Last Night at the Telegraph Club(54)

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Lily leaned toward the mirror in the women’s bathroom, raising her lipstick to her mouth. Behind her, the door to one of the two stalls opened and a woman in a slim purple V-neck dress emerged. She carefully balanced her handbag on the edge of the sink before she turned on the taps to wash her hands. She caught Lily’s eye in the mirror and smiled. “I like that color on you,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lily said shyly.

“Where’d you get it?”

“At Owl Drugs, on Powell.”

The woman dried her hands on the rotating towel. “What’s the name of the color?”

Lily capped her lipstick and peered at the bottom. “Red carnation.”

“I’ll have to look for it.” The woman reclaimed her handbag and took out her own lipstick, while Lily slung her purse over her shoulder. “See you down there,” the woman said.

“See you,” Lily said as she left. She felt buoyed by the brief encounter, as if she’d been admitted to a club she hadn’t known existed. As she passed the line of waiting women in the upstairs hallway, she didn’t mind so much if they gave her curious looks.

Downstairs in the stage room, Jean and Kath had met a couple of other women during the break between Tommy’s acts. They had pulled up two more chairs and drawn into a loose circle around the little table. Lily’s seat was still empty, and when Kath saw her she waved her into it, saying, “Jean ran into some friends from Cal.”

Jean made the introductions. Sally was the girl in the green-and-white shirtdress, and Rhonda was the one in the lavender sweater and gray wiggle skirt. They were both brunettes who wore their hair almost identically, but Sally wore hardly any makeup, while Rhonda had a lush, dark red mouth, and eyelashes so long Lily thought they must be false. Jean seemed to be paying Rhonda quite a bit of attention, flattering her and offering to buy her another drink even though she hadn’t finished her gin and tonic. Sally, meanwhile, went back to her conversation with Kath. They appeared to be discussing something they’d both seen on Toast of the Town the other night, an act involving two little girls and a dancing monkey. Lily hadn’t seen the show and had nothing to add to the conversation, and the buoyancy she’d felt earlier began to dissipate. Kath, on the other hand, seemed very free and easy talking to Sally, leaning forward slightly, smiling as she sipped her beer. When Jean offered around a pack of cigarettes, Kath even took one, though she held it stiffly, barely smoking it. She miscalculated the trajectory of the ash when she flicked it toward the ashtray, and a gray cinder dropped onto the scarred surface of the table, breaking up and scattering like crumbs.

There was a hubbub on the other side of the room, and for a moment all of them turned to watch as a couple got up—the wife was wobbly, and her husband had to put his arm around her waist to keep her steady—and after the couple had departed, Rhonda turned back to the table and her gaze fell on Lily.

“There’s a girl in my psychology class from Chinatown. Helen Mok. Do you know her?” Rhonda asked.

“No. I don’t think so.”

Rhonda lifted her cigarette to her mouth, the filter stained red from her lipstick. As she exhaled she said, “I’ve even seen Helen around here once or twice.”

Lily felt a twinge of excitement at the idea of another Chinese girl at Telegraph Club. “Really?”

Rhonda nodded. “I don’t think she comes here anymore though. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“People come and go all the time,” Sally said.

“Just like these bars,” Rhonda said. “This place has been around for a while though. I wonder how much the owner’s paying the cops.”

Lily’s eyes widened, but nobody seemed surprised by what Rhonda had said—not even Kath.

“I heard that the Five Twenty-Nine Club might be starting up a Saturday night show with a new male impersonator,” Sally said. “Have you ever been there?”

“I heard it’s all hookers and dykes, and you can get bennies there under the table,” Jean said with a grin.

The words shocked Lily, but Jean said them as casually as one might say girl or boy or aspirin. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder.

Rhonda merely shrugged. “Sometimes it’s fun to have a little sleaze with your night out, but they better watch it if they don’t want to get raided.”

They laughed, and Lily forced herself to laugh too, though she wasn’t sure what was funny about it. Lily glanced at Kath, who looked almost exhilarated by what was being said, and Lily was ashamed of her own prudish reaction. The last thing she wanted was to behave like her mother. She shuddered inwardly. She tried to relax and drank more of her beer.

“What do you think of Tommy Andrews?” Sally asked. “I think she’s pretty classy.”

“Classy onstage, anyway,” Rhonda said archly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jean asked. “Do you know her?”

“Not well. I know of her. She was with a friend of mine last year—before the femme she’s with now—I forget her name.”

“Lana Jackson,” Lily said, and they all looked at her in surprise. Their attention made her nervous, but she tried to pretend as if all of this—the club, the conversation, these strange women with their strange slang—was entirely normal. “I met her last time we were here, in the bathroom line.”