Bright Young Things Read online

  “Who‧s there?” said Charlie on the other end of the telephone line, suddenly at greater attention.

  “No one. Never mind. Send a car round tomorrow, cocktail time. Good-bye.” Then she put the receiver back in its ornate cradle. “Don‧t I know you?” she purred, though knowing the handsome, decidedly unrefined boy seemed unlikely.

  To her surprise, he nodded. His black hair was falling in his eyes, and he pushed it back a little shyly before answering. “Yes, ma‧am. My name‧s Luke. We rode together a few times when we were young. My pa ran the stables at Count de Gruyter‧s place over in Great Neck.”

  “Aha, I knew it!” she lied. “We must have been about eight,” she said, because her mother had only been married to the count—her second husband—for a year and a few months, around 1920. “Anyway, what brings you here, Luke? You couldn‧t possibly be working for us again.”

  “No …” He paused awkwardly and looked at his feet. “I work over at the White Cove Country Club now.”

  For some reason this made her smile, and when he saw it, he smiled, too. Then she decided she didn‧t want to know anything about the series of events that preceded his arrival in her foyer on that particular afternoon—it was one of her virtues that she was often content to know little—and shrugged happily. “I‧m suddenly so hungry, aren‧t you?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  She moved breezily to his side and took him by the hand, and they hurried together through the quiet rooms of the house to the kitchen, where the cook and her assistant were busy making bread. The cook glanced up—she had a kind, fat face, just as all cooks should—and there was only a brief moment where a little scandal lingered in her eyes at seeing the young miss wearing pajamas in the late afternoon and holding the hand of a strange boy in work clothes. She had been employed by old, rich families a long time, and could remember the days when a girl‧s reputation was ruined over much less. But all the rules had changed in the last decade, and in Marsh Hall, as on many of the surrounding estates, people with fine names were always having meals at unusual hours with people who were not at all like them.

  These days one might enter a Fifth Avenue parlor or a pool hall and encounter socialites in feather boas and reporters just off the crime beat, Princeton sophomores and heiresses wearing men‧s trousers, gold diggers and gamblers, bankers and bootleggers (what was the difference, really?)—and occasionally a few stray, incorruptible innocents. One might encounter three generations of debutantes, each wearing her heirloom jewels, shoulder to shoulder with a known racketeer at a boxing match, all heckling with equal gusto the hulking, sweating, bleeding men in the ring, and all manner of fine people frequenting the kind of joint where brandy was served out of chipped coffee cups. And so, the sight of Astrid Donal with a stable boy was unlikely to shock the cook.

  “Martha, we‧re hungry,” said Astrid, showing her lips in their full poutiness. Of course she did not mean to pout, and in fact she was comforted by the smell of rising flour and the simple quality of that part of the house, with the copper hoods over the stoves and the brick-sized white tile everywhere. She let go of Luke‧s hand, with its rough skin and firm grip, and crossed the room. “Won‧t you make us some eggs?”

  “Course, dearie,” Cook answered, as Astrid draped her arms around the older woman‧s neck, happily receiving a kiss at the hairline. “Only, sit down and don‧t be in my way. There‧s coffee on the stove.”

  Astrid winked at her new friend. He was fussing with his belt and lingering on the margins of the kitchen. No doubt he felt a little funny being her guest there, since he himself was more or less the help, too. She poured them each a cup of coffee in delicate china cups and beckoned for him to come sit next to her on the high stools at the worktable in the center of the kitchen, so that they could watch as Cook scrambled their eggs.

  He took a tentative sip and glanced at her as though he were unsure whether or not it was his place to speak.

  “You work at the club, you said?” He smelled like cut grass and sweat, and sitting so close to him gave her a pleasant, easy feeling.

  He nodded. “Training the horses.”

  “I never have time for that kind of thing anymore,” she replied with a careless wave of her hand. “But maybe I should take it up again, now I know you‧re there.” She rested her elbows on the table and leaned toward him, pausing long enough that his dark eyes were forced to meet hers. “Would you help me?”

  He nodded, but was prevented from replying by the cook noisily putting two bowls in front of them. Into each she shoveled a pile of scrambled eggs, topping them with a slab of bacon.

  “Thank you,” he said to the cook, with a sincere bob of his head.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Astrid, as she picked up the bacon with her fingers and nibbled thoughtfully at the end. “I remember you now,” she mused, forgetting that a moment ago she had pretended to know him for sure. There was something familiar about him, she saw it now: a quiet boy in a plaid flannel jacket who used to lead her pony for her. “There were three of you, weren‧t there?”

  “My older brothers, John and Peter.” His eyes were shining, and she realized that it pleased him to be remembered.

  “And you used to walk my pony Arabella around the corral for me. You and I were the same height then …” A mischievous smile crept onto her lips. “You used to look back at me sometimes,” she whispered sweetly.

  His own smile fell at this, and his face colored. Then she knew that his childhood self had had a crush on her childhood self. She was perfectly aware that the cook was giving her a disapproving look, but she didn‧t care. That was Astrid‧s way—she loved Charlie, of course, but she was an incorrigible flirt, and anyway it was glorious, making a man blush like that.

  “Oh, there you are.”

  The cook‧s eyes darted up first, and then Astrid and Luke glanced over. There, framed in the hall doorway, was her mother, Virginia Donal de Gruyter Marsh, whose strong features conveyed any displeasure that her tone might have left in doubt. Her physical presence was composed of brittle parts, but the overall effect was one of fierceness. It was very generally known that the lady of the house enjoyed a party as much as—and maybe more than—her daughter did, a fact that always made the latter wince.

  Indeed, Astrid‧s mother was in full evening dress now, but it was apparent, especially in the natural light streaming through the large windows, that she was still wearing what she had gone out in the evening before. The quality of her pale skin was dull, and her sleeveless black dress, with the black sash tight at her narrow waist, hung off her in limp, wrinkled tiers. Her hair had surely been done up for whatever fete she had abandoned her husband for last night, but now it sat around her shoulders like weeds. The buckles of her high-heeled shoes, which involved diamonds and emeralds, were the only part of her that shone.

  It was only after several seconds that Astrid realized it was not she, but Luke, her mother had misplaced. “I have been looking everywhere,” Virginia added unnecessarily.

  The exact circumstances under which Luke had met her mother and been invited into Marsh Hall would never be fully explained to Astrid, but a vague outline of what must have occurred had now taken form in her mind—after all, her mother was very frequently at the White Cove Country Club, and people on their third marriages are rarely sentimental about fidelity—and the idea of it disgusted her. Although Astrid had inherited her mother‧s flirtatiousness, she was not nearly so cavalier. She gave Cook as true a smile as possible before standing up.

  “Thank you, Martha, but it‧s just occurred to me how late it is, and I must have my dress fitted for the party tomorrow night at Charlie‧s,” she announced. Without meeting the eyes of anyone in the room, she advanced toward the hall; on the threshold, her mother grasped her wrist.

  For a moment Astrid imagined she was about to be admonished for having slept so late, for so clearly planning to skip dinner in the formal Marsh dining room, for ruining a very expensive pair of pajamas,
or for announcing so casually that she was going to socialize at a house that belonged to a known bootlegger. But instead her mother parted her thin lips, caught her daughter‧s gaze, and asked: “What time is the party?”

  4

  DESPITE HER FEVERISH LATE-NIGHT INTENTIONS, CORDELIA must have slept, because in one moment she was watching the suburbs go by, lulled by the stutter of the train, and in the next everyone around her was pushing forward down the aisle to exit.

  “Letty,” she whispered. Her friend shifted in the seat beside her. Cordelia swallowed. “We‧re here.”

  Letty‧s eyes opened and darted right and left. “In New York?”

  At the sound of the city‧s name, Cordelia‧s lips sprang into a smile. “Yes.” Then she stood, tightened the belt of her coat, and reached for Letty‧s hand so that they could join the mass of bodies.

  It was possible that neither girl drew breath from the time they stepped down onto the platform until they ascended the metal staircase into the giant main space of the station. Space was the only word that Cordelia could think to describe it, for it did not resemble any lobby or entryway she had ever seen. The floor was of some shining stone, which hundreds of pairs of shoes crisscrossed in a single-minded rush, heads down, as though the iron and glass ceiling high above them was not strung aloft by some set of miracles.

  “Oh,” Letty whispered, her petal pink mouth hanging open as she gazed up. The hands of an enormous clock, suspended over the tracks, ticked between Roman numerals. It was almost four o‧clock; their first day in the city was half over.

  “Here we are.” Cordelia‧s voice had become soft and amazed. But they had only a moment to pause and take it in, for the crowd was pushing every which way, and the only rule seemed to be that one was not to stand still.

  So they went on, through the warm concourse and out into the brisk day.

  The sky was cloudless, and the sunshine forced them to squint as they came onto the grand marble portico of a building that appeared large enough that it might have squatted over all downtown Union. The clamor of voices around them was so constant they could scarcely make out a word, and the horns of automobiles blended with the screech of tires as drivers pulled their vehicles off the wide avenue in front of the station and back into the stream of traffic. The air was heady with exhaust and the smell of food frying and men‧s cologne. Beyond all that rose a city like a painted set, buildings jutting up with geometric assertiveness to dissect the sky, one blocking out another, all of them festooned with turrets and Gothic spires, repeating over and over until they grew hazy in the distance.

  Letty‧s palm was cold against Cordelia‧s; she appeared perhaps too shocked to speak, and they both slowed a little as they reached the sidewalk. This was at least in part because of the crowd that had formed there—mostly women, their feet inert despite all the movement around them, and their necks craned to look up.

  “What is it?” Cordelia asked a woman in a geometric-patterned dress that hung loosely over her long frame. On the woman‧s head was a soft gray felted hat shaped like a helmet.

  “Don‧t you know?” The woman turned to Cordelia and Letty with an air of irritated surprise. She blinked at them for a moment, but it was clear that it pained her to remove her gaze from the sky even for a moment. “It‧s Max Darby, the famous aviator, performing one of his tricks …”

  Who? was the question on Cordelia‧s lips, but the woman had already gone back to doing what everyone else was doing, her hat tipped back and her nose pointed upward. Cordelia‧s eyes traveled in the same direction, and she saw—in a field of perfect blue, higher even than the skyscrapers—a small silver capsule, twisting about and emitting a white smoke. She flattened her palm and put her index finger to her brow to soften the glare.

  “Oh, no!” Letty gasped. “His plane is on fire.”

  “No, it‧s not,” said the woman in the gray hat impatiently. “The smoke is for skywriting.”

  “Oh,” both girls replied in quiet unison, faces turned heavenward.

  A glittering sensation passed through Cordelia‧s body as she gazed at the daredevil spinning white letters over Manhattan. A curling P followed by an A and then an R … she hadn‧t the faintest notion what it would come to spell, but the spectacle had nonetheless stolen her breath. It confirmed for her, with its breezy beauty, that she had not been wrong—that New York was more extraordinary than a girl from Ohio could possibly have imagined, that it was a place of wonders where the citizens used the sky as their tablet and airplanes for pens. And to think—the city was not yet even an hour old to her.

  “Should we see what it feels like to ride in a taxicab?” Cordelia asked after a while, once the aviator‧s message—PARK ROYALE NOW OPEN, whatever that meant—became enlarged and blurry against the blue sky. Then she took several long steps toward the traffic, holding her old suitcase against her hip, and raised her arm in the air.

  With a blast of its horn, a square black car careened across two lanes and toward Cordelia, coming to a halt just in front of her. For a moment Letty thought the man was going to drive right through her and onto the sidewalk, and it took several seconds for her breathing to become normal again. Then Cordelia gave a gleeful little bow, opened the cab‧s back door, and with a flourish of her hand shepherded Letty into the backseat.

  Impressive was one word that had been used in Union to describe her friend, because of Cordelia‧s swift, impatient walk and the high, sharp planes of her face and her ability to hold a stare. And of course, there was the way she‧d stolen John, the handsomest boy in town, from Reverend Wallace‧s daughter, without ever seeming to lift a finger to draw his attention. That was the way Cordelia always did things—with a coolheaded stealth that never failed to catch her detractors unawares.

  Letty‧s hands moved from her lap to the leather seat, and she had trouble lifting her gaze much higher than her knees. What one did in a taxicab was a mystery to her, but she hoped Cordelia, who had placed the two pieces of luggage between them and was closing the door behind her, had some inkling.

  “You girls actresses?”

  Letty‧s eyes darted up, and she saw the reflection of the driver in the rearview mirror. He might have been poking fun, she knew, but there was something likable about his weak chin and soft cap and the way his blue eyes stood out against his drab, worn face. A face like that wouldn‧t make fun. Anyway, she knew she had that indescribable quality—the same one Cordelia saw, the reason they both knew they had to try their luck in a big city—and perhaps people in New York were just more adept at recognizing that kind of thing.

  “I am,” Letty said brightly, leaning forward. “A singer, too, and I dance. That‧s one of the reasons I moved here. My friend Cordelia Grey isn‧t really anything of that kind—she‧s just made for this city.”

  “Well, you certainly have a nice enough face, miss.”

  A blush crossed Letty‧s cheeks at that, and she had to avert her eyes. She looked to her right and saw that Cordelia had taken the notebook out of her coat pocket, and was studying a page scrawled with her own handwriting:

  Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a

  terrible waste of a girl‧s time.

  —Cara Gatling

  It took Letty a moment to remember why that name sounded familiar to her, and then she realized it belonged to a character in a radio play they‧d listened to during the winter, but which she hadn‧t thought Cordelia was interested in particularly. Below that was a list of what appeared to be addresses, some written in pencil and some in ink, as though the list had accumulated over a good stretch of time.

  “Do you know the Washborne Residence for Unmarried Women?” Cordelia asked, glancing up and closing the book.

  “Sure,” the driver replied, starting up the motor. “Down in Greenwich Village?”

  “Oh, I don‧t think we want to live in a village,” Letty cut in, trying not to sound rude but having to speak more loudly than before on account of the noise the car made. �
��You see, we came all this way because we want to live in the city.”

  The driver‧s eyes met hers again in his rearview mirror. He seemed to be assessing whether or not she was joking. When he‧d made up his mind, he said, “Greenwich Village, I mean. Believe me, it is the city.” Then he winked.

  Letty nodded, blushing again, and the car rumbled into motion. They watched the city pass as they traveled downtown. Men in hats thronged either side of the street, marching past store windows or perhaps strolling with women who wore artificial flowers pinned to their brims. Girls breezed by, their skirts swishing a little, the seams of their stockings straight as arrows, their pert noses pointed upward. By comparison, Letty and Cordelia appeared rather shabby, she supposed, although no one was glancing in the windows of their cab. And anyway, all really interesting girls invent themselves, or so Letty‧s mother used to say.

  For a long time they traveled on the broad avenue, stopping and starting, lurching forward and coming to sudden halts. The noise of the city came in waves. On every street corner something was for sale—flowers or magazines or fruit arranged in colorful pyramids. Another few blocks passed, and then they turned onto a twisting, narrow street of trees and low structures that were nonetheless taller and more tightly placed than any downtown she had ever seen.

  “Here we are: the Washborne Residence for Unmarried Women.” The driver indicated a four-story redbrick building set a little farther back from the street than those on either side.

  Carefully, Cordelia removed a bill from the envelope in her book and paid the man. Then she and Letty heaved their luggage up the steps and entered the spare, clean lobby of the Washborne. Their heels clicked on floors made of old planks. Through a large doorway on their right they spied six or so women of varying ages in a sitting room, drinking coffee from mismatched cups and speaking in low voices.

  The housemother wore her gray hair in a Victorian pincushion of a bun, and though she was situated behind the desk, Letty felt it was fair to assume that her dress was long enough to protect even her ankles from lascivious eyes. Cordelia strode up to her, and asked how much a room cost.