Chapter Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
There were places in New York that Vivian never went at night.
The elegant avenues, with mansions spilling light and sound into the air, where drivers waited next to cars that cost more than their year’s salary, the tips of their cigarettes glowing in the night as they waited for the party to finish and the revelers to stumble out in the small hours of the morning.
The vast park, with its stately trees and too many shadows, where you were equally likely to stumble on a quiet, dangerous meeting taking place in the dark or someone with nowhere else to go who just wanted to find a few hours of rest.
And she never went to the pretty little row of shops, on as quiet a street as New York had, where you could find a perfectly tailored suit with a hat to match, elegant heeled shoes made in emerald velvet and tied with gold ribbons, a dress sewn with ten thousand glass beads that would turn the head of every drunk, careless partygoer at a Long Island mansion.
Vivian used to sew those dresses. Just thinking about them made her fingers ache with the memory of a thousand needle pricks.
She never wanted to think about Miss Ethel’s shop, or Miss Ethel’s demands, when she left them behind her each night.
She was even less interested in swinging by for a visit or a stroll.
When Vivian’s feet took her across the city at night, they carried her to places where she could find her escape.
A few hours in a cinema sitting next to a fella with a million-dollar smile and a flask tucked in his jacket.
A knock on a door, a whispered password, a dance hall filled with light and music.
A drink, a smoke, a chance to flirt. She didn’t want a reminder of what she didn’t have.
But there was a first time for everything.