The Vaudeville Star

She didn’t know quite what to make of it until she told Bessie and the other woman just laughed. As they entered the side door to the theater with Archie, Lewis pointed to a bouquet of wilted daisies wrapped in newspaper on the table next to him.

“For you, Ruby.”

Archie was already walking toward his dressing room as Ruby picked up the wilted flowers.

“Who brought them, Lewis?”

“Some fool young man. He wanted to wait for you, and I told him on no account. So he thrust those at me and said, ‘Tell her I want to marry her,’” Lewis said, all the while he scanned the newspaper in his hand.

Bessie burst out laughing.

“What did you tell him? I mean about the marriage part?” Ruby asked, bewildered.

“I told him to come back and ask you to marry him when he could afford some better flowers,” he huffed, and Ruby smiled at the old man.

“Oh, Lewis.”

Ruby put the sad little daisies in water in her dressing room as Bessie sat on the couch.

“How does it feel? You have fans, Ruby Sutton.”

Ruby sat before her dressing table. “It’s so strange. Suddenly, I’m on the street and people know me, but they are complete strangers to me. It’s very odd.”

“It’s also fun. Wait until you become really famous. You’ll get gifts and real offers of marriage. Well, but then you already have. Look at what King has done for you, and you haven’t given him anything. Have you?”

Ruby flushed as she turned to Bessie. “Of course I haven’t! I’m not a light skirt! We’ve been to the park and supper. He says he is my admirer.”

Bessie surveyed Ruby’s trim figure. “Admirer. Just beware. He’s safe enough with a wife and mistress. But should they ever go . . .”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Bess. I’m not giving anything to anyone. I’m here to sing. It’s all that I want.”

Ruby was busy scrubbing her laundry and hanging it out to dry in her little room. She had been spoiled at home, and now everything that had once been taken care of by others, she did herself. She felt a slight tinge of regret. She wondered about her sister and mother from time to time, but she had not written to them. She had not even sent a note to dear Jessbelle in a few weeks and wondered if Ford had told his sister that she was here in New York.

She thought fleetingly of Ford. Mostly she thought of him at night when she was drifting off to sleep. She kept their one night close to her heart, as it obviously meant nothing to him. They had never spoken of it beyond that one conversation. He had meant to do his duty, and she was bent on New York.

But she thought of him often. She wondered how different her life might have been had she married him and traveled back to Mississippi. Would he have abandoned her there to return to New York and the agency? Or maybe she might have traveled with him? Either way, none of it had happened, and they were bent on living separate and different lives.

When the knock on the door sounded, she went to answer it. Mrs. Hodges held a note in her hand.

“Yes?” Ruby asked.

“This was delivered for you,” she said, handing it to Ruby and leaving.

When she opened the note, she was shocked to see it was an invitation to take tea with Alice Parker. How had the woman even known where to find her?

The invitation was for that afternoon, so Ruby immediately went to her closet and pulled out a modest light blue linen dress that was two years old. Ruby had continued to squirrel away her money, and her dresses bespoke it. When she pulled on the dress and pinned up her hair, she thought she looked passable.

With her small straw hat, white gloves, and purse, she left the boardinghouse for the Parkers’ grand mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Ruby was greeted stiffly by the butler and shown into a cozy back parlor that was decorated in dark woods. The floors were covered in beautiful carpets to protect the parquet floors, and a large arrangement of flowers stood near the windows.

Ruby looked around, but no one was inside. She took the chair nearest the windows and could smell the scent of lilies floating about the room.

“There you are,” Alice Parker said as she entered the room. “Punctual. I like that very much.”

Ruby looked at the older woman, wearing a tight corset and dress about ten years out of style. She imagined Alice Parker liked the tightness of the corset and the secure way it made her feel. Ruby was the opposite. She always felt the corset was constricting and suffocating.

“Tea,” she instructed the maid who came into the room and then disappeared after Alice spoke the single word to her.