”
Nirav. Nirav really wants this room, Stella. I smile. Huh—that’s nice,smiling. “Caroline would go nuts over the horses having to walk over those cobblestones all day. That girl loves her horses.”
Miss Beverly’s eyes sink further into her wrinkled face. “How many sisters do you have?”
Say six.
Without pause, Pax says “seven” and I say “six.”
There is something about how Pax’s face tilts into that dimple that makes me look away. “I have seven. Rose here, of course, has six.”
I narrow my eyes at him.Do not call me Rose. Stage name only. He shoots back a quick look of apology.
Huh—that’s odd. I haven’t communicated like that with someone since Daisy.
Miss Beverly slides her gaze to Nirav. “Why does she wear pants?”
Nirav sighs but understands what he must do. He hikes one leg of his pants to show a horrible scar on his bony shin. My heart twists, wondering what could’ve caused him that kind of pain.
That poor kid got a bum rap of a family, he did.
Sweet baby.
It’s the kind of scar that would sometimes show in the swish of a skirt, so the pants are plausible. When he shrugs and lowers his pant leg, Miss Beverly grunts, “You got references?”
Pax flashes his sunbeam-laden smile. “You have me.”
Miss Beverly spits a wad of tobacco juice into a nearby spittoon. “I got the piles, is what I got.”
Oh my goodness. Did she actually SAY THAT OUT LOUD?
She did. My sister loves to discuss her hemorrhoids.
“You don’ttrulyneed references, do you?” Pax looks into her eyes, deeply. Unflinchingly. It’s mesmerizing. And she returns the stare until her face softens. She reaches for her roster and starts rattling off a too-memorized list of her home’s features:
“Private bath. Hot and cold water. Telephone. Steam heat. Electric lights. Southern cooking daintily served at the diner around the corner. Laundry next door. Near the el, the subway and the trolley. Newly furnished rooms. Four dollars a week. You need two?”
“Yes,” Pax says.
