clover club

Closed Starter for : @mabel-landry​ Location : Nalini and Aurelie’s apartment TWs : alcohol

“Oh, don’t you look darling!” Pink-cheeked and merry, Nalini takes Mabel’s hand in her own, holding it high above her head to encourage her to twirl. She’s drank a little too much (perhaps it is to block out what is happening in the streets, perhaps it is just because the party is a good one. She tries not to think too hard about it, either way), but the drink agrees with her. It only makes her more cheerful, more friendly, and adds warmth to the smile that she grants to her young friend. 

“Can I get you a drink?” she chirps. “A glass? Hell, a bottle if you want it. There’s plenty to go around.” She busies herself with leading Mabel to the kitchen, plucking bottles from the table and holding them up for her to examine. “I have no idea what’s left that you could make a cocktail out of. We’ll have to experiment.” She looks eager at the prospect, already inching to fetch a shaker before Mabel has even given her answer.

“Tell me,” she chatters endlessly as she works, filling a shaker with some ice brought by one of their guests and inspecting bottles to decide what to put in it. “Been to any good spots lately? I mean, Knock Five Times is great, but I work there, Mabel. I don’t always want to drink where I sing.” 

Mabel beamed when the wonderful woman owed her a compliment at first sight. Though Mabel had already taken a few elbows to the side and a couple heels had come dangerously close to stepping on her toes, she was leaning into the looser nature of those around her. There was no liquor to warm her spirit and body at once, but she was drinking in compliments and laughter, anything to clear her mind of what had happened. She didn’t know how long the party would last, but she secretly wished it would go until the sun came up the next day. Things usually seemed less scary, less serious, in the daylight. Perhaps a shooting would, too.

The smile and wistful look stay on her face as she stands for a moment with her hand held up, unsure at first what she is supposed to do. Is this some new kind of greeting? Then she self-consciously adjusts a strap on the dress, and finally half-twirls, half-hops in a circle to show off the dress. “I don’t need anything, thank you,” Mabel replies breathlessly, looking over the contents of the kitchen without any idea of what is liquor and what is not and what would contribute to a good cocktail. “Or... maybe just some juice,” she admits as she reaches a hand up to push back some of the hair that is clinging to the sweat on the top of her forehead. “There’s a lot of people here!” It’s said with a mix of admiration and awe. To know so many people! This was the city life she’d heard about!

The wind is slightly knocked out of her sails at the question she has no answer to. Mabel has taken to wandering when she has days or mornings off, but she figures the grocers and stores she’s meandered through aren’t what Nalini is asking about. She clasps her hands together, feeling very much like a child asked to read aloud from a book she can’t understand. “I don’t... I haven’t, no,” she admits finally. She wants to come up with an excuse for her lacking answer, but she knows a lie will sound even more childish than she feels already. “I don’t even know where to look, really.”

mabel’s affirmation that she’s unhurt is like balm for ines and the restlessness which has infected her thoughts and taken to guide all her actions since the first gunshot went off. bitter altercations are not entirely unheard of in this part of town, what with this district’s proximity to both the police station as well as the docks but rarely are the vincellis behind commotion of this kind.

in a strange way, the most harm they’ve done unto this community is taking what does not belong to them although ines supposes that isn’t far from taking a life. the thought makes her shudder, her hands squeezing mabel’s in a bid to convey her concern to the younger while steadying herself. “don’t overthink it, we need to get you to safety. come on, i know where we can go.”

right into the lion’s den, she supposes. a brief thought crosses her mind—would she get punished for bringing an uninformed third party to a safehouse where weapons are stored? a brief glance thrown at the younger as they start hurrying away from the shooting makes ines worry about mabel will think of her. “why were you working late?” perhaps distraction is the better tactic to employ here.

Mabel didn’t know to think twice, so she didn’t. When Ines said she had a plan, Mabel believed it. She was ready to follow blindly, even if she was confused as to why she should overthink anything. She’d been overthinking her whole life, as far as she knew. Imagining too much on her mother’s tales of New Orleans, yet nothing as horrific as a gunshot in the street. Her mother’s stories, her own overthinking, hadn’t prepared her for this.

The question about her late shift is enough to throw Mabel’s concentration, for just a little while. “A, um, groom and his friends, um, made a bit of a mess,” she explains. “Took a while,” she adds, as she looks down at her hands, trying to focus on the imperfections as she follows Ines at a quick pace. Her nails were still as she’d last filed them to a close oval, but her cuticles and fingertips were ravaged by cleaning products and scrubbing. “I made extra, staying late,” she justifies, to herself and to Ines. Life in the city was expensive, far more so than Mabel’s mother ever let on. But Mabel’s mother never had to scrub floors, only walk on them. Nothing of her mother’s stories had included so much financial consideration as Mabel’s own day to day life.

Flashback, summer 1924

Due to a scheduling mixup, Mabel showed up to work only to be turned back around and sent out into the mid-morning heat. She didn’t have a reason to buy anything, and had hardly any money to do so, but she still found herself meandering in and out of shops of all kinds. The only other place she had to go was back to the rooming house, and no matter how hot it was, she couldn’t imagine sticking herself inside a stifling room with a window so dusty she could barely see the sun.

In clothing stores and grocers, she was careful to keep her hands to herself. She didn’t want to ruin the fabric with a sweaty grip, or get scolded for handling food she wasn’t planning on buying. It was difficult to follow the same policy in the bookstore she soon entered. Her parents didn’t have many books in the house, but her father did tend to reread them all throughout the year. The schoolhouse had several books for the students, but some were so poorly cared for, they were sad to see. Mabel picked up a book at random, only to realize upon slowly reading the first line that it must be for someone with some advanced understanding of philosophy. “Oh my,” she muttered as she closed the book and started to scan the other covers nearby. “Are they all like this?”

objectively speaking, ines knows it would have been better to stay away. better to keep inside the safe house that vera sent her to, and let things blow by before daring to step out once more. unlike a cat, she doesn’t have nine lives left to spare and her own position as a supplier to the vincelli’s crime empire isn’t murky enough to let her get away scot-free. if anything, all men and women look the same when they’re fighting for those who aren’t on your side.

ines would prefer not to be involved in this conflict at all, but she’s got no choice.

“mabel,” she says once more, hands coming up around the girl’s shoulders to gently shake her out of her thoughts. ines understands the terror that she sees painted on her features, the confusion of not knowing and understanding what’s going on, and part of her wishes she could do or say something to ease her out of that anxiety. but there’s no way to make this sound any less gruesome and no way to sugarcoat the fact that right at this moment in time, men and women affiliated with two rival gangs are shooting up the street—and each other in the process as well.

she can’t shield her from this. the only thing she can do is be there to see mabel through the worst of it.

“mabel, look at me,” she implores, urgency coloring her tone. “we’ll get you out of here but first you have to breathe. you’re gonna drive yourself into a frenzy if you dwell on your thoughts. i want you to listen to my voice, okay?”

ines thinks she is woefully unprepared to deal with this in an appropriate manner but seeing the state the younger woman is in tugs at her heartstrings. there’s no way she’s going to leave her by herself, regardless of the consequences.

“here, take my hands.” she holds them out before fixing her with an encouraging look. “did you get hurt?”

Mabel almost doesn’t recognize her name at first. It’s coming up too short, too different. Mabelandry. Even her mother said it, especially in moments like these when her daughter was scared by a loud noise in the night. She’s just Mabel now, desperate to soak in the warmth of someone’s hands on her shoulders, but still shaking too much to feel it fully. The side to side shaking slows, and then it’s up and down. She’s nodding her head along to Ines’s words, and slowly rising up onto her toes and then letting her heels back down. She tries to attach her breath to the movement of her heels. Up, in, down, out, up, in, down, out.

She takes Ines’s hands, and accidentally squeezes when she hears the question. She’s not hurt, but the mere thought she could be makes her drop her heels and go still. “No,” she finally replies, realizing her silence is not an obvious answer. “Was I that close?” All she heard was the gunfire, but she heard her father shoot predators from far, far away before. The noise was so loud it travelled quite a ways, but that was on the quiet, empty space of their farm. 

When a familiar voice reaches her ears, Aurélie turns, attention diverted from Luc or Lewis or maybe Leonard, gaze searching for the girl from the department store. With the way she seems glued to the floor, Mabel proves easy to find. She is a sharp contrast to the party in motion, enveloped in a crowd that might swallow her up—not that Aurélie would let that happen. Waving her fingers at her previous companion, she bids her goodbye with a winning smile. My friend’s there, so I’ll see you later, yes? Moments later, she’s taking Mabel’s hands and tugging her out of the fray. It’s in Aurélie’s nature to treat anyone she likes as she might a dear friend, whether it’s been a month, a day, or a year, and Mabel is no exception.

“Oh, don’t go! It’s not safe out,” implores Aurélie. “Besides, it’s my place, so of course you’re welcome here. We’ve music and dancing, and it’ll be a swell time away from all that out there. What do you want—ginger ale, limeade? Did you come straight from work, doll?” She does a quick glance of Mabel’s uniform, hoping she’s not overwhelming the younger woman with all her chatter. There’s just simply so much she needs to say. “Want to borrow something of mine? You can have any pick, if you’d like. I think we’re about the same size, and you’d look lovely in blue.”

Mabel felt a hand take hers and immediately let her body follow the guide without knowing who it was. Someone was here to help her, that was all she knew in the moments it took to place a face to a memory. A wonderful memory, of learning something new and hoping to be as informed and put-together as the woman she spoke with in the store. One hand slowly rose to pat at the top of her head, as if that would be enough to keep down the frizz that had puffed up mere moments into her work day.

There were a number of questions Mabel now had to answer, as she eagerly looked at the generous host and her surroundings and then back. “Blue?” She pictured something a little lighter than navy, in a shining fabric with straps so thin she didn’t know how they kept all that fabric up. She was sure she’d seen a woman at the hotel wear a dress like that out the night before. Even as she daydreamed, she was already shaking her head. “No, no, thank you. I don’t think I’ll stay long. Just until things, um, get quieter.” She’d never been this close to a shooting where the thing on the other side of the barrel was a human being. She didn’t know if she’d ever find the city quiet again. “I’ll have some ginger ale, if it’s not too much of a bother.” She felt small and childish asking for the soft drink in an apartment full of people who clearly knew how to have fun. She crossed her arms, and felt the thick fabric of her uniform sticking to her skin with each movement. She was learning everyday that the heat of New Orleans was only made worse when there were a lot of bodies around. “Um, actually, I might try on that dress. If it’s okay.”

Date: September 12th, 1924

Mabel was too scared to go all the way back to her rooming house now. She was still stuck in her maid’s clothes, but at least the darkening sky hid the stains of a day full of nonstop cleaning. Desperate for some guidance, she’d talked to absolutely anyone that looked familiar as she slowly meandered in the general direction of home. She’d seen some people slip into Sal’s, but she was far too self-conscious in her work clothes to go among a group of men and women she always thought looked so glamorous. Her hands were starting to shake again at the prospect of having to venture home alone, with many people now off the street and tucked safely among four walls.

Soon, a young woman who worked the beauty counter at a store Mabel frequented spotted her across the street. Mabel was a frequent visitor, if not a frequent buyer, at many stores in the city. She usually came with more questions than money, but it was proving useful as she was waved at and summoned across the street. She was quickly brought into a conversation about a house party as the cashier and her friends strode quickly down the road. Mabel didn’t know how anyone could talk about anything but the gunfire earlier in the evening, so she mostly just nodded along. Soon the whole group was pushing together as they squeezed through one door into an apartment. Mabel was too caught up in staring at the crowd and walls to notice that the girls she’d entered with had already disappeared among unfamiliar faces. “I should go,” she declared, a half-hearted command to herself, said aloud as if that would really give it any weight. “I should go,” she reiterated to her feet that did not move.

for: @mabel-landry date: september 12, 1924; early night. location: on the streets of new orleans.

the night breeze catches in ines’ hair. it’s gotten cold, but she hopes not to be in the open for any longer than absolutely necessary: vincelli men are still patrolling bourbon street and its side roads and alleyways, showcasing a variety of weapons in gloved hands while they escort civilians to secure places and away from the scene of another, potential shootout. ines stands and lets her thoughts wander for a minute in the hope that it will help her figure out where her brother might have gone off to, but to no avail: she’s tired, and it shows in the sluggish movements of her body.

“mabel?” the name falls from her lips only all too easily, before catching the younger woman’s gaze. a mixture of reproach and concern colors ines’ voice when she steps closer to the other. “my goodness, what are you doing out here?”

Mabel thought the worst part of her night would be summoning the patience to heat some soup on the stove when she got back to the rooming house. It was too late for her to go all the way home, thumb through a cookbook (it was never a quick or easy decision what to make), and try to get everything needed before the shops closed. Her feet hurt from a long shift, and her fingertips were still pruny from so much scrubbing. She wanted to minimize her time in the communal kitchen, and hopefully get a chance to read that magazine she’d had by her bed for over a week now. She was already daydreaming of the quiet when the hum of the evening street crowd was cut through with something awful.

The sound was unfamiliar. But the reaction was something even she could not be confused by: panic, chaos, and frantic action as some rushed away from the noise and some rushed toward it. She was so startled, she couldn’t even recall now exactly which corner the noise seemed to have traveled around. The startled crowd looked like chickens unable to find a way out of a coop. Their clucking told her more than their movements. Gun, shooting, shot, bullets. She’d heard her daddy shoot an old rifle at predators that tried to come for the farm animals, but it didn’t sound like what she’d just heard. Usually all she heard on the farm was the echo of the shot.

Her shoulders started to shake first, then her whole body as she let the crowd pull her, hopefully, away from the scene of the crime. People start to slow, to find missing friends and family in the crowd, or maybe just to catch their breath. Mabel tries to steady her heartbeat as she comes to a stop under a barbershop sign. She’s too busy staring at the ground now to notice who’s coming and going by her, until she hears a familiar voice. “I-I worked late,” she explains, quick and apologetic, like a child caught eating candy before dinner. She’s been told before she shouldn’t be out too late on her own, but it’s not up to her when the work day is done.