“I don’t feel good,” Ethan croaked, in the fakest voice imaginable.
“What’s going on?” It was Dad, frowning in the doorway. Of course he’d show up right as Ethan was laying on the drama. “Abby? What are you doing here?”
His suit jacket was rumpled. He’d probably been wearing it since he got up that morning in New York. He would’ve worn it the entire train ride back to Union Station, and the cab ride to his office after that, and then through all his meetings or lunches or whatever it was he did all day. Neither of their parents ever went home until it was absolutely unavoidable.
Behind them, Ethan moaned again.
“Is Ethan sick?” Dad’s face shifted from confusion to worry. For a second, Abby was jealous she’d never thought to try fake moaning. “I thought they said he got in trouble with his teacher.”
“You can go on in, Mr. Zimet,” Ms. Jackson said, emerging from the back room. She didn’t seem particularly worried. She’d probably heard plenty of fake moans in her time. “Your son’s in with Mr. Geis. He was feeling fine before.”
“All right.” Dad turned back to Abby, as though waiting for her to solve this puzzle for him.
“He wants Mom,” she whispered, as patiently as she could manage. “He thinks if he’s sick you’ll both come, the way you did when he had that appendix thing. You should probably get Mom on the phone. If he hears both your voices he might calm down.”
“Abby, it isn’t as simple as...” Dad glanced toward the office. “Wait for us out here and we’ll all go home together, all right?”
“Oh, um...” Her eyes darted up, down, anywhere but at him. As much as she wanted her parents to act like parents again, the thought of actually being alone with her dad and her brother for any amount of time was excruciating. “I’ve gotta go. I have a big project for, uh, French...”
But Abby couldn’t think of anything more to say about her fictional French project, so she darted under Dad’s arm and out of the office.
She was halfway down the hall before she realized she was running. Dad wouldn’t come after her, though, not with Ethan and Mr. Geis waiting.
She swung around a corner into the huge, vacant main stairwell, listening out for footsteps in the hall behind her. Nothing came.
Abby climbed up one floor, and then another. The third floor looked empty. Surely Dad wouldn’t think to look for her up here. When they got out of their meeting he’d assume she’d already gone home, and he’d take Ethan somewhere to give him a talking-to.
She opened her laptop with shaky hands, though she wasn’t sure why—it wasn’t as if she could focus enough to do homework right now.
That was when Abby noticed the ebook sitting on her desktop, staring at her. Women of the Twilight Realm. Without pausing to think, she clicked it open. She was still on the third chapter, and the point of view had switched from Elaine to another character.
The new girl was magnificent.
She was young, certainly—no more than twenty or so. Her hand-stitched clothes marked her as a stranger to New York. She was a stranger to bars like Mitch’s Corner, too, Paula was sure of it. She’d seen enough first-timers to know the mix of apprehension and anticipation they always carried, even when they were doing their best to look tough. Before tonight, the pretty, little blond girl hovering by the jukebox with an unlit cigarette clamped between her fingers had never set foot in a queer bar.
She’d thought about it, though—Paula was certain of that much, too. There was something about the steely set of the new girl’s hips, and the way every so often she cast her eyes from side to side, watching the bar’s patrons as they danced and drank and talked. Yes, the girl might be new, but she wasn’t a total innocent.
Paula ordered a beer and a martini, and then, holding the drinks tight, sauntered over beside the new girl to peer down at the jukebox. The blond didn’t look up.
“The songs in that thing are no good,” Paula said, lifting the martini glass. “Old Max is so stingy he probably hasn’t bought a new record since the Hoover years.”
The blond met Paula’s eyes for a moment, then shifted her gaze back to her own white schoolgirl blouse.
Paula smiled. The new girl’s nerves only made her look prettier.
“I suppose I wasn’t really looking for a good song.” The girl took the offered martini and drained half of it in one gulp. “I only hoped that if I waited long enough, someone interesting might come over and talk to me.”
Paula didn’t bother trying to conceal her reaction. She laughed, long and loud, and let herself relax a little. “I hope I fit the bill.”
The girl appraised Paula, taking in her height, her faded brown slacks, the full glass of beer sweating in her hand.
“Interesting, yes.” The girl nodded. “So far. But if I’m going to make a full assessment, I think we’ll need to dance.”
Paula smiled. If she was going to keep up with this one, she’d need to be quick. She took both drinks and set them on the little table next to the jukebox, then looped her arm around the girl’s back and steered her toward the dance floor.
“You got a name, new girl?” she asked, teasing, as they started to dance.
“Elaine.”
“It’s a pleasure, Elaine. I’m Paula.”
“Well, Paula, what do the girls do for fun in this city when they’re not sipping martinis and dancing to old records here in Mitch’s Corner?”
Paula smiled again, winding her arm around Elaine’s back to pull her in close. “I can only speak for myself, Elaine, but I like to hit the movies.”
“Alone?”
“If I have to. But I’ve found everything looks better when there’s a pretty girl by your side.”
Abby tilted her chin to the ceiling. In spite of herself, a grin crept onto her face.
Meet-cutes were overdone, but Abby had always loved those old-fashioned romance novels the library had on spinner racks. The formulaic romantic comedies you could get on Netflix, too. They were all so predictable. Maybe that was why it was so delightful to lose herself in them.
She could recite the plot template by heart. A woman and (usually) a man met, traded witty banter and fell in love. There was always some stupid obstacle to them living happily ever after—one of them was a cattle rancher and the other one was a vegetarian, or one was a workaholic and the other was a manic pixie dream girl, or whatever—but they figured out how to overcome it and learned important lessons along the way. Then they did live happily ever after, without ever encountering a single problem for the rest of their lives.
It was all ridiculous and silly and unrealistic. Abby knew that. She’d only ever been in love with one person, but she still knew fantasy when she saw it.
Love didn’t conquer all. Whatever else was going on in the lives of Paula and Elaine outside that smoky bar in 1956 wasn’t going to stop just because the two of them had danced and bantered.
But God, it would be fucking wonderful if it did.
Abby settled down with her back against the wall and clicked through to the next page. She put in her headphones so she wouldn’t hear anything from downstairs and focused on the screen in front of her.
It wouldn’t be so bad to lose herself again.