Last Night at the Telegraph Club(35)
“I didn’t think you’d have it yet,” Lily said, almost afraid to look.
“Jean got it from a friend in the Western Addition. We went and saw him together on Saturday.”
“How much did it cost? Do I owe you money?”
“No, don’t worry. He owed Jean a favor. Here you go.”
It was a little bigger than a business card, with white lettering on a dark background. The words OPERATOR’S LICENSE CALIFORNIA were printed across the top, along with the expiration date and a number. The name on the card was not Lily’s; it read MAY LEE WONG. In a box on the lower right was a fingerprint, and a signature was scrawled across the bottom. It looked startlingly genuine.
“I told them you were Chinese,” Kath explained. “They thought that was a good name. Is it all right?”
Lily held the card gingerly, as if it might burn her. “Whose fingerprint is that? Who signed it?”
“It’s my fingerprint,” Kath said. “And the guy who made the card signed it. Doesn’t it look real?”
Kath seemed oblivious to the possible consequences of carrying this card, but seeing the declaration above the signature (“I hereby certify that the person described hereon has been granted the privilege of operating motor vehicles”) made Lily feel queasy. She hadn’t imagined it would look so authentic, and now she was certain this would doom her if the authorities discovered it in her possession. She wondered if false immigration papers could be obtained as easily.
“Is something wrong?” Kath asked. She seemed worried. “You look like—is the name wrong?”
Lily didn’t want to be a spoilsport. She shook her head. “It’s a little like calling me Jane Smith, but it’s all right.”
Kath frowned. “Are you sure? We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
A pang went through Lily. “I want to, I just—where’s yours? Can I see it?”
Kath pulled hers out and showed it to Lily.
“‘Elizabeth Flaherty,’” Lily read. “You don’t look like an Elizabeth.”
Kath laughed, and so did Lily, and then her nervousness began to be overtaken by excitement. “Do you really think this will work?” she asked, looking at Kath.
Those two red spots began to bloom on Kath’s face again, just beneath her cheekbones. “Only one way to find out,” she said. “When do you want to go?”
* * *
—
The newspaper clipping with the photo of Tommy Andrews was beginning to soften at the edges. Lily carefully removed it from The Exploration of Space and unfolded it against the book, taking care not to smudge the newsprint. She and Kath had decided to go to the Telegraph Club on Friday night, but the idea that she could see Tommy for real still felt like science fiction.
She angled the Telegraph Club ad to better catch the light from her bedside lamp. The picture was so familiar she didn’t need to look at it to remember what Tommy looked like, but she still liked to look, to feel the way it tugged at something deep within her. A spark of recognition, or a glow of hope.
She lay back against her pillows, setting the clipping down beside her on her bed. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine Tommy Andrews singing to the women in the audience—to her—but her imagination seemed to balk tonight, as if it refused to show her this fantasy anymore because she was about to see the real thing. By the end of this week, she would be there.
When she opened her eyes, the ceiling was a shadowy dark yellow in the lamplight. The flat was quiet. Everyone had gone to bed, but she wasn’t sleepy. She picked up The Exploration of Space and opened it at random to the chapter on the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, and Mars. She had read it before, but now she read it again, hoping that it might put her to sleep.
Clarke spent several pages on the mysteries of Venus, which seemed to exasperate him. The planet was completely covered by clouds that obscured all traces of the surface. He theorized it was unlikely that Venus supported intelligent life, but he gamely speculated that if they existed, Venusians would have no knowledge of the stars until they developed machines that could fly above the clouds. Mars, on the other hand, was largely naked to the observer, and maps had even been drawn of the surface. The book included a map of Mars, which seemed to Lily almost as fantastical as a map to Alice’s Wonderland. This Mars was labeled with names for places no human had ever visited: Elysium, Eden, Amazonia. There was also a color illustration of an automatic rocket that could travel to Mars. It had a spherical body mounted on several small rockets, and metallic arms that extended a satellite dish for communication as it hovered over the red planet.
There was a stage between wakefulness and sleep when she seemed to be able to direct her unconscious mind; the problem was, she could never be sure when that stage began or ended. As she drifted off to sleep, she saw the insectlike rocket crawling over the surface of Mars, which wasn’t red as it should be, but was covered with swirling clouds like those over Venus. She knew she could direct the rocket closer to its destination—she had built it herself—but somehow she could never cause it to accelerate fast enough. The destination remained a silvery blur.
—1942
Joseph joins the U.S. Army and becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.