25

Mamie Lee died a day and a half later. When she fell, she had fractured her skull above the ear and torn an artery. Her brain was beginning to swell even when she spoke to me that last afternoon. By the time they brought her in for surgery the swelling was irreversible. She died in a coma, and later that day my dad was notified that she had left money behind for her funeral and she wanted his business to plan it.

“Tess,” he said when he showed up to my room, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re sorry.”

“For what exactly?”

“For not taking Mamie seriously,” I said. “And please just tell me you want to do this right.”

He leaned against the doorframe.

“Okay. How is it going to work?”

I told him about Harry Palmer’s.

“Jesus,” he said. “You went to that place by yourself?”

“Harry is a shrewd businessman,” I said.

“I wish you would have told me,” he said.

“I bet you do.”

Eventually Dad apologized and acquiesced to my demands. We would fly Mamie’s old friends in and fix up Palmer’s to look like a New York burlesque club. If it took all the money she set aside, then so be it.

So, in the days before the funeral we painted the walls red and put up silk curtains in the strip club. Then my dad hired a handyman, and they built a makeshift runway with a few theater seats around it. The only illumination came from footlights to accentuate the legs of the performers. “They’re the last to go!” proclaimed Candy, an aging dancer with hair dyed the color of a blood orange. She showed up from the airport at five in the morning.

Because of the short notice, the crowd was smaller than I hoped. Besides the old burlesquers there was only me, my dad, Harry Palmer, and a few of the younger strippers from his club. And, of course, the body of Mamie herself, displayed in the corner, bathed in a magenta spotlight.

She was in the rhinestone dress, and we hired one of the best makeup artists in town to make her look like she was about to go onstage. She had dark-lined cat eyes, long spidery lashes, and glittering bright red lipstick. Her white Betty Page haircut was side-swept along her face in waves.

Onstage was Lillian Orlando. She was telling a story about the time she and Mamie caused a car crash, crossing the street to get Chinese food in their stage costumes. Then her song came on, and she did a memorial fan dance to a big band tune. For ten minutes she eclipsed two black feathered fans across her body, strutting above the floodlights, ending the number entirely hidden behind the plumes of her veil.

It was all really beautiful, I guess.

I mean there’s something undeniably soul-lifting about elderly exotic dancers shaking it for their fallen comrade. But I couldn’t quite slough off my sadness. The fact remained: Mamie never got to see this. She died without a reunion, without a chance to be who she most wanted to be again.

After a while, I decided to escape to the bathroom for a minute to catch my breath. When I approached the restroom door, however, it swung open and out walked a woman in stylish mourning gear. Even without getting a good look, I knew instantly who it was.

“Grace,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Grace fiddled with her hair and looked around the room.

“Attending the burlesque funeral of Mamie Ann Lee,” she said. “I heard you did most of the planning on this one. Congratulations. It looks great.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Oddly enough, I was glad she was there. If I was being honest with myself, some of her advice from that day at her office had guided me. I was about to say something when she looked around again with an anxious gaze.

“Did you know Mamie?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said.

Her eyes were still scanning the room. I waited until her eyes came back to me.

“Then how did you find out about this?”

“Your father,” she said.

She spoke quickly, and I almost didn’t hear her.

“What about him?”

The skin around her freckles was turning pink.

“He invited me. We’ve been . . . corresponding a little.”

My father came across the room just then.

“Grace,” he said. “You made it!”

Then he turned to me.

“Tessie,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I thought Grace should get a look at the competition, now that we’re ramping up our efforts.”

He smiled his charming, goofy smile, and rested his hand on her forearm, ever so briefly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just need a moment.”

The humid club was closing in on me. It seemed very clear, suddenly, that Grace had only taken an interest in me to get close to my supposedly dreamy, single father. So I walked away from the restrooms and stepped outside into the cool of the evening in order to be less aware of this fact for a moment.

Still it stung. Was I going to go the rest of my life thinking anyone who showed any interest in me was my best friend? Was I going to be the last person to understand what was actually happening to me every time? An entire life like that seemed like the most exhausting thing imaginable.

Harry Palmer’s was by the railroad tracks, and there was a large freighter inching by about twenty feet away. Each car’s graffiti was more vibrant than the last’s. It was an unending colorful sentence full of odd words I didn’t understand. J-FISH. BOWLER. NADA-NADA. FUGUE. I wondered for a moment if it was a message just for me. My phone buzzed.

Don’t go back inside.

I stared down at the sentence from Daniel. My heart started beating in my ears.

Inside where?

The train clacked by, but it sounded like it was running inside my head.

I think you know.

I looked up from my phone, and in the space between the cars, I saw the outline of a figure. I waited until the last car had rumbled past, and then the person was walking toward me. It was a person that, up until now, I had only seen naked. Today, he was in a T-shirt and jeans, a backpack hanging off his right shoulder on a single strap, and a worn baseball cap on his head.

He took his time moving across the tracks. Then he stopped a few feet in front of me. His face was expressionless. He was more striking in person; his brows framing deep brown eyes with flecks of yellow. A few black locks of hair had escaped his hat and brushed against his forehead. I watched him lick his dry lips.

“No more phones,” he said.

He was a real person, standing in the same physical space that I was in.

“No more phones,” I said.

I reached out a hand.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Actual Tess.”

He took my hand and gave it one brief shake. His palm was warm.

“Actual Daniel,” he said.

“Nice to meet you.”

I was staring, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to look away, but it was impossible. I couldn’t believe he was actually here.

“What, you weren’t expecting a brown guy?” he said. “I sent you a picture.”

I looked away.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I said.

We were by the open door of the club, and there was a change in the music. All day there had been a steady blast of horns and rolling pianos. Raucous old music that brought raucous old women to the stage. Then suddenly, there came the soothing sound of Bobby Darin’s voice. A song I remembered from the Oldies station my grandma used to listen to. Beyond the Sea. All of the dancers started to gather on the stage.

“How did you find me?” I asked Daniel.

I still wasn’t sure that he was standing next to me. But I could smell the soap on his skin.

“Magic,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I called your dad. His number’s online.”

I turned back to the stage and listened to the song.

Somewhere beyond the sea. She’s there watching for me.

The old dancers had been drinking most of the day, and now they were in various states of undress. Lilli was still in a corset from an earlier number. Candy was in a shimmery purple evening gown with a giant boa wrapped around her neck. Another woman, Maggie L’amour, was topless, her drooping breasts covered only by pasties the size of silver dollars.

“This is what you’ve been doing since you dropped out?” Daniel asked.

“Pretty much,” I said.

Mamie’s friends wobbled and kicked, arms around one another like a last-ditch chorus line. And as the song picked up steam, moving into that revved up orchestra part, Candy led them in Mamie Lee’s trademark shimmy. One at a time, they lay down on the floor and raised their legs straight up in a full-body quake until it was all wiggly thighs and Bobby Darin singing:

Happy we’ll be beyond the sea. Never again I’ll go sailing.

“Is this actually happening?” asked Daniel.

I could feel him watching me out of the corner of his eye, shyly taking in a face he’d only seen in pictures. His proximity was unnerving, but my heartbeat would not slow down. I had no idea where things were supposed to go from here, so I just kept staring at the stage.

“I think so,” I said.

It was the best I could do.