Bright Young Things Part 7

"But I don't need any more cigarette girls."

"Oh, Mr. Cole, I know." Paulette batted her long lashes, and her voice got even sweeter. "But don't you remember how you were just complaining that us girls disappear on you soon as we get a callback? Don't you think it would be a good idea to take a new girl on now, so you'll be ready next time someone defects? I'll show her how to do everything myself, and she'll work hard, I promise."

Mr. Cole sighed. He shifted his gaze once or twice more between the two girls, and then he turned round in his barstool, back to his papers. Letty's heart sank, and she glanced up at Paulette, who was holding her breath. It had probably been silly of them to think that Letty was sophisticated enough to walk among all those beautiful city people night after night.

But then, with his back to the girls, Mr. Cole said, "One week. I'll try you out for one week. If I still don't like you at the end of it, you'll have to go-and no complaining."

It didn't sound like a job offer, but after a few seconds Letty realized that it was. She beamed. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Cole!" she gushed. "I'll work hard and be no trouble, I promise!"

Paulette gave her a wink and reached for her hand. "Come on, doll, let me show you how it's done."

As they headed toward the far end of the club, Letty couldn't help tilting back her head and taking in the expanse of the room with a certain reverence. Later, music and shrieking laughter would fill that s.p.a.ce up to the arched ceiling, and by then Letty would belong there, instead of being a shy outsider just peeking in on the scene the way she had been before. Someday she'd be even grander than that-she hoped so, anyway-but for now, a gate had opened into a new, shimmering world.

Her attention was brought back to the main floor by a few strutting notes from a cornet.

When she turned toward the sound, she realized that all the boys in the band had been watching her for some time already, and her cheeks colored. The cornet player was standing near the edge of the stage, in shirtsleeves, and he bent toward Letty and met her eyes as he played a few more bars. For a moment, she thought she might be swallowed up by her embarra.s.sment, but when she realized that the melody was familiar to her, she felt not quite so shy of him.

"Where do I know that song from?" she asked, stepping toward the stage.

He lowered the instrument from his lips. "Just a tune we used to play in the college marching band, a lifetime ago, back in Cleveland. I doubt you've ever heard it, little lady."

"No, no, I'm sure I have. I'm from Ohio-and if I hear a song even once, I never forget it. I'm a singer, you see."

"What part of Ohio?"

"Union, Ohio, but Mother was a dancer in the Cleveland ballet, and when we were young, she used to take us to the big city whenever there was a parade." Letty blushed again. "That seemed like the big city, then, but of course none of us had ever dreamed of going to New York yet."

"I was born in Defiance," he replied, grinning. "Though you must have still been a girl when I left that dusty town behind."

They both laughed at this evidence that the world was not so vast after all. Then the man lifted his cornet and played a little more of the song. Letty closed her eyes and hummed along, her heart lifting with the music and the memory of how much her mother had loved a parade.

"Come on, Letty," Paulette said, reaching for her hand and pulling her gently along.

"Stay late some night and sing with us, Letty," the cornet player called as she moved along behind Paulette.

"They seemed like nice boys," Letty whispered, still smiling at the invitation, as she and Paulette pa.s.sed off the main floor and into a dressing room on the side. Racks of clothes and mirrors lined the walls, as though chorus girls and not cigarette girls dressed there. The far corner was occupied by an old daybed, where Letty supposed the girls rested on their breaks.

"Oh, sure!" Paulette laughed. "The boys in the band are always concerned about the welfare of the newest cigarette girls. But listen, honey, I have a few simple rules of comportment for while I'm at work or out on the town-and you'd be wise to follow them, too. Number one is: No going out with musicians."

"Oh, I don't want to go out with him! He must be at least ten years older than I am, anyway. It was only that he seemed nice ... and it would would be fun to practice with them." be fun to practice with them."

Paulette gave her a smile out of the corner of her mouth. "Okay," she said. "But be careful."

Mindful of how much she owed to Paulette, Letty softly asked, "What are the other rules?"

"Number two: Never accept a drink during your shift. That's how you end up having to pay back all your wages to the house, on account of all the money you've lost. Number three: If you do accept a drink from a gentleman, after your shift or on your night off, always keep him one drink ahead of you. This one is to prevent you from waking up in strange apartments." Paulette winked and stepped toward a rack of cream-colored outfits. "Our uniforms," she interrupted herself. "Mr. Cole insists on white. Something about us looking like heavenly virgins-ha! Number four: If a customer gives you a big tip, don't gush and act like it's some giant favor. Act like you deserve it, because, honey, you do. you do. They like that sort of thing, anyway." They like that sort of thing, anyway."

Letty nodded and peered over Paulette's shoulder as she pushed one outfit and then the next aside.

"Number five: Say as little as possible. Men find that mysterious, and then they want to learn more about you, and they'll keep tipping you excessively trying to do exactly that. Or buy you more drinks, or bring you more presents. Whatever it is you happen to be fishing for. Here! Isn't this perfect?"

With a wide smile on her face, Paulette pulled a tiny jumper off the rack and held it up in the air. In the end, Letty chose a more girlish, conservative style, with flounces at the neckline and hem, cinched at the natural waist. Except for the fact that it showed a good deal of her legs, which were covered in mahogany fishnets, even Father might have approved. As they dressed and made up their faces, other girls trickled in, shouting out the latest gossip and waving half-lit cigarettes as they took the curlers out of their hair.

Paulette shared a few more tips with Letty, though if her new friend had been more honest, she might have included this lesson in her list of survival tips: That it is often advantageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down every street in the city, people not yet old enough to have lines on their foreheads were laughing away memory, warmly ensconced in shrines of forgetfulness. Those who followed the word of G.o.d and those who preferred what the priests called "hoodoo" alike. People everywhere forgetting with drink or forgetting with religion or forgetting with the numbing quality of their many heaps of things. They looked forward and imagined rosy tomorrows, and gave up whatever horrors heckled their dreams, and listened to the pretty stories of whomever ruled their pulpit.

In the dressing room of Seventh Heaven, just as Letty was beginning to grow comfortable with the banter, Paulette announced, "It's time."

Letty gulped.

"Go get 'em," said Colleen, the girl she'd just been discussing the club's female singer with. Apparently her name was Alice Grenadine, and she was Mr. Cole's special lady friend, and couldn't carry a tune to save her life.

"Don't worry, you'll be great," Paulette said, as she strapped a tray neatly packed with cigarettes and candies and other treats to Letty's middle. With a rea.s.suring smile, Paulette turned toward the noise and the light. Letty took a deep breath and followed her friend as she strode onto the main floor of the club. In the time it had taken them to dress and go over the particulars of the job, Seventh Heaven had been transformed. The light was low and warm, and the tables were filling up. The buzzing of excitable voices hung in the air.

"Oh!" Letty suddenly shouted, pain shooting out from the spot on her elbow where she had collided with a barstool. But the pain was not as bad as the embarra.s.sment over her klutziness. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped she wouldn't cry. She'd been concentrating on all the potential customers out there, and had collided with the tall wooden chair hard. "I'm so sorry. I-"

"Don't worry." It was a man's voice, sincere and kind. "In fact, I came here hoping I might run into you, but now I find that it's you who has run into me."

Letty opened her eyes. It took her another moment before she recognized the man who had yesterday applauded her singing from a streetcar. Letty was so relieved to see a kind face that she smiled back. This seemed to please him and cause the color of his skin to change, too. He was sweet on her, she realized, or at least he found her pretty, and the nature of her embarra.s.sment changed. Then it occurred to her that he had made a joke.

"That's a good one, Mr.-"

"Mr. Lodge. But my first name is Grady."

The edges of her mouth flickered upward, and her eyes became bright. He had a nice name and a nice face, and he was wearing the same herringbone knickerbocker suit as the day before, although his boater had been removed from his head to reveal fair hair parted down the center.

"What's yours?" he asked.

"Letty Larkspur."

"Letty Larkspur," he repeated, and for a moment she thought he might enjoy the sound of that name almost as much as she did. "What a pretty name. You must be from New York, with a name like that."

"I'm from Ohio," she said, noticing Paulette watching her from among the tables out on the nightclub's floor. "But this is home now."

"Well, welcome, Miss Larkspur. You look like a city girl to me."

She glanced down nervously at her outfit, which she certainly would never have dared wear in Union.

"Thank you, Mr. Lodge. And where are you from?"

"I'm a rare native-born New Yorker, so I should know. I'm a writer, also, thus I spend a great deal of time observing people, and I see it when a person has something about them particularly worth watching-and you have that, Miss Larkspur."

Before she could wonder what he meant, Mr. Cole approached from around the bar.

"Larkspur, you're not here to flirt. Move along."

Shame washed over her, when she remembered that she was only trying out, and that she didn't have time to act shy. She could not bear to look at either man as she stepped back onto the floor-although, once she had, she discovered a strange new confidence. Anyway, Paulette had warned her to say little, and perhaps it was for the best that she'd moved on right when she did. She tried to appear busy-which she very quickly was-and tell herself that her exit had seemed smooth and purposeful.

Despite her embarra.s.sment, she couldn't help but feel excited by the attention. No one had ever seemed interested in her that way in Union, except a few bucktoothed farm boys with unclean hands. Cordelia had always said it was just that, in their backward part of the world, men were only interested in a thick girl who could stand up to years of hard living and childbearing, and that someone delicate and sparkling like Letty confused them. And though everything Cordelia had ever said was now shadowed with doubt, Letty wanted to believe that maybe, in that one instance, she might have been speaking the truth.

After she managed a few sales-somewhat blushingly and b.u.mblingly, but nonetheless-she got up the courage to glance back in Grady's direction. He was still there, watching her from the same barstool as she ferried her tray of wares between tables crowded with patrons. It was almost as though he was clapping for her like he'd done the other day, although privately.

A lithe woman wearing what looked like a beaded bathing cap bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, and once Letty had counted out her change, she heard Paulette at her ear.

"One night on the job," she whispered, with a wise grin, "and Letty Larkspur already has a fan!"

Letty smiled and said nothing. But after that she began to believe that she would last through the week and have a job for herself as long as she needed one. Then she would know for sure that she could make it here on her own, and that she hadn't needed Cordelia to survive at all.

11

DESPITE THE AGONIZING BEAUTY OF CORDELIA'S waking life and the unusual luxury of the sheets she now rested upon, dreams more vivid and darker than she'd ever known had invaded her sleep. But when she pulled off her eye mask after a restless night, she encountered nothing terrifying in her room. Instead she saw a girl with uneven blue eyes and a dirty-blond bob, wearing a black-and-white uniform, standing at her bedside and holding the tray of coffee things.

"Good morning, miss," she said in a singsong English accent. "I'm Milly, your maid."

"Good morning." Cordelia sank back into her pillows and let her eyelids drift shut. Heaps of sun-streaked hair fanned out around her head. The elements of her dream were fading, although she believed they involved John, and that John was dead, and that she was somehow or other being chased. Her dream self had been wearing the same peach satin slip that she was wearing xnow, except it had been ripped and torn.

"Coffee?" the girl persisted.

"Thank you." Cracking her right eye, Cordelia regarded the girl, and an unpleasant possibility occurred to her. "Where do you sleep?"

"On the second floor ... over the kitchen."

Cordelia nodded, relieved, for that was far enough away that she might not notice, later in the evening, when her mistress tried to leave the house without her brother accompanying her. That was the source of the anxiety that fueled her dream, she supposed-every inch of her was determined to meet Thomas, or Thom, or whatever his name was, but she feared that if Charlie found out, then he would insist on coming along, and that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

"Good. I was only curious. You can put the coffee over there."

As the maid crossed the floor and put the tray down on a little table, Cordelia draped an arm over her face and thought she might drift off again ... but a swift, explosive sound from somewhere on the property brought a harsh end to her languor.

The sense of dread that had pervaded her dream now returned.

"What was that?" she demanded.

Milly's shoulders rose upward toward her neck as though she were frightened.

Cordelia threw back the covers and fastened an oat-colored linen robe around her body. She descended the main stairs two at a time. As she rounded the final landing and came onto the final flight, she heard another explosion, louder this time and much closer. She knew that sound. It was the sound of a shotgun. She had heard it often when Uncle Jeb was trying to scare coyotes.

She pa.s.sed through the pocket doors, beneath a strange mounted animal head, and into the ballroom. The filmy curtains that covered the south wall billowed with the breeze blowing through the open French doors, over the waxed dance floor. Cordelia stepped onto the stone verandah, which was composed of several levels connected with switchback flights of stone steps, each one decorated with carved stone bal.u.s.trades and statuary.

Outside the light was bright and white. Her eyes adjusted, and then she saw her father wearing a thick terry cloth robe, from which black pajama pants emerged over loafer-style suede slippers. He stood near the edge of the terrace, his back turned to her, and his figure framed by the rolling blues and greens of Dogwood's acres, a shotgun cradled under his arm. A little farther behind him, under the protective shade of the stone arch, Elias Jones sat on a canvas folding chair, his face pointed toward the distance, his eyes obscured by the shadow his hat brim cast. Jones was holding on to the end of a wire, which snaked along the ground toward a contraption just in front of her father's right slipper.

"Pull!" yelled Darius, and Jones's hand flinched, and then a circular object was launched from the contraption and went soaring past the lower levels of the terrace and over the south lawn. Cordelia watched as her father lifted the gun, swung its long shaft to follow the trajectory of the pale object, and fired. The object exploded, and its parts fell on the gra.s.s below.

The air filled with mingling odors of citrus and sulfur. Relieved that the shooting was benign, Cordelia sighed-apparently loudly enough to get the two men's attention.

"Cord!" her father exclaimed once he had turned and seen her standing on the threshold from the ballroom. She smiled and walked toward his outstretched arms. It was strange to see him like this, in the daylight-those bursts of white in his sandy hair looked more aged than elegant, and though his broad, tan face was still handsome, there was something puffy and middle-aged about the wear around his eye sockets. He rested his hand on the back of her head and gave her a squeeze.

"Jones, what can we do?" he called out jokingly. "I go away for a few days, and now she's sleeping till noon, just like Charlie. Soon she'll be as bad as her brother, and then I'll have no one to leave my kingdom to."

Cordelia's eyes flickered toward Jones, briefly fearful that he would inform her father that she had in fact been out every night with her brother's entourage-although Darius had wanted wanted her to be under Charlie's watchful eye, and so she had not technically done anything wrong. Then she remembered something else-how she had flirted yesterday on the green-and experienced something curious and for the first time. She'd never before had a father to be protective of her and to frown on young men's intentions toward her, and suddenly she felt secretive about her interest in Thom and hoped that Darius hadn't heard of it. her to be under Charlie's watchful eye, and so she had not technically done anything wrong. Then she remembered something else-how she had flirted yesterday on the green-and experienced something curious and for the first time. She'd never before had a father to be protective of her and to frown on young men's intentions toward her, and suddenly she felt secretive about her interest in Thom and hoped that Darius hadn't heard of it.

"Here," Jones said, standing. "Take my seat, Miss Grey. I have things to see to, anyway."

"Yes, sit, my dear," Darius said, and as Cordelia moved to the chair, he called after Jones: "Have them send us some fresh coffee, would you?"

Jones did not acknowledge the request but simply closed the ballroom doors loudly as he left. Whether it was an accident or an expression of anger, Cordelia couldn't tell. Her eyes returned slowly toward her father, but his face showed no sign of perturbation, and when he spoke again, it was with such gentle affection that she decided he could not possibly know that she had told a young man-a stranger-to pick her up on the main road in only a few hours.

"Toss me a few grapefruit, dear." She followed the direction of his pointing finger, to the right side of her chair, and saw a crate full of pale yellow orbs. So that was the source of the citrus smell. She leaned over, took hold of a few, and threw them toward her father one by one.

"Have you ever eaten grapefruit?" he asked as he caught the last of three.

In movies she had sometimes seen svelte women eating half a grapefruit for breakfast, but she herself had never tasted one.

"Lousy fruit. These come all the way from Florida." Her father bent, placing the fruit in the contraption. "Ten dollars a crate."

"Ten dollars a ...?" She couldn't believe he would use something that expensive for target practice, but she tried not to appear shocked.

"Oh, don't worry, I won't bankrupt myself. I have a great excess of these because a special lady friend of mine was on the grapefruit diet. Never heard of that? It's when a woman eats grapefruit and melba toast for breakfast, grapefruit and olives for lunch, grapefruit and grapefruit for dinner." He made a disgusted noise and spat. Then, as though he had just remembered the company, his brow rippled and he shot his daughter a sorrowful look. "You mustn't think that ... this friend-that she could ever replace your mother. Dear f.a.n.n.y." He sighed. "How she would have loved this house. I only wish I'd already made it, then, when I first knew her ..." A storm pa.s.sed through his features. "Then none of the bad things would have happened."

"You still love her?" Cordelia did not want to sound like it mattered to her, although of course it did. She had wondered that probably every day of her eighteen years.

Darius closed his eyes, and some exquisite pain of long ago seemed to twist up the corners of his mouth. "Your mother had a very pure kind of beauty. She would have done anything I asked her. I was always p.a.w.ning her things, borrowing from tomorrow to sc.r.a.pe by today. I thought I'd live forever ... I certainly thought she she would." When he opened his eyes, they looked particularly dark. "Yes, I still love her. But now I have you back, and it makes me feel I haven't lost her so completely." would." When he opened his eyes, they looked particularly dark. "Yes, I still love her. But now I have you back, and it makes me feel I haven't lost her so completely."

Despite herself, Cordelia beamed. There was no way to reply to a statement as momentous as that, so she leaned forward and picked up the end of the wire that Jones had been holding on to. "Would you like me to ...?"

Her father grinned. "Thank you, dear. When I say 'pull,' you push that b.u.t.ton."

"Okay," she said, leaning against the canvas back of the chair and crossing her long legs. Sleepiness was still blurring her at the edges somewhat, but it felt good to sit like this, with her father, before the day had shown her very much. The sun came out from behind a hazy cloud, making the steps below them and the lawns stretching out toward the orchards almost sparkle.

"Anyway," Darius went on, settling into a wide stance and propping the shotgun against his shoulder. "Florida is entirely crooked. You agree to a weekly shipment, and they won't let you out of it no matter how you scream and yell. So I have another four months of grapefruit, and no skinny broad around to eat them by the crate." He shrugged indifferently. "Pull!" "Pull!"

The sudden loudness of his voice startled her, but then she regained herself and pushed the b.u.t.ton. The machine launched the grapefruit into the sky, and her father followed its trajectory with the body of the shotgun. He pulled the trigger. A shot rang out, echoing against the stone arcade, and far off over the lawn, the fruit exploded in the air. That smell-as though a whole book of matches had been set aflame and then put out with orange juice-rose up again. His nostrils growing wide, Darius inhaled.

"Smells like America," he said grandly. "As I was saying: Never invest in Florida. Can you remember that? It's a snake-infested swampland."

The only investment Cordelia had ever considered was a one-way ticket to New York City, but she nodded anyway. "Never invest in Florida," she repeated.

"It's like the Australia of the Union. Entirely inhabited by crooks." He cleared his throat and reloaded the gun. Before the thought could even take form in her mind, he went on: "And I know I seem like a crook to you, but believe me, I'm not like most of them. I do things honorably, and I'm not a violent man. I provide wealthy people with harmless spirits, good ones, imported from Europe through our neighbors to the north and south, and I am paid handsomely for the risk I take doing so. But I am not a criminal, and sooner or later I will have ama.s.sed enough wealth that I'll be able to go entirely into legitimate business. So don't let anyone tell you your daddy is a criminal, all right?"

Besides churchgoing busybodies, no one minded much how Darius Grey made his money, at least Cordelia didn't think so, and many others regarded him with a kind of awe. But she did not want him to know how fervently she'd always read newspaper articles about him, so she only said, "All right."

"All right. Now, would you like to learn how to use this handsome piece of equipment?"