Chapter OneNew York City1901I feel how the air changes when I step into the room. Crowded as Mrs. Vanderbilt’s ballroom is, it all goes charged, crackling like this new electricity that Mr. Edison has begun to brighten our world with. I sense it in their eyes, their voices, the tilts and leans of their silk-clad bodies. I glide in, and the Four Hundred go silent.
My hostess stands in the middle of her guests and offers me the slightest of nods, the quick upward pull of an approving smile. That’s my cue. I sweep farther into the massive space, taking center stage against a backdrop of gleaming marble and framed portraits of the dead Vanderbilts that line the walls. New money, these Vanderbilts. Arrivistes, but that makes them cleverer—and bolder. If they aren’t necessarily welcomed by the likes of these Four Hundred, they’ll settle for acceptance or at the very least tolerance. And they’ll do things the others wouldn’t dream of in order to gain that, like invite me—a fatherless girl from coal country—to their costume party. Give the blue bloods a salacious dance before supper. They won’t pretend to be the arbiters of taste, these Vanderbilts. They are just richer than God, and they’ll throw the best parties if it buys entrée into the clique.
Oh, but the keeper of the gates herself is here tonight, too. And surely that’s part of why Mrs. Vanderbilt smiles so triumphantly as I take my place before her guests in this grand room of hers. It’s because Mrs. Astor has deigned to accept her invitation to this flashy costume party. She’s even donned a tiara for the occasion—dressed as a royal? Or simply herself? Mrs. Astor stands sipping champagne a few paces from her hostess, flanked by two mustached men. One I recognize instantly. He’s always in the society pages. Mrs. Astor’s partner and confidant, her closest ally in keeping people in their places, Mr. Ward McAllister, studies me with an appraising eye. And I can read his lips as he tilts toward his high priestess and whispers, not disapprovingly, “Look at her. Positively sinful.” In reply, Mrs. Astor’s pristine skin reveals the faintest and most tasteful of blushes against her collar of priceless diamonds.
I’m not sure who the mustache on Mrs. Astor’s other side is, but he’s gazing at me like a puzzle he’d like to sort. He’s much taller than Mr. McAllister, and broad, with hair the color of dark copper laced with silver that calls to my mind the pelt of a fox. Under his full copper mustache are widely smiling lips.
Mrs. Vanderbilt’s orchestra strikes up the first notes of the languid melody; they have the sheet music my stage manager provided. Tonight I’ll be giving these fancy ladies and gents one of my most risqué performances, just as Mrs. Vanderbilt requested when she telephoned the theater to hire me. I shall be Salome, dancing beneath my seven veils, the biblical beauty who turned the king mad. The girl who drove Herod so deeply into his lust that he saw no choice but to grant her wish: the head of John the Baptist on a platter.
I close my eyes, draw in a slow, long breath. And as the music picks up volume, I allow it to pull me in, and I begin to move. I tug the first veil from my hair and raise it aloft. As my dark waves tumble loose and long, I flicker my fingers, and the rich scarlet covering flutters slowly to Mrs. Vanderbilt’s floor. Small gasps of shock—and delight. I lock eyes with my hostess, who is done up elaborately as Lady Liberty this evening. Her lips part in a satisfied smirk as she watches my movements. And then my eyes slide to the tall man at her side, who is staring at the skin of my neck, which I’ve just laid bare. He’s enchanted.
I drop the second veil. Deep purple. More scandalized gasps as my arms and wrists flash, uncovered. They are wondering how far I will go with this. Oh, so much farther, ladies and gentlemen. I flit my hands up and down, then over my head. My fingers flicker as the jewels of my rings catch the light of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s thousands of candles. The world is a dirty place. Keep her hands clean. My mind wanders back to the advertisement for which I modeled earlier this week, a soap campaign. I was dolled up like a sweet little shepherdess in a pastoral scene, surrounded by fake flowers as I pretended to wash before a porcelain bowl. Each day a new costume, a new scenario.
I drop the third veil now. Emerald green. I see how they lean forward, and I can tell: I’ve got them. These plump and powdered matrons who hide behind their own veils of propriety, with their thick calling cards and butler-guarded foyers, but who delight in the diversions that women like me can provide. I’m holding them all. One lady nearby is ornamented as a swan, dripping in white feathers and ropes of pearls, and just over her head I spot a framed portrait hanging on the wall: a nude in repose. Some Vanderbilt ancestor? Surely not. More likely some French courtesan whose painted flesh they’ve acquired because the artist is in fashion and they can afford to own her. And yet, I’m positively sinful.
I drop the fourth veil now, ocher, and reveal my ankles, my calves. They titter to one another. They can’t know that the further I unveil, the thicker my armor becomes. It’s not Evelyn they are seeing, the showgirl who will return home to the cramped room in the boardinghouse, where Mamma will be asleep in our shared bed. Or worse, awake and weeping in her rocking chair, quietly lamenting our turn in fortunes.
I drop the fifth veil, sapphire, and the jewels of my necklace glisten alone against the bare skin of my shoulders, my collarbone, my décolletage. I gleam like the sensational new statue, Manhattan’s infamous lady of burnished gold who spins forever and ever at the top of Madison Square Garden. And as the music winds on, I, like her, spin and spin. I don’t grow dizzy, practiced as I am, but I can tell that they do. Fox Mustache at the side of Mrs. Astor is smirking, and Mrs. Astor is hiding half her face behind her rapidly fluttering fan. But she’s not hiding her eyes—no, she’s still looking.
I drop the sixth veil. Fuchsia. Someone cries out now—“Well, I never!”—from farther back in the room. I bite down on my lower lip to stanch my smile, and I keep dancing. The music is fast now, and so are my steps. Bold! Bright! Fresh! That’s what the papers declared as this new century came roaring in. Faster than the subway train that will soon make thunder under Manhattan’s busy streets. Livelier than the jaunty notes of ragtime that bumped the waltz back into the last century. All of it new, the papers hailed, as they’d declared mine to be the face of this fresh century. The face enchanting enough to gain entry into this party of the Four Hundred. To dance before Mrs. Astor herself—something that, last century, would have never been possible.
I pluck the seventh veil. Gold. Hundreds of eyes go wide, taking in the warm sweep of my navel, my hips. My glorious figure that has made me the most in-demand artists’ model on this island, the most sought-after doll to dance in the footlights of Broadway. I can feel it, the power I wield. I stand before them, my entire body thrumming, holding them in my thrall. And then the last notes play, and I raise my scarf before my body once more, ripping the view from their ravenous eyes. And they groan, as if in physical pain, when I take the sight of my figure from them, and I fly from the room. But as I go, I hear the place erupt. Applause, cheers, scandalized chatter. They loved it. They were shocked and horrified—and yet entirely seduced.
Like Salome, I could have whatever I want from them in this moment. But I want a very different ending than the one she got.
Copyright © 2026 by Allison Pataki. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
