The voice that emerged was pitched low and husky, like a jazz singer with smoke on her breath. A faint gasp went through the audience as if people were surprised, but Lily knew it wasn’t surprise. It was acknowledgment of how immaculate the male impersonation was, how shockingly well staged. The contrast between Tommy’s voice （especially when it rose smoothly to the higher notes） and silhouette （legs spread and shoulders cocked） was deliciously scandalous. Lily felt her heartbeat thrumming in her chest as she watched; she was afraid to blink; she was afraid to miss the moment she sensed coming closer—and finally, there it was.
At the end of the first verse, Tommy spun around with a cocky smile on her face, and the audience burst into applause so loud it drowned out the rest of the verse.
The black-and-white photograph in the Chronicle had been a poor imitation of reality, smudged and blurry. It had left out all the important details: the sheen of pomade on the waves of Tommy’s hair; the precise folds of her black bow tie; the gold signet ring on her pinkie finger as she cupped the microphone close to her mouth. It had given no sense, Lily now realized, of Tommy’s physicality. The way she stood, the way she moved—her swagger—so like a man and yet—
It was that yet that made Lily’s skin flush warm. The knowledge that despite the clothes that Tommy wore, despite the attitude that invited everyone in the room to gaze at her, she was not a man. It felt unspeakably charged, as if all of Lily’s most secret desires had been laid bare onstage.
Tommy didn’t change the lyrics. The song was languid and liquid, with a hint of jaded self-reproach as if Tommy were confessing that she had fallen in love against her wishes. Hearing her sing to an unnamed “him” while dressed as a man was a sensation. The audience whistled at her, and she winked at them, so sure of herself it made Lily’s face burn.
She didn’t want Tommy ever to stop. She could stand there in the hot crowd, craning her neck to see around the heads of those who had been lucky enough to get a table, gazing at Tommy in her tuxedo, forever. She had heard the song before, of course, but never like this, never the way Tommy sang with a purr in her voice that felt like she was whispering directly in Lily’s ear.
Lily’s blouse clung to her damp skin, and she became increasingly aware of the press of people around her and the heat that rose from their bodies. The air was close and smelled more strongly than ever of cigarette smoke and alcohol, and the undercurrent of perfume now seemed shockingly intimate, as if she were nuzzling the necks of all the women here.
And all of a sudden it was almost painful to watch Tommy onstage. She had to look away as if she were a drowning person surfacing for air. She saw that there were some men in the audience—husbands with their wives or girlfriends, seated in a clump on one side of the room as if they had huddled together for safety. The men seemed to be having a good time, applauding and grinning, giving each other approving glances as if to congratulate themselves on their adventurousness. The wives and girlfriends were more mixed in their expressions. One looked absolutely mortified and could barely keep her eyes on the stage; one leaned forward with a broad smile, occasionally giving her husband a smirk. The smirk was so thick with suggestion that it made Lily queasy, even though she didn’t understand what it meant. The not knowing made it worse; it opened a Pandora’s box of implication, and yet she was painfully aware of her own na?veté. She couldn’t even imagine what that woman wanted, but she was certain it was shameful.
Beyond those couples, most of the audience was women, and some of those women were dressed like men. None as finely as Tommy, but some wore ties and vests, while others wore blazers with open-collared shirts. Some women were done up for a night on the town in cocktail dresses, with sparkling earrings and necklaces around their pale throats. There were a few Negro women seated together, but Lily was the only Chinese girl in the room. That meant there was no one from Chinatown to recognize her, but it also made her stand out all the more.
She shrank back as far as she could, and when her foot touched the wall, she realized she could inch back a tiny bit more until she was entirely pressed against the wall, and Kath was half a foot in front of her, partly blocking her view. Now she felt safer, and when the song ended and the room burst into applause, she took off her jacket and draped it over her arm. Her blouse was damp where she had sweated through the back, but at least she was cooler.
Kath glanced at her and asked, “Are you all right?”
Lily nodded, but there was no time for her to elaborate, because Tommy was starting another number. This one was livelier, and it involved her stepping off the stage and flirting with the women seated around the perimeter. Lily was extra glad, now, that she was hidden against the far wall. She had dreamed about Tommy visiting her table, but now that she was in the room the possibility of that attention felt distinctly alarming. Instead she held her breath as Tommy perched on the edge of each table she visited, smiling down at the woman she had chosen and joking with the man nearby. She seemed utterly comfortable with what she was doing, as if wearing a man’s suit and flirting with women were the most normal thing in the world. She leaned toward a blushing woman in a low-cut green dress, singing “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me,” then turning to her male partner and adding, “Not you, sir.”