I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

2 Emmy Jane

Emmy Jane followed the man in the dirty white shirt through the door. He was already moving down the hallway and she hurried after him, leaving the bouncer to glower and lock up the door behind them. Her arms ached at the weight of the bag but she moved quickly, buoyed up with a sense of elation. She was inside a real Delta Mouth nightclub! Soon she would be on the stage, and when she came through the door the bouncer would smile and bow.

She had only a brief glance of the hall, for it was dimly lit. There was the impression of damask wallpaper, a black pattern over a dusky mauve. A narrow table painted black and set against the wall. Brass sconces holding up the lamps. Then the man pushed open a door and led her down a different hall. This was narrower, with neither carpet nor wallpaper, and ended in another door. For a moment, panic closed up her throat. What was she doing, following a stranger into a strange place? Who would hear if she screamed, and would they care? But she kept her limbs moving her body forward and concentrated on breathing. Breath in as long as she could, breath out as long as she could sustain a puff of air escaping her lips. Breath was the key to voice; she could not stop breathing.

Behind the door, she saw that her fears were unfounded. It was nothing more sinister than a kitchen. A large kitchen, with long wooden tables well scarred by use and a hot iron stove in one corner. Steaming loaves of bread stood in a row on one of the tables and a woman was busy tapping more loaves out of their blackened pans and into place on the table.

Emmy Jane realized she was probably gawking, one of the sins her mother had often scolded her for, and settled her eyes on the table of bread. No, then they would think that she was hungry. She looked at the stove instead as the woman straightened up and dropped the dusty cloth she had been using to protect her hands onto the table.

“Hello Cal,” the woman said. “You look more like yourself.”

The man—so he was Cal—nodded. “Bread looks good.”

She snorted. “It’s better than good; it’s divine.” She turned back to the oven and pushed the door shut with her foot. “Did you go to Hotel di Ferello? The Vincent still waiting for me?”

“Of course.”

The woman made another dismissive noise. She was as solidly built as the man at the door, and the noise reminded Emmy Jane of an angry bull. But her face was kind, and the few people she’d spoken with on the boat coming down the river had said that Minnie’s was a decent establishment, a real nightclub and not a house of ill repute. Not a whorehouse, they meant, but they wouldn’t say it to a girl.

Cal waved her forward. “This is Emmy Jane,” he said.

“Hello,” she said.

“This is the one Harlan was trying to send away from the door earlier?”

Emmy Jane’s cheeks reddened but she tried to keep a friendly smile on her face. “I’ve come to sing.”

“She’ll start in the kitchen and see how she likes life in Delta Mouth,” Cal said.

Emmy Jane bit her lip. They were letting her stay, after all.

The woman was looking at her with an appraising eye. “My name is Helen,” she said.

“And she’s queen of the kitchen,” Cal said. For the first time, a slight smile turned up his lips and his lined face lifted. To Helen, he said “Give her a bit of bread. And give me some, too, so I remember what Vincent is missing.”

Helen sliced the bread and fetched a pot of butter. It melted immediately as it touched the still steaming bread. Emmy Jane set her bag on the floor and took the piece of bread that Helen held out to her. She took a small bite even though her stomach was crawling with emptiness. She could skip a few meals, she’d told herself as she walked past shops, cafes and fruit carts by the docks in the early morning. She’d expected it might be a few days to find a place in the city and to find the few places that she’d been recommended by fellow passengers on the boat down the river. And here she was at the first one on her short list. It had been the safest sounding option, and maybe even had another Ibai girl. She hadn’t expected the dirty shirt and scuffed shoes, but if this was Cal, then they had said he was more honest than most, and did not press the chorus girls in Minnie’s to earn extra cash by selling their bodies.