time declining offers of more. More than once he’d wanted to grab her and haul her out of the door. The only thing that had stopped him was her. She’d handled herself well. That left him in a quandary. If he did haul her out of here and she came back, she’d get the wrath of Mel, the owner. If he didn’t, there would soon be a man she couldn’t fend off. Or worse.
“No.” She nodded toward his table. “You still have a drink, and I don’t need you or anyone else doing me any favors.”
“It’s not a favor.” He picked up a drink and downed it, nearly choking at the rotgut whiskey. If it hadn’t been so watered down, he wouldn’t have been able to swallow it. “I’m thirsty,” he said despite his burning throat.
“You’re...” She shook her head.
She thought he was crazy. He might be. “I’m Walter Russell,” he said. “Who are you?”
She huffed out a tired-sounding sigh. “It doesn’t matter. Take your money and leave.”
He took another drink off her tray. “Not until you tell me your name.”
She glanced around and then sidestepped to the table he’d sat at all night. There, she lifted the final four drinks off her tray and set them on the table. Tucking his bill beneath her ashtray, she nodded. “Enjoy your drinks, Mr. Russell.”
Walter grasped her arm, but the bartender, with yet another cigarette hanging out of his mouth, cleared his throat. The glare the man gave Walter said he’d be in charge of anything that happened from here on out.
That could include her leaving with him, for a price, Walter understood that. He also understood it wouldn’t be her choice. But she’d be expected to do whatever he wanted or she’d lose her job.
She, however, probably did not understand that.
Walter let that settle for a moment before he set the drink in his hand on the table and then pulled a calling card out of his suit pocket and laid it on her tray. He gave her and the bartender a nod before he turned about and left.
Every step got harder and harder to take, and by the time he was at the door, he was ripped right down the middle. She wasn’t his problem, but she had no idea what she’d gotten herself into.
He did, and would do something about it.
Shirley lay on the lumpy cot in the room she shared with six other cigarette girls and stared at the calling card. It was shiny, like the pages of a magazine, but harder, stiff and small, just a few inches long and a couple inches wide. And the writing on it was gold.
Gold.
She’d never seen a calling card before, but had heard about them. The other girls had said she better not let Mel learn about it. He was the owner of CB’s and would be mad because when a man gives you a calling card, he wants to see you outside of the basement.
That wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t want to see Walter Russell again. Not inside or outside of the basement.
Under his name it said The Russell Firm. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but there was also an address and a phone number on the card. A phone was very expensive. Not even the Swaggerts could afford one. They sure as heck didn’t have calling cards, either.
One of the other girls, Alice, rolled over, and Shirley quickly tucked the card beneath the one and only cover on the bed, a scratchy wool blanket.
Alice didn’t open her eyes, but she did pull her blanket over her head to block the light shining in through the window.
It was the middle of the night, but the city, so full of lights, was never dark. The building next door had a big cigarette billboard on top of it, and the lights on the billboard lit up the room all night as brightly as the sun did all day.
Alice had been tricked into working at Cartwright’s, too; so had Rita and all the other girls sleeping on the cots.
Shirley pulled her arm out from under the blanket and stared at the calling card again. It was him. The same man who’d almost run her over. She’d felt as if he had run her over tonight when she’d recognized him sitting at the table with a man that was as skinny as a match. The second man at the table not only had hair the color of a carrot, but he looked like one, too. A big one. Wide at the top and skinny on the bottom.
Walter wasn’t skinny or fat. Just somewhere right smack in the middle. He was nicer to look at than the other two, too. Actually, he was nicer to look at than any other man in the room. Any other man she’d met since arriving in California. Mayhap in her whole life.
His eyes. There was something about them that made it hard to look away from him. It was as if they were sad or lonely. No—lost. That’s what they looked like. Like he was lost.
She felt that way herself. Lost. With nowhere to go. All the fancy talking Roy Harrison had done turned out to be nothing but baloney. He’d hoodwinked her, that’s what he’d done. It hadn’t taken long to figure that out, but it had been too late.
Oh, he’d gotten her an audition where she’d sung her heart out, and had jumped with joy when she’d been given the job. Roy had even given her a fancy dress to wear and had shown her an apartment. Not this one. That one had been a real apartment. With nice furniture and a bathroom complete with tub, right next to the kitchen with a stove and refrigerator. This one, the one she was staying in, only had two rooms, and both of those rooms had nothing but cots in them. This apartment dang near packed in as many people as the Swaggerts’ bunkhouse had during harvest time.
After all that, him showing her that apartment, giving her that dress and then the audition where she’d sung her heart out, Roy had left. She’d spent that first night in that fancy apartment, dreaming about the days to come. Believing her dream had finally come true, until morning.
That’s when she’d met Stella.
Stella took away the dress, gave her the skimpy red dress and hideous white tray, showed her this apartment and then led her downstairs to work.
Shirley wasn’t about to schlep drinks, and had said so. Also said she was here to sing, and had headed for the door.
Stella said she could leave right after paying the breach of contract amount.
Shirley’s stomach had sunk all over again. She had signed a contract, and evidently hadn’t read it closely enough because she hadn’t known about a breach of contract, nor had she known the amount of money that had been listed. That any amount had been listed. She’d had nowhere near that amount in her purse. Not then or now. Weeks later.
Her options had been to work it off or go to jail.
Jail.
So here she was, working off a debt that grew rather than shrank each day.
Some of the other girls said she had a good chance of being discovered here. Rita claimed lots of famous people came to the basement. Stars and producers, radio jockeys and singers. She took that to heart the first night, but soon thereafter figured out no one visiting the basement was looking for a singer.
