BOOKER

September 24th, 1926

“Evening, Mr. Jameson.”

Jerking slightly at the unexpected voice at my car window, I look up in the middle of reaching for my folder of club-related papers on the passenger seat. The voice, of course, belongs to Benson, The Twilight Room doorman. I just this instant shut down the Packard 236 in a space he somehow always manages to keep clear for me in front of my club on this busy downtown Seattle street. I don’t know how he does it, but half the time he seems to materialize out of thin air. The man is a magician.

Seeing he has my attention, he opens my door. “It is good to have you back, sir,”

“Thanks.” I unfold from the car and allow him to close the door as well. But I have to tamp down the twitch it gives me to let someone else perform a task I can easily do for myself. “It’s good to be back.”

That’s a damn understatement. The headache I’ve been throwing aspirin at all day finally begins to unclench its vicious grip on my temples and forehead. We step beneath the black canopy of my speakeasy, The Twilight Room written in a pleasing bold gold arc across its front and along each side. The stylish awning stretches from the curb to the brick siding above the gleaming four-panel fir entry to the lounge. I wave Benson ahead of me—and don’t even mind when he wraps his white-gloved hand around the ornate knob and steps back to open the club door for me.

A jazzy rendition of Manhattan wafts out of the lounge on a wraith of smoke and its lush sound makes me grin: at Benson as I pass him to enter my club and to myself. Hiring this five-piece band was one of the smarter moves I made this year. They sound better than many a full-sized orchestra.

I’m damn proud of my achievement here and, for the first time since leaving my parents’ estate in Walla Walla this morning, my neck and shoulders lose the tension tying them in knots. My visit with Mother went well. She’s always supported me in everything I’ve done. The one with Father? Well, that was about as productive as usual.

Clyde Jameson finds me a major disappointment. He has done so since I skipped college to fight in the Great War—the war to end all wars. I left home with a head full of patriotic fervor, but no true knowledge of the realities of warfare. The fact I returned home significantly changed from the malleable boy he remembered merely exacerbates his displeasure.

Despite Father’s dissatisfaction, however, he persists in clinging to the belief I’m going to give up my speakeasy any day now and get a “real” job. In other words, join the family bank.

No chance in hell is that bushwa ever gonna happen.

Darkness clung like cobwebs to my mood during the interminable drive up from the southwest corner of the state. Shaking it off, I stride through my beloved lounge.

And finally start to feel like myself again.

When I put the Twilight Room together I opted to do it up swank, and it’s drawn the money crowd. I had it decorated with women in mind. Most men will show up regardless of the décor, but let their women say this is the place to be seen and the fellas will shrug and take them there. So, I gave the ladies plush banquets and small, candlelit tables draped in crisp white linens.

As if to illustrate my thought, I see a dame cupping her hand around her escort’s as he flicks the table lighter and holds it out. One of her bejeweled fingers strokes its cool marble surface while he lights her cigarette.

Tonight, as most nights, the club is packed with elegantly dressed men and women, most of whom greet me as I walk past. I smile, nod at everyone and toss off a greeting here and there. But I keep moving.

As I head for my table, the band segues from Manhattan into The Charleston. The Brasher Sisters, my hoofers Dot and Clara, swan onto the stage, then launch into the hip to the jive dance sensation that’s been going strong for the past couple years. They shake their hips in their high-waisted satin shorts and shimmy the fringe on their skimpy tops. Flappers and their Jelly Beans desert the tables to crowd the dance floor fronting the small stage.

“Hi, Mistah Jaaame-es-son!”

The greeting has me searching among the crowded tables to my right, and I locate Sally, the cigarette girl. Not that I needed to see her to know who hailed me. Sally is a New Jersey girl who came to the Twilight Room by way of Los Angeles, where she had acted in several silent films. She’d just begun to make a minor name for herself when the talkies struck a death knell to her career. Sally has a voice that—well, it won’t strip paint, exactly. But it sure as hell killed her future in the movies.

Seeing me looking her way, she leans forward to display her ample cleavage, flashes her big, sassy smile and wiggles her fingers in greeting. I return a salute. Then a customer hails her and I continue down to my table, situated where the back edge of the narrow, now jammed dance floor meets its northern counterpart. Before taking a seat, I nod at John behind the long, curved mahogany bar against the wall.

He snags a glass, drops in a couple of ice cubes and pours a generous splash of single malt. Putting the drink on a tray, he hails Millie, who serves this side of the room.

A moment later she dips to set it on a coaster in front of me. Dips equals tips and Millie knows how to keep male customers happy.

“Thanks, doll.” I toss a clam on her tray.

Flashing me a smile, she tucks the dollar in some mysterious pocket inside her outfit, one that no doubt snuggles up against her magnificent breasts. I swallow a smile even as I give myself a mental pat on the back for hiring busty women in direct contrast to the current fad for straight silhouettes. It was a deliberate decision on my part, because for all the new emancipation of women, it’s the men patronizing my club who still foot nine-tenths of the bills.

“Thank you, boss,” she coos, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re the berries!”

Moments later the band wraps up The Charleston. Dot and Clara trot off stage and the flappers and their boys abandon the dance floor, fast-talking as they reclaim their tables.

The band leader carries a large round microphone on a stand to the front of the stage. After arranging it several feet this side of the piano, he bends into it.

“And nooow, ladies and gentlemen, fresh from the Tropics Lounge in Spokane, Washington, the songbird you have all been waiting to hear. Please give a big round of applause to Miss! LO-la! Baaaaker!”

The audience’s applause is polite rather than enthusiastic, but breaths all over the room are sharply inhaled when a blonde vision in ice blue satin rises up through the floor. I watch in satisfaction, my focus more on the mechanics of the lift than my new singer. It’s true I made sure to get here in time to hear her, since for the first time since opening the lounge I wasn’t involved in the hiring. But we have tested the elevated platform over and over again and had to work out several kinks. This is the first act to actually use it. No one else west of the Mississippi has anything like it, so to say I think it’s pretty damn fine…

Well, hugely, ironically understated of me, that is.

A spotlight suddenly picks out my new singer and I stare, forgetting all about the hidden lift.

Damn. The woman is stunning. An honest-to-God tomatah. Leo, my manager, told me as much, but the photos that came with her bio weren’t the best quality.

Seeing her in the flesh, I can honestly say they were nowhere close to doing her justice. Her hair is a blond so pale as to be damn near white. The only other person I have ever seen remain a tow-head beyond childhood without resorting to bleach was Lena Bjornstad back in high school.

A ghostly rush of a once all-too familiar mixture of lust and anger hits me, and I straighten in my seat. Whoa. Haven’t felt that in a long, long time. Can’t say I’m happy to feel it now. And having learned long ago not to dwell on things I don’t have a chance in hell of changing, I shake it off.

Clearly this is not Lena. As my first and—fine, to date only —love, she will always have a permanent place in my memory. But she had a totally different body type than the woman onstage. Lena had been boyishly slender and small breasted, with damn little extra flesh on her bones. She had had, in fact, the type of lean body that’s all the rage right now.

This Lola dame has breasts and hips and a tiny waist, all lovingly delineated by the blue satin flowing over her curves and clinging faithfully to the dips and hollows.

Which I am still in the midst of admiring when she opens her mouth and draws my attention in a completely different manner.

“Who’s sorry now?” she sings in a low, throaty contralto, making me realize my piano player launched an intro while I was obliviously staring. The rest of the band is also playing, but softly, to avoid stepping on that amazing voice. “Who’s sorry now?”

The vivacious chatter behind me fades away. Lola’s version of Isham Jones’ popular song is slower, and bluesy in a manner more often heard in the colored clubs. And it is clearly grabbing the lounge’s attention.

“Whose heart is ach…ing, for…breaking each vow?”

Then there’s the way it affects me—like a warm hand stroking down my chest, over the ridges of my abdomen—and down to my—.

I straighten in my seat. I don’t even try, however, to bite back my awareness. Because I haven’t felt this for quite some time: this let’s-buy-the-woman-a-drink-and-see-where-it-leads spark of interest.

Trouble is, though, I have this ironclad rule. I get my sex away from the club and never, but never, mess with the help. I can’t say it has ever been a hardship. Then again, I have never been faced with this sort of temptation.

And I shed the rule like a snake its skin and stride over to the bar. As I listen to her finish up the first song and launch into Careless Love Blues, I have John refresh my scotch and make me a champagne cocktail for the club’s new canary. And smile slightly as I think, What the hell. Accepting the drinks a moment later, I turn away.

Some rules are just made to be broken.

I stop at my table to sweep up my folder and tuck it under my arm before making my way backstage. After dropping the paperwork in my office, I head back to wait for my newest hire to finish her set.

She exits the stage a few minutes later, walking in my direction with a slow swivel of her hips that has me hearing a mental Boom, bumpa boom, bumpa boom drumbeat. My throat goes dry and I knock back my scotch. Jesus. The woman is even more magnetic at close range. That body—it jiggles subtly with every step she takes. And those eyes—those lips.

A niggle of unease itches along my spine when I look at her eyes and lips. Because, I’m reminded again of–

No. I square my shoulders. The thought itching at my brain is just wrong. But there is something uncomfortably familiar about the dark-rimmed blue of Lola’s eyes and the lush Cupid’s bow lips. Not the vibrant red color of the latter, but their shape.

Then my common sense catches up with me and I thrust the notion aside. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Clearly, I’m seeing ghosts where none exist. I step into the singer’s path.

“Lola,” I say, amused with myself at the way my voice deepens. I offer her the champagne cocktail, abandoning my own glass on a nearby prop table. “My name is Booker Jameson. I own—“

The palm of her hand is a blur as it flashes with lightning speed toward my face. I dodge too slowly and it catches me across the cheek with enough force to turn my head. Stunned, I rear back. “What the—?”

She leans into me, looking fiercer than a mama bear even though the top of her head barely clears my shoulder. She cuts me off with fiery disdain. “I know exactly who you are, Mr. Jameson.” Snatching the flute I’m still mindlessly holding out to her, she tosses back the champagne in a couple of large gulps, then thrusts the fragile empty back at me. I automatically grab it when she shows every indication of grinding its crystal edge into my chest.

Then she does the impossible and maneuvers her face even closer to mine, a neat trick for a woman half a foot shorter than I. “You’re the man who left me to face the consequences of our—not mine, Buster, our—actions alone. The man who promised he would never forget me, who swore he would write faithfully until he could come back for me.”

She takes a step back and her eyes lose their fire, her voice changes from lava-hot to ice cold. “In other words, a damn liar.” Then she turns on her heel and struts away.

Leaving me blinking at her departing back. “Fuck,” I whisper—a word I once reserved for the trenches, and lately, for conversations with other fellas when no women are present. A second later, as the truth I had instinctively known but convinced myself I did not sinks in, I say with a little more volume, “Fuck!” Then, “Jeez-us, hell.” I watch the swing of her satin hem disappear around a corner. And feel a wave of something that feels surprisingly like...happiness.

“Lena?”