Near as she could get to Miss Dolly’s, Marian parked the truck and unloaded a runnered sled from the back that she piled with the two baskets containing the weekly order. Down the darkening street she trudged, pulling the sled behind her.
One of the girls, Belle, opened the kitchen door. “You!” she said to Marian. “Come in!” She was not done up for callers but wore a plain blue drop-waisted dress with wool stockings and a gray shawl, her hair pulled into a low knot. Only her heavy rouge and kohl gave any suggestion of her profession.
Marian had one of the baskets in her arms. “There’s another one on the sled.” Belle scooted outside in her slippers, came chasing back in with the second basket, herding Marian into the kitchen.
“Good thing you came. We’d almost run out,” Belle said. She said this every time, apparently oblivious to the precision with which Miss Dolly doled out each week’s supply. Miss Dolly also bought imported booze from a real legger, actual premium Scotch and gin for the big spenders, but most of her customers were happy enough to drink Mr. Stanley’s cheap moon. “Sit and visit for a while. Dolly’s not here.”
Marian should have been on her way, but she was always flattered by the attentions of Miss Dolly’s girls. She took off her coat and hat and sat at the table. “Did Dolly leave money for the order?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Belle peeked into one of the baskets and squealed, flinging back the calico cover. A custard tart rested on top of the bottles. In the other basket, with even greater delight, she discovered half a dozen cream puffs, each sealed in its own envelope of waxed paper. Presents for the girls from Mr. Stanley, who came around from time to time. “Let’s have one,” Belle said. “Just one, we’ll split it.” She was already up, fetching a knife. Once she’d sliced the puff in two, she pushed her half greedily into her mouth with manicured fingers. Marian took a bite of hers. Both the pastry and the cream, cold from the truck, were firm and delicious.
Belle, still chewing, squinted at her. Miss Dolly’s girls were so accustomed to done-up faces and curled hair that Marian’s boyishness struck them as improper and troubling. Belle reached out and brushed at Marian’s hair, trying to part it with her fingertips. “I’ve told you, you ought to quit chopping this so short,” she said. “It looks funny.”
“I like it.”
“Your uncle doesn’t mind you cutting it?” Wallace was known at Miss Dolly’s.
“He doesn’t try to stop me. Our housekeeper does. She hides the scissors.”
“You cut it yourself?”
“No, my friend Caleb does.”
Belle hitched one shoulder flirtatiously. “Must be a good friend if you let him cut your hair. I don’t let anyone touch mine except Cora. She has a way. I keep telling her she should quit and become a hairdresser.”
Marian thought of her last haircut, of Caleb looking at her naked torso afterward while her neck and shoulders were still itchy with trimmings.
Around Miss Dolly’s girls, she was all sharp curiosity. She observed how they fussed with their cobbled-together little frilly outfits, how they switched in a blink from coquettish posing and vamping to bored slumping and lounging. The pull, the density of their femaleness intrigued her, even if she preferred pretending, more or less, to be a boy. Dolly’s girls were gossipy and lazy and hard, but something about them seemed important. They were a clue to a mystery she had not quite identified.
For a time, Caleb’s price had been only to kiss her. She had let in his tongue, the odd muscular wetness of it. After her most recent haircut, he had calmly unbuttoned her shirt and pushed it off her shoulders, gazed at her naked chest. She’d felt like those paintings of Jesus where he was flayed open, his heart exposed and radiating light. When Caleb had reached out and brushed her nipple with his thumb, though, she’d shoved him away, and he’d laughed the way he did after he’d picked a pocket.
Belle got up and went to the kitchen sink, wetted her hands before working more forcefully at Marian’s hair, parting and smoothing. “It’s no good,” she said. “I need a comb and some brilliantine. Wait a minute.”
Alone in the kitchen, Marian listened to Belle’s footsteps retreat up the stairs. She heard a distant murmur of voices. A pot on the stove gave off oniony steam. Beside the stove, a door led to the basement stairs, and this opened. Mrs. Wu came in. She was very thin with a small, round face and hair shot through with gray. She glanced at Marian without surprise, crossed to the stove, and stirred the stew with a wooden spoon. Then she drew a few bills from the pocket of her apron and handed them over, saying, “From Miss Dolly,” before she disappeared back down to the basement.