“You’re still young, dear. There’s plenty of time to find someone else.”
On the kitchen table, Lisa’s head rested on her crossed arms. “Please, Ma. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“There now, honey.” Her mother stroked her hair. “You’re dripping on your flight attendant uniform, you know.” She grabbed a dish towel and attempted to absorb Lisa’s wet patches.
Lisa yanked away, released herself to her bedroom, and then slammed her door. Curled into a ball on her bed, she nestled against her old baby doll. It was nighttime now, and Billy hadn’t even called to explain.
Though he barely needed to explain. It all added up—his lackluster good-bye on the tarmac, his failure to send her a wire in Paris—finally, the fact that he had left her stranded at the airport. She had waited for over two hours in the terminal, hiding her embarrassing tears from the crowds.
Billy’s behavior made sense to her now.
He must have lost interest in her.
Lisa had heard of this happening—men suddenly losing interest. One of her friends from high school had been dating someone for four years. They seemed serious—a real item—but then he just disappeared from her life without warning.
Lisa hadn’t observed any warning signals from Billy either. When she was in Brooklyn, they would go out on dates almost every evening, and he had always acted like he was enraptured with her.
She had been dating Billy for a little over two years. She met him at a New Year’s Eve party for his labor union. Lisa was attending the party as a guest of her friend, a secretary for the labor union, and Billy approached her as she chatted with her friend near the punch bowl. He flashed her his dimpled smile, asking her to dance.
Wordlessly, Lisa nodded yes, her heart fluttering as his muscled frame guided her effortlessly to the center of the Knights of Columbus hall dance floor. He twirled her around the floor, cracking jokes about his “manly” dance moves, and she giggled in girlish hysterics as his hands loosely surrounded her waist.
When their dance was through, Billy paused in front of the labor union’s photographer to sling his arm around her shoulders. Lisa felt a crackle of electricity at his casual touch as she smiled for the camera. Billy then took her out on the floor for a few more dances; when the night was over, he asked her for a date.
During the first few weeks of their courtship, they went out to the movies, out to the pizza parlor. They took long walks around Brooklyn together. She was entranced by his charm and the casual way that he laughed. Everything seemed light around him.
Everything moved so effortlessly with him.
At the end of that first month, they sat next to each other in a booth at the pizza parlor, and he pulled something out of his pocket. It was a copy of the New Year’s Eve photo from his union’s newsletter. Billy had drawn a heart around the two of them, and below their picture he had taped a jewelry box, which she opened to reveal a gold locket.
With a boyish grin, he squeezed her hand, asking her to go steady. They had been an item ever since.
Yet now he was ignoring her, as though none of it even mattered.
Tears started to stream down Lisa’s face, and she sat up to grab a handkerchief from the dresser adjacent to her narrow bed. As she dabbed at her tears, she observed herself in the mirror—her eye makeup was smudged, her mascara had leaked to form black splotches around her lids, and her eyelids were puffy. Her blonde hair lay in knotted clumps around her face.
Lisa closed her eyes, unable to look at herself, and set her head on her pillow.
Shortly, her mother’s voice shouted through her door, “Honey, I meant to ask—how did you get home from Idlewild?”
She paused to take a deep breath, then answered, “I shared a taxi with a girl from the airport. She loaned me money.”
“That was nice of a stranger, to give you some money. But you know we’re not beggars.”
Lisa cast her eyes around her tiny room: the frayed carpet, the paint flakes on the windowsill.
The words spilled out before she could stop them. “Why were we almost evicted, then?”
The other side of the door grew silent.
Lisa closed her eyes and exhaled. She peeled herself off her damp coverlet and opened the door.
Her mother was no longer there.
A few hours later, she left her apartment. Lisa didn’t usually drive around by herself at night, but here she was, steering her massive boat of a car between the pillars of the elevated train tracks, alone.
For their dates, Billy would pick her up in his red convertible. Sometimes he even borrowed his father’s car, an expensive Oldsmobile designed primarily for the race track. Billy was a skilled driver, and he always operated the steering wheel as an extension of his sinuous muscles, even inside the tight boxes of the Brooklyn streets.
Next to her, he might sometimes place a bouquet of fresh flowers, along with a golden box of fine chocolates.
For my queen, he would say. Then he would kiss her, with feeling.
Now, Lisa took a sharp intake of breath as she navigated another tight bend. Night trains passed on the tracks above; their headlights bounced down through the rail gratings and shimmered on the icy streets in quickly moving lines of light.
She was lost en route to Brooklyn Heights; the directions Elaine had given her on the phone earlier were too vague. Though Lisa had crossed the Atlantic Ocean multiple times over, she struggled in this closer terrain of Atlantic Avenue. Elaine’s directions had sent her toward a little strip of stores on Livingston Street, not the brownstone Elaine had skittered toward this afternoon.
Lisa started to turn back home, then looped back in a last effort to find the place. At last, a sign caught her eye: a street address in gold numbers at the corner.
The building wasn’t a brownstone, but it said 890, which Lisa had underlined in her notes.
The block was mostly desolate, but a few fancily dressed women walked briskly toward a storefront. Lisa parked and watched them enter as she clutched her little envelope of cash with numb fingertips. She looked up to see:
Elaine hadn’t mentioned anything about working in a dress shop. She had exited the taxicab toward an elegant brownstone residence, not a storefront. It seemed unlikely that she would be out in the shopping district at nine o’clock at night. Yet, from a distance, there did appear to be some lights aglow in the Starlite Dress Shop, even as all the surrounding shops were closed.
The sidewalk in front of the dress shop shone with patches of ice, though there was a thin clearing near the door. This store’s window boasted a full display of mannequins, each in a different jewel-toned ensemble, fit for an evening fete. The mannequins were backed with displays that obscured much of the store’s interior. Between these displays and the tall silhouettes of some clothing racks near the windows, it was difficult to tell how many shoppers might be inside at this hour.
Lisa cautiously stepped out of her car, making her way down the icy sidewalk. She stood beneath a narrow awning, which shielded the dress shop’s door but provided little protection from the winter chill. She trembled as she slowly lifted her hand, using her knuckles to rap on the door. It was solitary on this sidewalk in the silence of the night, and the wind whipped up her little stewardess skirt.
From across the street, a man sweeping snow paused to look up. “Do you need some help, lady?”
Lisa ignored him and knocked on the door more urgently. It swung open swiftly, catching her by surprise.
“Hi there!” It was a woman with a cheerful smile. “Are you Elaine’s friend? She literally just asked me to step around the block and look for a girl who might be lost.”
“I guess I’m the lost girl.”
Festive sounds of laughter, music, and chatter leaked through the open door.
“Come in, dear, follow me.” The woman took Lisa’s hand and pulled her inside, ushering her through the crowd.
Lisa let herself be dragged like a puppy, yanked through a maze of people, racks, and tables. The shop buzzed with beautiful noise as ladies appeared and disappeared behind the A-lines and taffeta skirts. To the sides, the place was shiny and gleaming, walls lined with silvery mirrors, multiplying each reflection. Everything was resplendent.
On a table, nylons had been displaced to display tea plates of delicate pastries. Women were drinking, debating, laughing. A makeshift dance floor in front of the fitting rooms boiled with the energy of rapid-fire twists. They were actually doing the Twist, though the music was hard to hear above the laughter, and they were giddy with hilarity, collapsing into giggly heaps as their full skirts tangled on the floor.
Lisa smoothed down her airline-issued skirt. The women here seemed utterly at ease as they frolicked around the space, sashaying and shimmying to the music. She felt stiff and out of place—like a dull spot in a field of luminous joy.
Lisa heard a playful voice shout at her from somewhere within the crowd. “Hey, I see we have a new friend!” The woman gave a friendly laugh. “It looks like she’s about to take us somewhere!”
From within the group, the lady was suddenly next to Lisa, patting her arm in a friendly way. She glowed, with auburn hair curled into dramatic flips. She was voluptuous in a tight-fitting black dress, and her ears glittered with chandelier earrings.
She looked like the happiest woman in the world.
“I’m Madeline, darling.”
She extended her hand, which Lisa accepted through the baggy sleeves of her mother’s old brown coat.
“Wow—a stewardess! I would absolutely love to hear about your adventures. You must have stories to tell, working for the airlines. Come over here—I’ll fix you something to drink.” Madeline pulled her to a table strewn with dozens of liquor bottles, which cast a glint of amber into the room.
“Oh, I don’t really drink.” Lisa’s voice was high-pitched.
Madeline led her to the far side of the store. A group of ladies played cards between the dress racks, sprawled out on rugs. “Look, everyone! I have another player!”
“Fabulous!” someone squealed.
A petite woman in a large bouffant hat tried to deal Lisa into the game. She slid the cards into Lisa’s curled-up fingers with a stream of girlish giggles.
“I’m so happy we found someone else to play!” She grabbed Lisa’s chilly hand, and her warm brown eyes danced with mischief. “I’m Harriet. I’m the dealer tonight. Usually Catherine deals the cards, but she’s not here yet.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to play. I’m actually supposed to meet someone—her name is Elaine.”
“Oh, yes, Elaine! She’s doing a reading on the side there.” Harriet gestured casually. “But why don’t you play with us for a bit? We’ll teach you as you go along.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m very tired. And I’ve been up for hours, and I have to catch a flight tomorrow.”
“So, you’re one of those ladies?”
Lisa’s cheeks reddened. “What do you mean?”
“You work for the airlines?”
“Yes, Pan Am.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sure. We have dress-up nights here, and sometimes girls just come in costume for the fun of it.”
“Like it’s Halloween?”
“No—just to experience being in different roles. It’s a costuming experience. We play different roles all the time, you know.”
“I’m sorry; maybe we could play another time.”
Lisa pushed the cards back toward Harriet, and she moved to make her way across the shop. As she waded her way through the crowd, she struggled to maintain her balance in the whirl of activity.
This was all so different. Lisa had been living in Brooklyn her entire life, but she had never beheld a place like this. Women streamed around the space, holding delicate cups of drink, as others sat cross-legged next to mannequins, making pastel sketches of fashion. Still others emerged from the fitting room, modeling glamorous ensembles for clusters of friends.
It all sparkled, and it was such a shock to Lisa’s weary eyes that she nearly forgot to look for Elaine. Then she suddenly remembered her envelope of dollar bills, still clutched in her fingers, now coated with sweat.
She searched the store, unable to find Elaine, until she finally spotted her head of jet-black hair behind some coatracks.
Elaine was in the lead position of a circle. The other ladies were observing her with rapt attention as they held little instruments, metallic triangles and miniature drums, which they plinked and thumped as Elaine rested, with half-closed eyes, between reading the lines of a poem.
Lisa thought of Billy, who had often talked of beatniks. He used that term for people he didn’t like. Those damn beatniks. He would gyrate his hands in a series of little snaps, and Lisa could never help but laugh.
“Drip, drop.”
Lisa’s cheeks reddened. Elaine’s voice was husky, breathy—sensual.
“Heated rain on my tongue lashing besides your body. Mind open, thoughts closed, the time has come for a little—wandering.”
A woman struck a metallic triangle with a little mallet.
“Elaine!” Lisa’s voice quavered.
Most of the women in the circle gawked at her—this interrupter—yet Elaine didn’t even lift her head. In some sort of trance, she continued. “I’d like to know the wistful world in which you live. I’d like to eat your sugared words, and your silent dreams.”
“Elaine!” Lisa hissed.
Elaine seemed to hear her at last; her half-open eyes widened as she brightened and gave Lisa a friendly smile:
“Well! You made it here!”
Lisa clutched her sweaty little envelope. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“That’s fine! I was worried you got lost!” Elaine set her poetry book down on her chair. “Can you take over, Gloria?” She whisked herself away from the group and grabbed Lisa’s arm as if they were old friends. “I’m so happy you made it here safe! I really should’ve been firmer about not having you come out—it’s so nasty out there.”
“I feel awful for letting you pay for that cab ride, but thanks so much.” Lisa kept her eyes averted and pushed the envelope into Elaine’s hands. Lisa scratched her own wrists, itchy from the wool of her mother’s coat.
“It’s perfectly all right, dear, but thank you. It’s all worked out. You’ve gotten to experience the Starlite!”
Elaine led them over to the cashier’s counter on the side of the store, which was piled high with poetry books, novels, and biographies. Behind the counter, women perched on high stools, sketching portraits of each other on long shopkeeper ledgers.
Lisa turned to Elaine, her voice tinny. “May I ask, what sort of club is this?”
“A women’s social group. But, you know, it’s a lot of things, really. Improvement of the mind, joining together for fun. Girls being girls, really!” Elaine’s laugh had a melody like a song.
“Yeah.”
To the side of them, Madeline held a tray of drinks in balance as she gyrated her shoulders in dance.
“Care to join us for another read?” Elaine asked as she flipped through a poetry book.
“I really have to get going.”
“Oh?”
“I do,” Lisa insisted. Her twenty-two-year-old lips were drawn, and her eyelids sagged with exhaustion. She bundled herself back up into her thin brown coat.
Lisa opened the heavy door to the sidewalk and exited the shop, entering the quiet night. The air was bitter. On the street, tiny snowflakes glinted like glitter in the beams of the streetlights, a crystalline path in the night.
She made her way around the block, trying not to slip, and hoisted herself into the driver’s seat.
Alone, she rubbed her hands on the steering wheel, trying to warm them. Her breath formed a thin white cloud in front of her face, which soon faded to darkness.
Lisa sat without driving for some time, her mind pulsating in shock from what she had just seen—all of these women, so free.