The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [182]
If she tried, she could remember all the way back to when she was very small. She knew she had lived in Russia, and some nights when she was lying in bed she tried to recall it. She remembered that the houses had felt very big and she had felt very small, and that everyone had been very beautiful. She had never talked about it with Missie but she could remember how her real Papa’s bristly early-morning chin had felt next to her cheek when she had rushed in to give him a kiss, and she remembered the way her mother smelled so deliciously of flowers and how soft her skin had felt and how cool her lips as she kissed her. And she remembered Alexei’s vivid face as if it were a photograph, his dark-gray eyes laughing at her as she followed him around and his young, strong legs preceding her up the tall stairs that she had labored over one at a time while he flew to the top like a pony over a jump. She remembered the way his voice had sounded and that he had spoken French to her in the mornings and English in the afternoons and that Nyanya had always sung them Russian lullabies.
These were the memories she retreated to in her dreams, her own personal, private world where she was a tiny child again and the center of everyone’s love and attention, and all the world was a safe place where everyone adored her. One day she hoped to find that world again.
Meanwhile, she attended Misses Beadles’ and brought home report cards that said she was a dreamer and inattentive, and she telephoned Rosa and the girls all the time to find out what was new with the boarders and if they had all played their parts in Scheherazade yet and if her darling Viktor was missing her too much.
And she always promised to visit them soon, but now a year had passed and they never had.
She was having supper at the kitchen table and Missie was talking to Beulah about the menus for the following week when O’Hara wandered in, a big grin on his face.
“Pack your fanciest dresses, me girls,” he said, bestowing a smacking kiss on Azaylee’s blond head, “we’re off to Chicago tomorrow.”
“Chicago?” they exclaimed.
“The Pink Orchid is just about finished,” he announced proudly. “I’m planning the opening next week. I thought we’d all go along, have a little holiday together.” He grabbed Missie and swung her around, laughing. “King O’Hara’s third club,” he boasted proudly. “How’s that for an alehouse-keeper from Delancey?”
“I wish I knew,” Missie replied, “but since you have never allowed me to see inside either one of your clubs, I’ve no way of passing an opinion.”
He frowned. “Well, you know how I feel about you going to nightclubs. They are no place for a respectable woman….” He blushed, embarrassed, as she burst out laughing.
“King O’Hara, do you mean to say that you run a business that’s not fit for ‘respectable’ women?” she teased. “I wonder what our Park Avenue neighbors would say to that. And the fact that most of their sons and daughters are your customers.”
“That’s different,” he said briskly, “that’s business. ?’jaysus, Missie, aren’t I asking you to the opening of the Pink Orchid next week? I’ve hand-picked the guests meself. The cream of society will be coming to see me club and meet me wife.”
“And will you be selling them bathtub gin?” she teased again.
“O’Hara’s gin is niver made in a bathtub. It’s genuine hooch from Bermuda.”
She looked at him, surprised. “I thought you bought your liquor from your friends, the Oriconne brothers.”
“The Oriconnes?” He coughed and shuffled his feet. “Yeah, well, me and the brothers had a slight