WELL, WHAT A disappointment! This was the Bohemian Embassy? Shouldn’t it be fancier? I had to climb up two flights of really narrow stairs that didn’t even have a banister. They were dark and dingy. Just as I was going to head back down, I heard singing and then applause. It was the tail end of the Animals’ big hit “The House of the Rising Sun.” Joe loved that song, thought it was “all that baby, just all that.”
I had to wait for my eyes to adjust when I got to the doorway. The club was even smokier than the Purple Onion, and that was saying something. Still, it got better inside. The actual room looked like the inside of a barn, but the patrons sat around tables with cheerful checkered tablecloths. Candles were stuck in wine bottles on each table. I made a mental note to talk to Big Bob about improving our decor. I scanned the room, looking for old people. I spotted a couple of “geezers,” as Big Bob called them, at the table farthest from the stage. I steeled myself and made my way over.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Do you think you would mind if I joined you?”
“Sure, sugar, take a load off and brighten our table.” His voice reminded me of Joe. Joe. It was like he was with me tonight. The man, whose name was Buddy, motioned for the waitress, who was way cooler than I was. In fact, all the waitresses were. Each and every one was beautiful, and each and every one looked bored out of their skulls. Is that why they looked so cool? I vowed to cultivate that look.
“Isn’t it a little late for you to be out, young lady?” asked Buddy.
I explained that I had just come from my shift at the Purple Onion. Without any effort at all, we got to talking about the Yorkville scene versus Gerrard Village “back in the day.” They both knew of Grady and Big Bob. Buddy said that after a time everybody knows everybody. I took that as my cue and asked if either of them remembered a woman named Halina Royce.
“Can’t say it rings a bell,” said Murphy, who had been Buddy’s best friend “since God was a boy.”
Buddy frowned. “Sure it does. Halina. Cute little blond number floated around Gerrard. Kind of out of it at times, but harmless. A sweet thing, ya dig?”
Kind of out of it. Didn’t Big Bob say something like that?
“Oh yeah.” Murphy stroked his chin with gnarled fingers. “She worked the clubs, dished drinks, cleaned, did just about anything short of the johns. I’m pretty sure she didn’t roll that way. Man, she hasn’t been around forever. Maybe she went back to where she came from. That’d be good. Yup.”
I had gotten snagged a few sentences back.
“Uh, would you mind telling me what the Johns are?”
Both men looked uncomfortable. They examined their cups as if the coffee would produce the answer. “Well, the thing is, young lady…” Buddy was still staring at his cup. “That’s not a topic fit for discussing with young ladies.”
“Please. I really, really need to know. I can’t understand half the things that you Toronto people talk about it, and this John word has already come up once tonight. I’m sick of feeling so stupid all the time.”
“I see.” Murphy cleared his throat and started stroking his chin in earnest. “Well, child, see, a man who wants to pay for the, er, company…” I nodded as if I understood. “No, that ain’t right, not just the company, for the, uh, well, sexual favors of a woman who sells those, I mean her sexual favors, for a price…those men are called johns.”
The room dropped away.
“You mean a prostitute? Like in the Bible, Mary Magdalene?”
“Uh, I…guess. Never heard it put quite that way.” Buddy shrugged.
I blush to admit that I spent time wondering whether the fifteen dollars I had been offered by the man in the Chevy was the going rate. I mean, was I exceptional or below market?
The fellas and I talked about the old days over our coffees, which were nowhere near as good as what I made at the Purple Onion. Finally, they excused themselves.
“It pains me, but I gotta get my beauty rest, darling.” Buddy winked as he got up. “Hope we helped and didn’t warp you none in the process. And girl, you might want to try the library. Those folks got just about everything you’d ever want to know and stuff you don’t. You get your hands on a librarian, and he’ll sort you out proper. It’s been rare, darlin’.”
We shook hands all around. I loved old people.
I’d definitely write Joe in the morning. He’d be so proud of me. It had to be close to two in the morning, and I was just thinking about getting up to go when…
“May I?” A man pulled out the chair that Buddy had just vacated. He was a young man but definitely a man. He was blond and blue-eyed. It wasn’t a look I usually dreamed about when I dreamed about that sort of thing, which was, like, all the time, but he was so… “I’d welcome the chance to have a minute with the loveliest girl in the room.”
I glanced around to see who he might be referring to. He smiled and sat down. That was it: the smile—his smile. You’d do just about anything to see that smile again.
“My name is Cassidy.” He extended his hand.
I sure was doing a lot of hand shaking.
“Toni,” I croaked, because my mouth had somehow gone bone dry while the rest of me lit up like a Christmas tree.
He motioned for the waitress and ordered another round of dishwater coffee. And then something really surprising happened. Cassidy asked me questions. He wanted to know everything about me. Really. Where did I come from? Why was I out by myself so late? Where did I work? How did I end up in Toronto?
“I want to know it all,” he said. “You have this thing about you. Tell me…well, everything you’re comfortable telling me.”
I was instantly interesting.
So I blathered on about the Purple Onion, the orphanage, the Seven, Betty, Joe, how much one of the gentlemen I had just met had reminded me of Joe. Cassidy made the mistake of encouraging me, which then launched me into how much I missed Betty and all the other girls. I confessed that I hadn’t said goodbye or written because I was, first and foremost, a coward. I told him about my search to find my parents, about Mr. Tyson, and about how I was Jewish now—maybe.
I must have been drunk on coffee.
Cassidy interjected here or there to keep me going, or just smiled. He was the best listener in the history of listeners. Aside from Betty.
“It seems to me that you’re quite the opposite of a coward. You, Toni, are a beautiful and charming young woman on an epic quest.”
Wow, hey, that was great. Quest? Yeah, a quest. I liked that.
He asked me about where I lived. I somehow had the wit to be discreet about Grady, her being so private and all, but I did go on about Big Bob and how our coffee was a million times better than the Embassy’s and what a great house band the Ramblers were. Finally, coffee or no coffee, I was getting tired. And even though I didn’t want to go, I excused myself.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I come and try the coffee at the Purple Onion one night.”
I inhaled and forgot to exhale. For a second it dawned on me that he was much, much older than I was, maybe even in his late twenties, but I dismissed that thought and went right back to paying attention to how to breathe.
Cassidy stood when I stood and pulled out my chair. When he reached for my hand, he placed a five-dollar bill in it.
Wait! What? What was he…?
“Please promise me that you will take a taxi home. It’s much too late for a young lady to be roaming the streets of this city. There are always cabs in front of the Embassy at this time of night. Please, I insist.”
I blushed and thought of Ethan following me here, but somehow putting me in a taxi was more thrilling and…grown up. This is what grown-up men did.
“Thank you, Cassidy.”
“I’ll look forward to the next time, Toni.”
The next time?
Sure enough, a cab was right out in front. I told the cabbie the address in my most sophisticated voice. Apparently, my sophisticated voice wasn’t loud enough. I had to repeat it three times. I was in a taxi! What a day, what a night. And Cassidy? Hey, practically the most handsome man in the whole city thought that I was lovely and charming.
Who was I to say he was wrong?