The Girl Is Trouble (3 page)

Pearl continued to ramble on with her scheme for catching whoever had left the notes, suggesting that I talk to the other person who received one and see what time of day they’d been discovered. I only half listened to her—the rest of my attention was directed at the Rainbows’ table, where Benny Rossi, an Italian boy with black eyes and a sixty-watt smile, was telling a story with so much animation that I felt like I was there with him.

Benny. Looking at him made me weak in the knees, quite a task when I was already sitting. We’d spent an unforgettable night together dancing at the Savoy in Harlem. Sometimes I thought I could still feel his hand on my waist and the gentle touch of his lips on—

“So what do you think?”

I snapped to attention. Pearl was waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard. “I think it sounds like a swell plan.”

“Great. So you’ll ask Michael who else got the notes and interview them, then I’ll find out where the other federation members’ lockers are.” She pulled out her composition notebook and pencil and jotted down our list of tasks. If Pearl was anything, she was organized. That was part of the reason she was allowed to work in the attendance office during study hall.

“Maybe you should interview them,” I said. “I mean, you know them, right?”

A strange look came over Pearl’s face that I couldn’t begin to read.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’m kind of not in the federation anymore.”

“Why not?”

“They kind of … um … kicked me out.”

“For what?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “They said I didn’t seem very committed to the group anymore. They seemed to think I’d rather be friends with you than them.”

I still wasn’t getting it. Were they jealous that Pearl and I spent so much time together? That seemed … weird.

Pearl pulled a cookie from her bag and snapped it in two. “Paul told them that you’re not practicing.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not a big deal,” said Pearl. “I’d much rather spend time with you.”

She offered me half of the cookie and I took it. It wasn’t sweet like I was hoping. Mrs. Levine must’ve been short a few sugar ration tickets. “Michael said he was your friend,” I said.

“Oh, Michael’s swell. He would’ve been happy for me to stay. It’s the other people who weren’t so keen on me.”

I still didn’t get it. I looked at the table where Michael was sitting with Paul, Denise, and several other people who I suspected were in the federation. “Denise isn’t Jewish,” I said. “How come Paul’s still in the group?”

“Because Denise isn’t Jewish,” said Pearl.

Ah. It was one thing to be a gentile who didn’t know any better. It was quite another to be a bad Jew.

“Why do you want to help them so badly?” I asked.

Pearl shrugged. “Because this is wrong. I may not like how they treated me, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help them.”

And maybe Pearl hoped it would help both of us get in their good graces.

*   *   *

AFTER LUNCH I SAID FAREWELL
to Pearl and stopped in the girls’ restroom off the cafeteria. Ordinarily I would’ve waited to use another restroom, since this particular one was taken over as a smoking lounge by the female members of the Rainbows. But with so little time left before we had to return to class, I had no choice.

They tried to cover up what they were doing when I walked in, but once they realized it was me, they resumed blowing smoke circles while touching up their hair and makeup. Rhona and Maria did what they did best and ignored me. Only Suze smiled my way and offered me a greeting. “Hi, baby girl.”

“Hi yourself,” I said. A few months before, talking with Suze had felt forced and awkward, but time had taught me that Suze was a good egg. All of them were, really, though Rhona and Maria liked to pretend that talking to me was taxing.

“How’s tricks?” asked Suze.

“Good,” I said. This was as friendly as our conversations got these days. It made me sad, but I understood: I had betrayed the Rainbows’ trust, and while they were willing to let bygones be bygones, they weren’t going to let me get close again.

“We gotta blow, Suze,” said Rhona as she stubbed her cigarette out on the counter and then tossed it down the drain.

“I’ll be out in two ticks.”

The other two girls exited, leaving Suze and me alone. She studied her reflection in the mirror, erasing a stray line of lip cream with her fingertip. “He saw you watching him, you know.”

“What’s that?”

Her mouth quirked into a smile. “Benny. You were playing cat to his canary during lunch.”

I burned with embarrassment. “I wasn’t—”

She winked from the mirror. “It’s okay, baby girl. He didn’t mind. I just thought you should know he noticed.” She snapped her pocketbook closed and hung it on her arm. “See you later, alligator.”

“In a while, crocodile,” I said as she walked out the door.

What was I supposed to make of that? Benny knew I was watching him? And he didn’t mind? Did that mean there was still a chance? I grinned at the mirror, imagining for a moment that it was his eyes I was staring into instead of my own. And then I left the restroom, having forgotten what I’d gone there to do in the first place.

*   *   *

I COASTED THROUGH THE AFTERNOON
on fumes of hope. Instead of hunting down Benny at the end of the day, I caught up with Michael Rosenberg after school. It wasn’t hard to find him; the federation was scheduled to meet that afternoon in the journalism classroom. I lingered outside the door as members of the group arrived. Most of them ignored me, except for one girl who put the name to my face and offered me a sneer.

“Can I help you?” she asked in the kind of imperious tone that I hadn’t heard since we’d moved from the Upper East Side.

“I need to talk to Michael.”

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. Instead, she disappeared into the journalism room. Thirty seconds later, Michael appeared.

“Iris! Have you changed your mind?”

“Pearl changed it for me.”

He removed his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his cardigan. “I had a feeling she would. How much will it cost?”

“Nothing, if you can get the federation to take Pearl back.”

He paled slightly. Or at least I think he did. It was hard to tell, given that his normal skin tone was on the spectrum between vampire and cave-dwelling amphibian. “Oh, I see. Look, I wish I could, but there are some real hard-liners in the group. I don’t think it’s going to be possible.” He reapplied his glasses and checked the air behind me to make sure no one was lingering to eavesdrop. “You must understand: the others … they think we need to band together. With everything that’s been going on in Europe, our commitment to our faith is more important than ever. I agree it isn’t fair to Pearl, but our group is a democracy and I must follow what the majority says.”

We had heard stories about what was happening to Jews in Europe: pogroms, ghettos, yellow stars pinned to coats, and much, much worse things that, so far, hadn’t been verified. It was so much easier to hear about these awful things when you’d fooled yourself into believing they had nothing to do with you.

“But Pearl is committed to the same things you are,” I said. “You couldn’t ask for someone more dedicated.”

It was like Pop said: you had to paint your enemy with a broad brush to protect yourself. Maybe you used a much more narrow one to define your allies for the same reason.

He looked toward the classroom door again.

“This isn’t just about Pearl being friends with me, is it? Something else is going on here.”

He took me by the elbow and led me away from the door. “Look, this isn’t me talking, okay? I like Pearl just fine. But the others find her … weird.”

“So?”

“Like I said before, this is a fragile time for us. We need the group to band together. People are looking for excuses to drop out.”

“So let them. Pearl’s worth all of them put together.”

“While I might agree with you in theory, it’s not just the other members of the federation who are the problem. If Pearl gives everyone at school the heebie-jeebies, and they know she’s in the group, they might start to take us less seriously, too. We can’t afford that right now.”

Poor Pearl. Did she suspect this was what was really going on? I found it hard to believe that she could know what they thought of her and still want to help them.

I certainly didn’t.

“Maybe you should talk to Principal DeLuca about the notes,” I said.

“The principal’s office couldn’t care less. They think we’re a nuisance. They love us when we’re working on the school paper and editing the yearbook, but when we congregate and try to encourage dialogue about Jewish causes, they think we’re being too political.”

“I thought the Lower East Side was more open-minded than that.”

“Maybe more than where you come from, but no one wants us to flaunt our faith around here, either.” It was still an improvement. On the Upper East Side, you didn’t even
talk
about being Jewish. “That’s why we need your help,” said Michael. “No one else is taking this seriously.”

I crossed my arms. “Pearl and I are a team. We work together.”

Michael cleared his throat. “And you still can. The others don’t have to know she’s helping you.”

“Forget it.” I turned to go.

“She’s going to want to know why you said no,” he said.

I stopped in my tracks and once again faced him.

“When she does, what will you tell her?”

I knew where he was headed: Pearl wanted me to help them. If I told her I’d decided not to, she would want a reason, and objecting to her being removed from the group for being my friend wasn’t likely to satisfy her. Could I tell her the truth? How would she take being told that all of these people got together—including her own brother—and kicked her out for being a weirdo?

Michael steepled his hands, and I had a strong sense of what he would look like when he was a much older man. “So, will you do it?”

I said yes, because I didn’t feel like I had any other choice.

CHAPTER

3

MICHAEL SAID
he’d talk to the group that afternoon about the investigation. I gave him Pop’s office exchange and asked him to call me as soon as the meeting was over. Now that I was working for Pop, I was always in a rush to get home after school. As I rounded the corner to Orchard Street, I saw a man lingering in front of the house. When I reached the steps to the front stoop, he lit a cigarette.

I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for someone there, or just pausing for his smoke. There wasn’t a bus stop nearby and he didn’t look familiar. It wasn’t unusual to see people loitering on the Lower East Side, but given how cold it was and how darkness was fast approaching, his presence gave me pause. I offered him a quick smile as I passed and hurried up the steps to Mrs. M.’s.

“You must be Iris,” he said as I reached the stoop.

I paused, and turned back to him. “Do I know you?”

“No. I’m a friend of your father’s. Tell him Stefan says hello.” And then, without saying another word, he turned and left.

I went into the house and made a beeline for Pop’s office. He wasn’t there, but a number of tasks for me were, each with instructions penned in his nearly indecipherable chicken scratch. There were case notes to type up, calls to return, and a set of picklocks he wanted me to practice using. AA Investigations wasn’t booming by any means, but in the weeks since I’d started helping Pop, business had definitely picked up, probably because he knew, with my help, he could take on more work without fear of getting in over his head.

“Iris? Is you?” Mrs. Mrozenski, our landlady, popped her head into the office. “You are hungry?” she asked. In her hands was a bowl of soup so hot the steam wavered in the air above it.

“Sure,” I said. Mrs. M. could make the most delicious soups out of nothing. They didn’t stick with you, but they did a fine job of tricking you into thinking you were no longer hungry.

“You have nice day?” she asked.

“It was fine, thank you.”

“Good, good.” Her eyes danced over the desk, taking in the work that Pop had left for me. Each page of instructions had been laid out parallel with the edges of the desk, each stack of paper meticulously straightened. When Pop first got home from Pearl Harbor, he seemed determined to leave every detail of his time in the Navy behind, going so far as to leave his bed unmade and his shoes unshined. Over the course of the year he had slowly been returning to the rigidity of military life. Nowhere was that more evident than in his office.

“Where’s Pop?”

“He go to the bank, he say. And to mail letters.” That “he say” was important. Pop always gave Mrs. M. a cover story in case anyone was looking for him. When you made a living investigating often unsavory people, you sometimes crossed the wrong person, and he wanted to make sure Mrs. M. was never held accountable for anything he did. So he deliberately kept her in the dark. She preferred it that way. While she didn’t seem to mind being lied to, she wasn’t comfortable with doing the lying herself. If he gave her false information about his whereabouts, all she was doing was passing on what she’d been led to believe was the truth.

“Your father, he leave interesting work for you?” She knew I was working for Pop, though I’m not sure what she thought about it. Mrs. M. wasn’t the kind of person to make her opinion known.

I looked at the notes waiting for me atop the desk, but a quick glance didn’t tell me much of anything. “Hopefully.”

She put the soup on the desk and worked her hands into a ball. “There is something I want to talk to you about.”

Anxiety tugged at my shoulders. Mrs. M. was much more than a landlady—she’d become a dear friend to both Pop and me. As our friend, she was more than patient when it came to things like late rent and light envelopes. I thought Pop was doing better—he seemed to be making more money, anyway—but what if that wasn’t the case and Mrs. M. had finally had enough?