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Ain't Misbehavin'

By Jennifer Lamont Leo

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Dot Rodgers slid the lacy, peppermint-pink dress over her head and tied the satin sash around her slim hips. She looked at her reflection in the bedroom mirror.
“Ugh!” It would be just the thing if she were attending a holiday hop at her old high school instead of a sophisticated soirée at her friend Veronica’s Chicago apartment. But this was New Year’s Eve, 1928. At twenty-four, Dot was long past high school.
Charlie would probably like the frothy frock. He’d say she looked sweet.
Which was one of the things she loved about him.
But tonight she wanted to wear something dazzling. Eye-catching and fun. A dress like she used to wear, back before she met Charlie. Tonight, she’d be reintroducing him to all her city friends. He’d met them once, briefly, when he’d come to the cabaret to hear her sing. But that episode had been awkward and uncomfortable, as she’d still been seeing Louie Braccio at the time. Her friends had barely paid attention to Charlie. This time would be different, now that he was her man. And she knew he would grow to love the glamour and excitement of city life, if he’d give it half a chance.
Furthermore, Veronica had mentioned that some members of the Northside Eskimos dance orchestra might be coming to the party. If Dot could meet them and charm her way into an audition, maybe she could stop selling hats and revive her fledgling singing career. She needed to make a good impression.
But she wouldn’t impress anyone dressed like Little Nell.
She flung the offending garment onto the pile of discarded clothing strewn across her brass bed. Demure things, all of them, with ribbon and lace. She had only herself to blame. She’d bought every garment over the last couple of months, trying to transform Dot Rodgers into someone she was not. Someone who would make a good wife for an upstanding straight-arrow like Charlie Corrigan.
That was, if he ever popped the question.
If Marjorie had been there, Dot would have given her the pink dress. She would have been delighted to watch her eyes light up. But her friend, roommate, and possible future sister-in-law was several hundred miles away with the rest of the Corrigans, neck-deep in preparations for her Valentine’s Day wedding. Trust a romantic soul like Marjorie to choose a wedding day that was already laden with hearts and flowers, not to mention cherubs aiming poison darts at unsuspecting people.
Not that love was poison, exactly. But it did complicate a girl’s life.
Hands on hips, Dot surveyed the wreckage. Not one outfit would do. She wanted something spectacular. But also the sort of dress Charlie would approve of. No need to shock the fellow. Not that he ever complained about what she wore. He never complained about anything she did, which was part of the problem. He treated her as if she were some ideal specimen of womanhood
How very wrong he was.
She loved Charlie, truly she did. But she was tired of clipping her wings. He’d have to understand that this was how things were done in the city. And now it was New Year’s Eve, a night to shine if there ever was one.
Frankly, she deserved to have a good time, after her disastrous Christmas. She should have known better than to show up unannounced on her family’s Indiana doorstep on Christmas Day, bearing new hats for her mother and sisters and a fine fedora for her father. He’d grudgingly let her come in, but now his angry voice still rang in her head.
“You come here with fancy gifts that you bought with dirty money, earned by parading yourself on the stage. You think you can buy your way back into this family? Well, you can’t. You’re an ungrateful, selfish girl. No decent man will ever want you.”
That ringing declaration had come after she’d described how she’d been supporting herself, that in addition to selling hats in a department store, she’d been trying to launch her singing career. She’d described her part-time job singing at a cabaret, described how the place had closed, and she was sure to get another job singing. She’d wanted to show them—to show him—she was making it on her own. She wanted to ease old wounds, forget the past, relate to her father as an adult.
It hadn’t worked.
It was partly Charlie’s fault, of course. She would never have gone, would never have attempted a reconciliation after all this time, if Charlie hadn’t encouraged her. Make peace with your mother and sisters, he’d said. Don’t let your father bully you. Well, that had gone well, hadn’t it? Maybe all that forgiveness and reconciliation stuff worked well in a picture-perfect family like the Corrigans, but not in the Reverend Oliver Barker household.
She marched to her jam-packed closet and reached to the back for a sparkly silver dress, last worn to a shindig at Louie’s Villa Italiana. She slipped it over her head and surveyed herself. Perfect. Metallic beads and silky fringe caught the light with every move she made. From the top drawer of the dresser, she selected a headband encrusted with jet beads and rhinestones and slid it over her smooth dark bangs. She clipped on a pair of ornate chandelier earrings, the cool metal grazing her jawline, and added a long rope of beads, knotting them at the breastbone. A quick swipe of red lip rouge and a sweep of kohl around her eyes, and she was ready just as the buzzer sounded.

***
Charlie Corrigan stood on the cement porch of the small brick two-story building and reflexively patted the left pocket of his overcoat, a gesture he'd performed repeatedly over the course of the day. Through the thick black wool, his gloved hand could just make out the outline of the tiny square box that held his future. Reassured that the precious diamond ring hadn't fallen out and gotten lost somewhere between Kerryville and Chicago, he straightened his shoulders and adjusted the brim of his fedora. In the crook of his elbow lay a dozen red roses wrapped in green paper. All was ready. Tonight, he was going to ask Miss Dorothy Rodgers to do him the honor of becoming his wife. During the drive, he'd rehearsed his lines and pictured exactly how the moment would go. In an atmosphere of softly crooning clarinets and candlelight, he'd produce the little velvet box, and her dark eyes would grow enormous, and he'd say, "Dot, will you marry me?" and she'd say—
Buzzzz!
The alarming rasp and click of the door’s lock startled him. He pulled open the heavy, glass-paneled portal and crossed the tiled floor of the slightly musty-smelling vestibule just as the door to the first-floor apartment cracked open. A woman’s face peered out.
“Oh, Charlie, it’s you.” The door opened wider to reveal a sixtyish woman wrapped in a blue chenille bathrobe and wearing scuffed slippers. Her iron-gray hair was curled in soft white rags all over her head, and she wore a gleeful grin on her broad face. “I thought I heard someone come in.”
With strained patience, Charlie stopped and touched the brim of his hat. “Just me, Mrs. Moran, and a happy New Year to you.”
No army sentinel kept a closer watch on his post than the landlady did on the comings and goings from her building. On previous visits, Charlie had found out how nearly impossible it was to make it from the front door to the staircase unobserved. Which was probably a good thing, he reflected, if inconvenient at times. Chicago wasn’t a safe and peaceful place like Kerryville. With only ladies living in the two-flat, the landlady downstairs and Dot and Marjorie upstairs, they couldn’t be too cautious about opening the door to strangers.
“The same to you, young man.” The landlady’s grin turned girlish as she patted her rag-rolled head. “I must look a fright.”
“Look at you, getting all dolled up for a date,” he teased. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”
“Oh, go on with you.” Mrs. Moran scoffed, but her green eyes twinkled. “I’ll be having a date with that handsome young bandleader, Guy Lombardo. Did you know he’s doing a special New Year’s Eve broadcast on the wireless?”
“You don’t say.” Charlie shifted his weight and glanced toward the staircase. For a brief, awkward moment, he feared she was going to invite him in to listen with her. On impulse he drew a rose from the bunch in his arm and handed it to the woman. “For you. You can’t meet a man like Mr. Lombardo without a corsage.”
She took the bloom and lifted it to her nose, her face beaming as she sniffed deeply. “Why, Charlie Corrigan, aren’t you a charmer. You’re so much nicer than that fella she used to go with, with his flashy suits and jeweled stickpins. Used to drive up here in his fancy automobile and bring her costly presents—earrings and what have you. But he didn’t treat her very nice, if you ask me.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice, even though they were the only two in the vestibule. “They said he owned an Italian restaurant, but you don’t make that kind of money from spaghetti, if you know what I mean.”
Charlie did know. “Is that so? Well, I need to be going …” The last thing he felt like doing was discussing Dot’s wealthy former beau, who had indeed owned a restaurant that fronted a speakeasy. And now the man was locked up in jail. She was well rid of the crumb. But all at once, Charlie felt tinges of doubt shadow the edges of his mind. What would she think of the ring in his coat pocket, if she was used to expensive baubles? His family’s dry-goods store was doing well these days, but he didn’t have a bootlegger’s budget to spend on jewelry.
“Now go on, shoo.” Mrs. Moran waved the flower as if he were the one detaining them both. “You young people enjoy yourselves tonight.”
“Thank you. We will.”
As the landlady retreated and closed her door, he took the carpeted stairs, bounding up them two at a time in his heart but constrained to a dignified pace by his bum leg, a souvenir from his scrape with the Kaiser’s army.
All he had to do now was talk his girl out of this crazy party she'd mentioned. The last thing he wanted was share tonight with anyone else but her.
Dot swung open the door to her apartment before he could knock, and he stood dazzled by glints of silver dancing off her dress like a thousand shooting stars. For a moment, he couldn't speak.
How did an ordinary fellow like him end up with an extraordinary creature like her?
“Well,” she said with a smile. “Aren’t you going to come in?”
He cleared his throat.
This was going to be one heck of a night.

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