Last Night at the Telegraph Club(55)

“Well, what do you think of Tommy?” Rhonda asked, tapping her cigarette against the ashtray.

“I guess I think she’s . . . talented.”

Jean snickered, and Lily went red.

“Don’t tease her,” Sally said. “She’s just a baby.” Sally looked at Lily empathetically. “Don’t worry about it—Jean’s barely out of diapers herself. We’ve been right where you are.” She cast a frown at Jean, who raised her hands.

“All right, sorry, I didn’t mean it.” Jean smiled at Lily in a more friendly way. “I like Tommy too. I want to know where she gets her suits.”

“They’re obviously custom. Would you wear one?” Rhonda asked, cocking her head at Jean.

Jean laughed. “I can’t afford it.” She glanced across the table at Kath. “I think you’d like one.”

Kath seemed taken aback. “A suit?” She shook her head. “Where would I wear it?”

“Oh, you’d find a place,” Rhonda said, shooting an appraising kind of glance at Kath. “I can see it.”

Kath looked uncomfortable. “Nah. It’s not my style.”

“Not yet.” Rhonda sounded amused. “I can see them coming a mile away, those baby butches.” Her voice was honeyed, teasing.

Kath was holding another half-smoked cigarette in her hand, and now she raised it to her mouth and took a shallow puff on it, the smoke emerging in a cloud rather than a stream. She shook her head, but there was a hint of a smile in her eyes, and Lily realized she was trying to hide the fact that she was pleased. Rhonda had apparently paid Kath a compliment, and Lily felt an electric clutch in her belly as she recognized it, butch like a blue ribbon awarded at the county fair, baby like a promise.

Kath’s gaze flickered briefly to Lily, and then she tapped her cigarette against the ashtray, and this time she didn’t miss.





26





Lily, what are you doing today? I don’t have to work!”

Shirley’s voice vibrated through the telephone line with what Lily felt was excessive energy for just past eight o’clock in the morning. Dramatic music came down the hall from the living room, where her brothers were watching Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, the tinny notes crescendoing in an explosion as a rocket presumably blasted off. Lily rubbed a hand over her eyes and answered, “I have a trig problem set. Why?”

“Do it tomorrow. Let’s go somewhere.”

“Where?” Lily stretched the telephone cord out as far as she could to look through the window in her brothers’ room, but the curtains were still drawn. “Is it going to rain?”

“No, it’s perfectly nice. It’s probably going to be sunny. Come on, I have to get out of Chinatown.”

There was an undercurrent of urgency in Shirley’s voice that surprised Lily. “I have to ask my parents. When do you—”

“Meet me on the corner in an hour.”

“But where do you want to go? I have to tell them—”

“Tell them we’re going to Aquatic Park. I’ll see you soon!” And she hung up.



* * *



—



“I don’t really want to go to Aquatic Park,” Shirley admitted as they walked down Grant Avenue. “It’s too close to school. We’re there every day.”

“Where do you want to go?” Lily asked. “The Embarcadero?”

The sky was overcast, and the flat gray light muted the reds and golds of Chinatown, giving them an ashy tint. The shopkeepers were opening their storefronts, unlocking their doors and poking their heads out to frown up at the sky, wondering whether it would open up on them.

“Let’s go to Sutro’s. We can see the Seal Rocks! And they have that museum, don’t they, that’s free?”

“Sutro’s! That’s so far.”

“I have all day.” Shirley gave a little skip of excitement. “Do you have to be back soon?”

“No.” The wind caused Lily’s skirt to flap against her shins. She suspected it would be freezing out by Ocean Beach, but there was a franticness to Shirley that told her she had made up her mind, and Lily knew there was no use arguing.

They took the B-Geary streetcar all the way to the end of the line, rolling through the Western Addition and past Fillmore and across the wide lanes of Divisadero. In the Richmond District, the avenues began their orderly march to the Pacific, each block lined with nearly identical houses painted in pastel shades or covered in cream-colored stucco. The farther west they went, the more space each house claimed. At first they’d been shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors, but eventually small plots of land began to separate them, so that each house was granted its own driveway and tiny bit of lawn. Out here the marine layer hadn’t yet burned off, and clouds of mist drifted over the streets, phantomlike, as they were pushed about by the wind.

Shirley had brought a cloth bag with her, and she opened it on her lap to show Lily its contents: a takeout box from the Eastern Pearl containing chue yuk paau* and faat ko,* a couple of apples, and a paper sack of fortune cookies. Shirley pulled one out and cracked it open. The message, printed on a tiny slip of white paper, read, You will be prosperous and lucky. Shirley made a face and broke the cookie into pieces, offering some to Lily.