Topic: The Singer

Paula Windham

Date: 2008-04-30 02:07 EST
Chicago, Ill. August 17th, 1947

Boris was hitting her again. Just like every other time, he was careful to only hit her where it wouldn't show. Her arms....she have to wear her opera gloves tonight. She'd learned not to fight back after the second time. She didn't even cry very much anymore. The tears and the puffy eyes were hard to conceal from the audience.

"You sing best tonight," he said in that thick Russian accent of his. "Many Mafia in audience tonight. Good business." The big man stepped away and got his jacket from the wall. "Wear red dress" he ordered before opening the door to the dressing room and walking in to the hall. "Twenty minutes" was the last thing he said before closing the door again.

Paula never said a word. She knew that anything she said would only make Boris angry at her....or at least give him the excuse to be angry.

She felt used up....dead inside. She went through the motions of getting dressed and preparing for the show. There wasn't anything else she could do.

Paula Windham

Date: 2008-05-01 14:35 EST
Chicago, Ill. Aug 24th, 1947

Martin H. Kennelly was the Mayor, swept in on promises of Reform....but everyone knew that the city council really ran things. Harry S. Truman was President....Roosevelt having died only two years previously. Union leaders were sullen and inflation was high.

Still, business was booming in The Evergreen. Paula Windham was a popular singer in the old traditions that the older remnants of the Mafia families liked; and Boris Hisel, ostensibly having fled the Communist revolution, was a shrewd business manager and affable host in pubic.

But all was not well behind the curtains of The Evergreen...

Paula Windham

Date: 2008-05-01 22:52 EST
Chicago, Ill. Aug 29th, 1947

Paula heard another song in her head. She was used to it by now. Sure, many singers and musicians heard music, thought of music, created music in their heads before committing it to paper....but Paula was different.

Every time she heard a song in her head, it was complete. Fully formed, music and words....sung by voices she knew she'd never heard before. Sometimes the music was played by instruments she couldn't recognize. Strange sounds, twangy, metallic. Sometimes she could adapt the songs and sing them in the club. More often, she couldn't. Even the words themselves were sometimes strange and new to her.

This time the song was in a foreign language. She thought it might be Italian, since some of the words sounded similar to what she'd heard some of Boris' customers say when they didn't want others to know what they were saying. Nothing she could use, so she struggled to put the song out of her mind.

There was a faint knock on the dressing room door and she looked up to ask who was there....and saw an oddly dressed man standing before the closed door. "Who are you? What are you doing in here?" She didn't think to be frightened. The strange man didn't look threatening at all.

"I can send you there", was all he said.