Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (16 page)

“Oh my God! Please, Basha, don’t!” I begged.

“Aw, shit, Basha!” Dora shook her head. “What are you doing with that thing? Jesus! Somebody go get the fellas!”

Evelyn bolted out of the powder room. I stood still, paralyzed.

“Fuck you, Dora! Fuck you, too!” Basha said to me, waving the gun all around.

Mrs. Squeak got back up to her feet but didn’t say a damn thing. Her eyes were locked on the pistol. Mrs. Squeak took a cautious step backward and then, without warning, she lunged toward Basha. Her fingers gripped Basha’s wrist as the gun swayed back and forth until we heard the
pop!

Basha’s eyes grew wide. Mrs. Squeak looked stunned. Neither one of them expected the thing to go off. None of us did. Then slowly Mrs. Squeak’s knees buckled and her body folded as she sank to the ground. She clutched her side, watching the blood gushing forth. When she removed her hand, repulsed and confused, she stared at the blood dripping from her cocktail ring and bracelet onto her dress.

“You shot me?” She looked at Basha in shock and then back at the crimson puddle spreading across her dress, trying to pat away the blood. She brought both blood-drenched hands to her mouth. “You
shot
me?”

We heard the men out in the hallway and when the door swung open, Squeak, Shep, Drucci and Dion all looked on in disbelief.

“Holy shit, Basha! What’d you do!” Squeak leaned over Mrs. Squeak, whose freckled face was smeared with blood, the tips of her hair looking more scarlet than its natural orangey-red. Squeak stared up at Basha, bewildered.

Basha brushed her hair off her forehead and drew a deep breath. “She’s gonna live. I didn’t kill her.”

The guys looked at one another and then Dion slapped Squeak on the back. “That’s a couple of hotheaded women you got on your hands, swell fella!”

Hymie and Drucci were trying to calm down Basha even as the ambulance drove away.

I was relieved that Barbara, Monty, Helen and the other girls from the rooming house had already left by then. But as I stood on the street watching the ambulance go, my mother looked at the blood streaked across the front of my wedding gown. “Nice friends you have, Vera. Very nice friends.”

MARITAL BLISS

R
ight after the wedding, Shep took me to New York City for our honeymoon. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, on Fifth Avenue. The lobby was graced with displays of fresh flowers in oversize urns and vases. The staff stood at attention when we walked by, as if we were the hotel’s only guests. Every morning they brought us the
New York Times
and a sterling silver pot of coffee, which they poured into bone-china cups and served with fresh-baked muffins. I adored the opulence of the Waldorf as much as I enjoyed our visit to Coney Island, where we strolled along the Boardwalk, stopping for nickel hot dogs with tangy mustard.

“You want to go on the merry-go-round or take an elephant ride?” Shep asked.

I looked up at the sky. It was full of squawking seagulls, their wings spread wide as they swooped in for landing. “The roller coaster,” I said, pointing to the people screaming in terror as their cars whipped up and over the hilly tracks. “The roller coaster! I want to ride the roller coaster.”

“You got it, Dollface.”

I held on to him the whole time, keeping my eyes closed. When the ride was over, I wanted to go again.

That night we had icy cold gin martinis with his friends Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky, at a place called Club Fronton.

“We always knew it would take a special gal to get this one to settle down,” said Meyer. “Mazel tov to you both!”

The following night Shep took me to see the Eight Little Notes at the Music Box on West Forty-fifth Street. We had such swell fun in New York, and for the first time in weeks I hadn’t dwelled on the pregnancy. At least I hadn’t until we went shopping our last day. Everything I tried on fit, but for how long?

“I won’t even be able to wear this in another three months,” I said, stepping out of the dressing room in a blue satin frock.

“So you’ll have it for three months,” said Shep, motioning to the shopgirl to start ringing up the dresses I’d already tried on. That day he spent more than a thousand dollars on clothes that I’d soon be too pregnant to wear.

It wouldn’t hit me until later, when we were heading for the train station, that I hadn’t thought about Tony Liolli once the entire time we’d been away.

When we got back to Chicago the honeymoon continued. Shep went on spoiling me. We spent our first weekend home looking for a new place to live.

After a day of walking through houses and apartments that were either too small, too old, or too far away from the city, Shep pulled up to a gray stone on State Parkway. “What do you think of this one?”

I looked up and pressed my hands to the passenger window. “Shep!” I stared at the cornices and the exquisite detail on the bay windows. Crocuses and tulips were blooming in the gardens, and the lawn was that perfect shade of new spring green.

“Well,” he said as he cut the motor, “shall we go inside?”

I turned and looked at him. “Are you serious? I thought we were going to look at bungalows, or maybe just a larger apartment.”

I smiled, a hand over my heart as he held the front door for me.

“Four bedrooms. A nursery,” he said casually as we walked through the foyer. “There’s also a butler’s pantry and a maid’s room. And look at this staircase.” He grabbed hold of the banister. “Not too shabby now, is it?”

“Shep—look!” I marveled at the loggia off the living room. “And did you see this view?” While I peered out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park, Shep asked the owner about the roof, the furnace, the boiler, and things I wouldn’t have thought about.

“Well, Dollface”—he smiled—“you think you could be comfortable in a place like this?”

“Are you kidding me!” I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him hard on the mouth. I was in love with the house and Shep promised we’d be moved in by the time the baby arrived.

When we got back to the apartment that afternoon I wandered about our place with a new perspective. Shep’s apartment had once seemed so magnificent to me compared to the rooming house, and even my mother’s house, but we had outgrown the space. I had already taken custody of the closets and the bathroom. My camisoles and hosiery hung over the side of the tub, drying. I hogged the medicine cabinet with my perfumes, my face powder, rouge, and lipsticks crowding in alongside Shep’s bicarbonate, the bottles of liniment, his supply of aspirin and aftershave.

“Why are you throwing this out?” I asked, walking into the bedroom, reaching for a necktie that I saw him put in the trash.

“There’s a stain.”

“Where?” I held up the tie, inspecting it front and back.

“Right there.” He came over and pointed to a speck, barely visible.

“You don’t need to throw it out. Just hide it with a tie bar.”

“But I’ll know it’s there.”

He had done the same thing a few days before, throwing out a perfectly good undershirt at the first sign of a hole.

I loved our life together, but sometimes I worried that Shep and I were mismatched. Every day I discovered new habits of his that baffled me. Like whenever he bathed, even if he was home alone, he’d lock the bathroom door. And then there were the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in his living room. He’d arranged the books in the oddest fashion. Not alphabetical, not according to subject, not novels versus nonfiction, but rather by color and size. All the tan spines lined up with the burgundies next to the green covers beside the pale blues and so on. And, of course, each color graduated accordingly from the tallest to the shortest.

“How can you find anything this way?”

“I think they look neater when they’re organized like this,” he said. “And besides, once you’ve read a book, you don’t go back to it.”

“Maybe you don’t. And you said you haven’t even read most of these yet.”

“That’s because I’m waiting for you to read them to me.”

So far we’d made it through
Great Expectations
,
This Side of Paradise
and
Sister Carrie
. We had a long way to go.

The following day, after Shep had left for the Meridian, I wandered around the apartment, roaming from the bedroom to the living room to the kitchen and back to the bedroom again. I never would have thought it was possible, but now that I didn’t have to work anymore, I was bored.

Fortunately, that day I had a distraction: I was meeting Dora for lunch. One thing about Dora and the others—they were very big on lunching. And shopping. It seemed as though that was all I’d done since I’d become Mrs. Shep Green.

•   •   •

D
ora was looking smart as usual when I met her at a tearoom down on Adams and LaSalle. Her blond hair was held in place with a beautiful ivory comb, and the pale pink frock she wore made her baby blues more luminous than ever. Unlike Basha and Cecelia, who looked and talked like gun molls no matter what, Dora knew how to tone it down. She was ambidextrous when it came to dipping in and out of both worlds.

The tearoom however was decidedly art deco, with black onyx tables and cobalt blue and gold mosaic tiles lining the walls. Nearly every table was taken, occupied by wealthy women who, like me, didn’t need to work or worry that a simple finger sandwich and a cup of soup cost two dollars. Dora and I sat at a corner table in oversize chairs with silk cushions. A bud vase with a fresh daisy served as the centerpiece.

“You’re looking just swell,” Dora said after we were situated. “How are you feeling?”

“So far so good. At least there’s no more morning sickness.” I opened my menu and scanned the entrées.

Dora sighed, setting her menu aside. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a little morning sickness.”

“Yeah, that’s what you think.”

“I’m serious. Knuckles and I have been trying for years.”

“Really? You?” I didn’t know why this surprised me. I closed my menu.

“Well, sure. What woman wouldn’t want a baby?”

I opened my menu again and changed the subject.

Halfway through lunch the woman at the next table removed a series of miniature perfume bottles from a crocodile attaché case. She carefully uncapped each one and took turns dabbing a bit onto the wrists and forearms of her two companions.

“I can’t believe she’s selling Little Dot in here,” I whispered, leaning forward.

“It is tacky,” said Dora, smoothing her thumb across her shiny red nails. “But, you know, it’s never a bad idea for a woman to have her own money.”

“I suppose, if you’re single.”

“Not necessarily.” She hiked up her eyebrows and leaned forward on her elbows. “I hope you don’t mind if I give you a little piece of advice.”

“You’re not going to suggest I go out and sell perfume, are you?” I smiled.

“I’m serious.” She leaned in further, letting her diamond necklace sway back and forth like a pendulum. “You’re married now. You’ve got a good man who brings home good money. But take it from me, start putting a little stash aside for yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t need to do that. Shep’s always been generous with me.”

“This isn’t about generosity.” She sat back in her chair and dabbed her mouth with her napkin. Her ruby red lipstick was still perfect. “Trust me on this. Our husbands aren’t ordinary working stiffs. You need to have your own money. If something happens to Shep, you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

A sense of dread crept over my shoulders, but I used that trick I’d learned from my mother and swept it aside, telling myself that Shep was strong and smart and wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

“You just never know.” She signaled the waiter and placed a ten-dollar bill on the table. “It’s something Cecelia told me when I married Knuckles, and I never forgot it. Every week Knuckles gives me spending money and the first fifty, right off the top, goes into my own pocket. Just in case.” She crossed herself as soon as she said it.

A BLUFF OR THE BULL’S-EYE

I
knew something was wrong with Evelyn. We were supposed to take in the new Buster Keaton moving picture,
Sherlock Jr.
, but she’d telephoned at the last minute to say she wasn’t feeling well. I could tell she’d been crying, so as soon as we hung up, I jumped on the el and went straight to the rooming house.

When I first stepped inside what was once my room, I glanced around, wondering how I’d managed in such a small space. You could fit four of these rooms inside Shep’s living room alone. It was the end of July, sweltering outside, and she had the only window in the room closed. She didn’t even have a fan running.

“Aren’t you hot in here?” I asked, and when she didn’t respond, I opened the window anyway.

Evelyn’s new roommate was out so I went and sat on her bed, running my fingers along her crocheted and embroidered spread. Two bath towels, one blue, the other beige, hung on the hooks near the door and I ached a little thinking of Evelyn dragging her soap and toothbrush and that blue towel to the bathroom down the hall.

Evelyn was on her bed, lying on her stomach with her ankles crisscrossed. She was reading a fashion magazine and without looking up, she asked what I was doing there.

“You sounded upset on the phone. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine.” She looked up from her
Vogue
and I saw the bruise on her cheek, swollen reddish purple and spreading a good four inches across her face.

“Jesus, God! What happened to you?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She squinted as if she were staring into a beam of sunlight. “Is that dress new?”

“Don’t say it’s nothing. What happened? Did Izzy do this to you?”

“It’s nothing. I bumped into the door.”

“Baloney.”

Evelyn got up, tossed her magazine on the dresser and burst into tears.

“Did you two have another fight? He did this to you, didn’t he?”

She nodded and sank down onto her bed. “It all started because I took him home to meet my family.”

“Are you crazy? You took him home?” If my mother hated Shep, there was no way Mr. and Mrs. Schulman were going to approve of Izzy Seltzer.