Tommy sat back in her chair, lit a cigarette, and downed a coupe of champagne in one gulp. “That stuff’s terrible,” she groused. “I’ll have to tell Joyce not to serve it tomorrow night.”
“It’s on special,” Lana said in a bored tone of voice. “I think she’s trying to get rid of it.”
“So she’s pawning it off on me and my fans? Of course, gotta save the best for Miss Rita Rogers.” There was a jealous sting to her words, and Lily wondered who Rita Rogers was.
Kath leaned over to her and said, “I’m going up to the bathroom. Come with me?”
Lily didn’t want to leave the table now that Tommy had arrived, but there was a look in Kath’s eye that made her get up. When they reached the dim hallway that contained the stairs going up to the bathroom, Lily caught a glimpse of a woman slipping into the shadows beneath the stairs. She stared for a moment, confused. The woman’s body was moving in an unusual way—her shoulders were bent forward, her head dipping—and all of a sudden Lily realized the woman wasn’t alone. There was another woman with her beneath the stairs, the edges of her skirt visible around the other woman’s legs. They were pressed together, their heads close. Lily couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, but she had a good idea.
She hurried after Kath, who was already standing in the unusually short bathroom line. Kath must have noted her flushed face because she asked, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said, flustered.
Kath seemed a bit tense. “Do you want to go over to Lana’s with everyone?”
Lily tried to put the image of those two women out of her mind. “Do you think they really meant to invite us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kath’s forehead furrowed as she glanced up the line and then back at Lily. “If we go, it’ll be late. When do you need to get home?”
Kath had never been concerned about getting home late before. Lily looked at her more closely, but couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Well, it’s already late,” Lily said. “Who’s going to notice if I’m a couple of hours later? But what about you? Do you want to go?”
Kath’s shoulders hunched slightly. “Only if you do.”
“Well, yes. I don’t really want to go home. Do you?”
Kath seemed to be holding something back. “I guess not.”
Lily was about to ask what was wrong, but they had reached the bathroom door and it was Kath’s turn to go in, so Lily was left standing in the hallway. By the time they were both finished, the moment had passed, so Lily said nothing.
They went downstairs together, and at the bottom she looked behind her at the alcove beneath the stairs, but it was empty. Back at their table, Tommy and Lana and the others were all standing up and putting on their coats, getting ready to leave. Lana saw her and Kath, and said, “We’re walking up to Telegraph Hill. Are you coming along?”
Kath plucked their jackets from the backs of their empty chairs, handing Lily hers. “Sure, we’re coming. Thanks.”
They spilled out onto the sidewalk, a group of half a dozen. Lily kept close to Kath, and they followed the others up a side street that was cut with stairs it was so steep. When they started out from the club they had been talking gaily, laughing and joking, but as they proceeded through North Beach their voices grew hushed. Lily lost track of where they were going. All around them the neighborhood slumbered, a world removed from the noise and music of the nightclubs a few blocks away. They finally arrived on a flat block just below Coit Tower, which was lit up at the top of Telegraph Hill like a beacon. Someone took out a ring of keys, and Lily heard a crunch as a key turned in the lock of a three-story building. A light was switched on and spilled out, yellowish, onto the front stoop.
“Come on in!” Tommy called back, and they all crowded through the doorway, into the front hall, and through a second door on the right into a first-floor apartment.
At first, Lily got the impression of a jumble of different dark lumps everywhere, but as Tommy and Lana went around switching on the lamps, the lumps resolved themselves into a long rust-colored sofa, and a set of black lacquered Chinese chairs like the kind that were sold to tourists in the Grant Avenue shops. There was a Mission-style coffee table, an octagonal end table like something out of Arabian Nights, and a medieval-looking bench by the door where Lana told everyone to leave their coats. Past the living room was a small dining room with a white Formica-and-chrome dinette set and an antique mirrored buffet, on top of which were clustered several bottles and cocktail glasses. Lana went through to the kitchen, announcing that she would bring back a bucket of ice, while Tommy disappeared down the hall, loosening her tie.