China Dolls Read Online Free Page A

bent back to her paperwork.
    I could have walked out right then, but I was intrigued. Maybe I could do this. I traced the path Grace had taken and entered the half-finished ladies’ room. She had changed into a soft pink one-piece playsuit with short puffed sleeves and little shorts.
    “I made this,” she boasted, “after I saw Eleanor Powell wear something like it in Born to Dance . I couldn’t tell the color of the playsuit in the film, but I thought this fabric would look pretty against my skin.”
    I hadn’t been to many movies, so I didn’t know what to say.
    She glanced in the mirror, squished her curls a couple of times to perk them up, and covered a cut with lipstick. I’d never be so rude as to ask her what had happened, but then she turned in my direction, frowned, and asked me a totally inappropriate question.
    “You don’t know how to doll up, do you?” she said with a laugh.She poked around in her bag and fished out a slippery thin pink hair ribbon, which she tucked between her lips. She turned me toward the mirror, ran her fingers through my hair, and then whisked the ribbon from her lips, passed it behind my neck, and pulled the satin strips to the top of my head, where she tied a bow. “That’s better!” And it was, because the pink lifted my cheeks’ natural color.
    We exited the restroom and followed the sound of music and rhythmic tapping. At the end of the hallway, I saw construction framing—for what looked like a bar to the left and a large central room. The stage looked done, though. The place was still a skeleton, but as my mind put flesh on it I began to see a nightclub like the one in Shanghai where I’d once danced the fox-trot …
    Onstage, as if testing it for the first time, a Chinese man, twenty-six or twenty-seven, or maybe older, wearing cream-colored pants and a blue button-down linen shirt, slid across the floor, spun, and then resumed tapping. His arms appeared simultaneously loose and taut. The slap of his shoes as they hit the parquet— tat-a-tat— reverberated through the floorboards and shivered up my spine. His hair was slicked back with pomade, but his athletic steps—rattling now foot over foot across the front of the stage—caused strands to break loose and flop across his forehead. This, in turn, made him flip his head back after every dance phrase to clear his vision. And he was tall—almost six feet—which was extraordinary for a Chinese. He had no musical accompaniment, but his feet tapped out a rhythm that continued to build. Rah-cha, rah-cha, tat, tat, tat . Spin. Slide. Now his arms and legs flew—like a windmill. A group of forty or so girls, who sat cross-legged on the floor before the stage, clapped and cheered. Next to me, Grace radiated delight. I couldn’t help feeling the same way, because this was a lot better than the Chinese Telephone Exchange.
    When the performance ended, the dancer picked up a towel and wiped the sweat from his face. He loped down the stairs, dropped onto a folding chair next to a woman and two men, all of whom had their backs to us. I focused on the girls by the stage. A couple of themwere attired in playsuits like Grace, but the rest wore street clothes. I didn’t recognize a single girl. Not one of them was from Chinatown. The air I sucked in felt clean and free.
    That’s when I saw her, one particular girl, who had a spot to herself. Suddenly I wanted out of there, but Grace gripped my hand tightly and pulled me across the floor toward the creature, who was strikingly different from all the rest. Light seemed to glow out of her skin. Her black hair was highlighted by a pair of shockingly white gardenias pinned just above her left ear. Her eyes sparkled, and her lips formed a perfect bow. She wore tap pants and a pale pink blouse with puffed sleeves not all that different from Grace’s, only hers had embroidery on the collar and cuffs. Her bare legs ended in ankle socks with delicate lace ruffles and basic black