Bright Young Things (22 page)

That night she had learned something that every pretty girl making a go of it in the big city learns at some point or another: In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.

But Cordelia—who, back in Union, had a year on Letty in school, a few inches in height, and many more forbidden words that she‧d taught herself to sound natural saying—was now several steps ahead in understanding how fraught a privileged view can become. She sat on a tapestry spread over the grass on a rise above the white tent on the Dogwood estate, her legs bent upward and covered by the flowing skirt of her black sequined dress, watching the scene before her. Under the glow of the tent‧s many tiny electric lights, partygoers laughed and swayed to the music, the girls’ eyes darting about, the boys making advances.

The young lady of the house was not interested in them, of course. Her father had already retired, and Charlie was off playing billiards in the house, and Astrid had not shown at all. However, she was not alone. Per her father‧s instructions, Danny had followed her all night and was standing just behind her, his hand resting on his belt, which Cordelia knew held a gun.

While her mind returned again and again to the dock where she knew Thom was waiting, there was no more restlessness inside her and no more desire to escape. Not since the end of lunch, when she‧d practiced shooting with her father. She hadn‧t felt like saying much—and it seemed that he hadn‧t, either—and they‧d fired off rounds in silence for what felt like hours. When they were through, he showed her how to properly clean a shotgun and then a six-shooter, and when she had brushed and oiled the latter to his satisfaction, he put the pistol in her hands.

“I want you to have that,” he‧d told her.

“You do?” She‧d looked down at the gleaming barrel, the shiny wood grip, the solemn trigger.

“It was my first gun. The first that was really mine, not on loan, not grabbed in a pinch. I bought it from an Italian I used to know, in the old days, when I was just starting to run liquor.” He‧d given her a serious, intent smile. “You may find it strange, my dear, but I trust you completely. Charlie, too, of course—but his gifts are different than yours. I don‧t expect you to understand it yet, but in time you‧ll see.”

They had been standing by the pool, in the noonday sun, and she had blinked rapidly several times and wished that she really
were
trustworthy. It was at that moment that she began to regret sneaking off with Thom last night, and as the minutes passed, her regret only grew.

“Oh, don‧t worry, I know you‧re sad about that—about the Hale boy,” he‧d gone on quickly, almost as though he‧d read her mind. “I knew him a little as a boy, and there was always something brilliant about him. But this is another thing you‧ll learn in time: That kind of love is always changing, you can never plant your feet on it. Trust me, there will be others. But those kinds of affairs—you can‧t ever count on them like blood.”

For a brief moment, Cordelia wanted to confess everything she‧d done and ask for his forgiveness. But then he smiled at her—wisely, and almost a little sad—and it seemed to her that he knew already and wasn‧t angry. She felt the weight of the pistol in her hands, and smiled back at him. “Thank you for this. I hope someday I really will make you proud.”

By the time the party began, she still wasn‧t in anything like a festive mood, but she knew that even if she could‧ve slipped away to find Thom, she wouldn‧t have tried. Darius Grey‧s first pistol was now tucked away with an old letter he had written for her mother and an even older trench coat—the family relics, her most prized possessions.

Every now and then, a pair of young men would look up at Grey‧s daughter, whisper something, and smile. But Cordelia would only avert her eyes and turn over the memory of Thom‧s touch in her mind. She tried to remember what the prettiest thing he‧d said to her was, but nothing came right away, and she sighed to think that she‧d had all of him she was going to have, and that these meager recollections were going to have to sate her for the rest of her life.
That‧s the way it has to be,
she reminded herself. The thought was still wrenching, and she closed her eyelids to soften the pain. The girl she had been on the train had had only one hope, she reminded herself: To be reunited with her father. She‧d been an orphan then, but she wasn‧t anymore.

Exhaling sadly, she opened her eyes. The stars were sparser tonight, and she supposed that had something to do with the clouds.

“I‧m feeling a little tired, Danny,” she said as she stood up.

Once he had deposited her in her suite, she pulled the pins out of her hair so that it fell down over the straps of her dress. She draped a delicate shawl over her shoulders as she crossed to the great open windows, and pressed herself against the back of the white chair that sat just inside the balcony. She was all sighs that evening. For a while she remained very still, listening to the faint music rising up from the tent below, and letting an exquisite melancholy spread through her veins.

Time passed, though it felt like nothing to her, and eventually her eyes drifted shut. In that gentle place, just before sleep, she could feel the way Thom‧s arms had wrapped around her the night before, and perhaps because of the vividness of her imaginings, she was not immediately surprised by the sound of his voice.

“You‧re pretty when you‧re sad, too.” He had come through the door and shut it silently behind him.

She raised her head from the cushion of her arms and regarded him. The brim of his hat was tipped down enough to make him unrecognizable, but then he took it off and revealed his smooth, perfect face.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was half yearning and half angry.

“When you didn‧t come to the dock … I snuck in through the tunnel.”

The many sentences she‧d told him in her mind over the course of the afternoon—that they would simply have to end it; that she couldn‧t betray her family; that she was sorry, but it was over—abandoned her now.

“Let‧s not say anything just yet,” she said after a pause.

“All right.” He nodded and stepped toward her across the white carpet.

All day she‧d been picturing his face, but now she found that her heart was beating too fast, and she had to turn her eyes to the floor. Her knees collapsed together, and she rested her elbows on them heavily, her whole posture bowing with the hopelessness of the situation. Wavy strands of hair obscured her face, and her naked toes turned in toward each other.

“What did they do to you?” Thom asked. He came closer and sunk down on his knees at her side.

She glanced up and then to the place where his gaze was fixed. A great purple bruise had formed on her right shoulder, where the butt of the shotgun had rested, and for the first time she noticed how sore she was there. She had been rather intense about felling grapefruit that afternoon, she realized. With a touch of defensiveness, she replied, “Nothing.
They
wouldn‧t do that. Dad‧s been teaching me to shoot.”

“Oh.”

They were quiet again for a spell, and then his fingers fell onto her thigh. One hand rested there, and the other carefully moved the strands away from where they‧d caught on her damp lips. His touch, when it came, melted any convictions. It made her briefly forget everything else she wanted, and all her principles, too.

“Don‧t say you‧re going to break it off,” he said.

She shook her head, memories of how protective Darius had been that day returning to her in a wave. How like an old man he was in his robe and loafers, his gray hairs poignantly obvious when they lunched on the terrace, his fierce concern when she grew frustrated over missing her targets. There was no bond as strong as blood, he‧d told her, and she furiously tried to keep that in the front of her thoughts now.

“Perhaps,” she began, but her voice faltered. “Perhaps we should leave it here. Before I get you in any real trouble. Like you said when we met, it was a perfect moment, and maybe neither of us should have wanted anything more than that …”

“That was a stupid thing for me to say!” he broke out in a rash tone. Then, in a slower and more serious voice, each word placed carefully after the last: “I didn‧t know you then.”

Cordelia threw back her head, staring at the ceiling and hoping her throat wouldn‧t get stopped up with emotion. “And what‧s to say you know me now?”

He stood up suddenly and took a few deliberate steps away from her.

When he turned to meet her gaze, there was a wounded quality in his eyes that her heart leapt to believe in. The sounds of the party below had grown rowdy, and she knew he should go while he could still make his way among them. Who knew what kind of activity there would be in the tunnel on a night like tonight, or what the repercussions would be if, say, Danny was sent to make sure the young lady of the house had gotten to bed all right.

“I‧ll leave if you want me to,” he said eventually.

For a while, she looked at the long, tall stretch of him in a summer suit, his glossy hair neatly in place and those eyes that seemed to know everything. An ache spread across her chest when she thought how awful it would be to sit in this room alone after he had gone.

“Please don‧t,” she whispered.

“I can‧t promise it‧ll be pretty,” he said after a while. “But I know I can‧t stand the idea of a day without you.”

“It‧s just that … for you to be here …”

“Can you meet me tomorrow, on the road? We‧ll go to the East End, where no one will recognize us, and we can pretend we‧re other people, and not sit here in fear. I‧ll be there by dusk …”

She nodded and brushed away the tears before he could notice them. “Maybe. I‧ll try. I don‧t know now. I don‧t know anything.”

He tried to smile, but only half his mouth cooperated, and in the end the expression conveyed more sadness than joy.

“Till tomorrow?” he said, taking another step back.

Down below, just out of their earshot, was the swagger and wail of a trumpet. There had been a scare about a debutante‧s twisted ankle that proved nothing to worry about, after which everyone began toasting to her health. Newly formed couples were pledging to stay up for the sunrise, and fresh drinks were being poured.

A peculiar calm was creeping through Cordelia then. She could see now that her situation was just as simple as all impossible situations. There was only once choice—to meet Thom on the road tomorrow—and yet that was out of the question. The way she had felt, sitting on the rise above the tent, thinking that perhaps all of Thom‧s kisses were in the past, came back to her now. Suddenly she knew that she couldn‧t let him leave. Not this way, after only a few restrained brushes of fingertips. If he had to go, she wanted to be sure that they had really known each other, that they had not saved anything for a future date that might never come.

Cordelia stood up and, holding his gaze, drew down the straps of her evening dress. “Don‧t go,” she said.

The light from outside flickered in his eyes, and his lips parted. For a moment they watched each other, and then he moved toward her, lifted her up, and carried her to the bed. As she fell back against the soft pillows, hair fanning out around her head, a smile spread across her lips. She reached up for his face, bringing it down so that his mouth covered hers. All of her began to quicken and soften, and the consequences of their situation dissolved. There was only that room and that warm dark night, and Thom above her, pressing against her, into the sheets.

22

“CORDELIA SEEMS AWFULLY QUIET THIS MORNING,”said Astrid, idly using her croquet mallet to scratch her ankle with one hand and pushing her short, lustrous yellow hair away from her forehead with the other. She was wearing a white jersey dress that hung on her lean frame rather like an abbreviated Greek tunic. Beside her was Charlie, in a white V-neck sweater and white slacks, bent over his mallet, concentrating on his shot.

“She wasn‧t very social at the party last night, either,” he said. “Dad was teaching her how to shoot a gun yesterday, and you should have seen how determined she was about it. By the end of the day, she was actually getting kind of good.”

“Oh, dear.” Astrid looked away from Cordelia, who was sitting on a wicker chair on the Greys’ south lawn—just below the multilevel terrace with its mythical carved stone creatures—wearing a great, flopping, black straw hat and a white boatneck dress with thin navy stripes. “We‧ll have to talk her out of that.”

She paused, squinting at the other party guests—a small gathering of White Cove youth, mostly from families like hers, not families like the Greys—all wearing white, gripping stemmed glasses of grapefruit juice much improved with a few drops of champagne. Apparently they were the stragglers from what must have been a rather epic party last night. Charlie had called her earlier, waking her up, and begged her to come enjoy the morning-after fete, although she could no longer tell why. Despite her flattering dress and her skin—which appeared especially fresh when compared to the faces of the girls who hadn‧t gotten any sleep—he was paying her no special attention.

There had been a moment, in the kitchen, when Cordelia first came down—they had all been sleepy-eyed and hungry and sweet, and it had seemed to Astrid that they were just like a family of hobos, except with a much nicer house. Many of the people she‧d known since she was a child were still there, tired but unwilling to let the party end.
How lovely,
she‧d thought. Then she‧d grown a little sad, knowing that eventually the summer would have to end, and she‧d wondered if she shouldn‧t just decide to drop out of school now and live like this forever.

And while she wasn‧t paying attention, Jones had come down and whispered something in Charlie‧s ear, and after that Charlie was surly, and stopped seeming happy that she‧d given in and come. That was just how men were, she was beginning to think. After that she wondered why Jones was whispering unpleasant secrets in Charlie‧s ear instead of Darius‧s—it was awfully inconvenient for her, especially when the day was new and had such potential for enjoyment.

“Did your father drink too much and go to bed early?” she asked irritably.

“No.” Charlie whacked the ball, which rolled within range of the next wicket. “He‧s always a little tight in the evenings,” he added as he strode forward. “Your turn.”

“I‧m bored,” Astrid declared. She turned toward Emma Cantwell and Cass Beaumont, twenty feet or so behind them, who as of last week had become a couple. “Aren‧t you bored?”

“No,” Emma said cheerily. Then she turned to Cass. “Are you?”

“No.” Cass rested his hand against his hip. “Come on, Astrid, finish the game!”

“Sorry,” Astrid replied breezily, but perhaps too abruptly to be convincing. “I couldn‧t possibly! Get Gracie Northrup to play for me.”

As she walked back across the lawn, she hoped that Charlie was watching her, yet couldn‧t help but fear that this wasn‧t the case. She had no idea what was going on in his mind, but his distraction irked her, and she wasn‧t about to waste a beautiful day hanging around him while he stewed.

“Are you all right?” she asked as she reached Cordelia.

“I didn‧t sleep so well last night.” She shrugged and an enigmatic half smile played on her lips, though the brim of her hat somewhat obscured the quality in her eyes. “But I‧m all right.”

“Good.” Astrid swung around and looked at Charlie across the vast green, now playing with plump Gracie Northrup, who was laughing loudly in that ungainly snorting way she had. She was a Miss Porter‧s girl, too, although she had been a senior when Astrid was a freshman. They were four white figures against a great arc of blue sky. “That‧s the wrong blouse on Gracie,” Astrid went on, changing the subject. It was polka-dotted, and the neckline involved a complicated tied-scarf detail that brought too much attention to her large bust. “It makes her look bigger than she is.”

“You didn‧t want to play anymore?”

“Charlie‧s sore about something.” Astrid shielded her eyes and tried to seem not to care. “He‧s no fun this afternoon. I‧m going home, I think. When he‧s ready to work for me, perhaps then I‧ll come back. The party is breaking up, anyway. Why don‧t I get the chauffeur tonight? We can go into the city.”

Cordelia tipped back her head, so that the light made her brown eyes almost translucent. Not for the first time, Astrid noticed how impressive looking she was in the right clothes. On a farm, her features would have been severe, but under the drooping brim of an expensive hat, those high, defined bones were more suggestive of a horsewoman from one of the really old families. “Where do you want to go?” she asked.

“Oh, darling, who cares? We can just drive and invite people to join us.”

“Maybe,” Cordelia wavered.

Astrid‧s full lips assumed a pout. “I like it when you say
yes,
Cordelia Grey, but for now I will take
maybe.”

She bent and kissed her friend on either cheek, and then skipped up the stairs without glancing back to see if Charlie marked her exit.

But by the time Astrid had returned to Marsh Hall, she did not feel nearly so carefree. Why wasn‧t Charlie more interested in her, anyway? Had her beauty faded suddenly, or what was it? As she stepped into her bedroom, the satisfaction of having walked away began to fade, and her eye started to twitch.

In the adjacent dressing room, she sat down heavily on the little upholstered stool in front of the vanity. But there was nothing wrong with her appearance. With agitated fingers, she began to fix her hair, which was cut so that it framed her face girlishly and jauntily at once. In fact, the reflection in the mirror was just as it had been on so many nights, when all the boys had followed her with their eyes and Charlie had seemed in complete thrall to her beauty. And all of a sudden she was thinking of an evening some months ago—it had been cold, and she had worn a white dress like this one, and checked her reflection in this same room, while the smell of hothouse hyacinth wafted in the air …

Suddenly, the memory came back to her whole, and she knew she‧d made a mistake. She began opening and closing drawers, pushing aside the assortment of things that filled them. Ribbons, hairbrushes, ruined stockings—sad, gaudy earrings that had lost their match. Her big eyes almost welled up at the sight of the black dangling thing, and as she held it in her palm, she forced herself to look up into the mirror, at the kind of girl who would lose an earring in Charlie Grey‧s bedroom.

No wonder he was so preoccupied and distant, she thought, as she sighed and slumped forward, resting her chin against her fist and giving herself a stern, moody look. How could he not be, when his girlfriend was always chasing phantoms and inventing problems where there were none?

“Ah, me, what‧s a silly girl like you to do?” she asked her reflection.

Of course, Astrid was not alone in conversing with herself. During those hours when afternoon yields to evening, a city is full of girls in front of mirrors, rotating their faces right and left, finding themselves pretty beyond all conception or else hopelessly inadequate. The scene over their shoulders generally involves one or more of the following: a heap of rejected frocks, a gin drink growing watery with melting ice, a friend or two offering advice while hoping not to be outshone, a neglected sandwich with one lone set of bite marks. Perhaps, if she makes plenty of her own money or has a generous suitor, a phonograph will be blaring out something fast to get her fully in the mood for evening.

In the case of Letty, there was no friend. Fay was executing high kicks and a perfect, frozen smile in the West Forties; Kate was checking coats on the East Side; and Paulette was at Seventh Heaven. Probably she had already told Mr. Cole that Letty wasn‧t feeling well and wouldn‧t be coming in tonight. The sandwich had been devoured by Good Egg when she wasn‧t paying attention. Now Good Egg was running in circles on the small section of floor between the old, rickety vanity and the bed that she and Paulette shared. The quilt was invisible under all the dresses she had tried on and decided against. Most of Paulette‧s choices had been flashier or more revealing than she felt comfortable in, but now she was alone—or she and Good Egg were, in any event—and she had settled on the dress she‧d known since that morning she would wear.

In the mirror, Letty saw a petite girl reflecting light from every point. Her eyelids were coated with iridescent green powder, her lips were the color of garnets and possessed a similar luster, and her dark bob was slicked to a high shine. The dress was a sleeveless sheath with complicated beadwork over the bust and otherwise of a stiff, black fabric. The waist was subtle, and the hemline hovered above her ankles; she had bought it earlier that day after seeing it in a window, where it made the mannequin look like the most sophisticated chanteuse of all time, and it had cost most of the money she had earned as a cigarette girl thus far. But after tonight she would be rich, and anyway all that really mattered was that her appearance was flawless, which as far as Letty could determine, it was.

The full meaning created by the combination of the words
Fifth
and
Avenue
had not completely dawned on Letty, but driving up that fabled street in a polished black limousine, her eyes shining and her head relentlessly rehearsing the words to the songs in her repertoire, she began to take in something of its power.

Her nerves were getting worse, but the genteel rectitude of the passing landscape did calm her some. For a while, she managed to put away entirely her frightened anticipation of that moment just before she was to step onstage. Then her attention was drawn by the face of a large and elegant building of stone, so tall that she could not make out the top from her vantage within the car. Several liveried doormen moved briskly back and forth beneath an overhang of looping wrought iron and white frosted glass. Beyond the ornate exterior, piles of luggage waited on brass dollies inside a lobby of glistening marble and gilt edges. Then the car door opened, ending her reverie.

“Here we are, miss,” the chauffeur said.

“Where?” She tried not to appear surprised as she scooted toward him.

“At the St. Regis, miss.” He stood back and averted his eyes.

“Oh.”

She stepped out of the car tentatively and for a moment stood, unsure and wobbly in her high heels, on the wide sidewalk. She supposed that she had imagined Amory‧s party would take place in a club, but she tried to look as though this was precisely what she had anticipated. “Thank you,” she added, and then, reminding herself to maintain a sophisticated gait, she made her way toward the hotel. She managed this for twenty strides or so, but once she was inside, she realized she had no idea where the dressing room might be or where in this vast hotel Amory was waiting for her, and she began to panic.

“How can I be of assistance to you, mademoiselle?” The voice, coming from over her shoulder, was honeyed and composed.

She turned and found herself looking up at a tall man in a tailored black suit, with a trim, old-fashioned mustache. He was neither friendly nor unwelcoming exactly, and he kept his hands behind his back when he spoke.

“Yes …,” she began. “I am here for a party.”

“A party, mademoiselle?” He smiled patiently. “Whose party are you attending?”

“Well, I‧m not attending, exactly. I‧m a singer, you see. I‧m performing at a party to be hosted by Mr. Amory Glenn—”

“Ah, Mr.
Glenn‧s
party.”

The man glanced around and quickly placed a hand on her shoulder. He guided her away from the elevator bank, past the grand curving staircase, toward a nondescript door in the corner of the lobby. They walked down a long hall and up a flight of stairs, which opened onto another hall. The lighting there was poor, and she wondered for a moment if she should demand to see Amory immediately—it was all a little shabby, she thought, and not nearly his style. But then, in his businesslike manner, the man led her to a door that opened onto a small but perfect space. Inside was a real dressing room, with an armless, upholstered chair and a mirror ringed with frosted bulbs and a vanity table littered with makeup of all kinds, and she realized that it was only that this hallway was not for public viewing.

This was how the starlets got in.

“Mr. Glenn said he would come visit with you before you go on. In the meantime, is there anything I can fetch you?”

The thing to do, she knew, would be to make a list of demands. But she couldn‧t right then figure what they might be; the notion that she was about to enter her own dressing room had buoyed her into new realms of contentedness.

“No, thank you.”

“Do ring if you change your mind. My name is Ernest. I am the concierge of this hotel—you can ask the front desk for me.”

When he was gone and the door shut behind him, she closed her eyes and did a twirl. The floor was softened by a burgundy-colored Persian carpet, and several beaded and feathered costumes hung on the wall. But that vanity—it was like an altar. Besides makeup brushes and tints, the table before the mirror was occupied by a large polished silver urn filled with ice and a green champagne bottle with gold foil on the neck. There was another door, presumably through to the stage, from which she could hear the faint noises of a gathering—the band playing unobtrusively as people mingled and talked. She could just imagine the vast room, men moving their wives across a dance floor, rumors of various theatrical productions floating in the air.

Some minutes later, the door to the stage opened, and Amory came in wearing a tuxedo, his hair brilliantined and his cheeks ruddy.