The Paragon Hotel Read online

  This will never do.

  Not for tonight. I need Nobody the infiltrator, Nobody the mannequin. Flipping my hands, I stretch the interlocking fingers.

  And just as Blossom did, I open my cosmetics case and set to work becoming someone else.

  * * *

  —

  We can’t see the moon sleeping high above the charcoal-sketched Portland streets. But her cloud-spun quilt glows diffusely. The air below is clear and full of gentle forest lullabies, and the garlands of electric lights hanging like holiday draperies along the avenues are beginning to thin. Several blocks with them, then one without. Two without, then two strung with glass fairy globes.

  Three without, the next by contrast shining like the deck of a yacht.

  “Oh, I see. We’re going to proverbial Brooklyn,” I mention.

  Blossom laughs, the full-throated one, which makes me smile.

  “Well.” She clears her throat, surprised at her own mirth. “My regular place of work isn’t precisely a conventional cabaret—actually, it’s the maddest I’ve yet warbled in, and for a San Francisco girl, you’ll agree that’s saying something.”

  “It’s the whole alphabet.”

  “What’s the oddest black market affair you’ve ever graced with your presence in New York?”

  Torso twinging, I reflect upon the Maritime Supper Club in the glimmering lap of the East River, sipping a champagne cocktail as a fellow with waxed mustaches ranted about an ambushed rum delivery. He was dead two days later. I remember sporting tails and trousers in the basement-level Cave of the Fallen Angels, smoking a cigarette as a bruiser bragged about having cut off the hand of one of Mr. Salvatici’s faro dealers. He didn’t last the night.

  “The Club Abbey,” I reply, citing a frolic with Sadie. “It was in a burned-out church with a bar set up where the pulpit had stood. Literally divine.”

  We reach the waterfront, businesses giving way to greasy spoons and fading billboards for Kellogg’s and Kodak. Both of us are losing the pep in our kick step. I’m about to suggest taking a cab and damn the expense when I remind myself that it’s hard enough for a Negro waving a ten-dollar bill to get one in Harlem.

  “Here we are,” Blossom announces.

  “An empty dock?” I question, baffled.

  “Oh, honey, it’s hardly empty.”

  As we step carefully down pine planks in our dancing shoes, I realize the quay is populated with rowboats—half a dozen of them, helmed by men with nostrils illuminated by their cigars. The nearest slaps gloved hands against his knees, rising.

  “Miss Fontaine!” he calls. “Give me the honor tonight—the missus is in a right snit and my bed’s been cold these four days running.”

  “I fear I can do nothing about the temperature of your linens, but if you promise not to splash on my gown this time, I shall leap into your dinghy like a fresh-caught trout,” she answers.

  I laugh, disbelieving. “What’s this, then, you perform in a lighthouse?”

  “Alice, that would be patently absurd. I perform on a sawdust barge.”

  “Not in that getup! Don’t fib, it’ll rot your teeth.”

  Humming, she slides our gloved hands together, and the ferryman helps us into the craft. It shudders happily, waves lapping. Blossom doesn’t let go of me when we seat ourselves, and I don’t want her to. She exchanges friendly insults with her escort about the effects of Willamette water on tulle as his boat lurches away from the splintering dock. I ought to be horridly fixated on the memory of other waterfront excursions, but instead I note that my companion is shivering as widening wounds in the cloud cover reveal gashes of stars, and hunch closer to her.

  “If you might do me the honor of keeping your lips buttoned regarding the exact goings-on at the Rose’s Thorn, I’d be ever so grateful.” She squeezes my hand. “Maximilian is a hoot and a half and well in my inner circle and therefore has come out to watch me at the lung work. The rest suppose I ply my ditties at chophouses, sit in with local ragtime acts. I do, of course. But this is my source of scratch, and I require an exquisitely steady amount. You’ll get nothing but kicks from it, but I’d be the one getting the kicks if the entire Paragon knew where I worked, you take my meaning.”

  “But that’s absurd—they run a speakeasy in the basement.”

  Blossom shrugs. “The sensibilities within our little family differ. Some know the power of music to gladden the spirit, see Prohibition for the two-faced profiteering scam it is, and even believe in the revered tradition of placing a bet and losing your money. Well and good. Those selfsame individuals are perfectly capable of considering bawdy houses hell pits, and the Rose’s Thorn does a brisk trade in bodily fluids even if I don’t work on the second floor.”

  “Who has your back to the wall?”

  “My altogether lovely Mavereen Meader approves of many things. She does not approve of others. Look.”

  She directs my attention to a cluster of lights. The spray and distance combined render them a blur, but we waltz our way across the waves, and soon I see it with exquisite clarity: a sawdust barge.

  “Holy Lord, you were serious!” I exclaim. “It’s just too grand for words.”

  “I thought you’d like it.” She smiles. “After all, you’re almost as sick a person as I am.”

  Squatting in the waters before us, the sawdust barge blazes as brightly as a carnival. On it hunkers a two-story structure strongly resembling the upper half of a paddlewheel cruiser. A few silhouettes lean against the railings, but the lights suggest that the interior of the Rose’s Thorn is better populated. With cooks and slingers of firewater, I surmise. Porters sweeping up cigarettes and lost bugle beads. Whores, eyes thick with sleep and crusted mascara, choosing which negligee to wear after they’ve risen from bed. It’s barely eight, though it’s considerably darker than Harlem will ever be. We’re early so that Blossom can prepare.

  “If liking this is sickness, may I never recover,” I pledge.

  “Sisters in disease, then.”

  “It’s ridiculous, though.”

  “I know. Swear not to say anything unless it’s to Max?”

  “I’d as soon shave my teeth, I assure you.”

  When we pull up to the scow, the boatman hands first Blossom and then me up a few broad steps, and we’ve arrived.

  “Best to your wife, and I suggest you pick up a vial of the jasmine scent at the C. Gee Wo Chinese Medicine Company on First Street,” Blossom advises him.

  “Nah. The way to my old lady’s heart is through the butcher shop,” he calls as he throws off the line.

  “Well, make the ensuing conjugal bliss worth her while, then!” Blossom laughs.

  “I always do, Miss Fontaine! Same offer stands for you, supposing you ever find yourself in a dry spell!”

  “That would require a stint in Africa,” I mutter, amused.

  “Yes, he is decidedly not my type,” she agrees, winking as she turns to enter the double-wide doors.

  I follow, curious. Whether she senses that I already know who her type is, that I’ve found one of her hidden puzzle pieces and pocketed it for safekeeping.

  “Welcome to the Rose’s Thorn, Alice James,” Blossom announces. “The very finest pit of iniquity in Portland.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Don’t be.”

  I toss her a smile. We stand on blinding poppy-red carpeting in a very long room lit by four giant chandeliers. The curtains are poison emerald, the effect absurdly Christmas-like. A colored waiter tying his apron hustles past, and the cluster of equally dark musicians on the raised dais pluck out splatters of notes. Between us and the stage are first a wide array of gambling tables where sharps lick their thumbs as they count lucre, then a fan of dining round tops, and finally—polish the skirts and hem the loafers—a simply gorgeous dance floor.

  “What a night we hav
e in store! I’ve heard rumor that the mayor of Vancouver may be in attendance. Take your coats, Miss Fontaine?”

  We turn to discover an awfully spherical fellow rubbing white-gloved paws. He’s positively nailing the dandy act, violet cravat and a monocle, no less, because why pay the dairyman when you can buy the whole cow. Beneath a set of mustaches that would put a midflight condor to shame, he beams like a sunrise at us.

  “May I present Miss Alice James.” Blossom shrugs off her cloak, revealing a vivid orange velvet stunner with rectangles of rhinestones bordering the severely straight waist and neckline. “Don’t corrupt her, Lucius, I’m quite gone on her as she is.”

  The maître d’, for so he must be if the world is as round as he is, dangles his lips over my hand. “Lucius Grint, Miss James, and entirely enchanted to make the acquaintance of any companion of the ravishing Miss Fontaine.”

  “Oh, I . . . mutual, I’m sure.”

  Slipping off my coat, I imagine smiling without actually pulling the trigger, ducking my head shyly. I reveal a beige frock done in draping chiffon scallops with tiny silver beads. It’s not the least noticeable, especially with my coloring; I might as well have worn dust. The Nobody I am this evening is a wallflower who thinks lipstick makes her look pasty, throws lavish parties for her engaged friends to hide the fact she hates them, ends up worshipping the tile after four champagnes. That sort.

  Blossom tugs me, a giraffe leading a gazelle to safety. “I had no idea! Your journalistically inclined suffragette was divine, but who on earth is this?”

  “I told you at the hotel. An Alice who suits.”

  “Even your gait is different. It’s half-fashionable, half-awkward, and entirely perfect.”

  “Just wait till you see my lady daredevil pilot. She’s to die for.”

  The hall we enter is papered in garish toile and smells of river rot. But Blossom’s dressing room, when the lights ignite, is charming. A merry menagerie of scarves tossed hither and thither, golden tassels draped over the makeup mirror, and an enormous birdcage containing what appears to be a dozen feather boas. I watch as Blossom pours a set of drinks, kicks hers down the gullet neatly, and hands me the second.

  This woman, when it comes to the dingbat juice, is efficiency personified.

  “A thousand apologies for abandoning you, but watching me warm up is neither amusing nor advisable.” Opening the birdcage, she selects a silver boa and tosses it about her shoulders as she leaves me. “You may do absolutely anything you like in the interim save finishing the scotch.”

  Soon, I can hear the strains of the band, notes wafting like streamers in the motionless air. I’m excited to see her perform live, haven’t been this jazzed over a concert since the Tobacco Club. Blossom said I could make free with the scotch within reason, so I polish off my glass and head for her dressing table.

  I have no intention of snooping whatsoever.

  It is in fact the furthest thing from my mind. Even though gravity is a constant force, as constant as my deviousness even, avalanches are still random events.

  When I pour another drink, a few drips fall on Blossom’s vanity, and I wince, because that is alcohol abuse. Fearful it’ll run onto the silk skirt, I cast about for a kerchief that doesn’t seem to be made of dragonfly wing or fairy dust. She’s messy enough to toss accessories about, but too professional to build up any significant layer of sponges or false eyelashes, and there aren’t any hand towels in sight.

  So I dive, pull the curtain aside, and begin opening drawers.

  Here’s some old curling tongs. Here’s tweezers, a kohl pencil sharpener, a small stack of letters. I don’t open the letters, wouldn’t dream of it, though I note that the topmost is from her friend Evelina Vaughan, and I think how sweet it is that they correspond as well as call on each other. Here’s a pot of facial cream.

  Here’s a medical pamphlet, apparently excerpted from a larger book by a local physician.

  The dressing chamber constricts. It seemed airy enough seconds ago despite the must, and now it’s stifling. My hands are steady as I reach for the brochure. But that’s only because my life is a veritable Sears Roebuck catalog of ghastly events.

  “Christ,” I whisper as I read A Guideline to the Dietary Concerns of Cancer Patients by Eli Grellet Jones.

  The question is often asked by a cancer patient, “Doctor, what shall I eat?” Some of our doctors, who have never tired of theorizing about the cause of cancer, have claimed that certain kinds of food caused cancer. For many years pork was supposed to cause this disease. Now it is a well-known fact that the Jews never eat pork; yet I have seen cases of cancer among that class of people. . . . It has been claimed that tomatoes cause cancer. . . . In New Jersey tomatoes are eaten in all ways the year round; yet there are many States that have more cancer victims than New Jersey.

  Finishing the brochure, I shut my eyes against its contents.

  This isn’t a puzzle piece I’m meant to know.

  And yet. No one ought to face an early grave all by their lonesome.

  I’m breathing too hard when I realize I still need something to clean Blossom’s counter. My next handle tug unsurprisingly reveals a framed portrait of Davy Lee. He’s a few years younger than the vanished boy, dressed in a sailor suit and smirking proudly. The painted backdrop is an ocean horizon with a beautifully pastel-colored city resting on a number of hills. A city that seems familiar, even though I’m certain I’ve never set peepers on it. Davy’s younger face is thinner—so his current baby pudge indicates he’s about to shoot up like a New York hotel. Supposing he’s allowed, that is, which is positively breaking the hearts of all and sundry.

  “Finally,” I breathe as I reveal a small face towel.

  Twenty minutes that feel like the oceans must have surely swallowed the Alps pass. When Blossom returns, eggplant cheekbones glistening with sweat, I’m as much myself again as Nobody ever is.

  “Well, the cords have been warmed,” she sighs. “Have you left any scotch? Please, Alice, for humanity, say that a drop remains.”

  “Plenty of them. How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, as well as necessary and not a bit more. One doesn’t like to overdo that sort of thing.”

  She powders her nose and fixes a stray hair or two and I can’t help it. I barely know the woman. But I’ve no one else left—so maybe that’s the reason my throat works and I tame the spasm with the last of the tipple in my glass.

  When we head into the hall, Blossom vanishes backstage. The place is rapidly filling up with all manner of types. I’m careful to look half-bored and half-expectant. Not someone who requires any social cheering. Swishing a gauzy handful of my muted dress, I find a lone armchair between the gaming tables and the dining room as the band takes their places. It’s a small combo—piano, bass, drum kit, saxophone. The scarlet curtain parts to reveal my friend in the footlights. Rhinestones aglitter, wrists loose, coral dress glowing brushfire bright.

  Blossom’s hip is cocked like a gun. She nods to the gentlemen and I recognize the song almost at once. It suits her, can’t help but suit her—“Someday Sweetheart” by John and Reb Spikes.

  Someday, sweetheart,

  You may be sorry

  For what you’ve done to my poor heart;

  And you may regret

  Those vows that you’ve broken,

  And the things you did to me

  That made us drift apart.

  Blossom’s singing voice is second soprano. It’s nothing like her carefully cultivated speech—here are purrs, growls, slides, floating moments when the only word I can think of is songbird. I’ve had enough tutoring to know where the bread is buttered, musically speaking, and my friend is slathering on the entire churn. I’m about to sally forth for a lap around the periphery when a fellow harrumphs in my ear and I make sure to jump subtly.

  “Apologies, Miss James. As Miss Fon
taine’s special friend, I wanted to be certain you were comfortable. Compliments of the Rose’s Thorn!”

  Lucius Grint proffers a glass of the bubble goods and I blink.

  “Gosh, that’s sweet. Thanks ever so.”

  “The pleasure is mine.” His moonlike face changes as he glances back at the entrance. “If you will excuse me? Don’t hesitate to call if I can be of the slightest assistance.”

  I use the upward motion of raising my glass to follow his line of vision and very nearly freeze.

  Officer Overton has changed out of his police duds. He’s in a light trench open over a slick suit, peering across the room at the performers. At my new friend Blossom.

  ◆ Fourteen ◆

  . . . A party of men started in pursuit of the fiend and instituted a search that proved successful this morning. . . . He groveled in the dust, and clasped the knees of his captors crying with all his might for them not to hang him. But the hand of justice had secured too strong a grip on the miscreant and all the pleading in the world would not have saved him from the death he so thoroughly deserved.

  —“REGARDING A MOB LYNCHING IN COOS BAY,” Oregon Journal, Portland, Oregon, September 18, 1902

  The first order of business is to vamoose, but one can’t decamp from a sawdust barge by slipping out the back. Overton is probably here merely to shake the trees for ripe plums. But Max isn’t around to provide muscle, and where Blossom is concerned, the policeman has considerably more on his mind than his hat. Meanwhile, I’m the wrong Nobody. It wouldn’t be impossible to play off Alice James the journalist exploring the local habitat. But my hair is unmistakably bobbed—I’ve put it into a messy halo of fat curls. The hapless debutante’s version of glamour, charming but with all the sophistication of a daisy chain.

  Draining the champagne, I drift toward the dance floor where three likely looking young swains lean against a railing. I tilt my head just so as one fellow’s eyes sweep the room, pretending to blush over catching his gaze.