Roaring Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Glossary of 1920s Terminology

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Entangled Teen titles… Smoke and Key

  Demon Bound

  The November Girl

  The Things They’ve Taken

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lindsey Duga. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  10940 S Parker Rd

  Suite 327

  Parker, CO 80134

  [email protected]

  Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Lydia Sharp

  Cover design by Mayhem Cover Creations

  Cover photography by moorsky/GettyImages

  ISBN 978-1-64937-048-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition August 2020

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  To Bridget,

  With whom I wrote my first stories

  Glossary of 1920s Terminology

  Ankle – to walk

  Applesauce – drat; darn

  Bank’s closed! – stop making out!

  Bird/cat – referring to a man

  Blouse – take off; leave

  Bluenose – term for a prude or individual deemed to be a killjoy

  Bubs – breasts

  Burning powder – firing a gun

  Bushwa – bullshit

  Cabbage – money

  Cheaters – glasses

  Choice bit of calico – pretty; attractive

  Corn – bourbon

  Darb – lovely

  Dewdropper – slacker; someone who is often unemployed

  Dizzy with the dame – in love

  Drum – speakeasy

  Duck soup – easy; no problem

  Dumb Dora – a girl who is not too bright

  Egg man – the money man; the man with the bankroll

  Flapper – young modern girl in the 1920s

  Flaming youth – young modern man in the 1920s

  Gasper – cigarette

  Grifter – con man

  Go chase yourself – get out

  Gooseberry lay – Stealing clothes from a clothesline

  Gumshoe – detective

  Half-seas over – drunk

  Have the bees – to be rich

  Hayburner – car with poor gas mileage; a guzzler

  Iron my shoelaces – excuse one’s self for the restroom

  Jake – easy

  Jane – a term for a woman

  Jingle-brained – addled

  Mazuma – cash

  Manacle – wedding ring

  Oliver twist – an extremely good dancer

  Oyster fruit – pearls

  Panther piss – cheap, homemade liquor

  Phonus balonus – nonsense; horseshit

  Pug – boxer

  Rattler – train

  Rhatz – darn; bummer

  Rub – a dance party for college or high school students

  Sheba – someone’s girlfriend

  Sockdollager – someone or something which is truly remarkable or impressive; a humdinger

  Spinach – cash

  Trigger men – men whose job it is to use a gun

  Whoopee – have a good time

  William “The Lion” Smith – famous jazz pianist of the 1920s

  Yegg – safecracker who can only open cheap and easy safes

  You’re on the trolley – now you’re catching on

  Zounds – expressing surprise or admiration

  Zozzled – drunk

  Under this single spotlight, I am an angel.

  The song flows out of me, free and beautiful and haunting. Rich and smooth as a glass of whiskey. Not that I know what whiskey tastes like. But that’s what more than a few patrons have said before.

  “Eris, babe, you’s got a voice as rich and smooth as a glass o’ whiskey.”

  I smile and dip my head in thanks, not speaking. Not ever saying a word.

  Their glazed, inebriated eyes tell me they want to hear my voice, but that they don’t care what words I utter.

  And so I utter nothing as I serve them their drinks. Don’t say a word.

  Don’t.

  Ever.

  Speak.

  Chapter One

  The Singer

  Applause met my ears as I finished my set. It wasn’t earth-shaking, wall-trembling applause, but the small number of clappers were enthusiastic. They always were. Even if dawn was just around the corner, six or seven empty glasses by their elbows, sleep and moonshine pulling them toward a state of dark but blissful ignorance, they always managed to show appreciation for my songs.

  I plastered on a timid smile and blinked in the glow of the spotlight on the tiny stage of The Blind Dragon. Actually, “stage” was a slight exaggeration. It was a six-inch raised platform made from old whiskey crates that Stanley had crudely painted black.

  The clapping tapered off, one whistle piercing the smoky air as I stepped off the makeshift stage, eager to vanish into the dark corners of the bar once more.

  Because there was usually at least one. One intoxicated fool that approached me and asked me to run away with him.

  My reaction was always the same. I would shake my head and retreat to the back where Stan would glare at the man if he got too close again. Still, the plea would linger. Run away with me.

  As if I could.

  And even if it were possible, I’d never want to run away with the fella who was asking. Most
of the gentlemen who sauntered into my quiet life probably wouldn’t mind a girl who never said a word. But what kind of person would want to have a partner who never cared about what they had to say? Not me, that was for certain.

  “Eris,” a voice said to my left, and I recognized its husky tone like the harmony of a chord—familiar and reliable. I turned to meet David, our saxophonist, stepping out from the band area. His scruff was growing out nicely along his jaw, now no longer a shadow but the beginnings of a full beard. His white shirt was clean and ironed, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and burgundy suspenders cutting parallel lines up and down his torso. Even his hair was somewhat combed. He looked like a fancy gentleman.

  But the night was still young.

  “Stan needs you to mix a few cocktails.” David lifted his chin toward the main bar. With its sleek mahogany wood, it was the nicest thing in The Blind Dragon. Everyone said so. New patrons would saunter up to a stool, take a look at the deep red lumber, see their reflection in the shiny surface, and rub their grubby hands across, smearing it.

  I hadn’t seen Stan make the telltale sign of raising his hand and spinning his index finger in a circle from the stage, but the spotlight prevented me from seeing most things. David’s dark eyes roamed my face, scanning as he usually did for any acknowledgment of his words, and any hint at mine.

  I nodded to let him know I’d heard, then turned toward the bar dutifully, even though I’d have loved nothing more than to lose myself to another song. The lyrics, melody, and harmony of “Am I Blue” were already waltzing through my head. It was a new piece, popular from the pictures, and the whole country was already in love with it. But I was confident that no person could love it more than me.

  I’d barely taken another step before a large hand wrapped around my arm above my elbow, drawing circles on my skin with the pad of its thumb. “Ah, Eris, my love,” cooed Marvin, sliding his empty glass along the top of the piano to the edge. “Top me off there, would ya, doll?”

  I frowned and held up two fingers.

  He supplied an easy, suave smile. “Eris, Eris, don’t worry so much. We’re gettin’ paid tonight, according to Madame, so let’s keep ’em coming, eh? ’Sides, she ain’t payin’ me to bore the folks to tears.”

  Marvin was a brilliant clarinetist, but a drunk. It was only ten thirty p.m.—The Blind Dragon had been open a mere hour and a half—and he’d already consumed two bourbons. I’d often heard Madame Maldu say to Stanley that he was basically paid in liquor. Almost every penny of his check went back to the Dragon. A dream employee, really. It also helped that he was somehow an even better musician when he was intoxicated.

  “Besides, I can hold my booze just fine. Cain’t I, Francis?” Marvin said, tapping our pianist lightly on the shoulder and resting his hip against the piano itself.

  With a noncommittal grunt, Francis dipped his bowler hat and reached for his own drink.

  “See?” Marvin said, smirking like Francis had just delivered a long speech of shining compliments to Marv’s long-standing sobriety.

  With a smile, I shook my head and held out my hand to take his empty glass. He placed it into my palm, and my fingers curled around it, disrupting the beads of sweat trickling down its sides. Maneuvering past the chairs and instruments of my little band, I skirted around the tables, heading quickly to the bar, hoping that my brief interaction with the band members had allowed the effects of my song to fade.

  “Thank ya, my love,” Marv called after me as he sat and picked up his clarinet. In a few short seconds, the beautiful notes trickled through the air, and David’s sax followed, their combined duet permeating my skin and dousing my soul.

  I reached the bar and ducked behind it, avoiding the gaze of anyone and everyone who tried to catch my eye, and then edged up to Stanley. He was pouring three shots of whiskey for some hoity-toity lookin’ fellas. The pressed lines in their shirts and slacks, their clean-shaven youthful faces, their rowdiness…if I had to guess, they were Harvard boys. Most men around Boston claimed association to the uni in some way or another, but it wasn’t often we got students themselves.

  If you asked me, they had a good bit of courage to risk their prestigious law career futures on a few rounds of giggle water.

  Turning to the back of the bar, I glanced at the cocktail list Stan had written down for me. A gin rickey, a mary pickford, and a sidecar. Stanley claimed he was bad at the measuring and the garnishes, so most of the cocktails he left to me. I didn’t mind, because when I measured ingredients, I pretended I was baking. Maybe a pie. I squeezed the lemon juice into the cognac and orange liqueur and twirled the peel with a knife and my thumb. A lemon meringue pie.

  “Good set there, Eris,” Stanley said from the corner of his mouth.

  I didn’t have to nod or dip my head. He knew I’d heard him even if I didn’t respond. Stanley didn’t need constant assurance of his worth or kindness.

  He was a good man. And I respected the dickens out of him.

  “Lookit, gents,” a rough, low voice said, the words digging into my back like a kitten heel.

  “It’s the angelic sheba herself. Where’d you get such a voice from, doll?”

  I didn’t reply. It was nothing personal to the fellas—I just didn’t speak. All the regulars had come to know this about me. In time, if they kept coming back, they would catch on, too.

  Instead, I set aside the finished cocktails, then uncorked the lid of Marv’s favorite bourbon and tipped it into the clear glass, already smudged with his fingerprints, greased from the oil in his slicked-back curls.

  “Oy, you heard me, bitch?”

  My hands flinched at the harsh tone and some of the precious bourbon splashed onto the mahogany.

  Stanley’s imposing form sidled up behind me.

  “Now, I thought you was gentlemen,” Stanley said to the stranger. “Was I mistaken?” The rumble of his voice sent vibrations from his back to mine, and I stayed turned around.

  Silence from the other side of the bar. I listened hard, my hand still frozen on the bottle of bourbon.

  “Those words don’t have a very gentlemanly feel to them.” Stanley’s muscles brushed against my back as he folded his whiskey-barrel sized arms.

  “You’re right, ole sport,” the Harvard boy said, his high-society Bostonian accent dripping off every syllable. “We are gentlemen, and we deserve to be treated as such. It’s rightfully rude to ignore gentlemen. Tell the sheba to answer my question.” The more he talked, the thicker his accent got and the more slurred his words became.

  I lifted my gaze, meeting the Harvard boy’s eye in the thin strip of mirror that ran along the back of the bar. He was a might red in the face, irritated at being ignored. Not used to it. Handsome fella like him, I doubt he’d been ignored a moment in his life. From his mother’s lap to his girl’s arms, he’d been coddled and adored.

  When our eyes locked, the boy slowly sat back on the stool, smoothing a piece of dark hair that had fallen out of perfect placement. A smile crept up on his thin lips, and it was like I could read his mind. He imagined us in the alley, wrapped in each other’s arms, him pulling me back to his dorm…

  Dropping my gaze back to Marv’s drink, I carefully placed the bottle of bourbon back on the shelf next to my right knee. That way, I wouldn’t be tempted to smash the Harvard boy over the head with it.

  “Eris don’t speak,” Stanley told them, his voice low and edgy. Maybe most people couldn’t hear the danger there, but the difference to me was like night and day. The subtle tonal shift from one octave to the next, the tightness in his vocal cords.

  Careful, boyos, better run and hide.

  “Bushwa,” the lad cursed. “The dame isn’t mute. She sings!”

  “But she don’t speak.”

  A laugh bubbled up from one of the boys, the one in the plaid flat cap that was much too big for him. It made him look too you
ng.

  “You telling me, sir,” he continued through thick, drunken laughs, “that she don’t speak in a speakeasy? A little ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why don’t you gentlemen get back to your drinks? Next round on the house,” Stanley said, every word wrapped in a swaddling blanket of tight restraint.

  Turning back toward the bar to face the Harvard boys, I placed a warning hand on Stanley’s large bicep. It relaxed ever so slightly under my touch, and I smiled to the fellas.

  My smile was sometimes enough. Enough to quiet the loud ones, let them sit back and fantasize about me on their arm or in their bed. Let them fantasize. After all, I knew the power of fantasy very well myself.

  I fantasized every night about getting out, running to the rails and following them far away, out of Boston. Most flappers my age would head for New York. But I didn’t want a city that never slept. I wanted sleepy towns, with golden fields and farmhouses and big blue skies and purple mountain majesties. I longed for wholesome communities where they sang at church, worked on farms, brought soup to each other when they were sick. Where kids played in the grass and under shady trees with big yellow dogs named Sunny.

  I was maybe the only eighteen-year-old girl in 1929 who fantasized of such things.

  In fact, most nights, on Stanley’s painted whiskey crates, I imagined I was singing sweetly in a small choir. Singing because I wanted to, not because it sold drinks.

  Lifting the tray of cocktails, I started to move out from around the bar. But I barely took two steps before a strong hand snapped over my thin wrist, startling me so bad that the drinks teetered and spilled drops of liquor on the tray.

  “We’re not done chattin’, doll.”

  This fella was persistent. Madame Maldu had always told me under no circumstances should I speak, but these moments were the hardest. How I longed to tell him just a few choice words.

  He leaned over the bar, light green eyes—eyes I was sure had ensnared females in the recent past—boring into mine. “Say, doll, let’s blouse. There’s a rub going on tonight in just an hour or so. We could sneak away and dance ’til we drop.”

  My song must’ve really done a number on him, or the more likely explanation was just that he hated rejection.