A man’s heart may have a secret sanctuary where only one woman may enter, but it is full of little anterooms which are seldom vacant.
—HELEN ROWLAND
SOPHIE
At the Christopher Club, the next instant
THE BARTENDER has a sympathetic face. When at last Sophie lifts her gaze from the telephone, she finds it regarding her, only a few feet away: slim brown eyes and crescent mouth. “Drink, miss?” he says, and then: “On the house.”
Sophie considers the offer. “What do you suggest?”
“A nice girl like you? I can make something up.”
The nod she sends him is probably numb. Certainly the rest of her is numb, a nice thick absence of feeling that coats her skin from scalp to pinkie toe. The film seems especially thick over her ears, but that might be because of the racket from the jazz band in the corner, or the buzz from the telephone receiver. Sophie had taken in the words on the other end, but the woman’s voice still seems to be vibrating the bones of her inner ear, instead of penetrating to the gray matter beyond.
He’s fast asleep.
Well, but didn’t the lady in the Sterling Bates foyer say something similar? He’s gone home for the day, I’m afraid, in an awfully professional voice, deflating Sophie’s buoyant pink-cheeked hopes just like that. So now Octavian was asleep. Probably he’d had a hard day at work, or maybe—oh, dreadful thought!—maybe he was sick! All that cold air yesterday. Sophie made him sit outside, while the winter wind blew straight on from Long Island Sound, turning an incipient cold into full-blown influenza, and likely pneumonia as well. Poor Octavian!
But the numbness in Sophie’s cheek and jaw suggests otherwise. Though her mental faculties seem to have taken on the sluggish syncopation of the music playing behind her, they still retain the sense to wonder why, if Octavian had the ’flu, his female companion should seem so unconcerned for his health—the little dear, she said—and, above all, why she should have the unquestioned right to wake him from his slumbers.
Sophie knows the answer to that question, of course. She isn’t stupid, nor half so naïve as she has the right to be. But the gray matter is nonetheless reluctant to accept this obvious explanation. The gray matter would rather remain numb, thank you very much. Numb and unreachable. She accepts the drink from the bartender and arranges her lips around the rim. Not so bad, if you remembered not to breathe.
She smiles her thanks, and the bartender’s mouth makes a hesitant movement, as if he’s thinking of asking a question. But the music is loud and shrill, and a gaggle of clamorous patrons has just burst through the door, and he shrugs and walks away instead, wiping his hands on his dishcloth.
The bartender. The bar. So forbidden and masculine, an unimaginable place for a nice girl to find herself—alone!—until now. Until suddenly girls and boys are going to saloons together, and they aren’t called saloons any more. A whole new vocabulary is springing up overnight, it seems, like mushrooms or crocuses, all clustered around the underground slaking of illegal thirst, and it seems the more illegal the thirst is, the more ordinary and acceptable it’s become to slake it in mixed company, among strangers. And the vocabulary has something to do with that, doesn’t it? Hooch, speakeasy, blotto. Silly words, trivializing the laws they’re breaking. Trivializing everything in the world. Sophie lays her palm on the dented brown surface before her. The wood is slightly tacky, as if someone’s spilled a drink or two. Something as sugary as the concoction in Sophie’s other hand.
Down the length of the bar, the newcomers are giggling and screeching. Three men and two women. The women are dressed in black satin trimmed with feathers and glittering beads, and sequined bands run across their foreheads like midnight canals. Their lipstick is so red, it’s almost black, and Sophie finds herself mesmerized by the graphic movement of their mouths. Realizes, as she does so, that she doesn’t belong here. She’s not one of them. She’s not a member of the tribe. Maybe she can repeat a remembered password and gain entry, maybe they won’t throw her out because they remember her from Saturday, maybe a girl has just as much right to a glass of bootleg liquor as a boy, if she wants one.
But maybe she doesn’t want one.
Maybe Father’s right. Maybe all this freedom doesn’t make you any happier, after all. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison and ride an ocean liner all the way across the Atlantic to a war-battered continent, all you get is a husband lost in Florida and a baby with a fever. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison to track down the man you might be falling in love with and throw your vulnerable new heart into his hands, all you get is a worldly female voice on the other end of the telephone line, telling you you’re too late.
Sophie rises from the stool. The drink is only half-finished, but she doesn’t want any more. If she had a dollar bill, she would place it on the sticky wood next to the glass, but she doesn’t have a dollar bill. She doesn’t have a dime; that’s why she came here, because she left her father’s house this afternoon without even the money for a public telephone call in her coat pocket.
Virginia and Father must be frantic by now. Darkness has fallen over Manhattan, and Sophie’s thirty blocks from home, and she will have to walk. Home seems awfully nice, just now. Home doesn’t seem like a prison at all, next to this sweaty, cacophonous medicine cave down a narrow staircase in Greenwich Village.
The bartender appears, like magic. “You leaving?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“You can’t go out by yourself. Lemme call you a taxi.”
A taxi sounds heavenly. Except she’s broke.
“No, thank you. I can manage.”
“On the house?” He smiles at her hopefully, the nicest bartender in the world. Weren’t these speakeasy men supposed to have Thompson machine guns hiding under the counter? This one looks as young as she is, as fundamentally decent as a newspaper boy, except he’s selling the demon liquor instead of news.
Sophie hovers. Opens her mouth. Says—
“Sophie! Darling. There you are.”
MRS. MARSHALL IS TERRIBLY REASSURING. “I’ve telephoned my brother,” she says, slipping off one leather glove and then the other. “He’ll be right down to fetch you.”
“I really don’t need—”
“Darling, he wants to.” Mrs. Marshall touches the back of her hand. “He’s thoroughly in love with you, you know.”
“Is he?”
“Of course he is. Why, look at you! How can he help it? Octavian.” She turns to the man sitting quietly to her left. “Wouldn’t you fall just headfirst into love with our Sophie, if you weren’t already going to marry me?”
How friendly she is. Of course she’s laying her claim—Sophie can’t fault her for that—but she doesn’t seem to bear Sophie the slightest bit of resentment for having telephoned this handsome young fiancé as if she has a right to. (Another emblem of the modern new world, that you could have a husband and a fiancé at the same time, and admit that paradox publicly.) How much does Mrs. Marshall know about yesterday’s drive to Connecticut? Does she know about yesterday at all? In her cheerful voice and unworried forehead, there’s no sign.
As for Octavian? Who knows. Who cares. Sophie won’t look at him. She hears him reply, polite and faintly agonized, but she tips up her drink to block him out. Something’s building in her head, ringing in her ears, and she’s afraid that if she sees Octavian’s face, the thing will ignite. Maybe even explode, messily and prematurely. “There was no need for both of you to come,” she says. “Especially since Mr. Rofrano was asleep.”
“Oh, the telephone woke him up, I’m afraid. And of course he wouldn’t hear of leaving either of us without some sort of protection, at this hour. What on earth were you thinking, my dear, coming to the Christopher Club all by yourself?”
“I didn’t have any money for a telephone,” Sophie mumbles.
“Dear me. Are you in trouble of some kind?”
“No.” Sophie looks up and smiles. “Not anymore. Just a little quarrel with my father, and I’ve realized he was right, after all.”
“Good girl. Fathers usually are, you know.”
What was that about the cold? Sophie is as hot as blazes now. Perspiration trickles down her back, between her breasts. Her cheeks are glowing. The backs of her legs are damp in their stockings, molding her to the round wooden seat beneath her. She can’t look at Octavian, but she doesn’t need to: he just sits there drinking and smoking and not saying anything. Waiting for her to acknowledge him. Waiting, no doubt, to telegraph some kind of mute apology from those fabulous chameleon eyes of his.
Waiting for her to say something. Waiting for her to toss her drink in his face and scream, How could you? She’s as old as your mother! How could you go to bed with her, after what happened between us yesterday? How could you love her? Her, Mrs. Marshall, of all people?
Well, she won’t. Sophie can be a grown-up, too. Sophie can play grown-up games, if she puts her mind to it.
“By the way, my dear,” Mrs. Marshall continues, “I was absolutely serious about that engagement party. Next Saturday, I think. Or perhaps the following week, just to give ourselves enough time? We want to be sure everyone can come. Things are a bit messy because of my divorce, but we’ll put our best face to the world, won’t we? That’s the only thing to do, when the world thinks it’s caught you flat on your bottom.”
Sophie says, “That sounds delightful, Mrs. Marshall.”
“I’ll make you the toast of the town, Sophie dear. Manhattan could really use a bright new face to rage over, and yours is both terribly bright and terribly new. I expect you’ll be on a first-name basis with the society page and someone will name a dessert in your honor. Or a cocktail.”
Octavian makes a noise in his throat, almost inaudible, and finishes his drink.
“And you must call me Theresa,” Mrs. Marshall continues. “We’re going to be sisters, after all. The best of friends.”
A welcome draft hits Sophie’s cheek, and she turns hopefully to the door.
“Jay!” she exclaims, and she springs from her seat and throws her arms around his astonished neck and kisses him, right there in front of everybody, in front of Octavian and Mrs. Marshall and the bartender and the whole world, until the women in their black feathers and sequined headbands start laughing and applauding, and the band, just returning to the instruments after a break, breaks out into a jazzy trumpet rendition of Mendelssohn.
“Don’t forget!” calls Mrs. Marshall, as a beaming Jay leads her out the door to his waiting car. “The first Saturday of February! The party of the year. I promise.”