Rare Objects

I searched the floor, the bedside table, then on the dresser. A watery blue beam of moonlight streamed in from the crack in the curtains. An old-fashioned gold pocket watch and a pair of cufflinks sat on top of it. Next to them was a photograph of a dark-haired woman holding a toddler. Both were smiling—big, wide, foolish grins. “To Daddy, with all our love” was written in a woman’s rounded hand across the bottom right-hand corner.

I wanted to throw up.

The guy in the bed snorted, coughed. I spotted my bag, jammed between the bedposts, and eased it out.

The room was quiet except for the snoring and a gentle ticking sound; a steady march of time.

I picked up the watch. Solid, smooth, and heavy, it had a pleasant, reassuring weight. My fingers closed round it; it fit neatly into the palm of my hand.

Three twenty-three a.m.

Plenty of time to get back to the boarding house and sleep it off before work tonight. Plenty of time to re-iron Nancy Rae’s dress before returning it. Maybe I’d buy a paper on my way home, get a head start on finding another job. That’s what I told myself. But more likely I’d just stay in my room, too ashamed to let the other girls see me coming in at dawn, lock the door, and lie in bed all afternoon, listening to the music of the landlady’s radio seeping through the floorboards. And I’d imagine how maybe soon things would be different; a man would come into the dance hall who was decent and kind or I’d stumble across a real job or maybe finally I’d just give up altogether, go home …

Tomorrow my luck would change. Tomorrow I’d try again.

Only I had to get through tonight first.

I don’t know why I took the watch. Maybe it was just an accident. Or maybe because of the stupid hopeful grin on the woman’s face in the picture, or because of the way the man in the bed smelled like mothballs and sour sweat. Maybe just because it gave me something to hold on to.

I don’t know why. But I did.

And I really wish I hadn’t.

Because after that, things got a lot worse.

New York City was the knife’s edge of opportunity—modern and progressive. A place where a girl could leave her past behind and get a job and a life that really mattered. Every day smart young women with bobbed hair and cherry-red lips poured out of the subway stations at eight in the morning to take over the world, and no one batted an eye. No one cared either when they ended the day sipping cocktails in underground clubs next to their male colleagues.

I told everyone that I went to New York City because I didn’t want to end up just another pair of hands in a typing pool. Sharp, efficient, able to anticipate every need before it arose, I saw myself rising through the ranks and becoming indispensable to a high-powered corporate executive. I wanted freedom and excitement; that’s what I said. And that was partly true, but it wasn’t the whole story.

I had just enough ability to make my hubris seem like healthy ambition. Even after the Crash hit, I’d always landed on my feet in Boston; even been able to take my pick of jobs. I thought I could make it. And for a short time, I suppose I did. I got a job at a brokerage firm working for the CEO and bought myself a fancy new hat to celebrate. But after six months the business went bankrupt and they found him underneath his desk, burning pages from his address book. After that I received an extended lesson in humility.

Turns out I wasn’t as uniquely talented as I thought, that the city was crammed to the gills with girls with the same credentials, and the landlady at the Nightingale wasn’t very patient when it came to rent. I ended up working as a taxi dancer at the place on Broadway, the Orpheum. They were short on redheads and prided themselves on catering to all tastes. So I got a job dancing with strangers.

I went from top of my typing class to bottom of the pecking order in the girls’ locker room. I rented a secondhand gown from one of the other dancers and borrowed a pair of slippers until I got paid. The other girls weren’t particularly nice or mean, just jaded and tired. And luckily for me, there wasn’t that much competition in the redhead section. You have to sit in groups round the edge of the dance floor, blondes with blondes, brunettes with brunettes, and the guys stroll around eyeing you up the way a woman looks at an apple at a fruit stall—trying to find one that’s not too bruised, not too soft. Some girls winked and flirted, others carried on chatting among themselves as if ignoring the customers sharpened their appetite. I used to close my eyes and try to drift inside the music—I didn’t like to see the look on the guys’ faces if they passed me by.

You think you’re lucky when you’re chosen, but of course now you’ve got a whole other world of difficulty ahead of you—keeping their hands where they belonged was a full-time job, and one that had to be done with a smile on your face. And it’s not easy to make small talk with a guy who doesn’t speak any English, or who’s trying to hustle you for a free date. But every misfit in the city is your sweetheart for the next three minutes—the gropers and the bullies, the small-town Casanovas; the shy boys, the physically deformed, foreigners fresh off the boat; older men, looking for company. You have to charm them while letting them know you’re not for sale. Only you are, really.

Of course I didn’t tell Ma where I’d landed. I made up a story about being a private secretary to an eccentric millionaire—Mr. Halliday. I gave him odd habits and a demanding personality. That explained away the late nights and why I was never at the boarding house when she called. And also why I never came home.

After all, it was only meant to be temporary. But it turns out there’s a lot of money to be made as a taxi dancer—almost forty dollars a week sometimes. And I pretty much had the redhead market cornered after about a month. I found that if I had a few shots while I was getting ready and then kept myself topped up through the night, it was just about bearable. I wasn’t the only girl with a bottle in her locker—most of us had something. And it wasn’t like we went out of our way to hide it either. The management knew the score and never bothered anyone unless a girl was stupid about it and got sloppy or sick.

Pretty soon a few of us started going out after the dance hall closed, just to finish up the night. That’s when the clubs got really interesting. Sometimes I’d make it back to the boarding house and sometimes I wouldn’t. It wasn’t something I was proud of. Sleeping all day, working all night, in a city like New York gets lonely.

But then I took the watch.

Turns out that guy was really fond of that watch; his father had given it to him, and his father before that. Turns out too that he remembered where I worked and showed up the next night hell-bent on getting it back.

By that time, I didn’t even remember I’d taken it. But he found it in my coat pocket, so there was no way I could talk my way out of it. He started making a scene, right there in the middle of the dance floor, shouting that I was a thief and a liar, and then the management had no choice but to let me go.

Only that wasn’t enough for him. He figured I still owed him something. And when I came out of the back entrance of the building after cleaning out my locker, he was waiting there to get it.

You have to give it to New Yorkers—they’re pragmatic people. They don’t get involved unless they have to. They can turn a blind eye, ear, or anything else you want to name. When he was done, he left me lying in the alleyway. Somehow I managed to get up, button my coat over my torn dress, and walk twenty-three blocks back to the Nightingale.

Then I ran a bath, poured another drink, and took a razor blade with me into the bathroom.

That’s how I ended up at the Binghamton State Hospital, otherwise known as the loony bin.

BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1932 (#ulink_0aede38d-29c0-50fb-bc21-45ad1870877b)

In the end, Ma won; I found myself standing in the empty outer office of the Belmont Placement Agency in Dewey Square, wearing the gray suit. I’d lost weight; the jacket sagged around my bust like a deflated tweed balloon. I tried to cover it up with my scarf, but it was hopeless.

I wondered where everyone was. I’d known the woman who ran the agency, Maude Williams, since I began secretarial school. As a star student, I was singled out as early recruitment material, and she gave me the pick of any position I wanted. It wasn’t long ago I’d been sitting across from her, turning down extra pay because I couldn’t wait to get out of Boston. But things had changed. There was a time when Maude had a receptionist of her own; when these dingy little rooms were crammed with girls, ready to go anywhere Maude sent them. Now I was the only one there.

On the way the trolley had passed by Boylston Street, near the Common. Crowds of homeless sat huddled around campfires in a makeshift shantytown. There’d been outrage and shock over their invasion before I left, but now there were twice as many. They had become invisible in their poverty, sleeping on cardboard boxes in doorways, selling apples on street corners. It wasn’t quite as bad as New York and the sprawling Hooverville that had taken over Central Park, but still it sent a chill up my spine.

In the North End, too, there were things I hadn’t seen before—big signs hung from the front gates of the shoe factory and the railroad yard: “Jobless Men Keep Walking—We Can’t Feed Our Own.” And on Hanover Street this morning, the corner was crowded with men, maybe fifty or sixty. They were all waiting for the construction trucks to drive past on their way to the building sites in the city, looking for day workers. When they stopped, all hell broke loose—swarms of bodies engulfed them, shouting, shoving, clambering aboard. The foreman had to push them down like animals, banging on the side of the truck to start moving again.

Please God that didn’t happen to me.

I jammed my hands into my pockets.

“Ouch!” Something sharp stabbed my palm, and I pulled out a bent safety pin. Another one of Ma’s superstitions: “A crooked pin in the pocket brings good luck.”

A minute later I was sitting across from Maude—short and solid, somewhere in her late fifties, a hard smear of red lipstick highlighting her thin lips and thick black glasses framing her eyes. Straight-talking and unflappable, Maude was the first and often only port of call for anyone looking for a truly professional secretary. Or at least that’s the way it used to be.

“Jesus, kid!” She took a hard drag on her cigarette and leaned back in her desk chair. “I never thought I’d see you again! What are you doing back?”

“Guess I’m not cut out for the big city after all,” I said.

She nodded sagely. “Not many people are. Though I have to say, you look a bit, well, underfed. And I can’t say I like that hairstyle on you.”

“I’ll never go to that hair dresser again!” I laughed, automatically running my hand through the short curls. “It’ll grow back,” I reassured her. “Faster than you think.”

“Have you been sick or something?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Maybe I was a little homesick.”

“Perhaps you should take it easy. Rest up. Why not come see me in another week?”

It wasn’t like her to worry about anyone’s health.

“I’m right as rain. So”—I sat forward, gave her a smile full of history and complicity—“what have you got for me?”

Maude flicked a bit of ash into a mug, where it fizzled in the remains of her cold coffee. “Nothing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t got anything for anyone, kid. Don’t you read the papers? The whole country’s out of work.”