Sirens by Janet Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

own. Good thing Pops wasn’t here; when the salesgirl and Mel weren’t looking, I wiped off the worst of it.
    We left the store with a bag of cosmetics, and Melody dropped me back at the apartment in the midafternoon before she went off on some private errand.
    So silent and so white, this space. I thought again about my home, my room with its flowered wallpaper, my chenille bedspread, Pops’s creaky old chair, Ma’s rhubarb pie, the landscapes cut from magazines and hung in Pops’s homemade frames, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Ellie in their finery in the round portrait over the fireplace. There was nothing homey here, nothing but still, clean newness. And me, plunked down in the middle of it, already a changeling, and wondering what was to happen next.
    I buried my queasiness in a cup of tea and a plate of fresh biscuits smothered in butter and made by my aunt’s capable cook.

    But I didn’t linger indoors for long, and decided not to wait until Melody returned. The day was warm like a promise, and New York beckoned. Teddy and I had walked the streets together enough that I knew where I was and felt at home. In the late afternoon I ventured out, my new shoes surprisingly comfortable.
    I made my way back down to Herald Square to Macy’s again. This time I paused to survey the fashions arrayed behind the glass windows. The mannequins gestured at each other accusingly, their pouty lips shiny with brilliant carmine, the long strands of pearls draping their necks iridescent in the glaring hot window lights. I wandered back to Fifth Avenue and headed uptown, passing the library, where I waved to the lions like a kid, the way I had when Teddy had brought me there so many years before. Autos rumbleddown the avenue; horse-drawn carters hauled empty, clattering milk bottles for cleaning; boys, their voices singsong and unintelligible, hawked the evening papers.
    I walked west across Forty-fourth. The setting sun washed down the street, and I lifted my hand to my forehead and squinted against the glare. As I passed a set of heavy doors, they burst open and a group of men and women tumbled onto the sidewalk, all laughing and chattering, surrounding me in such a swell of enthusiasm and banter that I froze.
    “Oh, pardon me!” The man who’d almost trod on my shiny new toes lifted his hat in apology. The book tucked in the crook of his arm tumbled toward me, and I caught it; as I handed it back to him I saw the cover: Fanny, Herself.
    “I’ve read that,” I blurted.
    He paused. “Really? You mean it? You’ve read it?”
    “Yes, of course.” The warmth crept into my cheeks. It had been a favorite with Moira and me when we’d discovered it in the library. The heroine, Fanny, was a girl with a gift for drawing—why, I spent many nights rereading passages, savoring her search for freedom and success and imagining myself in her shoes, but with a pen substituting for a paintbrush.
    He looked me up and down. “So did you like it?”
    “I…yes, I did.”
    He turned to his companions. “Hey, Ed, listen to this. This lovely young thing has read your book.”
    The woman behind him said, “Really? One of the few,” and she laughed as she was tugged on up the street.
    “She liked it, Ed!” he called. He shrugged. “Oh well, they’re off.So, then, must I be, darling.” He tipped his hat to me and made a little bow. “Cheers!”
    And they were gone, leaving me in their wake.
    The doorman stood a few feet away, his hands behind his back. “You know who you were just talking to, don’t you?”
    I shook my head.
    “That was the membership of the Round Table.”
    “The Algonquin Round Table? Oh, my stars!” I gaped up at the awning. The Algonquin Hotel. Of course. Everyone knew about the Round Table at the Algonquin, set up in the back of the dining room. Since shortly after the war it had become the gathering place of New York literary types. Playwrights, novelists, journalists—they came together to talk about books,