"See-line woman (see-line)
Dressed in red (see-line)
Make a man (see-line)
Lose his head (see-line)"
Nina Simone – "See-Line Woman"
She fucked them both.
Smoke and Stack.
Seducing the twin brothers was easy, but confusing at the start.
She met Stack first. The gold in his teeth gleamed in the light of the Sunset Café, one of the most popular Black and Tan clubs in the Bronzeville section of Chicago. Lena Blackwell worked behind the bar instead of the floor, where jam packed circular tables faced an at capacity dance floor moving to the sounds of the latest jazz band snazzed up in tuxedos.
Although the Sunset Café advertised itself as a supper club and a popular music venue, people along the stroll knew it was a higher class speakeasy. Unlike other clandestine establishments with secret code words whispered to get in and concealed entrances to deceive law enforcement and politicians, the Sunset owners paid off low-salaried policeman to look away. Their mob ties kept money in the right pockets to warn of raids and shakedowns from other gangsters. People wanted liquor and any other spirits they could get their hands on in a city that was supposed to be as dry as the Sahara.
Stack slithered over to the far end of the long polished mahogany table with a toothpick wedged between his gums. For over twenty minutes, he rapped to her while she tried to keep the prohibited drinks flowing.
"You should come work for me," he said, sizing her up with blatant lust in his bold brown eyes.
"I'm not a whore for you to put on the stroll, mister. Order another drink or leave me be."
He gave her a crooked grin with his sexy lips, then admired her perfectly coiffed hairdo styled with pin curls and slathered in Sweet Honey Brown pomade. Lena cut him to the quick.
"I know a pimp when I see one," she snapped, mixing drinks for one of the female servers.
"I ain't mean it like that baby. This is a legit business proposition. I'ma go back home and open a juke. I need a talented drink mixer such as yoself."
His delta accent was raspy and thick like overcooked grits. He was one of them sorry souls who migrated from the dirty south. She wondered if his feelings got hurt when he discovered the north was no different than the low down redneck peckerwoods he ran away from.
"Mmm hmm," she said, rolling her eyes.
"I'm serious. Think about it. Lemme have some cold water," he said.
Lena reached down into a false shelf and poured Stack some high grade illegal moonshine. She slid the glass to him and he guzzled it down.
"Stack!"
Lena tilted her head to see the caller.
Well, damn.
The head of the Bronzeville syndicate gestured toward Stack. Ernie Miller, the Black godfather of the south side, was wide in the gut and built low to the ground like a bulldog. A dangerous cat, who carried a switchblade known to cut throats on a whim.
Stack slid a fat wad of cash out of his pocket and laid a crisp twenty on the counter.
"Keep the change for your tip," he said, winking at her.
The change from his tab would cover her rent for two months.
He stuffed the rest of his money in his pocket where a shiny set of brass knuckles dangled, and left the bar to join Ernie. For the first time, Lena took notice of Stack's finely tailored brown suit and the sharp creases in his pants. He had syndicate connections. A gangster. And a good tipper. She watched him enter a secret door in the back and never saw him again that night.
Two days later, as she started work at the bar, she spotted Stack nursing a drink at the far end, listening to an older barfly chat away to him. He drained the last of what was in his glass and Lena offered him some cold water.
Stack looked at her in confusion and shook his head in the negative.
She worked her shift, expecting Stack to hit on her at the bar again, like most men did.
He didn't.
"Cat got your tongue tonight, mister?" she teased, wiping down a spill near his arm from another patron.
He stared at her and then turned away to watch chorus girls tear up the Black Bottom dance in short dresses. Maybe she'd been too curt for him last time, and he took the hint. Ironically, that made her take a sudden interest.
He was tall, fine-looking, and a sharp dresser. She wondered if he smelled as good as he looked. Her eyes stayed on him until he wandered off to take an empty seat next to Ernie in a far left corner with some other broad-shouldered men.
"What was he drinking?" she asked another bartender.
Max, a reed-thin high yella man with a nasally voice, glanced at her.
"A South Side and the last glass was some Smoke."
"Eww, he likes that Smoke shit? That could kill him," she said, crinkling her nose.
"Them ex soldiers like that cloudy fuel alcohol."
"How you know he's an ex soldier?"
Max held out his hand and wiggled it.
"His hands. They shake a little bit. Lotta them war boys came back messed up."
Lena couldn't imagine the jovial man she met the other night acting shell-shocked. She reached under the bar and grabbed some gin. Adding some lime, sugar, and a bit of mint, she made a fresh glass of South Side.
"I'll be right back," she said.
Her heels click-clacked on the floor and she passed several raucous tables enjoying the floor show. Ernie had stepped away to talk to some people two tables over. She placed the South Side in front of the ex soldier.
"Thought you might enjoy this better than that rot gut you were drinking earlier," she said.
He glanced down at the drink and a slow smile raised the corners of his lips. No gold on his teeth. She studied his features, his hair, and the large build of his body. This had to be the same man.
"What they call you around here?" she asked.
"Smoke."
"Not Stack?"
He showed more teeth and some dimples.
"No. Just Smoke."
He had a twinkle in his eye and he chuckled softly.
"Where you from?" she asked.
"Mississippi."
"You really opening a juke down there?"
He squinted at her, but before he could answer, Ernie returned.
"Let's go," Ernie said, grabbing his coat.
The soldier stood and brushed against her. She looked up into his eyes and shivered. He reached down for the drink she prepared for him and sipped it down in front of her.
"Thank you," he said, handing the glass back to her.
She clasped it with both hands, feeling woozy by the scent of his cologne. He grabbed his suit coat, and she glimpsed the gun in a holster strapped to him.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice soft like cotton.
Lena stepped aside and touched her forehead. The man had her breaking out in a sweat.
Two more men caught up to them near the bar and that's when she gasped, seeing double. The man who called himself Smoke greeted his twin brother Stack. Lena returned to her post and Stack peeled back his lips, showing her gold in his mouth. She ended up grinning, and he leaned an elbow on the bar.
"You look even more beautiful when you smile," Stack said.
Staring at them both, she could tell they were physically identical, but the personalities, their auras…so opposite.
One thing was for sure, seeing them together…she was smitten.
And she wanted them both.
###
Stack usually showed up at the Sunset around nine.
Lena figured out his routine quickly because out of the two twins, Stack liked to party and be around the nightlife the most. He stood out in a crowd of men and the ladies loved him.
The Sunset Café started advertising to lure more women into the place for capitalistic gain. Originally the owners created it as a gentlemen's club, but in order to stay lucrative during prohibition, they had to open up the market to new customers, and women loved to drink.
To hide the odorous stench of bootleg hard liquor that could turn female customers away, new cocktails were created adding syrups and various fruit juices to sweeten the bitter taste. The club manager ordered all bartenders to add more cherries, orange slices, and canned chucks of pineapples in the drinks to appeal to the good-time girls who sought excitement. Especially the white ones.
White women loved the Sunset.
White men loved it too, and the forbidden allure of rubbing shoulders with negroes brought out their lascivious side. Everyone in Chicago knew that colored folks couldn't have their own entertainment spaces without white folks sniffing for some action in the mix. As much as they pretended to hate negro people, they sure couldn't stay away from them. Colored patrons and performers tickled their libidinous fantasies. The best music, the best food, and the best dancing happened on the south side where negroes were crowded together. They didn't call it Bronzeville for nothing.
Lena eyed the entrance. Stack was due to swagger through any minute.
The supper hour kept the bar less hectic as folks ate garnished devilled eggs, green beans, steaks, fried catfish, buttermilk-dipped fried chicken, with the added sides of creamy macaroni and cheese with generous slices of honey cornbread.
Max flipped through his tattered, olive-colored copy of the H.P. Dreambook. A man wearing a turban in front of a crystal ball illustrated the cover. He pestered busboys, servers, and Lena about their dreams so he could search them up in his book and find the corresponding numerical interpretation to play the numbers. Another bartender named Frank polished glasses and worked the other end of the counter.
"C'mon Lena, your turn, what you dream last night?" Max asked.
"I don't really have dreams."
"Everybody dreams. Bernice, what about you?"
Bernice scratched an itch on her prominent nose and thought about her answer while she waited for Lena to pour whiskey into three tumbler glasses.
"The night before, I dreamed about going to Paris and seeing Josephine Baker," Bernice said.
She spun around and shook her hips.
"Y'all think she really dances over there naked wearing bananas?" Bernice asked.
"Lemme see, travel… bananas…dancing…" Max murmured.
He circled numbers in his book with a stubby pencil. Lena placed the drinks on Bernice's tray and tapped her foot waiting for Max. Two other female servers went to Frank to fill their orders.
"Okay…two…twenty-nine…seventeen," Max said.
He reached into his tip pocket and pulled out a coin, handing it to Bernice.
"Give that to Melvin and tell him to combinate my numbers," he said.
"You give your own money to the numbers man," Bernice said.
She flounced away from the bar, and Max sucked his teeth.
Stack strolled in and took off his hat and coat, leaving it with the coat check girl. He surveyed the room and two gleeful white women sauntered over to him.
"Them ofays sure do love them some Big Stack," Max said.
Bernice returned with another drink order. She glanced at Stack, too.
"Can you blame them? Look at him…just a big stiff drink I'd love to pour down my throat."
"Man can't even get into the club without women flocking to him," Max said.
"Those two wait to see him every week. They reserve the table closest to the door to catch him," Bernice added. "I ain't never seen him with anything darker than a paper bag, though."
"That's cuz you and those ladies are at the top of the hierarchy."
"What are you bumping your gums about now, Max?" Bernice sighed.
"Niggas out here go for color first, hair texture second, and shape last. Listen to me…don't roll your eyes…white girls and you lightskins…that would be you Bernice with your mixed ass…are at the top. If a woman ain't that, they'll take a brownskin, like Lena, if they have good hair. But if they can't have number one or two, a woman has to at least have a good shape. See, Bernice here, she only got one and two—"
"I got a cute shape, too! I'm all three!" Bernice protested.
"Not with those knock knees and small tits…anyway, like I was saying…you gotta have what's on that list or you won't get no attention in this club. That's why Lena is behind the bar and not on the floor with you all night getting the fat tips. Facts is facts, and that man over there likes to have all three."
They watched Stack as he charmed the women blocking him from the rest of the club.
"Hmmph. Men are stupid," Bernice huffed. "Miss Two-out-of-three, can I get three shots of rum?"
"Coming right up, Miss Three-out-of-three," Lena said.
Bernice cackled, then took the drinks away.
"I never noticed she had knock knees," Lena whispered to Max.
Stack sauntered over with the women and their loud chatter livened up the counter.
"Hey Max," Stack said.
"Good to see you this evening, Mr. Moore," Max said, taking on his polished bartender voice.
He dropped his dream book under the counter.
"What can I fix for you tonight, sir?"
Max waited for the order. Lena headed over to another patron who wanted hooch.
"Ladies, what would you like to drink?" Stack asked.
The first woman, a shapely red head with narrow features asked for a Sidecar, and the second woman, a wide-eyed brunette, requested a Malört.
"You like that bitter stuff?" Stack asked.
Lena clocked the brunette's curling edges from perspiration, and the slight roundness of her nose. To a regular white person, she could pass as Italian or even a Jewish Russian. However, the hair, the extra curve in her ass, and the nervous fluttery eyes told the truth to Lena. The woman glanced at her; a mutual understanding passed between them that she would be treated as a white woman. Who was she to judge what people had to do to survive a depression?
If Stack knew, he didn't let on. Max gave them their drinks and Stack turned his steady focus on Lena.
"You look real nice tonight, Lena."
"Thank you, Mr. Moore," she said.
"When you wear all those curls, it makes your pretty eyes look mysterious—"
"Stack," the redhead interjected.
Her tone came out sharply, saying his name.
"I'm talking, baby, give me a minute," he said.
The bass in his voice caused her lips to bunch up. Her brunette friend sipped the Malört and looked away.
"I didn't come down here to watch you talk to a bartender," the redhead whined.
"Bitch, I don't care what you came here to do."
Max stepped in to de-escalate.
"Mr. Moore, what would you like to have?"
Lena left them to serve other people, and Stack dismissed the two women. He conferred with Max and the floor show began, capturing his attention. Stack loved watching the dancers. He probably ran through most of them based on his reputation. Irritation stretched across his face and Lena served him the moonshine he loved.
"Those girls don't know how to act when you talk to other women," she said.
"I'm tired of them dingy broads anyway. They both have dry coochie and bad attitudes. White bitches love slumming with dark dick, but act all bent outta shape if a colored woman gets a tiny bit of attention."
"You do know one of them is colored, right?"
"Yeah, I know."
He grinned and looked deep into Lena's eyes. She gave him a sly smirk and his eyes drank her in.
"You want some more?" she asked, enunciating each word.
Stack watched her succulent red lips and his gaze dipped to the top of her white blouse, eyeballing the outline of her breasts.
"You undressing me with those eyes, Mr. Moore?"
Dimples.
"I think you're undressing me," he said.
"I been did that," she teased, and sashayed away to serve a counter rush of older men with their mistresses.
She knew he kept his eyes on her ass the way she intended by swinging her hips extra hard.
He loved watching her.
For weeks she acted coquettish and purred his last name any time she served him. Ernie treated him and Smoke as his most trusted muscle men. If he needed an enemy whacked, he sent the Smoke Stack twins with the chopper to deliver a Chicago overcoat first class. Stack strutted around the club with a dominance that aroused her. Most tough guys annoyed her, their performative masculinity a tremendous joke to her.
Not Stack.
He oozed overt power, and she wanted a taste of that in her bed.
"Be careful, Lena, being a gangster's woman ain't the life you want," Max warned on a different night.
He caught her ogling Stack. Lena loved the way his thighs stretched the material of his pants, and she licked her lips at the heavy bulge in the crotch. What she would give to sit on all that hefty weight. She flirted with the gangster using long unblinking stares on him, and lightly touched his hand whenever she served glasses of rum, gin, or the moonshine he liked to call dog soup. Eventually, he would just beeline to the bar to greet her the moment he walked into the club. He only had eyes for her.
Women were easy for Stack to catch because they threw themselves at him. She lured him in night by night, forcing him to chase her, keeping him expectant, and on his toes. The man hadn't chased a woman for a long time and it showed.
Her calculated seduction worked.
He started bringing her things. Diamond earrings. Real ones. Fancy gold hair clips and chocolate candy in heart boxes. He asked around and found out her favorite snack was the roasted peanuts sold a block away on the street from an old German man. He left her small warm bags at the bar before her shift started on Fridays to last her all weekend. She showed up to work one night and Max could barely contain himself. He handed her a large box with a knee-length fur coat inside.
He asked her out a few times, but she played demure, citing the rules of employees not fraternizing with employers.
"Aw Lena. I don't own this place…I work for the man who does. He pays your checks, not me."
"The other girls will be mad if they see me with you."
"Fuck 'em."
"I'll think about it."
He floated for a week after she said that. Like most men, he wanted a slut to fuck in private, but a good girl to woo in public.
A month later, Lena had a rough night with some rowdy patrons. Lower-level men of Ernie's syndicate. Stack had been out of town on business, and she missed interacting with him. His flirty nature kept her work nights fun, and they flew by fast. Without him, they dragged on for hours.
After Lena helped clean the bar area and counted money at closing, the numbers man slid over to Max and handed him a fifteen dollar win.
"Holy shit!" Max shouted.
He turned to Lena, his eyes shiny with joy.
"I'm taking you to Al's Diner for steak and eggs!"
Lena grabbed her coat and purse and walked out of the club with Max. Bernice joined them. They caught a cab to Al's Diner in a seedier area, but the food was delicious. Lena ate her fill and listened to Max make plans to buy his girlfriend new dresses, and a new tailored suit with nice dress shoes to replace the clodhoppers he wore outside of work. Bernice planned a rent party and Lena promised to spread the word and address to their shared apartment building. Max offered to pay for all the food at her party so she could sell dinner plates and keep all the proceeds.
After Max splurged on chocolate malts, she shared another cab ride with Bernice to her second-floor walk-up.
Another week passed, and Stack didn't come to the Sunset. Lena worried that the Italian mafia under Al Capone's orders gunned him down in the windy city or Bugs Moran and the Irish mob caught him slipping and threw him in Lake Michigan. Smoke huddled with Ernie and the other men in their crew, talking animatedly. She made her way around the bar counter. Tensions around the city had been thick among the immigrant groups, but colored folks kept on striving for better. Tempted to ask the other twin about his brother, she felt two muscular arms lift her up when she headed to the secret storage room to retrieve more spirits.
"Stack!"
Her heart triple-thumped in her chest like a train roaring down an uneven track. She turned and threw her arms around his neck instinctively.
"You missed me," he whispered in her ear.
The vibration of his voice along the delicate skin on her neck thrilled her. The breathiness in the shell of her ear heated the blood in her veins.
She kissed him.
Smashed her plump wanton lips across his fuller ones and slipped her tongue past the seam, tasting the strong whiskey on his breath. Their heads slanted for the proper angle to slide warm tongues together. His deep kisses sent love pulses straight down to her toes. Stack tongued her breathless hidden behind an alcove. He cradled her face before pulling away first.
"Damn. I ain't been kissed like that before," he drawled out in his delta accent.
She held his longing gaze in the yellow light of the hanging lamp that dangled above them. As tough as he was, his face looked so gentle and pure up close. Like a big ole puppy that just wanted to play fetch with her heart.
"Go out with me tonight," he asked.
She tickled the facial hair on his chin, then ran a slender finger down the part in his hair.
"How 'bout you go out with me?"
He grinned.
"Where?"
"It won't be nowhere high class like you're used to, but you'll have a good time. Promise."
He lunged for her mouth again, wrapping his beefy arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet.
"Oh, no wonder it's taking you so long to bring those bottles out," her co-worker Frank said.
Lena jerked away from Stack and grabbed the bottles she came for. She rushed past Frank, beaming all the way back to the bar.