Love's Darkest Cage

Dove

“Babe, no offense, but you look like a librarian. And not the sexy kind.”

My roommate Priya shook her head disapprovingly with an apologetic smile, served with a side of cringe.

“Gee, thanks.” I sighed as I undo the buttons of my navy cardigan.

Priya was right, though. I had tried on everything I owned, and everything I owned was wrong.

The pile of clothes on my bed had become a small mountain — the floral dress that made me look twelve, the blouse with the coffee stain I couldn't get out, the one nice skirt that had survived the bus from Pennsylvania only to come out of my suitcase wrinkled into a fist. I stood in front of our cloudy mirror in the last clean thing I had, a plain white t-shirt and a blue cardigan, and I wanted to cry.

"This is literally all I have." I sighed in defeat as I looked through the pile of clothes again.

It was a little after eight. Outside our window the city was doing its electric blue thing, the hour when the buildings start to glow and everyone with somewhere to be is already on their way there. I had somewhere to be too, but I was standing in my bra in a room the size of a closet, losing.

Suddenly, the door banged open and my other roommate Jessica came in already half-dressed for her own night, one earring in, and mascara wand in hand. "Are we leaving or what, the line's gonna be insane by nine —" She stopped, took in the bed, the mirror, me. "Oh no. Wardrobe crisis. Is this what you’re wearing to the Freshman Mixer?"

"No, she’s doing this audition thing," Priya said, before I could. "At that weird jazz club."

"The Craigslist thing," Jessica corrected, pointing the mascara wand at me like a tiny accusing sword. "The one I told you a hundred percent could be a murder situation."

"It's a real club, they just haven’t opened yet." I said. "Look, they have a website. There's pictures."

"Murderers can have websites too, Dove."

I laughed despite myself, dropping a dress back onto the pile. "It's an audition to sing. In public. In a room full of people. The most dangerous thing that's gonna happen is I'll forget the words and die of embarrassment."

"Oh, come on. Forget about that dingy club. Come to the mixer instead," Jessica said, switching tactics, softer now. "Seriously. It's the freshman thing, the whole department's going, there's gonna be free pizza and that cute guy from orientation who keeps not-asking you out.” 

“Jess is right, Dove.” Priya chimed in. “You’ve got, like, two other part-time jobs already. Coffee cart, then class, then the store, then you come home and you go straight back out.  That club sounds really sketch, and you haven't come to a single school event since orientation. You're allowed to be eighteen, you know. You're allowed to have, like, one normal college night."

And there it was. The thing the two of them had clearly decided to gang up on me about. 

For a second I almost let it land. The free pizza. The guy from orientation. A normal night where I was just a girl in a city, not a girl with a mountain of her mother's debt and a scholarship she was terrified of dropping and a clock running on her own life that nobody else could seem to hear.

"I know," I said. "And I appreciate you guys thinking about me. I do. It's just — this one's good money. It’s night shifts. Which means I could keep my mornings for actual school instead of the coffee cart." I picked at the hem of the dress in my hands. "And it's singing. I came here to sing. I've been here six weeks and the only place I've sung is the practice rooms at two in the morning when nobody can hear me." I made myself smile, the easy one, the one that ends conversations. "It's cool, you guys. Really. I'm cool."

The room went quiet. Priya and Jessica exchanged a look.

Then Jessica sighed and set down her mascara. "Okay. But you are not auditioning in a sad librarian outfit." 

Jess ran to her room and came back the next second like a magician. She brought out a dress, simple black one. But I could tell from the material it must be well-made.

"Little black dress. Goes with everything, hides everything, and makes you look like you meant to." She held it against me, squinting. "Yeah. That's the one. Take it."

"Jess, I can't —"

"You can. You'll bring it back. You'll get the gig and you'll buy me a drink with your first paycheck." She pressed it into my arms and gave me a look that was equal parts big sister and don't-argue. "Go knock 'em dead, Dovey. Just — text us when you get there. And when you leave. And if anyone seems like a murderer, run."

I laughed as I put on the dress. In the cloudy mirror, with my dirty blonde hair down and my mother's tiny gold cross at my throat, I almost didn't look like a sad librarian at all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The club didn't even have a sign yet.

That was the first thing I noticed, standing on the curb with Jessica's coat — she'd shoved that on me too — pulled tight against the cold. Just a black door in black brick, a velvet rope nobody was guarding, and a window of frosted glass leaking a warm gold smear of light into the dark. Somewhere inside, a piano was playing the lazy, expensive kind of jazz that sounds like smoke and money.

I almost left. I'll be honest about that. I stood there long enough that a man in a beautiful coat passed me, glanced at me, and made me feel small in a way I couldn't name.

Then I thought, one day, little dove, in my mother's voice, and I went in.

It was beautiful inside. That surprised me. I'd braced for something seedy and instead got deep green velvet and old brass and low amber light, round marble tables only half filled because the place wasn't fully open yet, just breathing its first nights into the world. A long bar. A balcony ringing the upper floor, set back in shadow, where I'd later learn the people who mattered sat to watch.

A woman in a sharp suit crossed the floor to me, heels striking marble like punctuation. She looked me up and down, quick, like she'd already decided something.

"You. The girl who emailed."

It wasn't a question. I nodded anyway.

"You're young."

"I'm eighteen."

She studied me one beat longer. Then, to the man at the piano: "Give her something old." Back to me, flat as a closed ledger: "Sing. If it's good, you sing tonight and we pay you tonight. If it's not, the door's behind you. Got it?"

My mouth was a desert. "Got it," I whispered.

I didn't have a band or a chart or any of the things real singers have. I had a borrowed black dress and the memory of my mother in a yellow one. The pianist started something slow — a standard old enough that my mom used to close every wedding with it — and I knew it the way I knew how to breathe.

I closed my eyes. I thought about the trees on Birch Street and a voice telling me I belonged somewhere bright, and I opened my mouth, and I let it out.

I don't really remember the singing. I remember the room going still. I remember the bartender stopping with a glass halfway to the shelf. And somewhere in the middle of the second verse, with my eyes drifting open, I remember finding him.

— End of Episode One: To Be Continued. —