“That’s a strange scar,” Julia said.
Eva quickly covered it with her hand. “What? Oh no—”
The lavatory door opened, and Dolly Clark pitched into the room, a white hand towel over her mouth. “Holy Toledo,” she said. “I feel better. But how do I look? Am I an absolute wreck? Max hates it when I’m sick.”
She lowered the towel. Her dress was bunched at her waist, and her headpiece was askew, but her eyes had cleared. Fresh lipstick restored some color to her face.
Julia offered to straighten her dress. Dolly lifted her arms as Julia did her best to tug down the fabric puddled above her hips. They were simply too wide for the cut of the frock. There was nothing Julia could do but sweep a hand across the back of the skirt and hope the seams survived the night.
Dolly mumbled her thanks, staring unabashedly at Eva. “I guess you must be used to it, huh? I’d be bawling my eyes out if some guy pawed my boobs and stuck a gun in my face, but not you.” Dolly leaned close as Eva outlined her eyes, painted her lips, and dusted more fine powder over her whole body. “You’re cool as custard.”
She watched Eva massage her feet and legs with generous slatherings of the yellow lotion. The scent of lemons was powerful. “Hey, are you really colored?”
Eva raised the stout jar. “I cheat a little. I’ll bleed lemon juice someday.”
Dolly belched. “That’s a good one.”
Julia steered the drunken woman toward the bed. “Try to rest, Mrs. Clark.” Dolly flopped down in a graceless heap, mugging to an imagined mirror.
Eva slid to one side of the bench and patted for Julia to join her. From a small icebox under the table, she drew out a glass bowl filled with shaved ice. “I hate this part,” she whispered.
She lifted her left breast and tucked the bowl around it, as if nursing a baby. Her head pitched back, and she inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. “Makes them hard,” she said through a grimace. She switched the bowl to the other breast and again recoiled from the painful shock. “A girl on the line showed him this trick. I could kick her.”
“Sex-y,” Dolly sang, dimpling at herself. “Sex-ex-ex-y lemon sexy custard.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Eva said quietly, under the off-key drone. “My new publisher. My friend who doesn’t care stink about all this. You know, the other night at Pablo’s I felt like I recognized you, or that I would recognize you once we met. Now it feels like we’ve known each other for years.”
Julia nodded. She remembered her own tingle of recognition when they met, her inkling that Eva and she shared some unspoken clarity, some kindred way of yearning to be in the world. She relished again the surprise, that thrill of discovering a rare new friend.
Eva glanced at the clock. She nudged closer, resting her hip against Julia’s. Watching in the mirror, she threaded her fingers through Julia’s and lifted their linked hands. They made a bouquet, her pale, creamy fingers mingled with Julia’s faintly yellow ones above the slim stems of their wrists.
“Ella and I used to braid our fingers together like this,” she said. “She said it was like stirring milk into roast yams. Do you know some say you can tell a colored person by their palms, their fingernails?”
Three raps sounded on the door. Timson’s voice broke Eva’s reverie. “Showtime, punkin seed.”
CHAPTER 11
A sharp thump lifted Julia’s face from the pillow. She floundered up from sleep. It came again, three brisk raps.
“Julia?” Philip’s voice pulled her upright.
“What is it?” she croaked.
“You have visitors.”
A hulking shape loomed up from beyond the foot of her bed.
“Of a constabulary sort.” Philip’s amusement wafted through the door. “They insist on speaking with you.”
She stared as the shape resolved into a disheveled and blurry Austen Hurd, struggling to sit up from the small divan where he had, apparently, been sleeping.
For heaven’s sake. “Ask them to wait. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”
She sat up. She was wearing last night’s chemise and step-ins. Both stockings and her evening frock lay in a shocking heap on the vanity chair. Everything came back to her in a rush. Harlem. Eva’s show. Her locked-away manuscript.
They’d returned quite late (or early, judging by the orange gleam on the horizon) in a dizzy swirl of too much liquor and music. Austen had wobbled into the apartment with her, but when she’d offered him a harmless half of the bed, he’d mashed his lips against her forehead. With a muffled, “Thanks, but no. Night, bean,” he’d dropped—shoes, braces, and all—to the tufted divan under the window. Ten seconds later he’d been fast asleep, left arm and leg spilled over onto the carpet.
Now abruptly she’d been pulled from sweet oblivion into two strange puzzles. The police visit was clearly ominous, but Austen on her divan? She felt equal parts bemused and annoyed. While she wanted nothing amorous from him, surely she warranted at least a glimmer of manly interest to rebuff. Did he fear for her virtue? Worse, did he fear for his own? It was vanity, she knew, but still his tumble straight to sleep rankled.
“Fiddlesticks!” she sputtered. “What the blazes do they want?”
She stumbled across the room to the wardrobe. Austen heaved himself toward the wall, shielding his eyes from the sight of her in crumpled scanties. For heaven’s sake. She gazed stupidly at the array of frocks, blouses, skirts, trousers. Dressing meant fresh underthings, stockings, shoes—altogether too much work after what felt like ten minutes of sleep. She pulled out her scarlet dressing gown and wrapped herself in its heavy satin. “If they insist on disturbing a lady at first crack on a Sunday morning, they must accept me en déshabillé.” Muttering bolstered her courage to face whatever calamity had brought policemen
