The Pink Suit: A Novel by Nicole Kelby Page A

mistake she’d made the night before. She was determined to have a proper dinner, but it was difficult to tell where to go.
    The Hedgehog, the Last Stop, Erin’s Isle, Chambers’, McSherry’s, the Lounge, Grippo’s Torch Café, on 207th near Broadway—that was close—Doc Fiddler’s, Cassidy’s, Jimmy Ryan’s, Keenan’s Corner, Dolan’s, the Pig ’n’ Whistle, or Minogue’s. Those were just some of the choices. There’s a reason why Walter Winchell calls it Ginwood, she thought. There were seventy-three pubs in the Inwood neighborhood, and they could be divided into three categories: Greenhorns, Far Downs, and all the rest.
    Greenhorns were for men from the old country. Green to America, they were not afraid to work and fiercely longed for the habit of home. Each of the pubs was connected to a particular town or county and took its name as a way of advertising—like the Lakes of Sligo, on 228th, where one could always raise a pint to the dark mist of the Northwest Coast. Their jukeboxes were filled with songs by Carmel Quinn and Dennis Day, who were always caterwauling on about Mother, Dear Mother, and Dear Mother Ireland. The songs were so maudlin that Kate hated to even walk past those pubs.
    The Far Downs were for the Irish Americans, the children of the Greenhorns. Elvis was on their jukeboxes—“All Shook Up” and “Fever.” Kate thought the man sounded like he was suffering from malaria.
    At the Far Downs, no one cared whether you were from Cork or Dublin. The only thing that mattered was that you were a good Democrat and that, like all good Democrats, if you were called to the war you’d go gladly to protect your new homeland and make Ireland proud.
    The other pubs were just that—other. Nobody cared about them.
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    Maeve always said that you could judge a place by what kind of beer they sold. Her father had owned a pub in Dublin, and she was always going on about Miller High Life. If an American bar served High Life, they probably served food, and good food, too. It was the champagne of bottled beers—Kate saw that in magazines—but it seemed to be the kind of thing sold on Park Avenue. Inwood was not a champagne kind of place.
    Rheingold Girls? Schaefer beer? Knickerbocker or Piels? The signs were everywhere. And, of course, the ever-present “Ice Cold Beer.” Kate wondered what her father would think about all these beers. Back home, beer was served cool, not cold—and never to women alone. If a pub did serve ladies, they’d have a snug, a separate room, for the women to drink in with their girls. Respectable men and women never drank together in public.
    Cobh was such an entirely different place from Inwood. On the Great Island, pubs were at the center of daily life. In Newtown, on Cobh, Kate’s family lived in the seventh of twenty cottages that were built around Fogarty’s Pub. They were lined up in two rows, one on either side of the pub, on the top of the hill overlooking the endless sea. You’d get the news at Fogarty’s, and anything that came by post. You’d take a phone call there or send a telegram. And there was drink—they stilled their own whiskey—and music. There was also a lovely snug for the Ladies so they could sip a halfie in relative peace.
    Cobh was an old-fashioned place—solemn and silent, too. In Kate’s New York neighborhood, it was always loud. There were sirens. And shouting. And praying. But it was the music that wore on Kate. Not just the screeching of jukeboxes, but all the rest of it. Most apartments had stoops. Most people in Inwood were homesick—music was to be expected. It could be very lovely, especially when accompanied by button accordion, harp, pennywhistle, or drum. And you could often hear bagpipes; there were several piper bands in Inwood.
    It was the opera that she hated. Nearly any hour of day or night, you