Even rogues need a place to drink and relax, like the Blue Moon Club in the suspenseful story that follows, although being in a place where rogues drink and relax, you’d be well-advised to watch your back—even if you’re a rogue yourself.
ROARING TWENTIES
Carrie Vaughn
The good thing about Blue Moon is that it’s invisible, so it never gets raided. Bad thing is, being invisible makes it hard to find for the rest of us. You have to have a little magic of your own, which Madame M does, and finding places that aren’t there is never much of a problem for her.
Madame M has the car drop us off at the corner of Fifth and Pine, and she sends the driver away. I follow her down a damp sidewalk along brick buildings. It’s early enough that the streets are crowded, cars and people jammed up on their way to somewhere else, no one much looking around. A few wheezing horns honk, and the orange from the streetlights make polished steel and frowning faces seem like they’re lit with embers. I shrug my mink more firmly over my shoulders. Madame M’s has slipped down to her elbows, showing off the smooth skin of her back. We look like sisters, walking side by side, in step.
The alley she turns down looks like any other alley, and that passage leads to another, until we’re alone with the trash cans and a yowling cat, under iron fire escapes and a sky threatening rain. She knocks on a solid brick wall, blocks from any door or window, and I’m not surprised when a slot opens at head height. She leans in to whisper a word, and the door opens. Either a door painted to look like bricks or the wall itself swinging out; I can’t tell and it doesn’t really matter.
The music of a three-piece combo playing jazz drifts in from down the hall, and it sounds like heaven.
The doorman, a gorilla of a guy in a brown suit that must be tailored to fit those shoulders, looks us over and nods his approval. He’s got a little something else, extra fur around the collar, on his hands and tufting off his ears. When he smiles, he shows fang, and his eyes glint golden. He’s some kind of thing, far be it from me to guess what. I walk on by without meeting his gaze. A coat check girl who seems normal enough, but who knows, takes our furs, and I tip her well. A clean-cut, scrubbed, and polished waiter guides us into the club proper. There’s a table just opened up, of course, a table always opens up for Madame M. I order soda water for us both, and the waiter looks at me funny because why come to a place like this if you’re not into booze? The booze here is good, top-shelf, smuggled in, not cooked up in some unsavory backwoods tub. Maybe later, I tell him, and he scurries off.
We’re near the dance floor, in the middle of everything, and the place is full. The band is a white guy on piano, and two black guys on bass and drums, and a microphone stand means someone might sing later, but for now they’re playing something with a bit of a kick, and couples are dancing on a tiny floor down front. At first glance it’s a normal crowd on a normal night, flappers and fine women in evening gowns, men in suits and even a few tuxes. Looking closer I see the odd fang and claw, the glimmer of a fae wing, a bit of horn under slicked-back hair, other bits and pieces I might guess at, but I’d likely be wrong. These folk aren’t drawing attention to themselves, so I won’t either, because then they might start looking too closely at me and Madame M.
Doorways lead to back rooms where you can find cards and craps and whatever else you might fancy. One doorway is covered by a shimmering beaded curtain, and through them and the cigarette-smoke haze beyond I can just make out a grand lady holding court at a sofa and coffee table, surrounded by men in suits and women dolled up like paintings. The scene is vague, as if I’m seeing it through etched glass.
Madame M wants to talk to Gigi, the woman behind the beaded curtain, who runs the place, and I think it’s a bad idea, but I’m not going to argue because M’s smarter about these things than I am. The back-and-forth and the deals, the secrets and the swindles. The things I’m smart about: watching her back and seeing trouble a minute before it happens.
It’s just the two of us in a den where the gamblers and bootleggers are the least of it. There are people here who’ll drink your blood dry if you let them, others who’ll tear out your throat, and a few who’ll buy your soul, even knowing how little some souls around here are worth. M and I do all right, her tricks and my eyes keeping us safe. A couple of molls out on the town, that’s what we look like, in our colored silk and fringe, bare shoulders and knees, dresses that swish and show off our hips when we kick our heels and shimmy our legs. Sequins and feathers over bobbed hair. They think we’re easy prey, and they’ll be wrong.
The drinks arrive more quickly than I expect because I think the waiter is on the other side of the room taking someone else’s order. But no, he’s right here, polished as ever, smiling as he transfers glasses from tray to table. The music plays on, and M sips.
“Something bad’s coming,” she murmurs.
I’m looking out. A card game’s going in the corner. Nearby, a gangster’s foot soldier is trying to impress his girl, both of them leaning over their tiny round table while he shows her the gold band on his watch. Her lips are smiling, but her eyes are hungry. She’s trying to get something out of him. A dozen small intrigues are brewing. Mostly, though, people are here to have a good time, to drink some good booze and revel in the feeling of getting away with something bad.
“Raid?” I answer. “A takeover? Is Rocco finally moving in on Margolis?” Anthony Margolis is the one presiding over the card game. He’s here playing to show he isn’t worried about Rocco or anyone else.
“No, this is bigger. Everything goes to hell.”
With her I can’t tell if that’s a metaphor. “This one of your dreams?”
“Visions,” she says. Takes a sip, leaves a print of red lipstick on the glass.
“The future?”
“It is.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Same as always: Keep your eyes open and invest in liquor.”
She’s thinking out loud, and it makes me nervous. More nervous. I nod to the beaded curtain. “She’s gotta know you’re here.”
“She’s going to make me ask,” M says.
“That’s what we’re here for, yeah?”
“Let’s just pretend like we’re here for a good time.” She leans back, stretching through her back, and puts one arm over the back of my chair. I draw a cigarette out of my clutch, light it, offer it to her. Her gloved and jeweled hand takes it, she draws a long breath from it and lets out a cloud of smoke, her mouth open and lazy. Her foot taps along with the music.
Her pretending to have a good time looks like the real thing. She could make a living doing anything she put her mind to, but she’s ended up in a place like this for a reason. So have I.
The place smells of alcohol and sawdust. Nothing is off in the rhythm, waiters and drinks flowing from bar to tables and back, a cigarette girl making the rounds. The card game in the corner is accompanied by a lot of nervous laughter, men pretending like the grand they just lost doesn’t matter while sweat drips onto their collars. If any trouble is going to happen, it’ll come from them, one of the jokers taking issue with another, then tipping over the table and starting a fistfight. The gorilla by the door would have made them leave their guns, so that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. M and I can take cover easy enough from a fistfight. Bullets, not so much. Being invisible can’t always save you from getting shot in a cross fire.