Suzanne & Loretta Hayes & Nyhan - Empire Girls

* * *

“Come, let’s get the trunks,” I said as we disembarked.

“No, you get them. I’ll go find the driver they sent from Empire House.”

She ran away from me quickly and was swallowed by the crowd.

“Ivy!” I yelled, climbing back up the steep steps of the transom, trying, in vain, to catch a glimpse of her, and holding my hat against the hot, smelly air that came flying at me like the breath of a beastly giant.

I was pouring sweat already, and my lace collar—the one Ivy’d begged me not to wear—was sticking tightly to my neck. I was choking, probably to death, and I’d already lost my sister.

“Here you go, ma’am,” said a young man who’d taken my trunks from the luggage car.

“I say, are you planning on helping me get these trunks through the station and out...side?” I had no idea where I was going.

He held out his hand, and when I went to shake it, a man pushed passed me, laughing. “He wants a tip, not a handshake... Country girls, I swear, you’re all knee-slappers.”

Our money was so limited that I wasn’t going to waste it on handouts. Chivalry should be free, anyhow. So I looked at the trunks and convinced myself I could do it on my own.

I shook my head at him and tried to politely explain why I was not filling his hands with coins. Only no one could hear anything over the din of voices, the steam and chaos. I reached down and placed my gloved hands on the straps of each trunk, stooped over and began to drag what remained of us through the station. I can only imagine what I looked like. Finally, I saw the glass doors ahead of me, and I saw Ivy in her purple satin dress with the beads at the bottom shining in the sun. I wasn’t upset she’d worn it anymore. I’d be able to find her anywhere.

I lurched outside banging the trunks against people and bricks and anything that got in my way.

She was leaning against a black sedan, but it was the driver who saw me first. There was a sign taped to the passenger window that read EMPIRE HOUSE.

For some reason, it was that sign...affixed haphazardly to that dirty window that brought the whole ordeal into focus. No longer was this some foggy, dark dream. This was my life, and I was suddenly very present in it. Nothing was going to fit neatly into the pages of a book. Life, it seemed, was busy, and messy and loud. Everything about this city was so loud.

Ivy turned to look at me, following the driver’s gaze, and put her hand over her mouth. She laughed so hard I thought she’d lose her breath.

“Thank you ever so much for the help,” I said, trying to push my hair back from my sticky forehead.

“I know how much you like hard work,” she said as she came to me and took the trunks a whole three steps to the waiting automobile. “But I never considered you would try to become a mule. Why didn’t you let the porter take these?”

“Because he wanted money.”

The driver took the trunks from Ivy and opened the door for me.

“Thank goodness, a gentleman,” I said as he held out his hand, I thought, to escort me into the cabin of the car.

I started to place my hand on his palm, but he pulled it away. “Sorry to disappoint, miss, but I was sorta askin’ for a tip,” he said.

“Are you going to embarrass me every single day of my life, Rose?” asked Ivy as she reached into the outside pocket of Father’s bag and pulled out a few coins. She dropped them in his hand, slid into the sedan next to me. Then she batted her eyelashes, which made him smile at her. The whole flirtation happened practically in my lap, forcing me to lean back so that their hands didn’t touch me by accident.

“What’s your name, fella?” asked Ivy.

“Jimmy, doll,” he said cocking his hat to one side. He was darker, this Jimmy. “Black Irish” Mother used to say, when we were impressionable young girls. She’d say it with a bit of disdain when we’d see them in town. Wrong side of the track kind of people. We Adamses didn’t belong on the track at all, so we could always identify people on, off, on the right side or the wrong side of any situation. Father said it made us well rounded.

“Do you have a name?” he asked my sister.

“Ivy,” she said. “I’m Ivy and this is my sister...”

Jimmy cut her off. “Ivy, huh? You don’t look like something stuck to the side of a house. I’ll have to come up with another name that’ll suit ya better.”

As if he’d see her again. Not to mention he hadn’t wanted to know my name, which is when I realized that if anyone could become invisible in a city full of people, it would be me. That thought brought me back around to thinking about Asher. If it was true, and we were similar people, then perhaps he was invisible, too. I shivered at that thought. It would be too hard to find someone who could not be seen.

Ivy, however, didn’t seem to notice Jimmy’s dismissal of my presence. Or if she did, she didn’t care. He sat behind the wheel again, and Ivy scooted up to sit with her arms crossed on the back of the front seat. I could see their exchanges in the rearview mirror.

“So, Jimmy...which way are we headed? Uptown, downtown? Where is this Empire House?”

“Where do you want it to be?” he asked.

“I don’t care if it’s smack in the middle of the East River. I’ve been waiting for this moment for my entire life,” said Ivy.

The truth that I felt in her statement hurt me. I always knew she wanted more from life...but could she have been that unhappy in Forest Grove? And for how long?

She leaned back her head and winked at me. And before I could stop myself, I reached out and tugged hard at the fine edges of her bob that just grazed her exposed back. It pulled her neck in an unnatural direction and she snapped her head away from me yelling “Ow!”

“You all right?” asked Jimmy, even though he was glaring at me in that infernal rearview mirror.

His blue eyes met mine, only I decided to give him my best glare, and it made him turn away.

“Yes, I’m fine,” answered Ivy. “My hair got caught on my sister’s broach. Who even wears high necks anymore?” They were laughing at me, but I knew Ivy was hurt because she kept rubbing the back of her neck. Good, I thought. My shoulders won’t be the same after that trip through the station with our trunks....

“So, you never answered me. Where is this place? Uptown, downtown?” she asked.

“The best part of town. Only the best for you, uh...two. It’s in The Village, right off MacDougal.”

That did it. I put my head into my white-gloved hands, already gray with the filth of the city, and I cried.

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