TEN

One month later Ella entered the Club Ritz at five pm to get ready for the evening show, arm in arm with Jean and laughing - they had supped late at the Victorian Tea Rooms, electing for champagne over tea and were both very jolly indeed. Ella wore beneath her stylish coat a crimson dress with a scalloped neck and a skirt that flared out at the knee from the form-fitting bias cut and emphasised the wiggle in her walk aided by the royal blue high-heeled shoes she had on. Gloves in a matching shade of blue were on her hands and nestled over her hair was a blue cloche decorated with red flowers. She'd had her hair cut to her shoulders which gave additional bounce to her copper locks and made it easier to style in the popular fashions and it shone beneath the raised lights of the club. Jean was similarly radiant in the canary yellow she so favoured, accessorised in bold red and the two had been enjoying the admiring stares of several men they had passed on the street.

A small cluster of mobsters were in the club when the girls swept in, having clearly just finished a business meeting upstairs and loitering over informal - if slightly strained - conversation. Their heads all swivelled when Ella and Jean entered, the customary wariness relaxing into appreciative grins and smirks. Several tipped their hats and Ella saw that Flattop was amongst them, unflappable as always, simply glancing their way coolly. Feeling particularly bold, Ella unfastened her coat without hesitating as they strutted toward the dressing room, shrugging it off her shoulders in a natural fashion but knowing the sudden reveal of her bright dress would be provocative to the men. Ella could feel all eyes on them as she folded the coat over her arm as Jean also started to remove hers and as they rounded the corner to the corridor and out of sight, they both broke into a run to get into the dressing room before they burst out laughing.

"That woulda made their day," Jean said when they'd calmed down, the only girls there yet. "They're so used to seeing tits and ass, a little tease is bound to be more interestin'. Very smooth, Miss Priss."

Jean's dress strained over her hips and her breasts seemed ready to burst her seams as she wiggled about the dressing room, pulling her costume from the rack. The weight gain was becoming more noticeable and Ella wondered about it - Jean worked as hard and often as any of them and minded her diet, her primary indulgences only champagne and martinis and the occasional tearoom cake. She didn't want to say anything and make her friend feel uncomfortable so instead she simply set about removing her gloves and unpinning her hat.

"Wearing that new dress tonight, I hope?" Jean said and Ella flushed with pleasure to think of it.

"You better believe it," she said standing up, unzipping her dress and wiggling out of it. "I hope we end up at the Villa afterwards - this dress needs a grand debut."

Ella had started agreeing to accompany her friends on dates out with the mobsters. In order not to step on any toes and so see a return to the anxious state she had determined to left behind, she was careful to only socialise in the club the evenings she wished to go out, maybe once or twice a week. She also took care to not be overly-friendly and ended the evenings early. She knew that a couple of the gangsters were keen to take things further, if only because she posed the challenge - but she and Jean had worked out a system in which Jean would play up Ella's naivety and inexperience, explaining in Ella's absence about her shyness and need for a gentle touch. The older men, in particular, responded well to this concept, engaging in conduct of such exaggerated chivalry it bordered on parody. Because she went out so infrequently, nothing had progressed to a point with any of them where they might feel entitled to press things further.

Flattop, however, had not approached her again, instead seeming to have taken a shine to Babs, a tiny brunette with Bette Davis' eyes and Mae West's lips who perpetually chewed gum. Despite herself, Ella found she continued to ponder the unflappable crook with curiosity. In the days that followed that awful evening out at the Villa Venice she had reflected and sorted through her myriad emotions and had come reluctantly to concede that her distress had been as much caused by hurt pride as anything else. Her confidence had taken a blow to be so brusquely knocked back and she enjoyed the bolstering it had been given by the attention of his peers. She couldn't deny that she had hoped her newfound gaity and eye-catching clothes might catch his eye - if only so he might realise what he was missing. She hated feeling that way about the situation - it was so petty and desperate - but like any other young girl she wanted to feel desirable and did not like to feel that she apparantly was not.

But Flattop remained impervious and Ella bristled inwardly and cursed him for it whilst wearing ever more glamorous gowns and flirting with greater boldness.

There was a knock on the dressing room door and Ella hastily tied a gown around her as Jean went to open it. The club's doorman stood there, concealed from the waist up by dozens of heavily-scented red roses in a golden vase.

"For Miss Ella Daniels," the doorman shouted around the curtain of flowers.

Ella stood, her jaw slightly agape and went forward wonderingly. "Who are they from?" she queried.

"There's a card with them, Miss, here let me carry them in, they're kinda heavy," the doorman brought them in and placed them on Ella's dressing table as she hastily pushed her makeup and hat out of the way. The doorman tipped his hat to them and then left as Jean darted forward excitedly.

"Come on then, don't keep us waiting - who're they from?"

Ella rifled through the blooms carefully and located the rose-coloured card then wrinkled her nose as she read the fine script.

"Freddy Washington," she said, the note of dismay in her voice clear and Jean snorted.

Freddy Washington was the young man who had been chatting Ella up the night Flattop and Itchy had approached them, that night they had gone to the Villa Venice for the first time. A nervous and awkward fellow, he came from a very wealthy family and was therefore idle rich. An only child with an experienced board running his family business, he had no need to work and no interest in it either. He was a constant presence at the Club Ritz, spending most of his nights there gambling heavily. For all his shyness, he nonetheless possessed a healthy sense of entitlement and would frequently throw childish tantrums when he lost at the tables - tantrums that were all the more marked for being so ineffectual and unthreatening. He was often sent home like a child being sent to their room, but since he was a VIP member and free with his spendings, he was also continuously permitted to come back. The gangsters disregarded him entirely though he clearly thought he was living very recklessly rubbing elbows with them and Ella had overheard him attempting to impress other club patrons by chatting about how he was the greatest of chums with Big Boy, Pruneface, Flattop and B.B. Eyes, amongst others. Quite regularly he sought approval and adulation by purchasing champagne for the entire club, blushing and waving magnanimously when the patrons applauded in response to the bartender's announcement, basking in that moment as though it were real love.

Altogether he was a rather sad little person - and he'd taken a shine to Ella, persuing her about the club when he wasn't gambling, paying her ridiculous compliments and attempting to emulate the natural charm and charisma of a popular theatrical actor who was also a club regular. Last week he'd presented her with an orchid corsage, bragging about how it had come from a hothouse as the late Autumn weather was the wrong climate for them, as though Ella knew nothing about flowers. Even on the note he'd slipped in with the roses, he'd added: "ps: had to import these from Florida, there's not a rose left in all of Illinois right now!"

"Well," Jean said thoughtfully as they looked over the roses, each velvety petal scalloped perfection. "He is very wealthy. There's nothing so awful in landing a rich husband."

Ella sniffed. "I'm a chorus girl from the middle classes. I doubt it would ever come to that. And even if it did - I'm not convinced he'd stay rich either. If he doesn't gamble his fortune away then his daddy will switch the tap off. Where would I be then? Stuck with an annoying twit of a husband who doesn't know how to work. Y'know what he said to me last week, trying to impress? He said 'Father is such a horrible bore, telling me I have to stop spending so much. But I'm a man now and won't be told what to do! I'll spend as I like, so there Papa!" she mimicked Freddy's petulant upper-crust accent and Jean giggled. "Can you believe he's thirty? He talks like my ten year old cousin. "

"All the macho and none of the balls. He thinks you're playing hard to get, I bet," Jean said, sitting down to begin applying her makeup. "After you knocked him back last week. Bet he thinks you're a spirited filly who just needs to be tamed," Jean burst out laughing and Ella scowled at her.

"Don't laugh - he's going to be here tonight and wanting to know if I liked the flowers," she moaned, but Jean only laughed harder.