Empire Girls Read online

  EMPIRE HOUSE

  “Don’t let the landlady intimidate you,” Jimmy said as he jumped out to grab the bags. I followed, leaving Rose in the car to sort out the money situation—I didn’t have the head for it.

  I squinted up at him in the noonday sun. “I don’t let anyone get under my skin.”

  He laughed. “You’ve never met Nell.” Jimmy hoisted Rose’s enormous trunk and carried it up the front stairs and into Empire House. Once he was safely inside, I could stop flirting and start eyeballing our new neighborhood. A few of the buildings had street levels that spilled open-air cafés onto the sidewalk. Colorfully dressed patrons leaned over small tables, speaking intensely about matters I could only wonder at. The scene was perfect for an artist’s eye, and I felt a pang, wishing my father stood beside me with his sketchbook.

  I curled my hands over the wrought-iron bars protecting the garden level of the building next to Empire House. The windows were shuttered, however a sign on the muddy door said, Republic Theater, Revolutionaries Welcome. My pulse quickened. It certainly wasn’t the staid, cavernous auditorium in Albany, but then, this city was a different beast altogether. Theaters could pop up anywhere.

  “Save your money. Whatever play they’re hawking will be closed down before you can blink twice,” Jimmy said, his breath tickling my bare neck. He’d come up without me noticing.

  I turned to him and smiled. “I’m an actress,” I said, not bothering to mask my pride. “I’ll be looking for work.”

  “You and half the girls in Manhattan,” he said dismissively. “But if you’re looking for theater work, you’d best stay away from these anarchists.”

  The word turned my insides to jelly. Anarchists? Revolutionaries? This was going to be fun.

  Jimmy laughed. “Don’t be such a tourist. You can’t walk around here with stars in your eyes.”

  As we walked back to the car, Jimmy continued his lecture. “Empire House attracts the more ladylike types, but it’s still a boarding house. Always hide your best things, but don’t shove all that you own under the mattress—the girls will think you don’t trust them. Walk with a set of eyes in the back of your head, and if you’re going out at night, make sure you don’t get caught coming in late. But if you do—” here he had the most delightful twinkle in his dangerously blue Irish eyes “—run over to my place on Christopher Street and I’ll give you a warm bed to sleep in.”

  I thought about the woman under the arch, and the man bent over her. I stepped closer to Jimmy. “Do you often leave your door unlocked?”

  “If you’re wearing that dress, I’ll give you a key.”

  I silently congratulated myself for my fashion choice that morning. I twirled once to give him a better look at how the dress dipped low in back. “A new dress for my new home,” I said. Technically, that wasn’t the truth. The dress was old. But I had a feeling that little fibs were necessary in this town and shrugged off the lie.

  With a wink and a tip of his fedora, Jimmy climbed back into the driver’s seat. He drove a few yards, stopped suddenly and backed the vehicle up with a jerk.

  Rose.

  I’d forgotten all about her. I yanked open the passenger door and stuck my head in. Rose sat inside, an open book on her lap. “Did you tip him already?”

  She nodded curtly. “Everyone’s hands are outstretched in this town. This is a greedy place.” There was a catch in her voice that told me she was trying not to cry.

  A good kind of sister, a Jo March or Elizabeth Bennet, would have reached out, drawing Rose to the comfort of her solid bosom, coaxing the tears that so desperately needed shedding. But I was not a good sister. Jimmy made a sound of impatience, and embarrassment sharpened my words. “He’s got places to go,” I hissed. “Come on.”

  “I can’t,” Rose whispered, her expression pained. “Maybe this was a rash decision. Let’s discuss this.”

  I scooted in next to her. “Get your nose out of that book and take a hard look at this city, Rose. Can’t you feel it? All the opportunity? We can be in this world. We can make money and find Asher and have an adventure while we do it. So, please, get out of the car.”

  Rose placed her book inside her travel bag, but otherwise didn’t budge.

  “Why aren’t you moving?”

  She closed her eyes. “Give me a moment, Ivy.”

  Rose had spent a lifetime choosing stillness over action. When the Gilbert boys pressed their noses to our screened-in porch, shouting, “Come to play!” I ran outdoors. Our ragtag gang leaped into the cold river, scoured the earth for arrowheads and climbed the best mulberry trees, smearing the juicy berries on our faces until our skin turned purple. We hooted and hollered and lived. “Take it all,” my father laughed when we’d roll in the door like tumbleweeds. “It’s all yours if you want it, you little scalawags!”

  Rose never joined us, preferring to stay inside, the egg tucked most firmly in the nest. She learned to knit and sew while sitting in a circle with our mother and her lady friends, who spent a few minutes discussing the women’s vote, but mostly passed the time clucking at bland, country-kitchen gossip, mundane stories that all sounded vaguely alike. Rose grew up with the mild buzz of their conversations in her ear, something that really dug at my father’s craw. “A child who grows up too closely aligned with adults assumes knowledge of a life she hasn’t yet experienced,” he always complained.

  After mother died, father sent us to school in town, where Rose outshone our classmates in natural intellect, quietly assuming the top spot on the principal’s most-honored list. The teachers had high hopes for my sister, but when they offered a place in the new business class for women, she demurred. I got no offers, but took advantage of everything I could wiggle my way into—voice lessons, bit parts at the local theater, dance-a-thons, beauty contests. Rose accepted her diploma with a nod and retreated back to run Adams House. She cooked and cleaned and budgeted. The townspeople spoke kindly of Rose’s devotion to our family, but what begins as sacrifice can eventually become foolishness. My father would have said as much, but in the back of Jimmy’s car, I saw Rose gearing up to say the one word he hated, and my sister lived by—no.

  One moment turned into two, then three. “You don’t have a choice in this,” I finally said, and before she could protest further, I grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the street. She fell into me, and I kicked the door shut and shouted for Jimmy to hit the gas. He did, peeling down MacDougal in a cloud of exhaust.

  We sat on the curb to catch our breath. A row of silver beads had come loose from my dress and spilled onto the pavement, rolling haphazardly in different directions.

  “Did I do that?” Rose said.

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I’m not sorry,” she snapped, but there was a faint amusement surfacing in her expression.

  “Oh, you’ll fix it for me anyway,” I tossed back.

  “Yes, but I’ll send you out here to search for every bead on your hands and knees.”

  I burst out laughing, and the sound coaxed a genuine smile from Rose. I wasn’t the least bit sore at her. How could I be? We were in New York on a sunny, charming street in Greenwich Village. I gazed at Empire House, its front, aging yet dignified, and felt my father’s hands at my shoulders, pushing me forward—go, go, go!

  Rose stood and dusted herself off. “Well, I suppose we should get ourselves a room before thieves run off with our trunks.”

  We walked up the stoop together. I pulled the bell and the door flew open, creaking on its hinges. A street urchin answered, a young girl not much taller than my waist. Her small, heart-shaped face was dirty, but her dress, a cotton slip covered in primroses, was clean. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  “Customers!” she shrieked, and pushed past us, sitting atop Rose’s trunk. “Are you moving in for good?” she asked, patting its brass lock.
r />   “Definitely not,” Rose said, attempting to soften her words with a smile that quivered at the edges.

  I crouched down, eye level with the girl. “Will you watch our trunks while we speak with the house manager?”

  “Maybe,” she answered.

  I nudged Rose and she dug a coin from her purse. With a sigh she placed it into the urchin’s tiny palm.

  “I’m Claudia,” the girl said, pocketing the coin. “And there ain’t much you can buy in New York with a wooden nickel.” Laughing, she patted at the mass of orange-soda curls springing from her head like coils from a spent mattress. “Miss Nell is inside. Keep walking until you find yourselves in the kitchen. The cook made the coffee too strong again, so look out for flying cups.”

  I watched Rose’s eyes follow the girl as she disappeared into the house. I knew my sister better than she thought. She was seeing herself in that girl, and the confused look in her eyes told me she was trying to make sense of why someone so young could put her hand out so easily. Rose didn’t know that she recognized the behavior, because she was doing the same thing in coming to New York—holding out her hand with the hope that Asher would put a nickel in it. If we could find him, that is. I wasn’t exactly sure what our odds were, but I knew one thing for certain—this city would offer us a thousand different paths toward a thousand different futures. We only had to choose the stepping-off point, and New York would take care of the rest.

  We followed Claudia into the building. The sound of a woman’s complaints, imperious and disdainful, contrasted with the cheerful, feminine interior of Empire House’s front parlor. The wood floors gleamed, throwing light around a room that already sparkled with charm. Delicately etched paper—white with fine gold stripes—covered the walls. The rugs, bleached by the sun, held the faint outlines of delicate Victorian flowers, reminding me of my father’s drawings. Broad-leafed plants, green and glossy, stood tall in Grecian urns, their stems curving slightly toward the open windows.

  “Well, what do you know,” I marveled. “Not so bad, is it?”

  Rose’s eyes traveled over the room, lighting up when she noticed the floor-to-ceiling bookcase covering the back wall. “I suppose this will do,” she said.

  I felt a surge of triumph.

  The kitchen took the whole back of the house. We stood in the doorway, watching a haughty-looking woman harangue a tall, good-looking man wearing a white apron. The woman nearly crushed the man’s toes as she stepped forward, straining her neck to meet his eye. Neither of them broke away when we announced ourselves with exaggerated clearing of our throats.

  “You cannot take cigarettes away from the working man and you cannot take strong coffee from the working girl,” the man shouted. “Basic human understanding!”

  “We cannot afford to run through coffee like a bunch of Italian widows,” the woman growled. “Basic accounting!”

  “Maybe some new tenants will offset the costs,” I interrupted.

  They glared at each other for just a moment longer, and then turned toward us in unison. The woman had a regal face—a patrician nose, icy-blue eyes and a precisely painted mouth bracketed with fine lines that hinted at a lifetime of secrets. She was attractive, and anyone could tell she’d been a looker once upon a time, which probably made middle age a real wet blanket on a dry bed.

  The man was a different story altogether. His features—from his neatly trimmed dark hair to his surprisingly thick-lashed eyes—were outlined in humor. His gaze danced over us, and he smiled graciously. “I’m Sonny Santino,” he said, and pointed to the bright, airy kitchen. “Welcome to my hovel.”

  “I’m Ivy, and this is Rose,” I said, grinning back at him.

  “Ah! The friends from Albany.”

  “We’re sisters,” Rose said.

  He laughed. “Sisters? You look like a pair of mismatched bookends.”

  “I’m Nell Neville,” the woman said, studying us with intelligent eyes. “I hope the trip down was comfortable.”

  Rose opened her mouth, but I pressed my foot against hers. “Fine and dandy.”

  Nell’s mouth pulled into a smile. “Will you be looking for work here in the city?”

  “I’m a capable seamstress,” Rose said. “I can do both tailoring and alterations.”

  Nell turned to me. “I’m an actress,” I said. “Both tragedy and comedy.”

  She nodded, unimpressed. “Your telegram said you were also coming to New York to find a lost relative. Is that still the case?”

  “Yes,” Rose said quickly. She dug into her bag and pulled out her book of poetry. Inside was Mr. Lawrence’s file. “My father was Everett Adams. This is his son, Asher. Will you take a look at this photograph and see if you recognize him?”

  The woman snatched Asher’s portrait from her hands, but only took a quick glance before passing it to Sonny. He studied it, his expression softening while Rose explained our mission. “Unfortunately circumstances have caused an estrangement from the family, but we are desperate to find him for legal reasons. Do you recall his face?”

  “It’s my job to keep young men away from my door,” Nell said. “I own Empire House, but I manage it, as well. Any male on the premises endures my careful scrutiny. If I’d seen him, I’d remember.” She took the photograph from Sonny and gave it back to Rose. “I’m sorry we can’t be of help in that matter, but we can get you settled into your room. If you’ll come with me, we can address the paperwork.”

  After tossing a final glare Santino’s way, she ushered us out of the kitchen. We followed Nell’s straight back down an adjacent hallway lined with faded fleur-de-lis wallpaper and framed photographs of hunting dogs dressed in country attire. Rose looked at me with a raised brow, doubt flooding her eyes.

  “Yeah, she’s an odd bird,” I said lightly, “but aren’t we all?”

  Rose sighed. “Speak for yourself.”

  Nell’s small office smelled of onions and rose water. A dusty brown ledger lay at the center of a circular table. “You’re lucky we had a vacancy,” she said, turning open the book. She fussed at a drawer and extracted a fountain pen. “Sign here.”

  “Could you be more specific about the rent and amenities?” Rose asked.

  “You could walk three blocks and find a dozen other boarding houses that offer the same or worse,” Nell said, bristling. “There are a hundred places for girls in this city. You’re free to find one to your liking.”

  I hated talk of money. I just wanted a room. The day was growing hotter, and I longed to stretch out in front of an open window with a cool cloth on my forehead.

  I signed the ledger with a flourish and handed the pen to Rose, who reluctantly added her signature.

  Nell separated one key from a ring holding countless copies. “You get the penthouse, top floor. As soon as you agree to the rules, you may have the key.”

  My head snapped up. “Rules?”

  “Oh, darling,” Nell said. “There are always rules, even in a city like this.”

  EMPIRE HOUSE

  RULES FOR TENANTS

  Curfew is strictly enforced. The front and back doors will be locked at 10:00 p.m. nightly. On Saturday nights, the lock turns at 11:00 p.m. SHARP. (After this hour, no knocking, screaming, crying or howling will be tolerated. Sleep in the garden and learn your lesson.)

  Hot showers cost fifteen cents and should last no longer than five minutes. At three cents a minute, you’re barely paying for the coal—quit your complaining. There is a timer on the small table outside the bathroom. It will be set.

  Laundry services are available, but management is not held to any time constraints. You’ll get it when you get it.

  Breakfast is served at 7:00 a.m.; dinner at 6:00 p.m. There is no luncheon. If you are here in the middle of the day, then you have most likely lost your job and have more pre
ssing things to do.

  Excessive noise is prohibited. Talking, singing, laughing and loud coughing are not acceptable after midnight.

  No one is allowed to sit in the parlor. Ever. No exceptions.

  Absolutely no consumption of alcoholic beverages. The Feds say it’s illegal and so do we. Have a nice cup of coffee instead (Five cents a cup and be sure to wash it out when you’re done).

  As we gained the upper part of the house, I realized with a growing sense of unease that Empire House was only elegant at ground level. The higher we went, the shabbier it got—frayed carpet, holes in the plaster, a pervasive dampness in the air. After climbing what seemed like countless flights, we reached what I thought was the top floor, but then Nell led us to a door, which housed a narrow staircase.

  I peered up, though I couldn’t see much. “Are we sleeping in the attic?”

  “It’s really quite lovely,” Nell said, dropping the key into my hand. “This is for the bathroom. You won’t need any other keys. I lock up the main door at night.” With a quick smile, she began her descent back to the first floor.

  “What’ll we do?” Rose asked, panic in her voice.

  I shrugged. “We explore.”

  Rose and I came up the stairs to find ourselves standing in the middle of an airy loft, marooned in a sea of cast-off furniture and puffs of dust.

  “Our front door is a hole in the floor!” Rose said, aghast. “We might sleepwalk and tumble down the stairs!”

  I didn’t want to admit I’d had a similar thought. “It ain’t the Ritz, but it’s not so bad,” I said, but I was throwing her a line—it was one step above a flophouse. One slim window faced MacDougal Street, and sunlight weakly filtered in through a dirty skylight, casting strange shadows on the two twin beds, huddled like starving children in the middle of the room, and an old-fashioned dressing table with an overlarge mirror. The walls were painted a leaden gray. Our trunks sat on a frayed rug. Leeched of all color, it covered a small section of well-used oak floors.