Authors: Tracey Ward
The night Alice died was the longest of my life. Tommy eventually called the cops and when they showed up they had an entire team with them. Our tiny apartment was filled to bursting with detectives, doctors, and a few nosy neighbors. Alice was photographed, examined, and eventually carted off to the city morgue. There would be no autopsy. Based on the accounts of her state before her death, the cops were pretty convinced it was an accidental suicide. She got too drunk, took too much sleep syrup, and died almost instantly. Case closed.
By the time they all left Lucy, Rosaline, and I alone, the sun was already up. Lucy had to get to work in a couple of hours, something I actually envied. I was dying to be busy, to be thinking about something other than what happened to my friend, but it wasn’t in the cards. For me or for Rosaline. We couldn’t sleep, no matter how tired we were, and there was cleaning up to be done. The doctor had taken Alice’s body but he’d left her mess. It was up to us to clean up the urine, feces, and vomit that now saturated that small bed and dripped down onto the floor underneath, staining the dark, worn wood.
We opened all the windows despite the cold and worked bundled up in our heaviest coats. We got some rubber gloves from our neighbors, promising never to return them, and took the mattress down to the ally. I didn’t hesitate to throw some old lamp oil on it, strike a match, and light it on fire. As the flames licked it greedily, snapping and popping as it heated the moisture in the center and sizzled it into the winter air, Rosaline and I watched on with our hands stuffed in our pockets and our shoulders pressed close together. We waited until it burned out, making sure it took nothing else with it, then we marched wordlessly on numb feet back upstairs to the dark apartment.
After we cleaned up the room and ourselves, we turned on the radio and sat down on the couch together. Neither one of us wanted to eat a thing so we took turns laying our heads on each other’s shoulders and drifting in and out of sleep. That’s how we stayed all day until Lucy came home and we knew it was time to get ready for work.
Through the entire day, neither of us said a single word to each other.
Now here I am at the club and I’m still not speaking to anyone. Everyone must know what happened, the news traveling quickly along the gangster grapevine, because no one says a word about Alice being missing. No one seems to care Rosaline and I are dead on our feet either. Even Clara, that wretched little bitch, is leaving me alone. I almost wish she’d start with me so I can lay into her. So I have somewhere to go with all the emotions I’m feeling.
I’m angry, sad, confused, and afraid. I don’t even know where to begin, so I do what I’ve done for the last six years; I stomp it all down until it can’t touch me anymore. I ignore it. I stow it away and I try my hardest not to let it bubble up and smother me where I stand.
As I apply my makeup, I realize that despite being too tired to think straight, I don’t have a headache yet. I’ve been here for hours but my head feels fine. I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened. Before Drew left, I know that.
Just the thought of him brings an ache to my chest that I can’t understand. One that feels strange and hollow yet full of things I haven’t felt in years. I wish he was there. I wish I could tell him what happened and have him try to cheer me up in that horrible, awful way of his. I want to look into his steady, steely eyes and pull strength from them.
And yes, a part of me wants to curl up against his chest, bury my face in his shoulder where I can smell the strange, intoxicating scent of him, and hide from the world if only for a moment.
I stare at the brown bottle the doc gave me. I wonder if I need to take it or if I can skip it. Can I avoid taking it all together? I’ve seen people get hooked on the stuff the same way some get hooked on the hooch. I’ve never had a problem with that before, but then I’ve never taken laudanum either. I hear it makes you loopy. Sleepy and stupid, sloppy. I can’t be that way here. Not surrounded by secrets, lies and—
“Are you ready?” Tommy asks quietly from the door.
I look at him in the mirror on my vanity and I’m reminded of the night I first met Drew. Tommy is standing exactly the same; hands in his pockets, coat flared out over his perfect body, dark, handsome eyes staring into mine through the glass. It’s like looking into an alternate world or seeing into the past through the mirror. If I could go back and do it again, would I step through? Would I bring Alice back and start over with Drew? Would I wait at that table for him and get that taste of something I can’t understand but crave in my gut, or would I save myself the trouble and tell him to beat it? I only got a small sip of him, just a sample of something strange and new, but I can’t forget it and I can’t deny it. I glance at the bottle again thinking maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe I have been hooked on something before.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Did you take the laudanum?” he asks, following my gaze.
“No. I don’t have a headache.”
Tommy strides into the room and uncorks the bottle deftly. He pours a small amount into a glass of gin I haven’t touched and pushes it in front of me.
“Down it,” he commands.
I look up at him with as much fire as I can muster. “I said I don’t have a headache. I don’t need it.”
“You also heard the doc when he said the lights could be what’s givin’ you the headache. Drink it.”
Too tired to fight and too sure he’s right, I take up the glass and swallow it all. The gin and tonic mixed with the laudanum is a terrible combination and I have to will my stomach to keep the liquid down. But I finish it all, slam the glass on the table, and glare up at Tommy.
To my surprise he grins down at me, his face almost affectionate. Soft. He takes up the glass then leans down to lay a gentle kiss on my forehead. “Good girl,” he whispers, his breath on my skin making me shiver.
That night I don’t suffer a single pain and I go to sleep without trouble.
Alice’s body is transported back to Idaho. Her parents ended up buying her a train ticket in the end, just like she said. There’s no funeral here, no mourning really. She was here one day and then she isn’t. Like magic. Empty, hollow smoke and mirrors.
Every night that I work, Tommy comes into my dressing room and makes sure I take the laudanum. Some nights I have a headache and an unsteady stomach already, some nights I feel fine. Some nights are worse than others, some nights I have no trouble at all. But every night without fail I take my medicine under Tommy’s watchful eye. I react to it pretty well, though I do feel a little loopy sometimes. I get tired after I take it and I feel drunk. On the second week, just days before Christmas, I stop drinking hooch altogether. The laudanum leaves me feeling strange enough. I don’t need the extra push. Tommy continues to be surprisingly sweet to me about the entire thing. He’s there watching closely when I take my medicine and he’s there to help me stumble off the stage on the nights when it hits me harder than others. He’s also there when I’m hurting from the headaches or the loss of my friend, and I’ve taken to leaning on him for support, something I’ve never done with any man.
And, of course, there are nights when the laudanum loosens me up and his bourbon makes his hands bold, and the lines we’ve drawn over the years become blurry and indistinct.
“Your skin is like satin,” he mumbles against my bare shoulder.
We’re sitting on the couch in his office after everyone has gone home. I wanted to lie down for a moment before he took me home but one thing led to another and now I’m straddling his lap with my skirt around my waist and the shoulders pushed aside to expose my naked skin. His hands are holding onto my hips, grinding me into him in a steady rhythm that’s driving me crazy. I can feel his hardness through his pants, straining to get out. To get inside me.
I run my hand down his exposed chest, across his taught muscles and the thin trail of amber hair peppered over his skin until I reach his belt. He bites down on my lip as I slowly undo the buckle. Then the button. Then as the zipper comes down he buries his face in my neck, nipping at the skin and sucking hard. Hard enough to mark me, but I don’t care. I take him in my palm and slowly caress the length of him, enjoying how hot he feels. How heavily he fills my hand.
“Baby, yes,” he groans, letting his head fall back against the couch.
He looks at me with his hard eyes and they hold me steady. They pin me in place and I watch his face contort with pleasure as I rub him up and down, as his breathing changes, becoming spotty and hiccupping in his throat.
“Tell me no, Adrian,” he growls, looking in my eyes. “Tell me no and walk away like you always do or I’m not stoppin’ this. Not this time.”
I stare down at him, lost in a fog of pain, laudanum, lust, and loneliness. I want him but I don’t. Not really. I feel my body respond to him every time he touches me, but I’m not there. I’m not in it, not in my heart or my head. But I want something, I want someone, and it’s like the Cotton Clubs. It’s like Cicero and New York. I want what I want, and I have what I have, and maybe it’s time I played the cards I’m being dealt instead of reaching for the deck trying to steal all the aces.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper shakily.
He groans as he descends upon my skin.
“You are so damn beautiful,” he whispers against my neck. He reaches my ear and runs his tongue along the outside. When he dips the wet tip inside, I shiver against him.
“Shut up and do it already,” I moan, writhing. I’m eager and burning, dying for this thing that I don’t actually want. Not from him. But I need to forget, to pretend I’m back in that alley with that man and he’s going to finish what he started when he pressed his body hard against mine.
“Look at me,” he demands.
“Just do it,” I tell him, using my hand to try and push his onto me. Into me.
“Look at me,” he says more forcefully.
I don’t want to because it will be all wrong. The look in his eyes, the color, the shape, the set of his jaw. His smell alone, cologne of some kind that you can get in any drug store anywhere, is always in my nose. Always bothering me, irritating me. But if I want him to finish this – to finish me – I have to do it.
I open my eyes and lower my head to look down at him. His beautiful, violent face is staring back at me with such intensity I wonder if this will actually work. But it’s too different. It’s not the exotic honesty I get from Drew. It’s all possession. Dominance.
“Look at me while I do this,” he says quietly. His hand slides forward, spreading me wide with his fingers. My breath catches in my throat and I want to close my eyes again but I don’t dare. He’ll only stop and I need him to get me there. To wipe my slate clean and let me know this is it. This is what’s what and nothing else.
I feel the pad of his thumb move quickly once over my nub, making me jump and whimper. “Do you like that?”
I nod slowly.
“Say it.”
“I like it, Tommy,” I whisper, feeling small. Feeling dangerously close to everything I never wanted to be.
He does it again, more slowly this time. “Do you want more?”
“Yes,” I mewl.
“Ask me.”
I shake my head, biting my lip.
He tickles me slowly. I breathe evenly, staring him down and refusing to beg. Then his fingers move in impossible ways that strum cords in me that have never been played before. It’s so sudden, so rough, but then he stops and I’m panting. And angry.
“Ask. Me,” he commands.
I lick my lips and swallow hard, staring into his eyes. “I want you to fuck me, Tommy,” I lie in a hoarse whisper.
It’s not exactly what he wanted, but it’s something he didn’t expect either. It’s enough to distract him from the fact that I won’t beg him, and suddenly he’s spinning me around. He presses me forward so I’m bent over the arm of the couch. He moves quickly, efficiently, as he lifts the dress around my waist again and exposes me. Then I feel him hard and ready at my entrance, and I groan, pushing my hips back and trying to take him in. I just want this over with. I just want to feel it, to know it, to understand it. I need it to happen before I can think twice about it.
He pushes inside of me with a grunt, and I cry out. I’m suddenly so full where I’ve felt so empty for years. I can hear his breath coming in sharp gasps as though he was as surprised by his entrance as I was. Then he’s pulling out painfully slowly. I whimper at the near loss of contact, but before I can voice a protest, he’s driving back into me.
I cry out again as the couch scratches across the floor. He retreats and advances, and I groan as I bite my lip to keep from screaming. It’s torture and it’s bliss and I feel something start to build inside of me. I take his hand and bring it to my mouth, pulling his finger inside and biting down on it to silence my cries.
“You’re killin’ me,” he breathes. “You’re everything I knew you’d be.”
His free fingers reach down and play that wild chord in me, moving to an easy beat that builds and builds and builds. His thumb is strumming, hitting the snare that makes me jolt every time, and then we’re reaching the crescendo. The beat is faster, faster, faster, the snare snapping over and over, and then it’s chaos and a symphony of color bursting behind my closed eyes that can’t bare the sight of this man as he owns me, controls me, plays me.