Mal stood on the Trianon stage, smoking a cigarette while he polished the swords he used with his trick cabinet. It was a subtle thing to sell the act. The brilliant reflection of spotlights on the blades sent a message of deadly danger as he inserted them into the cabinet, drawing involuntary gasps from the audience.
It had taken six months for Mal to graduate from working tables to setting up his act. It could have been sooner, but Mal wanted to get it right: the right act, the right girl, the right equipment. His table-side card tricks were amusing enough, but patrons—that’s what Pete called them—wanted some real flash on stage. People didn’t know table magic, close-up sleight of hand, required more skill than the illusions that got the big applause. Those were all staging and misdirection.
He’d bought a decommissioned hearse to haul equipment and built his own pieces, guided by the man who’d taught him. Now he opened for the biggest names in showbiz. After a year in the BH, it was still heady stuff for an Irish gutter rat.
A girl with a pale face and long, black curls slipped into the dining room and crossed the sea of empty tables, ducking around to the side of the stage.
Her Betty Boop mouth gave a mew of distress as she struggled with her hat, a frilly pouf the cigarette girls wore as a uniform along with the puritanical black dress with its prim lace collar. Pete hired good-looking gals to please the men, but he put them in drab plumage so they didn’t outshine the female customers.
She hadn’t seen him. Mal clanked the sword against his trick cabinet, making her jump. She looked up with a sad twist of a smile.
“I’m absolutely hopeless.”
Mal checked the clock. Thirty minutes before dinner was seated, another thirty before the curtain rose on his stage show. For now they were alone. He set the sword down and knelt at the edge of the stage.
“A bit early, aren’t you?”
“First day. I was too nervous to sit at home.”
“What are you doing in here?”
She looked around, as if uncertain where she was or how she got there. “I didn’t want anyone to see me with my hat falling off, so I ducked back here. It’s not a problem, is it?”
“Nah. Come over here, I’ll fix that for you.”
She came to the edge of the stage. Mal tucked his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and made quick work of the silly pouf with nimble hands. “There you go.”
She tilted her head experimentally. The hat stayed in place. “My hero.”
The smile she gave him was sunny, lacking the sly, brassy veneer too many of the girls had. He wondered how long she’d stay so innocent. He cocked his head.
“Why aren’t you teaching kiddies in school?”
“I’d like that, but jobs are scarce. I was lucky to get this.”
“What’s your name?”
The head ducked. “I’m Rose.”
“Nice to meet you, Rose. I’m Mal. Anyone gives you a hard time, you let me know.”
Mal’s heart gave a pleasant tug as he watched her walk away.
“That was an affecting little scene,” Esme whispered in his ear, jerking Mal out of his thoughts.
“She’s just a kid with first-day jitters.”
Esme, his stage assistant, was one of the perks that came with his promotion to stage magician. He gave Esme’s spangled bottom a pat, knowing she expected it.
Esme humphed. “She’s like a zebra in a henhouse. She doesn’t belong here.”
That was probably what he liked about Rose. She didn’t belong. “What have you got against her? She’s a cigarette girl. You’re a star.”
Esme’s eyes narrowed. “Misdirection doesn’t work on me, buster. Something about her smells.”
Mal returned to the sword, mentally shaking his head. Dames. Some of them are just plain nuts.
That night, and every night after, Mal had to fight to keep his eyes from following the little pouf as it moved between the tables.
He was smart enough to hide his interest in Rose. Esme was a dame with a capital D. Like everyone else in this place, Esme had her eye on the brass ring. She might be biding her time with him until she caught the eye of one of the high rollers, but she’d make him pay if she thought he was interested in another woman. That was fine with him. A gal like Rose needed wedding bells before she climbed into bed with a fella.
He found himself coming in early to catch Rose before shift. She liked to sit at a table in the empty dining room before the bustle started. Their conversations were about nothing: her sick mother, the pregnant cat, kids she babysat. As looks went, Rose wasn’t a stunner like most of the girls Pete hired, but she had a sweetness about her, and a love of small things unusual in a place that catered to the high life and impossible dreams.
Mal never wanted the straight life. That meant church, kids, and a back-breaking job that barely paid enough to keep a roof over your head. But Rose almost made living like a sap seem like a good idea. He wondered how long it would take before something happened to grind the sweetness out of her.