Last Night at the Telegraph Club(69)
Kath had never been concerned about getting home late before. Lily looked at her more closely, but couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Well, it’s already late,” Lily said. “Who’s going to notice if I’m a couple of hours later? But what about you? Do you want to go?”
Kath’s shoulders hunched slightly. “Only if you do.”
“Well, yes. I don’t really want to go home. Do you?”
Kath seemed to be holding something back. “I guess not.”
Lily was about to ask what was wrong, but they had reached the bathroom door and it was Kath’s turn to go in, so Lily was left standing in the hallway. By the time they were both finished, the moment had passed, so Lily said nothing.
They went downstairs together, and at the bottom she looked behind her at the alcove beneath the stairs, but it was empty. Back at their table, Tommy and Lana and the others were all standing up and putting on their coats, getting ready to leave. Lana saw her and Kath, and said, “We’re walking up to Telegraph Hill. Are you coming along?”
Kath plucked their jackets from the backs of their empty chairs, handing Lily hers. “Sure, we’re coming. Thanks.”
They spilled out onto the sidewalk, a group of half a dozen. Lily kept close to Kath, and they followed the others up a side street that was cut with stairs it was so steep. When they started out from the club they had been talking gaily, laughing and joking, but as they proceeded through North Beach their voices grew hushed. Lily lost track of where they were going. All around them the neighborhood slumbered, a world removed from the noise and music of the nightclubs a few blocks away. They finally arrived on a flat block just below Coit Tower, which was lit up at the top of Telegraph Hill like a beacon. Someone took out a ring of keys, and Lily heard a crunch as a key turned in the lock of a three-story building. A light was switched on and spilled out, yellowish, onto the front stoop.
“Come on in!” Tommy called back, and they all crowded through the doorway, into the front hall, and through a second door on the right into a first-floor apartment.
At first, Lily got the impression of a jumble of different dark lumps everywhere, but as Tommy and Lana went around switching on the lamps, the lumps resolved themselves into a long rust-colored sofa, and a set of black lacquered Chinese chairs like the kind that were sold to tourists in the Grant Avenue shops. There was a Mission-style coffee table, an octagonal end table like something out of Arabian Nights, and a medieval-looking bench by the door where Lana told everyone to leave their coats. Past the living room was a small dining room with a white Formica-and-chrome dinette set and an antique mirrored buffet, on top of which were clustered several bottles and cocktail glasses. Lana went through to the kitchen, announcing that she would bring back a bucket of ice, while Tommy disappeared down the hall, loosening her tie.
Lily left her coat on the bench with the others and wandered over to the rust-colored sofa; above it were several framed photos hung in a somewhat haphazard order. There were a couple of snapshots of Tommy standing with other male impersonators on a busy street; Lily thought it might be in front of the Telegraph Club. There was a picture of Tommy with her arm around Lana, the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Tommy was wearing a sweater beneath an unbuttoned jacket, a cigarette drooping out of her mouth.Lana had a polka-dotted scarf tied over her blond hair and wore a trench coat and sunglasses. They were both reluctantly smiling, as if the photographer had been scolding them into doing it.
And centered over the sofa was a large glossy picture of Tommy Andrews that Lily recognized as the original of the headshot that had been printed in the Chronicle. Seeing the photo on the wall was somehow shocking: here she was in Tommy Andrews’s apartment. Tommy Andrews! She had gazed at her photo in the paper—this photo—countless times, and now she was in this woman’s home. It was as if time had stuttered, and she was back in the Eastern Pearl surreptitiously tearing the ad from the paper. She could still hear the dull ripping sound, the crumple as she folded it. She felt detached from her body, and when she closed her eyes for a moment she might have been floating, untethered from the earth’s gravity.
She heard the sound of a record falling into place, the scratch of the needle as it struck vinyl. The song “Black Magic” began to play, and she felt her knee pressing against the edge of Tommy’s sofa. She opened her eyes and turned around, feeling a little dizzy. She hadn’t finished her martini—it had been too strong for her—but perhaps the champagne she had drunk earlier was still affecting her. She didn’t know how to act in a place like this—and where was Kath? She couldn’t see her anywhere.
From the dining room, Lana announced that she had made a Spanish sangria and asked who wanted cocktails. There was a proprietary air to Lana’s behavior that made Lily realize this wasn’t Tommy’s apartment—it was Tommy and Lana’s. They lived here together. She sat down on the sofa, feeling like an idiot. The cushion was too soft, pulling her into an unexpectedly intimate embrace. More people arrived—they seemed to be mostly women, a few in Levi’s with their cuffs rolled up—and she began to worry about where Kath had gone, but at last she spotted her emerging from the kitchen, carrying two wineglasses. Relieved, Lily waved at her, and Kath came to the sofa with the drinks.
“It’s sangria,” Kath said, handing her a glass of red liquid. “There’s fruit in it. I didn’t think you’d want another martini.”