Ada "Bricktop" Smith

Taxi horns.

A doorway, and inside it, a small, loud, happy nightclub run by an American woman with a crown of red hair, Ada Smith, called Bricktop.

Bricktop is the one who shows Josephine the city in those first months.

How to order.

How to tip.

Which streets to avoid.

Which men to trust.

And years later, after Josephine is gone, Bricktop will tell Josephine's biographer that the two of them had, for a time, been more than friends.