I walked past the line—checking for my boys in uniform—and smiled at the man behind the velvet rope. He must be new, or moved up from some other grunt detail, because I didn’t recognize him. He recognized me, though. The blood drained from his face. If I’d said “boo” I swear he would have fainted. He stumbled forward and unhooked the rope.
“This way, ma’am,” he said.
I smiled as kindly as I could, though it was clear he couldn’t tell. I walked through the doors, a little sick of the kind of woman they must imagine me to be, and by my own design.
In the twenties the Pelican had been an old Russian cigar club, and Victor had retained the mahogany paneling and leather walls while adding a few judicious modern touches: geometric glass chandeliers trimmed with chrome, Chinese silk curtains, and a gleaming zinc bar lit from behind, so that its rows of bottles glowed gold and green and amber. The stage was catty-corner to the bar, with a dozen round tables in between, but on nights the crowd wasn’t elbow to elbow the barman had as good a view as anyone of Tamara’s jungle dance. At ten, the place was bumping but not full up. I smiled at the regulars and noted the faces that meant Victor was here already—not on the floor, but behind the false bookshelf in the corner, which led to his office.
On stage, Charlie was going at it with his swing band, playing that new bebop jazz that was catching like brush fire in the Harlem clubs, but was unusual in a downtown joint like the Pelican. On Wednesdays, Charlie got up on the Pelican’s stage to play with a little five-piece, wreathed in marijuana smoke like clouds. The Village’s most dedicated hepcats came to pray, close their eyes, and shake their heads and shout in scatting tongues. He called that bebop too, but on weekends he played the down-tone version. Even then, the jumpy drums and circuitous, laddered chords made for hard listening and even harder dancing. I caught a few strains of “Tea for Two,” but his French horn veered off as soon as I had them, layering and riffing. Victor let Charlie have his way until eleven, enough for the Pelican to maintain its reputation for the avant-garde, but not enough to put off the paying white customers who came to enjoy big band swing and a beautiful girl dancing with a snake. Tamara wasn’t out yet. I wanted to talk to her, but she was as likely to be with an admirer backstage as she was to be alone, and the thought of putting off some amorous white boy who thought he was playing with fire was enough to make me feel old as Gloria looked this afternoon.
My feet took me to the bar without my asking and I leaned my back against it, watching for the dentist or my three soldiers, anyone to distract me from the barman shaking martinis just four feet away. Dev filled two glasses from shakers in either hand—at once showy and economical. One of the appreciative gentlemen bit off his olive and asked him what he thought of Hitler’s chances in Russia.
“Wait till winter,” Dev said. “It seems to me we’ll be in this by then, one way or another.”
“I’m thinking of enlisting, before my number comes up. Wouldn’t mind flying against those Japanese Zeros.”
“I’ve heard from a few who are doing that. At least you get a choice, they say.”
“That’s right—though are you likely to get called? You don’t sound American.”
Dev shrugged. “My mother’s British, but I got naturalized years ago. I’m as liable as you. But I’ll take my chances. Don’t think I’d care for army life.”
I tried not to listen, or at least to pretend like I’d gone judiciously deaf, but at this I turned my head, surprised into laughter at the understatement. He didn’t even eat meat.
Dev flicked a glance to the side at the same moment and our gazes snagged and held, a burr on clean cotton, until I thought some warm answer flashed inside him. Then he ripped me with a shrug and waved a greeting to Tamara, just come from backstage.
“The usual, sugar,” she called, shaking the bangles on her arms like maracas as she danced through the crowd. They cleared a path to get a better look; in high-necked satin or a grass skirt, Tamara always commanded attention. She was an earth goddess come to vibrant life, with brown skin, glossy hair, an ass like a naked peach, and eyes like the bottom of a well. My resentment of her had only managed to last a weekend; sure, I had known from the start how she fascinated Dev, but he hadn’t been mine for a long time now and there was something about Tamara—the way she cared about everyone, the way we listened to one another—that had made us fast friends without me having hardly any say in it. Dev watched her face as he lit her cigarette.
“Well, that’s better,” she said, and, catching sight of me, “Sugar! Gorgeous as always, where have you been? Are you drinking? Of course you are. Make that two French 75s, Dev. Have you tried one, Pea? They’re my new favorite. Our Dev’s a genius.”
This flow of uninterrupted, low-throated chatter was accompanied by a peck on both of my cheeks, French-style, which I bore with a smile and a small shrug in Dev’s direction. Tamara admired no one more than the dancers of the French avant-garde, Isadora Duncan and Josephine Baker; she had no time for the fluttering weightlessness
