The kid smiled, which made Dash grin in return.
“What is her name?” Karl asked.
“El Train.”
Karl titled his head with puzzlement. “Why is that her name?”
“She’s as powerful as a locomotive, that’s why! Of course, it’s not her real name. Her real name is Eloise Ankins, though nobody calls her that—not if they want to stay alive, that is.”
“Why would she change her name?”
“She’s a take-charge kind of woman, not a refined, passive Eloise. Certainly not an Ankins. Horrid-sounding name and she’d tell you so. Sometimes the names we’re given don’t reflect who we truly are.”
“Like the pansies.” Karl quickly glanced around, worrying someone would overhear him.
Dash placated his fears. “This is a safe place. Yes, exactly, like them. Now other times, people change their names to protect themselves.”
“How so?”
“Take the tailor shop for example.”
“Ah, you changed your name,” Karl said. “I was wondering why the shop was called Hartford & Sons and not Parker & Sons.”
The kid hadn’t missed the sign out front.
Dash chuckled. “Well, almost. My family name is indeed Parker, though I don’t have any sons of my own.” He leaned in. “Accuracy isn’t the point; anonymity is.” He sat back on his barstool. “I actually inherited the shop from a, uh . . . friend.”
The friend had been the Parker family tailor. Just the thought of Victor with his dark hair flecked with gray, dark eyes, and dark pinstripe suits—always pinstripes—lit a fire buried deep within Dash. He hoped Karl didn’t see the tell-tale blush on his cheeks.
“He was a Hartford?” Karl looked at Dash expectedly.
Dash shook his head, trying to recover. “This is where it can get confusing, especially after a few of these.” He gestured to their drinks. “Yes, publicly the original owner went by Victor Hartford, but his real family name was Agramonte.”
Karl wrinkled his brow. “What name is that?”
“Spanish. Apologies, Catalan. Victor would gasp if he heard me call him Spanish. We Americans aren’t into the fine nuances of other countries and other cultures.”
Though he certainly taught me the nuances of a glance or a handshake held too long.
“Why did he change his name to Hartford?”
“Because no one would buy from a Spanish tailor, let alone a Catalan one. And when the Spanish Influenza hit, can you imagine the scorn they endured? They were deemed responsible for bringing the ‘plague upon our house,’ as it were.”
Dash’s father certainly thought so when by Christmas of 1918, Dash’s younger sister Sarah—the one who coined “Father Voice”—was added to the list of the fallen. If Thomas Parker had ever found out the true nationality of his tailor, God knew what he would’ve done.
Karl nodded, his voice solemn. “I understand. Just like they blame all us Germans for the War.”
Dash’s smile curved towards sadness. “When tragedy hits, people will need someone, or something, to blame.” He took a long drink to cleanse his palate. “Anyhow, Victor simply picked his new name from a map. He said, ‘if Hartford’s good enough for a state capitol, it is good enough for me.’”
“He must’ve been a good friend to have left you his entire business.”
Dash’s body warmed with the memory of those secret nights in the back of the tailor shop—where music swelled from the Victrola and he and Victor discussed everything from worldly politics to the pulp stories Dash read with abandon. The air thick with cologne, laughter, and spilled wine. And then later, humid breaths on skin, lips salty with sweat. The room seeming to spin like the record on the turntable, the needle scratching as no one seemed to care the song had long ago finished.
“He most certainly was a good friend,” Dash replied.
“Was?” Karl approached his next question with care. “Did he die?”
Dash quickly shook his head. “No.” Thank God that wasn’t the case. “No, no, he—” Dash didn’t want to explain, not just yet, so he settled for: “—he had to leave. Circumstances beyond his control. You know how life can be.”
That was 1925. A bad year all around.
Karl said, “And this new name, it gave him a new life when he moved here?”
“It does for most who come to this country.”
“I wonder . . .”
Dash looked at Karl with interest. “Wonder what?”
Karl was speaking barely above a whisper, not talking to Dash at all, but to himself. “I wonder if I should do something like that. Go to a different place. Give myself a new name. A new life.”
“Why would you need to?”
Karl didn’t answer.
Dash leaned in closer. “What are you running from, kid?”
Before Karl could answer, El Train appeared onstage.
6
The roar from the crowd was deafening. Half the room stood up—a few even stood on their chairs—to applaud and whistle the tall, broad-shouldered, busty woman. She was dressed in a man’s black tuxedo with tails. A top hat cocked to the side on her head, a face round like the moon, a snaggletooth dead-center in her grin. She placed her hands on her hips and scanned the crowd, seeing if they met to her liking.
After a full minute of cheering, she raised her hands and yelled her usual greeting. “Well shee-it!”
The crowd replied back, “Well shee-it!”
“You act like you’ve never seen a woman before! Some of you probably never even been with one. I know some of you never been with a woman like me. That’s alright, baby, that’s alright. Better late than never. Now tonight, I’m gonna educate you on the subject of l-o-v-e.”
Dash watched as El pulled out the piano bench, flipped her tails back, and sat down.
“Tonight’s first lesson is Alice Blue Gown. You know Alice Blue Gown? She one baaad little girl. Most don’t want to admit she’s around and those that do, well, you get told to keep your mouth shut. It’s not appropriate conversation for polite society. Uh huh. As I look down from this stage, I can
