Page 71 of Shadow Ticket

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Things pick up a day or two later when Slide reports that Daphne has been sighted at the Tropikus nightclub, in Nagymezo utca, the Broadway of Budapest.

Night business here is going full tilt, sedans, roadsters, and motorcycles prowling the overlit bustle, pedestrians dodging in and out of the traffic, maybe no Dearborn and Randolph but bright enough.

Tropikus, an all-night dance-cabaret on a nautical theme in the metropolis of a landlocked artifact of Trianon, whatever it might answer to emotionally, must’ve looked to owners Imi and Jóska like a surefire ticket, especially with commercial real estate so cheap at the moment. Looking down the street and seeing how well the Arizona and the Moulin Rouge were doing, it seemed reasonable to ask, Why shouldn’t there be room for one more joint to catch the overflow?

Waitresses in abbreviated sailor-girl getups back and forth with Unicum boilermakers and fruit-heavy house specials in coconut and conch shells, ceramic mermaids with purple Cellophane drinking straws emerging from the tops of their heads, smoke hanging like tropical weather. As Imi works the tables, making with the repartee, Jóska attends to the cash drawers, the liquor supply, the security, the girls.

The band, camouflaged in the scenery here, itching to go Latin all evening, impatient little raps and flourishes among the percussion and brass, apparently misplaced beats in the waltzes and foxtrots till at last helplessly collapsing into a Latin American fanfare, conga drums suddenly apporting inhot from the tropics along with claves, güiros, timbales, and cowbells, and sure enough here’s Daphne Airmont, same lengthy red flow of hair Hicks remembers, backless evening dress, arm-length gloves, long strides, apparently solo tonight, straight to the bandstand where she’s ushered to a microphone, takes off one glove, scratches the mike with a fingernail, puts the glove back on, and with a practiced swing-vocalist bounce right in on the beat—

Yes…here…comes…

that…

Strange-ly trop-i-cal rhyth-m!

Yes! Strangely, hauntingly so—no

Mat-ter how, gring-go, you

Might-think-you are, some-

-thin lights up ’n’ goes “Bing-go!”

and you’re suddenly far…far

away, at some

un-expec-ted fi-esta, just as

syn-copated-as sin—one

Min-ute you’re Ang-glo, next

Min-ute-you’re not,

The stars seem to hang low,

The or-chestra’s hot—

Tell ya what—

take

take

[bridge]

a-break from Prohi-

-bi-tion, wave

hasta la vista to the Feds—

one li’l te-

-qui-la inter-