the ceiling and then the floor while she covered her eyelashes in black goo.
She grabbed a wide comb next. “Not done yet.” Darby tried not to wince as her hair was combed backward from the way she normally did it, then flipped to one side and combed back again. “Now look.”
A mirror hung crookedly above the table holding the coffee. Darby stood up and stared. Her eyes, defined in black, appeared bigger than they actually were. Her hair puffed up a couple of inches above her scalp, a triumph over gravity. A plastic taste leached into her mouth from the lipstick.
“I look so different.”
“You look pretty.”
Darby wasn’t so sure. “Mother would be horrified. I look like one of those girls.”
Esme’s grip on her shoulders tightened. She put her face next to Darby’s and looked at her in the mirror with a quiet tenderness. “For ten minutes of your life, forget about your mother. You will be one of those girls, the ones who fool around and don’t care and get into trouble. But it’s all an act. I know you’re a good girl. I’m a good girl. We do it for the audience, ’cause they got hunger for girls like that.”
The pretense and bravado fell from Esme’s face, replaced by a look of desperation. “You have to do this for me. One song, three verses, that’s all I’m asking. No one will know. Please.”
Underneath the rough voice and confidence, Esme was scared as well. Not scared of change, like Darby was, but scared of staying put, staying unchanged.
The place where Esme touched her bare skin tingled, the beginning of an illicit thrill that shimmied down her spine. Could she be a bad girl? Esme refused to define herself as a hotel maid. And maybe Darby didn’t need to define herself as a boring secretary. At least not tonight.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
Esme squealed and hugged Darby close. “Go out there and get a seat at a table up front. I’ll call you up when it’s time. And act like you’re having fun.”
“I’m not swaying my hips.”
“Okay, don’t sway, just sing. Keep the mic a few inches away from your mouth, not too close, not too far, and look at me if you get scared.”
Tanya moaned again.
“Should we do something for her?” Darby asked.
“She’ll be fine. She got herself into this mess, and she’ll have to get herself out. Buckley will make the busboys dump her in the gutter if she’s still here at closing.” She turned back to the mirror. “Off you go. I’ll see you under the lights of stardom.”
When Darby emerged from the green room, the club was three-quarters full. As directed, she took a table near the front. The stage was steps away, but she’d have to be careful getting up there so as not to fall or hike up her dress too high.
The undercover policeman whom she’d seen the first time walked by her table and gave her a nod, staring at her two beats longer than what was considered polite. In fact, several of the men at the nearby tables held her gaze, or tried to hold her gaze, before she looked away. A hot rush of shame traveled through her, from her forehead to her feet. Did they think she was a prostitute, sitting alone?
But so what if they did? They’d see soon enough that she was part of the show. She hummed the notes under her breath, imprinting them on her memory.
Finally, Esme’s name was announced and she bounced up to the stage to stand in front of the center mic. Darby nodded along with the beat and clapped at the end of the first song, but her mind was racing, her heart pounding faster than it ever had. A dry stickiness spread over her tongue, a combination of the lipstick and fear.
“And now I’d like to call up Darby McLaughlin to join me.” Esme’s voice thundered across the room.
A sprinkling of claps covered the endless walk onto the stage. Darby positioned herself behind the backup singer’s mic. Esme counted off and launched into “The Bluest Blues.” At one point, she looked back at Darby and gave her an encouraging wave of her hand, which Darby knew meant that she should stop standing like a statue and move in time with the music. She bobbed her head, the best she could do under extreme circumstances.
She couldn’t see a thing out in front of her with the bright lights shining down from the ceiling. It was