“It’s not 1919, Abe. The more you order, the more expensive it is. I don’t know if you realize, but the shit’s not easy to get.” I gave him a wink and he nodded, resigning to the fact that his efforts were for naught.

“I need one and a half times what you got me this month.” He glanced down at his paperwork. “We tore through the thirty cases. Can you get your hands on more than that?”

“I can get my hands on anything I want to get my hands on,” I replied confidently. Vlad’s distributor was golden and the big boss was pressuring us to move more booze.

“Is that right, Viktor?” Abraham asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, amused.

I cleared my throat, committed to staying on topic. “I’ll get you a pallet. Sixty cases should keep your queens good and sloshed.”

“And we’re holding steady at ninety a case?” Abe questioned.

“That’s the rate. That’ll mean you owe me …” I worked the numbers in my head, urging my face to keep it together when I came up with the total: “fifty-four hundred.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Is it going to be a problem for you?” I challenged.

He shook his head. “No.”

“You got quite a racket going here, Walters.”

His smile returned. “I do. How about I buy you a drink to celebrate our shared success.”

“You can afford it,” I smirked.

We walked back to the main room, and Abe poured me a whiskey on the rocks. As I drank it, he disappeared into the crowd just like he usually did, ever the entertainer.

When a diminutive drag queen took the stage, The Gallery grew so quiet that I could hear the ice in my drink clank against the side of the glass. Delicately, he wrapped his manicured fingers around the microphone, opened his rosebud mouth, and proceeded to sing a melancholy melody in his haunting alto tone.

My thoughts go back to a heavenly dance. A moment of bliss we spent. Our hearts were filled with a song of romance. As into the night we went and sang to our hearts' content. The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. You and the song are gone, but the melody lingers on.

Entranced by the beauty of the effeminate boy’s voice, I nearly missed the hand placed on the small of my back. A pair of vaguely familiar brown eyes focused on mine as a not-so-strange man made his intention known. Draining my glass, I slid it across the bar and followed him out to the alley.

Gone.

2

October 1929