A shout went around the room—“Last call!”—and several women got up to go to the bar and buy their last drinks of the night, while others headed to the hat check.
“We should go,” Kath said.
Lily nodded, and realized with a mixture of disappointment and relief that Tommy wasn’t going to sit with them after all. She put on her coat, and she and Kath said goodbye to Claire and Paula—Lana politely shook their hands—and then they began to move through the emptying stage room toward the narrow bar area. Tommy was walking toward them, carrying two tall glasses of beer, and for a heart-stopping moment Lily thought Tommy was bringing one of them to her—but then Tommy passed her by briskly, a whiff of her cologne floating behind her. Lily turned her head to follow Tommy’s progress; of course she was going to meet Lana and Claire, and there was Paula standing up to take one of the beers. Lily felt Kath’s hand on her arm, and Kath said, “Are you coming?”
“Sorry.” Lily followed Kath down the length of the bar, past women still nursing their final drinks, and through the black door and onto the sidewalk.
The cool night air was welcome after the smoky, stuffy interior. Women were standing in little clumps outside the club, lighting up cigarettes and talking, prolonging their nights out. Someone said there was an after-hours club a couple of blocks away; someone else suggested heading to Chinatown for some late-night chow mein. Lily glanced at her watch in the light of a streetlamp as she and Kath walked away from the club; it was two o’clock in the morning, and all the neon signs on Broadway were still ablaze. Men and women were emerging from the other clubs on the street, some of them stumbling drunk, others squealing with laughter. The entire city seemed to be awake, living a second life she hadn’t known existed until now. When she and Kath reached the intersection where they had to part ways, they paused on the edge of the sidewalk to avoid the other pedestrians.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” Kath said a little awkwardly.
“See you Monday,” Lily replied. She thought she should say something more, but she felt inexplicably shy—as though she hadn’t just spent more than two hours with her friend in a nightclub full of gay women. Even the thought of those words made her nervous, and she was sharply aware that there were people all around them, and she was only a block away from Chinatown.
Kath turned to leave, and at the last moment Lily reached out to touch her arm. “Thank you for taking me,” Lily said.
“You’re welcome,” Kath said.
The traffic was a moving river of red and white and yellow lights reflected in miniature in Kath’s eyes. She smiled. Lily looked away selfconsciously. Someone honked repeatedly, and a black car careened up Columbus, and the pedestrians nearby shouted at the driver to watch out.
“Good night,” Lily said, stepping back.
“Good night,” Kath said.
Lily forced herself to turn away and walk home.
* * *
—
She kept to the shadows of Grant Avenue as much as she could, walking quickly through the pools of light that spilled out the doors of the Sai-Yon all-night restaurant and the Far East Café. Her fingers were steady when she quietly unlocked the front door of her building; she was utterly silent as she slipped off her shoes and carried them up the stairs. The flat was hushed and dark and so quiet she could hear the faint sound of her brothers breathing as she passed the cracked-open door to their bedroom. The door to her parents’ room was closed, and she tiptoed past quickly.
She rolled the pocket doors to her room shut behind her. She left the light off. She unzipped her skirt and thought, This is what I wore the night I met Tommy Andrews. She unbuttoned her blouse and felt the lingering traces of dampness in the armpits where she’d sweated. Normally she would air it out on the laundry line or put it in the wash, but she couldn’t do that in the middle of the night. She unrolled her too-thick stockings and peeled off her girdle and unclasped her bra; the toes and creases and seams were all a little damp, too. It was incriminating: the residue of her body on these bits of fabric. She knew she should find it revolting, but she didn’t; somehow she felt triumphant. It was proof that she had been to the Telegraph Club and breathed its warm, perfumed air.
She folded her clothes in the dark and gently laid them in the bottom dresser drawer. She felt for her nightgown and put it on, the pink polyester sliding cool as water over her warm skin. Her bed creaked slightly as she lay down and drew the covers up to her chin. She closed her eyes, but she wasn’t at all sleepy.