“Mrs. Eustis said she’d arrange my schedule around my classes. She’s not all bad.”
“How did you find the job at the club in the first place?” Darby asked.
“My aunt knows the owner.”
“Did your aunt come with you from Puerto Rico?”
“No. She was here already. I wanted to come. Santurce was too small a barrio to hold me.”
“Santurce?” Darby rolled the word around her in mouth.
“My father had a store there. Sold all kinds of things, candy, plantain balls, and when I was really young, my father had money and we were treated with respect. But things got worse quick. The store kept being robbed and my father lost it, lost everything eventually.” Esme dropped Darby’s hand. “There was no other work, so we all came to America, to live with my aunt.”
“How old were you when you moved?”
“I came here five years ago, when I was fifteen. Now I live in the same building with the people who worked in the fields, the jíbaros. All filthy.”
So Esme was a member of the privileged class in Puerto Rico. That explained her brashness. She wasn’t like any of the other maids at the Barbizon, who avoided eye contact and scuttled down the halls. “What does your father do now?”
“He helps out our building’s super, when he feels like it. But he can’t fix a thing, never was good with his hands. That’s why I have to make it big on my own. I’m not one of these arrimados.”
“Sorry?”
Esme laughed. “People who can’t take care of themselves, freeloaders.”
The girl was to be admired. Darby’s circumstances weren’t nearly as dire, and all she wanted was a decent job. Esme, who came from a completely different culture, wanted to act, sing, become famous. Was she tenacious? Or deluded?
Perhaps a little of both. Darby held her breath as they walked by a man lying facedown on the sidewalk, but even so, the smell of alcohol and grime permeated her nostrils.
“But what about you, Miss McLaughlin? What’s your story?”
Darby shrugged. “My father died three years ago. My mother remarried, and it’s not a very happy marriage.”
“Was she happy before?”
“I guess not. Mother is one of those women who always want more. More friends, more respect from those friends, more clothes. She’s hard to live with. Daddy traveled a lot for work; he sold paper. We were never rich, though, and I don’t think he measured up to her standards. She was pretty mean to him.”
“What about your stepfather?”
“Mr. Saunders? No one measures up to Mr. Saunders.”
They turned into the alleyway and Darby was relieved not to have to go into further detail.
The Flatted Fifth, which was so mysterious and dark after midnight, looked every inch the nineteenth-century tenement building it was under the harsh glare of the overhead lights, with a cracked linoleum floor and a ceiling darkened by decades of cigarette smoke. The first night, with Esme, Darby had been overcome by panic, imagining a nasty man grabbing her and dragging her into the shadows. Funny how innocuous the club looked now.
Esme yanked her across the floor. “I gotta do a sound check. Will you sit in the back and make sure my mic is loud enough? The drummer thinks he’s more important than anyone else onstage.”
Darby placed herself at the table near the back of the room as Esme assembled her musicians onstage and they ran through two numbers. Esme’s voice was deep and low and she sang right to Darby, who beamed with approval.
As the musicians discussed the intro to the next song, a man’s voice rose from the back of the club.
“This isn’t your kitchen, remember that.”
Sam’s voice answered. “No one’s out there, if you haven’t noticed. We have no orders to fill and we’re ready for tonight. This is only an experiment.”
“No experiments. Not at my club. Keep it simple.”
“Don’t you at least want to taste it?”
“I don’t like that kind of food. You’re in America. Fucking idiot.”
The kitchen door swung open and a tall, sullen-looking man with slicked-back hair and bushy eyebrows raged through, the scent of cloves and pepper whirling in the air behind him. Darby breathed in deeply, and jumped when the door swung open again and Sam appeared.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
Darby looked up, embarrassed. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t overheard the exchange. “Hi,” she muttered.
“Oh. Hi.” Sam wiped his forehead with the corner of his apron. He wore a white shirt that was open at the neck, and had rolled up his sleeves, revealing a soft coating of blond hairs on his forearms.
“Why are you turning red?” Sam asked.
She put her hands to her cheeks. “It’s hot in here.”
“Sorry you had to hear that. That’s my dad.”
Mr. Buckley. Considering his foul mood, she hoped he’d still allow Esme to sing tonight. “Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful.” She meant it, but she also wanted to make him feel better.
“It’s in the trash now, unfortunately.”
“Too exotic for the Flatted Fifth?”
“We wouldn’t know unless we tried, but he’s unwilling to do anything new.”
“Where did you learn to cook like that?”
“In the army. I was stationed in Southeast Asia.”
Darby didn’t know how to keep the conversation going. Her knowledge of the world was limited to Defiance and small sections of New York City. “How wonderful.”
“Not really.”
Thankfully, the band started up again, this time with a pretty black girl standing a few feet to the side of her. The girl was rail thin and wore a bright slash of red lipstick. Her eyelids fluttered open and shut as she swayed to the music.
When Esme hit the chorus, the girl came in a few beats late. The harmonies were simple, but she didn’t seem to be able to hold the notes long enough and was ever so slightly off-key. Darby’s shoulders rose, an involuntary reaction to the atonal interval, while Sam let out a low “sheesh.”
Darby hummed the harmony under her breath, hoping to correct the girl by osmosis, but Esme stopped halfway through. “Tanya, you’re falling asleep up here. Stay with me, okay?”
The second attempt wasn’t much better. Tanya looked as if she were going to be sick.
“What’s wrong with her?” Darby asked Sam.
“She’s high.”
Tanya put her hands to her head and began listing to the left.
The bass player dropped his bow and reached out to break her fall, but she still landed with a loud thud. Sam raced up to the stage to help.
Esme stomped over to Darby while the girl was carried off by the bassist and drummer. “I knew she wouldn’t make it. This is my big night and she’s ruined it.”
“You can still do the song. You sound terrific.”
“The final number’s supposed to rev everyone up. I can’t rev without a backup singer.”
Sam, who was headed back to the kitchen, stopped in front of her. “Darby can back you up.”
Esme looked up at Sam, then at Darby, her eyes wide.
Darby laughed. “He’s joking.”
“I’m not, I heard you singing the right notes. Not loud, but the right ones.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I don’t sing.”
“I just heard you.”
“Okay, I sang in the chorus at school, but I never did anything for real.”
“Backup isn’t for real; you just stand there and do it.” Esme sang a phrase, her hands stretched out to Darby.
No matter how badly she wanted to help her friend, Darby knew her place, and it wasn’t onstage at a nightclub. She pictured the audience laughing at her, the same way the Ford girls laughed at her.
“I’ll embarrass you, Esme. You’ll do fine alone.”
“Sing.” She started in again.
“I can’t.”
Sam punched her playfully in the arm. “Sing under your breath, then. Like before. Just to prove to Esme that I’m not crazy.”
His touch startled her. She put a hand over the spot where his knuckles had hit her upper arm and rubbed it gently. Darby sang along, quietly, her voice hesitant but on pitch.