Helen grabbed my arm. “Look!”
One girl behind the window had set her cowboy hat on the floor so she could swing a lariat above her head. Her black hair swished back and forth across her breasts, concealing her nipples but shimmering like satin against her pale skin. It was Ruby. Our Ruby. We gripped the handrail, trying to maintain our position in front of the window as new visitors pushed against us. From where we stood, Helen and I could hear a woman’s voice calling orders: “Get off your duff, Betty. Jump a little higher, Sue. Keep that rump up when you bend down to get the ball, Alice.”
I rapped on the glass with my knuckles. A girl with curly red hair looked toward the sound. I pointed to Ruby, sending a message that I wanted her attention.
“Hey, Ruby. You have visitors!”
Ruby dropped the lariat-and let’s just say she’d never be a whiz at rope tricks-came to the window, and put her hands on the glass. “Helen! Grace! I have a break in ten minutes. When you exit, come around to the side door. I’ll meet you there.”
Even through my shock, I perceived the energy coming off Joe. I saw the way he stared at Ruby. At first I thought he was embarrassed, but then I realized he couldn’t take his eyes off her. His desire jarred open something startling in me. My yearning for him was so deep I could barely breathe. Not once had I felt that way with Monroe. I didn’t want to be Ruby, but I wanted Joe to want me like that.
The crowd surged against us, and we were pushed back outside and into the night. The lights teased my eyes. The cold air nipped my face, but with so many people crowded together it felt as though a thousand hands caressed me.
“I wouldn’t call that appropriate for children!” Helen declared. “How could she?”
I shrugged, striving to appear responsive. I stood so close to Joe his clothes brushed against mine and his breath warmed my cheek.
“Will you introduce me to your friend?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Helen blinked. Had both her friends gone crazy?
A few minutes later, Ruby-dressed in slacks and a sweater-oozed through a door and onto the Gayway. “You found me!”
Helen started in with a thousand questions: “Do you realize you’re practically naked in there? And in front of all those people? What will your parents say if they find out?”
“You looked beautiful,” I said. Did I mean it? Not a word, but I was trying to show Joe I could be adult about such things. I took his hand. I’d never behaved so boldly in my life. My fingers lay cold in his palm, but he didn’t pull away.
“Ruby, I want you to meet my friend, Joe… Joe…”
“Joe Mitchell,” he said. “I’m a big fan.”
“I’ve only got twenty minutes,” Ruby said, not bothering to acknowledge him. I was relieved he hadn’t caught her interest. “Forty minutes on, twenty minutes off, from three in the afternoon until two in the morning. Here, let me show you around.”
“You three are so tiny,” Joe inserted hopefully. “I bet you can all fit on my rolling chair.”
Ruby sized him up. “Sure. Take us for a spin.”
Joe pushed us hither, thither, and yon, denying Helen and me the chance to grill our friend. The twenty minutes went by quickly. We dropped Ruby back at Sally Rand’s and decided to wait for her set to be over. Helen remained quiet, hiding her thoughts, while I gave Joe the third degree. What was his full name? Joseph Eldon Mitchell. How old was he? Twenty. (That’s what I’d guessed when I first met him.) His openness encouraged me to ask more questions.
“Are you still going to Cal?”
“Yep! I’m studying political science,” he answered. “I want to go to law school eventually and become a lawyer like my dad.”
“Do you like California?”
“You bet! I don’t miss the seasons in Winnetka one bit.” And flying was still his favorite thing in the world. “I’ll love it forever.” His voice had an endearing way of rising at the end of a sentence as though asking a question. “Not that I’ve been able to fly since coming to California-”
A little more than forty minutes later, Ruby opened the side door and held it ajar. She wore a kimono. Her nipples pushed against the thin silk. “Sally got mad at me for being late last time. I can’t go out with you again. I don’t have time to get out of my costume, get dressed, then undressed, and back into my costume again.” She laughed at the absurdity of what she’d just said. “It takes time to get those pistols just right! Will you come and get me later? We can go home together on the ferry.” Without waiting for an answer, she gave a wave and closed the door.
Joe said, “I’ve got to leave you too. I need to turn in the rolling chair. But will you come again? We could all meet after Ruby and I get off. I could even come out here one day when I don’t have classes or work. Would you like that?”
“I’d love it,” I answered, because I really wanted to see him again.
After he pushed off, we found a spot to wait for Ruby near the Headless Woman display. Helen had already spoken her mind, but what was I going to say to Ruby?
I shouldn’t have worried, because she started talking as soon as we boarded the ferry to cross the bay back to the city.
“I don’t want you girls to zing me from two sides,” she began. “I needed a job, and this was the best I could get.”
“But how can you be-” I didn’t want to say the word naked. “You had to have known about this job for a while.”
“Ummm.” A confirmation of sorts.
“Those nights you were out late the last couple of weeks-”
“Ummm.”
“Were you rehearsing?”
“Not a lot to rehearse,” Helen quipped.
“We’re supposed to be friends,” I said, “and you didn’t tell us.”
“Of course I didn’t!” Ruby flared. “Look how you’re taking it!”
I peered at her, disbelieving.
“It’s not a big deal,” she insisted.
“Ruby!” I exclaimed. “You’re n-k-d in there!”
“I’m not naked-naked. Sally is very careful about what we show. Besides, we aren’t the only nudes on the Gayway. Go to that studio where girls pose without a stitch on, and people can sketch or photograph them for a fee. Go to the movie house that plays reels of nudists playing volleyball. Or go to the Palace of Fine Arts in the main part of the fair, and you’ll find a naked woman re-creating a painting by Manet.”
“Manet?” Helen burst out, indignant. “Who in the hell is Manet?”
Ruby’s and my eyes widened. It was the first time we’d heard Helen curse.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ruby answered with a pixie shrug. “We were told to say that.”
She started to giggle, I joined in, and Helen covered her mouth. But what were we thinking? There are consequences to everything.
CONSEQUENCE ONE OF visiting Treasure Island: I now had an honest-to-goodness crush on someone… and it absolutely wasn’t Monroe. I needed to do the right thing and tell him, even if it disappointed Helen. He picked me up the following Sunday, took me to the Eastern Bakery, and ordered me an ice cream soda I didn’t want. I was just getting up my nerve when, surprise! The tables were turned-but definitely!
“I had once hoped my father might approve of you, even though you’re a dancer,” he began. “But when I saw you on New Year’s Day, I realized he never would.” Monroe then spent the next half hour telling me why he could never marry me: that I didn’t cook Chinese food, that I was an only child so I hadn’t learned to care for children, that I didn’t embroider, darn, or tat. I wasn’t sufficiently political either. I didn’t show enough sympathy for what our people in China were enduring at the hands of the Japanese, I didn’t appreciate the deprivations of Chinese in this country, and I hadn’t been through Angel Island, so I would never understand the terrible things that happened to our people there.