Bright Young Things Page 14

  “I guess they like you here.” Cordelia put her elbow against the table, draping her body forward.

  “You‧ll find they like me everywhere,” Thom replied, letting his fingers linger on her bare back and turning toward the band.

  The music was wild and fast, blurting and bouncing in every direction; the beat echoed across the room in the ecstatic shaking of shoulders, the furious tapping of toes, the jittery clicking of fingertips. When the song ended, the room erupted in applause. The waiters continued to wind their way between the tables, and the poor souls hanging back in the entry inclined forward to see what was so exciting.

  Cordelia‧s red lips bent upward in a natural smile as Thom‧s fingers grazed her spine, sending shivers from her neck every which way along her skin. Then her eyes returned to the stage, where a girl was stepping, a little shyly, toward the microphone. She was petite, with cropped dark hair, and she was turned away, saying something to the cornet player. All the members of the band were straining to hear her, and some of them wore expressions of surprise. She was wearing a flouncy cream-colored dress and brown fishnet stockings, and when she turned around, Cordelia couldn‧t help a whispered exclamation of shock.

  “Oh!”

  But if Thom heard her, he didn‧t respond. Cordelia sat frozen, her lips parted, as the frightened pallor disappeared from Letty‧s face, replaced by a broad smile, and she fixed her hands to her hips. A low rumble was beaten out on the bass drum, and Letty‧s big, blue irises went theatrically left and right. Then the rest of the band joined in, and her brows moved flirtatiously up and down. After the first few bars her hands rose up, fingers splayed, and she opened her mouth. The crowd gasped, and even Cordelia, who had heard Letty sing many times, felt a shudder of surprise at what a deep voice that slip of a girl could produce. But mostly she felt a surging pride: Letty sang with such beauty and confidence that it carried to the rafters. And it was obvious that all these strangers heard the same thing, too. She recognized the song, but only vaguely—Anabelle Baker had performed it on a radio show they‧d listened to back in March, something about dancing barefoot—and wondered if Letty had practiced it in private, or if she simply knew it from memory.

  When the song ended, Cordelia couldn‧t help herself. She stood and began to clap, almost forgetting in the moment the man she‧d walked in with.

  Letty‧s chest rose and fell. She turned in the direction of the tall girl who‧d shot up, so quickly, from the crowd. Their eyes met, but by then everyone else was standing and clapping, too. Letty‧s attention turned to the audience that had risen like a wave, and she regained the flashy smile of her performance. Someone yelled, “Encore!”

  With all the excitement, Cordelia hardly noticed the bodies crowding in behind her, and the noise was loud enough to drown out her yelp.

  By then it was too late. She was being hustled back through the tables, and the two men behind her were so large that she wasn‧t even able to glimpse Thom when she turned. Danny was ahead of her, pulling her by the arm, a fact that only stoked her anger. None of the other patrons, who had gawked so freely before, so much as glanced in her direction now.

  “What is this?” she demanded, as they came stumbling onto the sidewalk. The single bulb above the entrance cast a pool of light around her and the three men. After the mania inside the club, the blue night seemed especially calm, though inside Cordelia was heaving with fury. “Who do you think you are?”

  Danny wouldn‧t look her in the eye, and she saw that he was sheepish, that he hadn‧t wanted to pull her away any more than she‧d wanted to be pulled. The two men with him were older, and they were large—standing side by side, they constituted a rather formidable blockade. On the other side of them, the door to the club opened, and for a moment all the music and voices within became audible again. Dress shoes sounded on the single stone step. Cordelia craned her neck and saw Thom coming toward her. What was in his face—anger, concern, humiliation? Before she could read it, Danny opened a car door and one of the other men pushed her inside. The car was in motion before she even managed to speak.

  “What—?” she began. But when she saw Charlie‧s big furious face, his simian brow tense and his lips taut, she lost her breath.

  A long way, but only a few blocks west, in a church still used for its original purpose, a reverend railed against bad behavior for a handful of midnight faithful. “This lewd new music,” he lectured, “this unspeakable jazz!” But down alleys and up rickety stairways hundreds of feet moved along, as dancing bodies for the first time contemplated a very modern cadence. This was the tempo of the time, and for a brief moment Letty, on stage with her innocent face and experienced voice, was its perfect expression.

  She beamed and sparkled and caught her breath. She was just trying to think what song she should sing next, when she noticed a gaping hole in the audience where a few seconds before had been one truly familiar face. Letty had felt so full of glory, but now she experienced the sting of rejection. Why would Cordelia have left so quickly? she asked herself. Was she still angry at Letty, or simply embarrassed by her former friend? There was no way of knowing, so Letty smiled sadly at the boys in the band, and stepped off the stage toward her waiting box of wares. As she was strapping it to her waist, she heard someone call her name.

  When she turned, she saw Grady.

  “I‧m so glad I got to hear you sing again,” he said from the same barstool he had occupied the night before.

  She gave an appreciative bow, and the great blues of her eyes gleamed. With her hair short and her lungs exercised, she was even lighter than usual. And so Letty kept on through the crowd. She looked right and left until someone met her eye or whistled or summoned her with a gesture of the hands. Suddenly she was the most sought-after girl in the room. They were interested in her for being precisely what she was: a cigarette girl who had done the unexpected, something exciting and gay that stoked their imaginations and their curiosity, and now they all wanted to buy their Lucky Strikes and gumballs from her.

  She went forward until she felt a tightening around her waist. Someone, she realized with a pinch of fear, had taken hold of her. Bewildered, she turned, but she was already being pulled backward.

  “Would you like something?” she said, a little hotly, to the man in the tuxedo who was holding onto her apron strings as if she were a marionette. He had manicured eyebrows, long and horizontal, and a trim, dark mustache hovering above a grin. His features were handsome, though his face reminded her of an overly polished apple.

  “No, no, nothing for me just now.” He glanced at the other men at his table, all of whom were dressed similarly, with the same high shine, and all grinning like rakes. “Boys?”

  The boys shrugged.

  “Nothing, pretty baby.”

  A long pause followed, during which Letty began to feel especially self-conscious about the way he was restraining her, as though she were a small child or a pony. A few people at the surrounding tables looked, or pretended not to look, and over by the bar she saw Paulette next to Grady Lodge, both of them watching the spectacle she‧d stumbled into.

  To Letty‧s relief, the man let go of the strings and patted her gently on the elbow. “I only wanted to tell you that you should be on that stage every night.” He leaned forward, resting his arm on his knee and staring intensely into her eyes. “And I ought to know.”

  There was something haughty about his I ought to know, but Letty smiled complaisantly and remembered Paulette‧s instructions. Saying as little as possible, she went back to work. She worked until her legs were tired and her bones felt heavy, and then she worked another hour, until they felt numb. Later, after they had counted out their tips in the backroom and put their coats on over their girlish uniforms, Paulette and Letty finally stepped out into the refreshing night air.

  The darkest hour had already passed, and the first signs of dawn to the east were becoming visible. Revelers were still stumbling home from long evenings of debauchery, and there wa
s a street vendor selling hot popped corn with melted butter in wax paper bags for five cents. She and Paulette each bought one, paying with a quarter and telling him to keep the change. They ate as they walked toward home, not in any particular hurry.

  “You know the fancy pants who grabbed you by the apron strings?” Paulette asked as she brought a handful of popcorn to her mouth.

  “Yes,” Letty replied distractedly. She hadn‧t known how hungry she was until she‧d taken her first bite, and tasted how rich the butter was on her tongue, and heard her belly growl for more.

  “Well, he‧s Amory Glenn.” Letty didn‧t respond immediately, and then Paulette went on. “Of the theatrical Glenns. His family owns some of the biggest houses on Broadway!”

  “Really?” Letty pictured him sitting there at that prominent table, with his crisp white collar and neat bow tie, with the slick hair and dark eyes, and she realized that he had had a moneyed, important way about him, and what he had said to her—“I ought to know”—didn‧t seem so haughty after all. She thought then of Cordelia and the handsome man with her, and marveled at how, in the span of so few days, both girls could catch the attention of such important-seeming fellows. They really had been too big for Ohio, she supposed, and perhaps they both had what Mother used to call “magic.”

  Letty let out a long, contented breath. There was a touch of moisture in the air, and it was refreshing on the tip of her nose. She looked at Paulette, with her long legs and her head full of information about the secret workings of the world—what a lucky stroke it had been to find a new best friend like that!

  A few stars were still visible in the brightening sky, and Letty sensed that at least one of them was for her. She was charmed—she just knew it, and she felt the tingle of the many possibilities laying in wait for her tomorrow and all the days after that.

  15

  “THERE‧S NO NEED FOR—” CORDELIA BEGAN, AS HER kidnappers pushed her into the library of Dogwood, but she fell silent when she saw the ashen face of her father waiting for her. The lie she‧d told earlier had been exposed, she realized, and any calmness she‧d derived from her cool anger with Charlie, in the car en route to White Cove, left her now. Her heart was beating awfully fast, but she pulled her shoulders back and smoothed her skirt over her legs and blinked.

  Charlie had been furiously silent all the way home, but her father, when he saw his children coming through the door, appeared only tired and concerned.

  “I hope they weren‧t rough with you, my dear. Men like that don‧t have much experience with nice girls.” Darius spoke softly, tentatively, as though he were afraid of causing her more harm.

  “They weren‧t that rough” was all Cordelia could manage in reply.

  “Why shouldn‧t they have been rough?” Charlie broke in angrily. “It‧s like I told you the first night she came here, Dad: She‧s nobody. She came out of nowhere. Who knows what she‧s up to, or who she‧s working for, especially now that we‧ve seen her out with Thom Hale—”

  “Charlie, shut up.” Darius closed his eyes, pinching his forehead as though he had a headache. “You were supposed to keep an eye on her. You were supposed to be always at her side. How could she know to stay away from Thom Hale if you didn‧t tell her?”

  Charlie said nothing, but his eyes burned with invective.

  After a moment Darius stood up and crossed to the doorway, where he put an arm around Cordelia‧s shoulder and escorted her back to the circle of stuffed leather chairs where he had been waiting. For a moment they sat there in silence, an awkward family of three. “I can understand how you might think I don‧t care what you do, since I went off so soon after your arrival. Because of all the years I let go by, without trying to get you back … But believe me, I do care. I want you to enjoy yourself, but also to be safe. And I‧m afraid neither of those things are possible with—that young man.”

  “But Thom‧s nice,” Cordelia whispered, remembering how easy she‧d felt in his company. But the grave mood in the room made it difficult to hang on to that lightness.

  Charlie snorted.

  “I‧m afraid not.” Darius let go of her hand and leaned back against his chair. He rested his mouth against his hand contemplatively, and let his eyes drift out the window for a moment. The mysterious noises of the country at night—crickets and rustling leaves—filtered inside. Eventually, Darius sighed heavily. “Thom is Duluth Hale‧s son. You remember this morning when I told you about Duluth Hale?”

  “They want a chunk of everything we got,” Charlie interrupted. “Furthermore, they‧d kill us if they thought they‧d get away with it.”

  “Charlie!” Darius turned, slapping his son‧s shoulder. Both men were large, but in that moment, Cordelia glimpsed the formidable force of which the elder Grey was capable. “Say another word and I swear you won‧t leave this house the whole summer.” He leaned his elbows against his knees and pushed himself toward Cordelia. “He‧s no good, all right? That‧s all you need to know. Stay away from him. Can you promise me that?”

  A cold front was advancing within her.

  “Yes,” Cordelia answered, but she could not bring herself to look as though she meant it. The way the city had rushed by the windows of Thom‧s car—bright and fast and full of music—was becoming less tangible to her with every passing second. It seemed excruciating that the kiss they‧d shared in his car was going to be their only kiss. Thom‧s touch, and the giddy, perfect way it made her feel, was fading, and she couldn‧t help but be stricken by that. She was crushed, and she knew that it was visible all over her face.

  “Both of you will be staying here at Dogwood for a while.” Darius stood again, more heavily this time, and walked toward the entryway on tired legs. “I am telling the boys. You are both punished. Good night, children.”

  When he was gone, Charlie faced Cordelia. There was even more fire in his eyes now. “Look what you‧ve done,” he said. “You fool.”

  But the hatefulness of his tone was no match for the memory of the brilliant sensation Thom Hale had created within her when he‧d turned that sideways grin in her direction, and it was with all the joyous confidence that the hours in his company had imbued her with that she stood, nose in the air, and declared, “You‧re a beast, and you don‧t have even a third as much class as Thom Hale.”

  If she glanced back, she feared there might be tears. So she kept her eyes focused forward as she climbed the stairs and walked across the third-floor hallway to the Calla Lily Suite.

  “Cordelia!” Astrid wailed when Cordelia came into the bedroom.

  For some hours, Astrid had been making use of the Calla Lily Suite. She had showered and redone her hair and gone through Cordelia‧s closet, examining the new frocks hanging there and imagining all the trading of clothes they would do over the summer. Then Milly, the maid Darius had hired for his daughter, had come with milk and cookies and also to turn down the bed, and for a while Astrid had engaged her in gossip about the strange inhabitants of Dogwood. But since Milly was new, she had little to add, and eventually Astrid grew bored and dismissed her. She was becoming truly, profoundly bored when she heard the sound at the door. The fact that Cordelia had claimed to be feeling too bad to go out earlier, and was now wearing a very expensive dress, was lost in the relief of having her friend back.

  “What‧s the matter?” Cordelia said as she kicked off her heels.

  The two girls moved to sit side by side on the bed.

  “Oh, look.” Astrid opened her fist and showed her friend the earring.

  “What is it?” Cordelia leaned forward to better examine the offensive object.

  “I don‧t know!” Astrid groaned and set her head against Cordelia‧s shoulder. “All I know is, it‧s not mine, but it was in Charlie‧s things … I suppose I was half hoping it was yours?”

  “No …” Cordelia‧s brown eyes flickered from Astrid‧s hand to her face. “It‧s not mine.”

  “I mean, how did it get there, and under what circumstances
?” Astrid went on, although the questioning tone was disingenuous, because already the picture in her mind of the woman whose ear it had dangled from had become a lurid scene that involved Charlie and another girl, or possibly two. The image made her feel foolish and powerless, and before she could help it, the corners of her eyes had become damp.

  Astrid slumped and sunk her hands into her lap. She felt diminished; she didn‧t know how she would confront Charlie, or even to put into words what she feared he‧d done.

  “I know you love Charlie,” Cordelia began cautiously, “but he can be such a bully—”

  Before Astrid could respond that that wasn‧t the way she saw him at all, she was distracted by a noise down the hall on the stairway and raised her finger to silence Cordelia. As soon as Charlie saw she was gone from his room, he would be coming this way. She felt on the brink of some crisis, and the only thing she was sure of was that she didn‧t want to see him yet. She brought her finger to her lips, telling Cordelia to hush. “I‧m not here,” she mouthed, and then she tiptoed to the bathroom, soundlessly closing the door and putting her cheek against it to listen.

  From the bathroom, with its expanses of gray-streaked marble and shining gold fixtures, she heard Charlie barge into Cordelia‧s suite. This was the way everyone redid their bathrooms nowadays, though she supposed Cordelia had never encountered anything like it in Ohio.

  “Have you seen Astrid?”

  The sound of Charlie‧s voice jarred her, even with the wall separating them. His tone was tense and breathless, and he didn‧t sound pleased to be asking the question.

  “No,” Cordelia, on the other side of the door, replied in that laconic way of hers. “Have you?”

  “Yes, but now she‧s gone.” The floorboards groaned beneath Charlie‧s feet as he walked across the floor. “She was in my room, but she isn‧t anymore—she‧s not here?”