Read Online The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon - Free Book Online

of fingers against her thigh. At the beginning of the third measure, she joined the melody, her voice deep and lusty and emotional. She could have sung the song straight and high and clear. But she didn’t. Ritzi allowed herself to feel it instead of performing it. In her peripheral vision, she saw Shorty standing next to the curtain. His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. Ritzi kept her eyes on the sheet of lyrics. They rang all too true. Ritzi let her voice crack at the beginning of the last chorus, an emotion-filled rasp that would surely cost her the audition.
Appetizing young love for sale
If you want to buy my wares
Follow me and climb the stairs
Love for sale
    She brought the last line to a close with a slight waver. This was the opportunity she’d struggled for. Her chance at a real part in a Broadway show. And she’d blown it on purpose. All Ritzi wanted was to go home and go to bed with an aspirin and a hot water bottle and forget that she had ever boarded that train three years ago. She closed her eyes and waited for the rejection.
    Damning silence filled the auditorium. Cole Porter rustled his sheetmusic. She heard whispers. And then, “Rehearsals begin next week, right here. Don’t be late.”
    It took several moments for her to make sense of the congratulations and the handshakes and the pleased look on Shorty’s face. Ritzi was given a packet of paperwork filled with scores and scripts and a typed contract stating her role in the production.
    Cole Porter graced her with a smile that might have thrilled her had it come a few years earlier. “You’re perfect,” he said.
    She remembered to smile and give thanks, to look pretty and charming and delighted. Ritzi had enough composure left to look the part. It was only when Shorty led her down the dark hallway again that she let her face crumple into dismay.
    “That was risky,” he whispered.
    “Why? I got the part.”
    “That’s not how Owney wanted you to sing it.”
    “Maybe I wanted to try something different.”
    “Listen.” He stopped and shoved her up against the wall, lowering his voice so no one could hear. Shorty pushed up on his toes to meet her eye to eye. “Keep doing things your way and you’ll get a short ride in the trunk of Owney’s Cadillac. I’m tired of dumping bodies off the Brooklyn Bridge at two in the morning, Ritz. I sure as hell don’t wanna do yours. Got it?”
    MARIA inherited kitchen duties at the age of ten. Her mother had passed the mantle, and the family recipes, with austerity and a hand-carved wooden spoon straight from the hills of Barcelona. Caramel colored with a smooth handle that fit in the curve of her palm, it was one of the few things she’d brought with her when she married Jude. Something about the feel of that spoon, the swish it made across the bottom of the pan, was therapeutic, and Maria swayed as she stood at the stove, boiling chutney to go with dinner.
    Bifana . The meal her mother made for special occasions. Pork tenderloin with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, and raisins. Maria usually made the complicated Portuguese dish during the holidays. Tonight it was an act of bribery. A way of softening her husband, easing into a conversation she didn’t know how to approach.
    The apartment was three rooms cobbled together with thin walls and rusty plumbing. A tenement near Chinatown. One corner of the living area was reserved for the kitchen, a nook containing a stove, a sink, an icebox, and a small stretch of counter against which Maria now rested, stirring the chutney in rhythmic circles. The heat radiating from the stove caused beads of sweat to rise along her hairline and lip. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
    Maria had rushed home from Smithson’s that day and worked out her anxiety by preparing the meal. She browned the tenderloin. Added spices. Stuck it in the oven to roast. And all the while, she wrestled her fears about Jude. She stacked the questions in her mind, shuffling