Last Night at the Telegraph Club(100)

Lily shrank back against the chair. “I—of course,” she managed to say. “I can go . . . somewhere.”

“If you don’t have anywhere to go, Parker said you might try the Donaldina Cameron House in Chinatown. Do you know the place?”

Lily was painfully aware that Lana was watching her with something like pity, and the pity made her shrivel with shame. “Yes, I know the place.” She tried to call up some bravado. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for letting me stay here for a bit.”

“Happy to. I’m very sorry for what happened.” Lana put out the cigarette and stood up, stretching. “And now I’m going to take a nap. I’m still hungover from last night. You’ll be all right out here? Do you want a book or anything?” She went to the octagonal table and opened the doors, pulling out a few paperback novels. “Here—they’re junk really, but some of them are fun.”

The covers were as lurid as the paperback romances in the back of Thrifty Drug Store. A woman in a slinky gown, her eyes downcast as a man in a fedora came after her, holding a gun: The Final Mistress. Two men engaged in a brawl in a dark alley while a woman in a ripped dress cowered in the corner: Midnight Caller.

“Thanks,” Lily said awkwardly.

Lana yawned. “Oh! I’m going to go collapse. See you in a bit.”

Lily listened as Lana went back through the apartment and into her bedroom, closing the door with a faint click. Her fingers tightened over the arms of the Chinese chair. Cameron House! Decades ago, Cameron House had taken in fallen Chinese women—prostitutes—but these days it was an after-school program for Chinatown kids. She imagined showing up at Cameron House, approaching the front desk in the wood-lined entryway, and asking for a place to stay. She could see the girl on duty giving her a puzzled look, lifting up the telephone to call one of the women on staff, saying, A destitute girl’s here. No, it couldn’t be done.

She knew she needed to make a plan, but her mind balked against it. Instead she moved over to the sofa and picked up The Final Mistress. Beneath it, to her shock, was Strange Season. She hadn’t seen the book since the last time she’d read it in Thrifty Drugs.

She took the book over to the couch and opened it. The spine was creased, and several of the pages were dog-eared. She flipped past the scenes she’d already read, quickly becoming absorbed in the melodrama of Patrice’s love life. Patrice simply couldn’t accept her feelings for Maxine; Maxine called her a tease and threw a vase at her, and then apologized profusely and made love to her on the floor of her penthouse foyer. (Lily glanced up to make sure Lana was still in her bedroom when she read that scene.) Patrice’s ex-boyfriend, the one who had left her at the beginning of the book, returned and begged her forgiveness. Patrice took him back and told him she’d done something crazy, then confessed her affair with Maxine.

Lily had a bad feeling about the confession. She read the scene with growing unease. Patrice’s boyfriend was simply too understanding. “You’ve just made a mistake,” he said to her soothingly. No she hasn’t! Lily thought. But even she didn’t see the surprise ending coming. On the pretext of taking Patrice out to lunch, Patrice’s boyfriend delivered her to an insane asylum. The book ended with Patrice sedated in a hospital bed, whispering Maxine’s name.

Lily wanted to throw the book across the room. She was so incensed by the ending that when the doorbell rang she started in surprise. She looked toward the kitchen, wondering if Lana would wake up, but when the doorbell sounded a second time, she decided she should answer it and take a message for Lana.

Lily hurried out into the building’s foyer and opened the front door. To her shock, standing on the front stoop was Aunt Judy.





45





You are here!” Aunt Judy exclaimed, and immediately pulled Lily into an embrace. She smelled like the Ivory soap from Lily’s family’s bathroom, along with a trace of ginger and garlic as if she had come straight from the kitchen. The fragrance was so familiar it made Lily cling to her for an unselfconscious moment, as if she were a little girl again. Aunt Judy squeezed her back and said, “You worried us so much. What were you thinking? Nobody knew where you were!” Then she held Lily at arm’s length and studied her closely. “You look all right. Have you eaten?”

Lily’s eyes pricked with tears. Aunt Judy looked the same as ever; she had always been a small, thin woman in black-framed glasses, a product, she said, of spending too many hours peering at math books in dim lighting. “How did you find me here?” Lily asked.

Wordlessly Aunt Judy reached into her purse and extracted two pieces of paper. One was the scrap on which she’d written Kath’s address. The other was the note she’d left at Kath’s house, with Lana’s address. She realized her aunt had tracked her down like a detective, and now—Lily’s heart plummeted—Kath would never receive that note.

“Can I come in? What is this place?” Aunt Judy asked.

Lily stepped back to let her aunt inside. “I’m staying with a—a friend.”

She saw Aunt Judy consider taking off her coat and shoes—her fingers briefly touched the top button of her raincoat—but then she seemed to decide she wouldn’t be staying for long. She turned to Lily and said, “You need to come home.”

Startled, Lily responded, “I can’t.”