The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(56)

“We won’t need to. Itchy said tonight every one of us girls is getting at least a fifteen dollar bonus. You and I,” Gloria whispered, “will probably get more, ‘cause we been here the longest.”

“Oh.” In a situation such as this, any other person might be dancing a jig, but Abigail had a stone-colored ball of worry in her head and it was weighing her down.

With the free liquor flowing every which way but up, Club Lucky didn’t close its doors until the last three patrons staggered out at six o’clock in the morning. Once he’d turned out the barroom lights, Itchy came back to the dressing room and passed around the envelopes. “This is it, girls,” he said, “the end of Club Lucky.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gloria asked.

Itchy laughed. “Honey, you ain’t none too swift! End is end. I’m closing down the place. We had a good run, now it’s over.”

“But, why?” Abigail said, her lip quivering. “Why would you close down now when selling whiskey is legal?”

“Because it’s legal,” Itchy answered, frantically digging at his crotch. “There ain’t no money in selling legal whiskey.” After that he told the girls he was real sorry, but business was business and if they wanted to take home the dresses they’d been wearing to help themselves. “I got no use for them now,” he said and walked out.

That was the last Abigail ever saw of Itchy.

She and Gloria walked home together in a gray dawn, a day so bleak that you couldn’t tell where cement ended and sky started, a day where you could pass by a person and believe they were a shadow. “What am I gonna do?” Gloria moaned, for although she had worked at the club for five years, she had not saved a cent.

Abigail, on the other hand, now had a shoebox of dollar bills hidden beneath her laundry basket. “Things are better now,” she said optimistically, “we’ll find jobs.” The following morning they sat down together and started searching the help wanted section of the newspaper, but despite Mister Roosevelt’s New Deal, there were still very few jobs to be had.

When Christmas came, Abigail didn’t buy the pine tree she’d been wanting, nor did she splurge on eggnog, instead she settled for a small stewing hen and invited Gloria over for dinner. Although the poinsettia had already lost a good portion of its leaves, Abigail was determined they would enjoy the day, so she played Christmas carols on the phonograph and sang along as if she had not a care in the world. That night when she crawled into bed, Abigail dreamed her father had thrown away the unopened package containing the meerschaum pipe and the letter she had written. In the dream, she could see the flame of hatred still burning in his eyes and when she woke the next morning, Abigail knew that William Lannigan would never forgive her, not even a thousand years from now.



Two months after Club Lucky closed its doors; Gloria came to stay with Abigail and started sleeping on the living room sofa. “If you hadn’t let me move in with you, I’d be out on the street,” Gloria said. “Starving, probably.”

“I’d have starved to death three years ago, if not for you,” Abigail answered, then they both laughed and vowed to remain friends for as long as they lived. “Longer, even,” Abigail promised, “special relationships reach beyond the grave.”

“Whoooo,” Gloria clowned, “that’ll be us, two ghosts, sitting on our tombstones, worrying about where we’re gonna find jobs.”

That’s how it went – day after day they tromped downtown and asked about work at one place and then another. “I’ve an opening for a bricklayer, the manager at Apex said, but neither Gloria nor Abigail were qualified for a position such as that. “I’ll let you know if something else comes up,” he’d told them, but they never did hear from him.

The very last week in March, after the weather had turned unseasonably warm and started the daffodils blooming, Gloria burst into the apartment with her cheeks ablaze. “I got a job!” she screamed, then grabbed hold of Abigail and danced around the kitchen for a full ten minutes. “You’re never gonna believe this,” she finally gasped, “Sally Mae, the waitress at ChickenCastle is having a baby! I’m standing there, asking the manager for a job, when she walks up and tells him that her feet are so swollen she can’t work no more.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. Right away he starts eyeing me up, then asks if I can start tomorrow. Hell’s bells, I tell him, I’m ready right now!”

“You worked today?”

“Nah. He said tomorrow would do just fine, and gave me this –” Gloria held up a wide-skirted dress with the name Sally embroidered across the pocket.

Gloria started paying the expenses and Abigail continued to plod along looking for work. Twice a week she marched herself down to the newspaper office and asked about the possibility of becoming a reporter. “You don’t have any experience,” the personnel manager said. “We only hire writers with experience!”

“I’d be willing to start in classifieds,” Abigail suggested. “Obituaries, even.”

“I could put you on the waiting list for a delivery boy spot –”

“Proofreading, maybe?”

Every day Abigail bought the newspaper and turned directly to the classifieds, but most times there were only a handful of listings. She’d slide her finger along the column – accountant, barber, dog catcher – a job she applied for but didn’t get – electrician, jeweler, plumber, undertaker; afterwards, she’d fold up the paper and hope for better luck the following day. After a while, she quit spending the three cents to buy a newspaper and started going to the library, where she could sit in a comfortable chair and read the Richmond Courier for free. After she finished going through the classifieds, which usually took only minutes, the remainder of a day without purpose stretched in front of her like the SaharaDesert, so she’d stay at the library and read through periodicals that had to do with things such as raising fish or telling jokes. Once she’d gone through those, she turned to history books, then it was biographies and after that geography. She read The Good Earth and Tobacco Road, taking heart in people who overcame adversity. State Fair she read twice, and might have read it for a third time if it weren’t for the fact that five other people were waiting for the book.