The Game of Love and Death(10)

“Come on, Flora.” Sherman jiggled his keys. “We got to go.”

The cat blinked slowly before turning abruptly and disappearing into the night, as if she were done with Flora. But she’d be back. Flora was sure of it.

On the short ride to the club, they went over the set list, adjusting things here and there based on how the audience had responded the previous night. They arrived a good thirty minutes before the rest of the band. Because Saturday was their biggest day of the week, Charlie had been at work since dawn, slow-cooking pork shoulder, brisket, and ribs. The scent was warm and wonderful, as much of home to Flora as her nana’s house.

“Hit the lights, baby,” Sherman called out from the kitchen as the double doors swung shut behind him.

Flora turned and walked into the heart of the club, a room painted black to hide the many scars in the walls and woodwork — and to make everything in the room disappear save the stage. She flicked on the chandeliers that hung over the dozens of round tables filling the floor. The room went from dark to dazzling. She found a box of matches and struck one, and carefully set about lighting the sea of candles that lay before her, their wicks hungry for the light and heat that would by night’s end consume them. Then she went to her dressing room to warm up her voice.





ETHAN rolled his eyes as he steered the car to the curb. Down the hill, past the International District, rose the Smith Tower, its lights glowing against the black sky. Beyond that, Puget Sound. It had taken the better part of two days, but Henry had convinced Ethan to go to Flora’s nightclub. His fingers twitched, playing the notes of the Enigma Variations.

They exited the car and put on their hats, swirling mist into the light of the streetlamps. All along the sidewalk, sharply dressed couples strolled arm in arm toward a low brick building with a black awning that read THE DOMINO.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this,” Ethan said. “We’ve got school tomorrow, and besides, Father won’t even let the arts reporters write about this music. He says it reduces people to an animalistic state. We’re not writing the story about the girl pilot anyway, so all of this is a waste of time.”

“It’s just jazz,” Henry said. “We’ve listened to it a thousand times.”

“Au contraire,” Ethan said. “We’ve listened to the uptown stuff. This is something else entirely. You of all people ought to hate it.”

Henry wasn’t so sure. The notes that found their way outside intrigued him. There was a call-and-response aspect to them, the same thing an orchestra did when the melody circulated from the strings to the winds and brass. But this was simpler. More elemental. More like one person chatting with another, one hand reaching out to touch another. He didn’t know whether it was the music or something else, but the air felt electric, almost alive.

They headed toward the line of patrons entering the club. Most were older, in their twenties. Some even as old as thirty. Only about half were white. The rest came in all shades. There was even a couple from somewhere in the Orient. Each pair stopped before entering, chatting briefly with a bouncer who weighed at least three hundred pounds.

Closer to the door, the music grew louder, complicated with rhythms he’d never encountered. His fingers moved along with these new sounds, trying to pick out the notes he’d need to hit if he were playing along. Not that he ever would. It was one thing to dream of playing in an orchestra, which had ties to history and respectability and a connection to the world he was used to. There was no way he could set his hopes on playing in a place like this. The Thornes would toss him right out, and he’d be alone in the world.

They reached the bouncer. “You eighteen?” he asked.

“Yes.” Ethan offered the man some folded bills.

The man laughed, taking the money into a hand that looked like it could remove a head as easily as it could uncork a bottle. “Happy birthday, then.” He unclipped the velvet rope drawn across the double-wide door.

The music swelled and the boys stepped inside, passing a huge oil painting of a couple dressed to the nines, their brown skin burnished with tones of red and gold. Henry and Ethan headed down a staircase. The song ended and a ripple of applause reached them.

“Ugh, it feels like anything goes here,” Ethan said. “Which is to say, a perfect recipe for everything going wrong.”

Henry didn’t respond. He couldn’t. They’d reached the bottom of the staircase and now stood at the edge of an enormous room filled with round, candle-lit tables, a long bar lined with bottles and glassware, bustling cocktail waitresses, and waiters carrying trays of food and drink on their shoulders.

On the far side rose a stage flanked by red velvet curtains and pearly lights. Everything had seen better days, to be sure. But it was the biggest, brightest thing Henry could remember since before the Crash, and for a moment, he almost felt as if he were back in that old world, the one he’d lived in with his family before the influenza took his mother and sister, before his father … Henry stopped the thought in its tracks. Now wasn’t the time.

A group of musicians stood on one side of the stage, and the drummer kicked off a new song. Center stage, stepping down a wide white staircase with curving handrails, was Flora, looking paradoxically the same and yet so different from the way she looked on the airstrip. She smiled as she walked, but it was clear she couldn’t care less about the audience clapping and hooting on the floor below. A spotlight pinned her in front of a nickel-plated microphone.