High Spirits [Spirits 03] Read Online Free Page A

shabbiness exhibited by the exterior of the place. Instead, I stepped into what looked like a bordello designed by a color-blind seventeenth-century French courtesan. Not that I know what that would look like, but it’s the closest I can come to describing my impression of the place.
           Red-and-black flocked paper covered the walls. Plush red carpeting had been laid upon the floor beneath our feet. The decor was undoubtedly meant to impart the impression of opulence, but it gave me a queasy feeling in my tummy (although that might have been a result of my state of trepidation). Crystal chandeliers with dangly ornaments were supposed to shed light on all below, but the cigar and cigarette smoke was so thick, everything looked merely fuzzy. A jazz band blared away in the main room, which lay straight ahead of us. I remember my footsteps dragging; I didn’t want to go forward.
           Harold grabbed my hand and yanked, and I had no choice. “Come along, dearie. Let’s see what my sister finds so fascinating about this place and these people.”
           I’d never before wanted to do anything Stacy Kincaid did, so Harold’s reasoning left me cold. But it was too late to back out now. I’d already committed myself. Nodding, I would have followed Harold, except that the man who’d opened the door to us, a bruiser of a fellow in a yellow-checked suit who must have been nearly seven feet tall and almost as wide, stopped us by the simple expedient of holding out an arm as big around as a tree trunk. We couldn’t move.
           “Hold it a minute.” He sounded as if somebody had sandpapered his vocal chords. “I gotta tell Jinx youse guys is here. Wait a minute.”
           Harold and I exchanged a glance. “Um … sure,” I said.
           The noise was ghastly. While we waited for the monster to deliver his message and return to us, I gazed glumly into the main room. A long bar had been built parallel to the far wall, behind which stood what looked like a battalion of bartenders mixing and shaking and handing out drinks, all of which I presumed contained alcohol. A huge mirror backed the bartenders, reflecting the revelry going forward in the main room. Girls in skimpy outfits, net stockings, and shingled hair walked here and there with trays strapped to their shoulders that were supplied with cigarettes and cigars and matchboxes.
           Leaning close so that I could whisper directly into Harold’s ear, I asked, “Where does it all come from?”
           He shrugged and shouted back. “No sense whispering. Nobody can hear us anyway.”
           He was probably right, but I didn’t want to raise my voice. I was scared, darn it. “Where does all the liquor come from?”
           “Beats me.”
           “Oh.” Since he didn’t seem to know any more than I did about the mysterious world of speakeasies, I let my question ride and stared some more, wondering if any of the scantily clad cigarette sellers were girls I knew from school. None of them looked familiar, and I was glad. I’d be done for if anybody besides Harold and Stacy recognized me.
           Approximately three hundred people swarmed around the place, dancing to the music, laughing, chattering, and screaming. I think they were only screaming because it was the one way they could make themselves heard over the band, which was playing “Honolulu Eyes.” Almost everyone who wasn’t actively dancing held both a drink and a cigarette or a cigar. Most of the ladies (I use the word loosely) used holders for their cigarettes. I guess that was supposed to be sophisticated. I knew for a sinking certainty that I was going to smell like an ashcan when I got home.
           The atmosphere was supposed to be festive, but it appeared only sordid to me. Maybe that’s my Methodist upbringing talking, but I don’t think so. I doubted that any of those people were truly happy. Then again,