Bright Young Things Read online

  Before Astrid could wonder what she meant, a loud guffawing drew their attention. They both turned toward the arched entryway to the ballroom. It was Harrison Marsh II, who shared with his daughter a fierce intelligence and a protuberant nose, but was a good deal thicker all over. He had an old sportsman‧s physical breadth, and his considerable middle was currently stuffed into a paisley waistcoat. His face had gone red in blotches. Astrid‧s stepfather liked to believe that he always knew more about everything than the person he was speaking to, and at this particular moment it would have been difficult for that not to be true, for Narcissa Phipps had glided into his orbit. From the way they were laughing, however, it was clear that the topic was not the cultural changes wreaked by the Great War, or Greek philosophy, or even Greta Garbo.

  “Stop!” Mrs. Phipps was shrieking, in a manner that seemed conversely to insist that he go on saying or doing whatever it was he had just been saying or doing. “You‧re too much, really! Oh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Twenty or so well-dressed bodies separated Mr. and Mrs. Marsh, although they all became noticeably quiet and subdued in the moments that followed this outburst. Surely these guests had registered the rather flirtatious pose that Mrs. Phipps had assumed, and the sharp quality coming into the eyes of the woman whose husband‧s every word Mrs. Phipps was currently hanging on. In the next moment, Astrid‧s mother gripped the young stranger who had just entered the parlor—he was handsome and overdressed, and he carried himself with a guilty slouch. The pair crossed the floor—the hostess with her eyes roving a little wildly, making sure everyone saw what she was doing, and her companion without looking up from his brand-new shoes.

  “Have you met Luke?” Mrs. Marsh said, teeth bared, as she approached her husband and Mrs. Phipps.

  Then the piano music from the next room picked up again, and the guests resumed their polite conversation.

  “I wonder what they‧re finding to talk about …,” Billie mused, watching her father and stepmother from the middle of the room. Astrid, still by her stepsister‧s side, wondered no such thing. The tightness with which her mother‧s bony arm had encircled her young companion‧s, the way she was pressed against his side, the slightly unhinged manner in which she was glancing at everyone near her, made it perfectly obvious that she‧d had more to drink than to eat that day, and that she now had a point to prove. All of which was more than Astrid had wanted to know in the first place.

  She turned from the bristling scene—and what she saw outside the window made her preoccupations of the previous hours melt away. There was Charlie, wearing a suit, holding a bouquet of plain daisies.

  “Should I come in?” he mouthed, putting a hand on the glass pane.

  Astrid gave a slow, subtle shake of her head and then stepped away from Billie and the confrontation masked as light social discourse in which her mother and stepfather were currently engaged. Through the crowd she went, like a white bolt, turning her face right or left to offer a wink here and there. When she passed through the foyer, she couldn‧t help but skip a little across the stone floor, and she bit her full lower lip to keep a giddy smile from fully forming.

  The great front door was open to accommodate latecomers, and by the time she stepped through it, she‧d made her smile vanish. Charlie was standing there, wearing a pale blue suit, his hands and the daisies hidden behind his back, waiting. Behind him the grounds rolled tranquilly toward the water, the foliage only slightly ruffled by the wind, the lower lawn populated by various species of automobile. Astrid leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” he replied in a tone less joking than hers had been.

  She cocked her head. “Hard to say for sure—if I do know you, it‧s been just ages, hasn‧t it?”

  He stepped forward, dropped the daisies, and bent his knees, wrapping his arms around her thighs and lifting her off the ground, as though she were light as a rag doll. “I‧m sorry, baby. There‧s been trouble,” he said, resting his chin against her belly, staring up into her face. “Otherwise I would‧ve called sooner.”

  “Put me down.” She set her hands against his shoulders and pushed away from him, struggling showily.

  Once he had, she averted her eyes and fussed with her skirt to make sure he hadn‧t wrinkled it. He leaned toward her face, aiming his lips for hers, but she twisted so that instead the kiss landed on her cheek.

  “Don‧t be like that! I‧m here now, ain‧t I?”

  “But here is exactly where I don‧t want to be,” she answered, her haughty, humorous veneer breaking midsentence.

  Charlie grinned and grabbed for her hand. She was so charmed by that grin that she could not help but lay down what remained of her defenses. “Come on, then,” he said. “Let‧s get out of here!”

  They ran across the lawn, through the small city of parked cars to Charlie‧s own. By the time he had reversed out onto the road that ran along the shore, she had forgotten that she had ever been angry with him, and she was only vaguely reminded when he asked, “What was the party for?”

  “Why, for me, of course!”

  “Was it? Think they‧ll miss you?”

  “Naturally.” Then she laughed and threw her arms around his neck and planted kisses up and down his neck. They were going fast along the bumpy one-lane road now, and she found she didn‧t mind that he hadn‧t realized the party was in her honor, and that she was simply grateful to have been rescued. “But I don‧t miss them at all. I have never been so glad to leave a party in my life.”

  “Yeah?” Charlie held the wheel with one hand and lit a cigarette with the other. “Well, where‧d you rather be now?”

  “Oh, I don‧t care.” She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder, curling against him.

  So they did what young couples everywhere—in the city and the country, couples whose daddies went to the same prep schools and couples who grew up on opposite sides of the tracks—do when they wish to be alone and unsupervised. They just drove. Drove up and down hills, away from the water and toward it again. They delighted in the chill on their ears and the jostling that the car afforded them and the cool fizzing of the sodas they bought when they stopped at the filling station. Neither said very much. They passed great chestnut trees that were older than they were and dunes that grew smaller by invisible increments every year. Just as the sun slipped away beyond the horizon, Charlie parked by a dock and they settled into the backseat of the car.

  “Aren‧t you starving?” she asked, some minutes later, after he‧d pulled down her silver strap several times in a row and she‧d grown tired of putting it back in place.

  “Yes,” he growled, and put his mouth back on her neck.

  “Don‧t be a boor!” she cried, and pushed him away. To underscore her point, she scooted to the opposite side of the backseat.

  “Well, what would you like to eat, then?” Charlie asked after clearing his throat.

  “Oh, I don‧t care …” Astrid sighed and pursed her lips as she examined her face in the compact. The water beyond the worn wooden platform was still and black and reflective, and she felt little urgency to be anywhere in particular. “Let‧s go to your house.”

  “Now you‧re talking,” Charlie said, climbing into the front seat of the car and starting the engine so quickly that she was thrown back against the seat when it lurched into motion.

  “Careful!” she squealed in delight as she clambered back into the front. The wind whipped her hair horizontally. She almost lost her footing, and the idea of the awful consequences of falling out of a moving car gave her a queasy sensation of being very keenly alive.

  She did not discover the truth of her hunger until she was all the way in Charlie‧s oak-paneled bedroom, situated cross-legged on one of the great, worn-leather club chairs that occupied the corner nearest the windows, and eating a hamburger that the Greys’ cook had prepared for them off a folding tray. She was very happy to be fed
. Charlie, who always ate in great gulps, had already finished his, and he had put a phonograph on, and was in the chair next to hers listening now to the sorrowful swaggering of a trumpet. His napkin was still stuffed into his collar, his big arms were folded up behind his head, and his toes were wagging. The windows were open onto the verandah, and a leafy breeze reached them in the lamp-lit room.

  “Done yet?” he asked, without opening his eyes.

  “No.” She took another nibble, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and then put her thumb in her mouth to suck the ketchup off.

  “Do you like the record?”

  She nodded. To her, it sounded like every other record he owned, but music was something she trusted Charlie to know about and understand, and that she only half paid attention to. When she grew weary of working her way slowly through the meal, she put down the remainders of her hamburger and sighed.

  Charlie opened his eyes and turned to her. “Done now?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  He stood and moved the tray out of the way, and then, hovering over her, waited until she pushed up to kiss him. Her arms hung round his neck as their mouths met. For a few minutes she teased him, pulling away and then sweetly bringing her lips back to his, until he lowered himself down against her. His fingertips circumnavigated her long naked arms, sending little pleasant tremors across her skin. The music, meanwhile, grew faster and more heady; there was a rat-tat-tat from the phonograph that was closely echoed by the accelerated beating of her heart. Charlie‧s kisses became more intense, too, and his hands moved down along her ribs to her waist. She was having trouble getting air, and as he pressed closer against her, she felt the nudging of something forceful and unyielding on her thigh, the grown-upness of which made her go sad all of a sudden.

  “Charlie!” There was a loud knocking at the door, and she felt a surge of relief when she knew the intensity of the moment was passed.

  “What is it?” he called inhospitably, as he drew back and turned his attention to the door.

  She averted her eyes and pulled her skirt down over her bare legs. The skin of her cheeks was hot.

  One of Grey‧s men stood in the hallway, and he said a few hushed words that Astrid couldn‧t hear. Charlie glanced back at her, and though she widened her eyes irritably, she was glad when he followed the man out of the room.

  Once he was gone, Astrid tiptoed to the white-tiled bathroom and washed her hands and splashed water on her face. This helped a little, but when she stared at her reflection, she still found a disheveled girl staring back. Her hair was a mess, her lipstick was smeared around her already ample lips, and her pupils were big and black. She pressed her lips together in a way that hollowed her cheeks, and wondered at what hour her mother had noticed her absence, if at all, and also if the party was still going. She jerked open one of the drawers of the cabinet, looking for a brush to smooth her appearance.

  Instead she saw a single dangly earring of black jet beads. She froze, staring at this feminine object, unfamiliar to her and odious in equal measure. Immediately a picture of the kind of woman who would wear that sort of bauble began to form in her mind.

  Holding the earring in a tight and furious fist, she stormed back through Charlie‧s bedroom and into the hall. As always at Dogwood, the distant sounds of low male voices emanated from somewhere in the house. The great hanging light in the front entryway created silvery pathways along the polished floor of the otherwise dark third-story hall. Astrid had taken several angry steps without any particular intention when she noticed that the door to the Calla Lily Suite was ajar and began running in that direction.

  Earlier, she had been disappointed when her new friend had said she wasn‧t feeling very well and couldn‧t come to the party, but now she was glad there would be someone to talk to about the hateful earring and the hateful girl who had left it there.

  “Cordelia!” she cried, as she crossed onto the carpeted floor inside the suite. “Cordelia?”

  But there was no answer. As she stepped out onto the suite‧s verandah, she saw a car start up and drive toward the gates of Dogwood, and she knew that it was Charlie and that he was leaving. A few minutes ago, she had felt frightened of him and wanted him gone, but now she needed him to be back, whether to shriek at him or be held by him, she wasn‧t sure.

  After a minute, there was nothing to look at but darkness and trees. She stood there with her white arms wrapped around herself, wondering why, on a night that a party was thrown in her honor, she felt so stupidly alone.

  14

  “WHAT IS IT?” LETTY ASKED AS SHE STEPPED AWAY FROM the mirror in the cigarette girls’ dressing room and toward the doorway. Several girls were huddled by the threshhold, whispering excitedly.

  Paulette hung back from the others, her long frame leaning against a wall, a cigarette resting between her fingertips. “It‧s that playwright you were so interested in—Gordon Grange.”

  Letty stepped over toward the huddle and peered out at the nightclub floor, where there stood an older man in a well-worn tweed blazer. He had a dapper quality, like an Englishman whose greatest pleasure derives from smoking a pipe in a musty library, and hanging on his arm, her body pressing close against him, was the cigarette girl named Clara Hay. Shouldn‧t she be out hustling cigarettes like the rest of us? Letty wondered, before the graver implications began to dawn on her.

  “Clara Hay was cast for my part?” she gasped before she could think better of it. “But she‧s blond!”

  “Well, you can‧t call it your part if you didn‧t even try for it,” Paulette laughed. But when she saw Letty had nothing to say to that, she went on more seriously. “Men are disgusting. They‧ll do anything for a girl who‧ll let them give her the business, which is why God gave us bigger brains, so we can outwit them. Right now, Miss Hay‧s wits have gotten her further along than yours, but don‧t worry, sweetie—you‧ll catch on.” Paulette dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with her toe. “Currently you‧re paying your own bills, though, and me too. So come on, before Mr. Cole thinks better of it and kicks us both out.”

  This was reminiscent of something Cordelia might have said, and before she could help it Letty‧s mind had turned to her old friend, who was out in the world somewhere and enjoying herself without any thoughts for the people she used to know. Letty sighed heavily and knit her brow.

  “Don‧t take it too hard,” Paulette said as she stepped toward the racket of the busy nightclub floor. “No matter how many old playwrights Clara Hay lets seduce her, she‧ll never sing half so pretty as you.”

  Despite her sunken mood, Letty couldn‧t help but smile at that. She pushed into the main room of the speakeasy, where there were cigarettes to sell and a crowd spinning ever faster. The tray of goodies led, with her red smile following shortly behind. She hummed a little now as she went from table to table, leaning in here and there in a gesture of offering. A middle-aged man, with a girl who could not have been much older than twenty, purchased a paper carnation for his date and a few chocolates wrapped in silver; two women in dramatic dresses, who barely spoke to each other while their eyes searched out something more interesting, bought a pack of cigarettes each. She was moving steadily to the far side of the room when she heard a snapping near her ear.

  “You, new girl!”

  Letty turned, bewildered, and saw Mr. Cole, the manager. His small eyes flickered nervously, and he straightened his tuxedo jacket.

  “Yes?” she said, keeping pace with him as he darted between tables.

  “A very important customer has just arrived.” He pointed in the direction of a couple approaching a table just to the left of the stage. “See if they want anything, but don‧t linger, know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Letty answered, although Mr. Cole did not bother to listen for her reply.

  The couple was tall and slender—the back of the woman‧s dress, which faced Letty, was low and deep, exposing the lovely bones below her shoulders—and they moved effortlessly togethe
r, as though they had been in love a long time. His hair was a light brown, almost metallic, and it was neatly arranged over a high, smooth forehead. There was an unmistakable aura of privilege about him—he seemed to have just stepped down off a yacht—and Letty found herself longing to be part of a club as exclusive and well-dressed as their crew of two. She placed her hands firmly on her tray and stepped forward. The man had moved to pull back the seat for his girl, who gracefully lowered herself, rotating her neck as she did to take in the room. When the line of her jaw came into the light, Letty stopped suddenly.

  She would have known Cordelia anywhere—but oh, how transformed she was! In the brisk, dark dress she wore, she was as much a lady as anyone in that room, and the gold band that circled her head suggested the imperious ease of a Grecian goddess.

  For a moment, Letty was flooded with relief and excitement to see her friend looking so enviably well, but then she remembered how it was when they had last seen each other—she had been staring at Cordelia‧s back then too, before she had stalked off into the night without so much as glancing behind her in apology.

  The thick emotion within Letty began to turn, and she became self-conscious of the tray of goods strapped to her middle, the girlish dress she was wearing, and the way she‧d thought cutting her hair might make her appear cosmopolitan, simple as that. Her heart went low. Mr. Cole‧s brusque instructions were still in her ears, but her feet were stubborn. In a few seconds she realized that the rest of her didn‧t want to have to face Cordelia, either, and an idea seized her.

  Across the room, Cordelia‧s eyes were so full of Thom that she hardly saw anyone else. She didn‧t even notice which establishment he‧d had in mind until they were inside, and the riot of color and noise brought her back to the last evening she‧d spent with Letty. There were the same stained glass windows and the same hysteria from the band on stage, but she regarded the room as she might have some fairgrounds she‧d visited as a young girl. Everything looked different now, when she was so much more traveled in New York‧s after-hours.