THREE

In the end, it had been horribly easy. Lightfoot was over and done with in a couple of minutes, shook her hand and welcomed her to the team.

"Good for you, Miss Priss, didn't think you had it in ya," he'd saluted her over a glass of gin while she fastened her dress. "But like I said, fast learner."

She'd wanted to scream at him to shut up but weirdly, she recognised that he wasn't trying to humiliate her. He saw nothing odd in his conduct, same as he had seen nothing inappropriate in calling her by her first name without asking if he might. He was simply of a different world and now - she supposed - she had entered that world too.

"Be here at noon tomorrow and make sure you're warmed up and ready to go," Lightfoot was all business again, tapping out a cigarette as she put on her shoes, as though their previous exchange had not even happened. But then again - that had been business too. "And bring a pair of tap shoes, eh?"

Tap shoes.

She'd left the club in some distress. She did not own tap shoes. She needed them, that was patently clear - but a new pair would cost her upwards of three dollars - and that was money she just did not have.

Her worries not yet over even with the securing of a job, Ella had hurried out into the late afternoon, one last traipse around the city a necessity.

Her friend, Mildred Arrows, was in the corps of the Chicago Ballet and, not knowing where else to go, Ella made her way to the Athenaeum Theatre, almost clear to the other side of town. By the time she got there, it was dusk and the dancers were warming up backstage, readying themselves for the night's performance.

For once, Ella had no time to envy them, rushing only over to Midred where she sat at the long shared dressing room mirror, dusting powder over her cheeks.

"Ella!" Mildred exclaimed in surprise. "Haven't seen you in a dog's age, how are you, girl?"

Mildred squealed when Ella told her she had a spot as a dancer, then blinked when she told her in what sort of show.

"Oh Ella, are you sure? A Revue, in those skimpy little costumes, flashing your legs like nobody's business?"

Ella could see Mildred was mildly scandalised - but then, she would be. She came from a family at a higher station in life than Ella's and had been even more sheltered. Of course, Ella had known from the get-go that she wouldn't be able to tell anyone - not a single soul - what she had done to secure the spot for herself, but seeing the vaguely troubled furrow on Mildred's brow rammed it home that bit further.

"I've been out of steady work for six months, Millie," Ella said, a little sharply. "I don't have the luxury to be choosy."

And then Mildred had been sorry of course and clasped her friends's hands in her own and congratulated her.

"I'm not here to celebrate though. I need tap shoes, Millie," Ella explained. "I got this job by the skin of my teeth and if I show up tomorrow without the right shoes and lose it before I've even begun - I couldn't stand it. Not when I'm so close. Do you know anyone with an old pair they don't need?"

Mildred had written down the name of a girl who worked at the Chiacgo Theater in the Vaudeville turns and after a hasty kiss and thank you, Ella had once again found herself dashing along the streets, the balls of her feet burning and her ankles jolting with every step.

They let her backstage at the Theater because she was able to give a name. It was rowdy, colourful, chaotic and hot - quite different from the cool calm and subdued palette at the Ballet - and crowded with a dozen acts all tripping over each other with props and costumes scattered about in disarray and loud arguments going on. At any other time Ella would've stopped to absorb every detail, drink it all in - some months ago she may even have dawdled over fantasies putting her in the spot of one of the chorus girls or as the magician's assistant - but now all she wanted to do - had to do - was secure her future through the acquisition of a simple pair of shoes.

Sally Simpson was Mildred's friend, a pretty and plump girl with platinum blonde hair and very red lips. She didn't have any tap shoes to spare, but stood up on her dresser chair and bellowed to the room of dancers that "a size six needs a pair of clackers!".

One girl came forth with a pair - much abused and scuffed but the straps were sturdy and the plates were screwed tight.

She asked a dollar for them.

Ella went cold, the surge of hope she'd felt sinking rapidly. A dollar twenty-five was all she had left right then and was all she had to make do until she was paid, unless she found time inbetween learning routines and performing to do more drudge work - assuming there was any to be had.

Luckily for her, Sally overheard and snorted. "Pfft, as if those old clompers are worth that!"

"I paid three bucks for them new," the girl protested and Sally snorted again: "What, in nineteen twenty-eight? They're falling apart! Tell her, Ella!"

The girl glared at Ella, ready to bully. She had a crooked front tooth and wiry hair and Ella felt a sudden pang of resentment and anger that such a mean girl should have a job in any theater when she couldn't even get an audition. It flashed across her mind she may have secured her spot here the same way Ella had secured hers at the Club Ritz. Ella would never have described herself as a hard girl before, but the memory of the lengths she had already gone to for her bed and board and how, really, anything else apart from cold-blooded murder was a lesser step than that, steeled her resolve.

"I'll give you twenty-five cents for them," she said firmly and Sally laughed while the girl scowled.

"That's ridiculous," the girl snapped.

:"It's what they're worth," Ella affirmed.

"Seventy-five," the girl argued and Ella thought such a dramatic drop so quickly steered things in her favour.

"Thirty," she retorted and the girl huffed, insulted at the meagre increase.

"Fifty. That's my final offer," the glare the girl gave her convinced Ella she was serious.

"Sold," she said.

Her triumph over her successful haggling was soured by the knowledge she now only had seventy-five cents to live on. It was enough - barely - and at the end of the week her worries would be over, but so used had Ella become to being overly cautious without knowing where her next income would be coming from that she simply couldn't relax. She was just now too accustomed to being in a constant state of anxiety and tension to enjoy the prospect of the future and until that first week was over and her wages in her hand, she didn't dare give over to merriment.

Funny - at the mere age of twenty she seemed older than Mrs. Brooks of sixty-two, who insisted on bringing out a long-kept decanter of brandy to celebrate when Ella explained why she'd been out so late. There wasn't much left and they watered the liquor down to stretch it further, but in the end it was enough to send Ella, clutching her newly-acquired tap shoes and seventy-five cents as though she feared a thief would take them from her in the night, into a deep sleep.