Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

  Except for the fact that he had his eye on a willowy blonde at the end of the bar.

  “I feel as if I’m on the beach in Cuba,” Lorraine shouted over the music. She held her cool glass up to his cheek.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It looked as if you needed to cool down,” Lorraine said. That sounded seductive, right?

  Marcus smirked, clearly not picking up on her flirtatious vamping. Did he not see that she was wearing her “naked dress”—the flesh-toned one that ended in shimmery layers like a mermaid’s tail, leaving very little to the imagination? He was acting as if she were dressed in a potato sack. She needed to say something, anything to draw his attention.

  “So, Marcus, what do you think the speakeasy scene will be like when we get to New York?”

  This time she caught him. His head snapped around. “We?”

  She hadn’t meant to let it slip. Not here, not now. But according to Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life—which she had self-consciously listed as her favorite book on her Barnard admissions application—perhaps it was her subconscious kicking in. What better time to plant the seed in his mind: the two of them, Chicago castaways, together in New York.

  She leaned in closer. “I have a secret to tell you.”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow. “I love a good secret.”

  Just as Raine was about to reveal to him what no one else besides her parents knew, someone rammed into her from behind, sending her tumbling into Marcus’s arms. She looked up into his deep blue gaze, their faces millimetres apart, and she couldn’t stop herself: She leaned in and kissed him.

  Their lips barely touched before Marcus pulled away. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, I …,” she mumbled, mortified. She hadn’t expected such a reaction. “The gin must have gone to my head already.”

  “Since when did you become such a lightweight?” His tone was biting, cutting right to her heart.

  She forced a laugh and playfully slapped his arm, but the damage was done. How could she have been so stupid? So rash? Marcus would never look at her the same way again, now that he knew she carried a torch for him.

  Could the situation get any worse? Lorraine turned and grimaced. Of course it could: Clara reappeared. “What did I miss?” she asked, sliding between them. “You two look as if you’ve just been to a funeral.”

  “All the more reason for another round of drinks.” Marcus beckoned the bartender.

  Clara raised a hand in protest. “Marcus, I made myself perfectly clear—”

  Marcus made a shushing gesture, putting his finger on her lips. “Don’t you know it’s impolite to turn down a drink from a gentleman?”

  “Don’t you know it’s impolite to disregard a lady’s wishes?” Clara flagged down the bartender with a flick of her hand. “I’ll have a seltzer water, please. With a wedge of lime.”

  Lorraine was appalled. She had just made a complete fool of herself, and here Marcus was already turning up the charm with this apple-knocker as if nothing had happened!

  Just as she was about to give up and go find Gloria, a tall man in a white tuxedo approached Marcus. Despite the fancy getup and slicked-back dark hair, he looked no older than eighteen. “Eastman!”

  Marcus smiled broadly. “Freddy Barnes! Great to see you, old boy!” He pumped the man’s hand.

  “Haven’t seen you outside of school since I trounced you in that doubles game last summer,” Freddy said. “Where have you been? People aren’t supposed to forget their high school buddies until the first year of college.” To Lorraine and Clara, he said, “Eastman used to be the ultimate guy’s guy, but nowadays …”

  “Never mind Freddy,” Marcus said. “He’s as ugly as he is rude.”

  “I’m not rude!” Freddy insisted. He extended his hand to Lorraine. “I beg your pardon if I was offensive. I’m Frederick Barnes.”

  Marcus said, “This is Lorraine Dyer.”

  Lorraine loved the feel of this stranger’s hand touching her own.

  Freddy’s eyebrows rose. “Dyer? As in your father is Patrick Dyer? As in the Dyer Building downtown?”

  Lorraine coughed daintily. “Daddy does love tall things.”

  “And this is Clara Knowles,” Marcus said. “She’s from the country.”

  “She works with cows,” Lorraine added quickly.

  Freddy took Clara’s hand and said, “You are like a country flower, a fresh sight in this tired gin joint.”

  Clara laughed, and Lorraine wanted to throw the rest of her martini on that country boob.

  Marcus waved his friend off. “Don’t listen to Freddy. He’s so full of hot air that it’s carrying him to Princeton next fall.”

  “You talk big for a Columbia man,” Freddy said. “Care to join me and the guys for a little poker?”

  Marcus said, “You’re in for a fleecing.”

  Lorraine turned to Clara. “Oh, something you know about!” Clara shot her a blank stare. “You know, Mary had a little lamb and all that.”

  With a suave bow, Marcus said, “Clara, I expect your drink to be gone by the time I’m back.” Then he and Freddy strolled away.

  Lorraine held back tears. Not only had she been rejected by Marcus, but she’d also gotten stuck with the hick cousin.

  “So, Gloria tells me you’ve been here before?” Clara asked politely. “Aren’t you worried about”—she cut her eyes first left, then right, and whispered—“all the criminals?”

  Lorraine sipped her drink and laughed as if it were No Big Deal. “Just know your onions,” Lorraine said, all breezy confidence. “If you stay away from the dope peddlers, the bootleggers, the quiffs, and the police, then everything’s jake.”

  “Who’s Jake?” Clara asked, confused.

  Lorraine ignored her, unwilling to explain flapper slang in the midst of actual flappers. Nothing could be more un-jake than that. “Oh! And don’t go near that booth right there,” she said, pointing to the plush green one in a corner of the room.

  “Why? Who sits there?” Clara asked, rising on her tiptoes to see the booth.

  “Don’t look! That’s the worst thing you could do!” Lorraine said through gritted teeth. “That’s Al Capone’s private table. He sits there so he can keep one eye on both entrances in case of a police raid—and dive into the trapdoor beneath the bar at a moment’s notice.”

  Clara blinked her big dumb doe eyes. “Goodness gracious!”

  “The guy next to him, the handsome Italian-looking one? That’s his right-hand man’s son, Carlito—”

  “No, I was referring to … that!” Clara blurted out, her eyes widening at something behind Lorraine’s back.

  Lorraine turned and was unsurprised to find a black man dancing the Charleston with a white woman—of course that would shock Clara. Lorraine almost snorted at Clara’s naïveté, until she peered at the couple more closely and realized who the white woman was.

  Gloria.

  Clara clutched her throat. “I didn’t know Gloria was so … progressive. In terms of race relations, I mean.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Lorraine couldn’t take her eyes off Gloria. She looked dazzling, like a red poppy in a field of weeds, swaying in the breeze. She had never seen Glo acting with such reckless abandon, not caring what anybody else in the room thought. What she, Lorraine, her best friend, thought. Gloria was smiling and laughing and exuding an effortless grace, as if she had been born on the dance floor.

  “Gloria is a rare girl, isn’t she?” Clara said, making it more of a statement than a question.

  “I don’t know if rare is the word.” Lorraine turned back to the bar, having seen quite enough. “More like privileged.”

  “Oh, but I mean aside from the wealthy family, the perfect grades, and the pre-Raphaelite beauty.” Clara paused, squeezing the lime wedge into her seltzer. “She’s rare because she’s the type of girl who can have a dignified fiancé waiting at home, a handsome male best friend at her beck and call, and still get t
o dance with a famous black jazz pianist. Actually, it’s more than rare. It’s quite extraordinary.”

  Lorraine felt her heart drop through her stomach. Gloria was extraordinary, and she herself was … she was … not. There was nothing worse than that. “Well,” Lorraine said, fixing her bob, “her fiancé thinks speakeasies are ‘dens of corruption.’ If he knew where she was and what she was doing, he wouldn’t act so dignified. And Gloria wouldn’t seem quite so extraordinary.”

  As the song ended and applause erupted from the dance floor, Lorraine watched the piano player take Gloria’s hand and kiss it. Her impulse was to jump onto the floor and pull Gloria away, but something stopped her. Though she didn’t quite know what.

  “I admire what a good friend you are, Raine. Sometimes it takes a good friend to give us the courage to do the things we could never do for ourselves.” Clara touched Lorraine’s shoulder. “You helped Gloria to get her hair bobbed, right?”

  “She wouldn’t have done it without me,” Lorraine stated matter-of-factly.

  “Precisely. Gloria clearly looks up to you. And why wouldn’t she? You’re mature. You have a sophistication about the world that she sorely lacks. But because of that, you also have a responsibility to watch out for her.”

  Lorraine regarded Clara suspiciously. Of course she knew all this about herself intuitively, but why should Gloria come under her care? They were seventeen; Glo should be able to make her own decisions. “If anybody should be watching out for her, it’s her fiancé,” Lorraine said. As the words came out of her mouth, she felt her face flush. “But of course I care about her; she’s like a sister to me.”

  “You wouldn’t let your sister go farther than the Charleston with that man, would you?” Clara asked, the answer already hovering between them. “Or at least, without letting her fiancé put up a fair fight.”

  As much as Lorraine disliked Clara’s tone, maybe there was something smart about this country bumpkin’s advice. If Lorraine were a true best friend, she wouldn’t allow Gloria to jeopardize her own future. Then again, to get Bastian involved would be a betrayal of epic proportions. If he knew that Gloria had gone to the Green Mill, and danced with another man, let alone a black man!—well, who knew what he might do?

  Lorraine knew. He would break off the wedding.

  “Oh, look, Marcus is back!” Clara chirped.

  He was indeed. Brow sweaty, eyes glazed, his once-pressed shirt crumpled. He looked as if he’d been up to no good—and yet, he’d never looked so good. Lorraine’s pulse raced and she held her hand to her chest.

  “I’ll never make that mistake again,” Marcus said. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at Clara. “An empty glass?”

  “If you’d like to refill my seltzer, Mr. Eastman, you may.”

  “I’d rather dance,” Marcus said, pulling Clara away from the bar.

  “Oh no! I could never dance like that—”

  “I won’t take no for an answer!”

  Lorraine shooed them away. Let them dance, she thought morosely. She looked around for someone to buy her another drink … but who?

  Then something caught her eye. It was the back of Gloria’s head. Lorraine was about to call out her friend’s name when something stopped her yet again. Gloria was leaning over a table in a corner of the club, deep in conversation with that same black piano player. They were staring at each other as if there were no one else in the club. She watched, in shock, as Gloria stole the piano player’s glass from his hand and drained it.

  Which was when she realized that Gloria was again not wearing her engagement ring! The room became a blurry maelstrom of color and sound. Lorraine was the one who had bobbed her hair first, who wasn’t attached to any man, who had the world at her fingertips. Gloria had already decided her future—she’d landed the coveted ring and the coveted fiancé. And now she was flirting with some poor black musician just because she could? Lorraine couldn’t even get Marcus to kiss her, let alone fall in love with her!

  Everything was spinning out of control. Lorraine clutched the bar, trying to steady herself. Suddenly, she felt a warm hand on her arm. “Raine? Are you okay?” She looked up; Clara’s soft face came into focus. “Here, drink this. Come on, it will make you feel better.”

  Lorraine took a sip of the cool, fizzy seltzer. “Thank you.”

  “I spotted you from across the dance floor and you gave me a fright!”

  Lorraine blinked, seeing Clara as though for the very first time. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so tough on Clara. So what if the girl was a hick? She was sweet and her intentions were good. She was giving Lorraine seltzer while Gloria—her supposed best friend—was off with that pianist. And if it wasn’t him, it would be Bastian. Gloria was making it clear: Men Before Friends. How devastatingly rude.

  “Sometimes nights like these can be overwhelming,” Clara said over the noise of the crowd. “Chicago is nothing like where I’m from. Although isn’t it funny how Gloria seems to be handling everything just fine?”

  “Funny indeed,” Lorraine agreed. Clara seemed to be the only voice of reason as her world was turning upside down. Clara truly was a Good Girl through and through. Marcus would never be seriously interested in such a wet blanket. Lorraine had nothing to be jealous of.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t be so quick to dispose of Country Clara. After all, if the truth about Gloria did need to come out at some point soon—whatever that truth might be—better it should be Clara’s doing than her own. That way, Lorraine wouldn’t have to get herself dirty.

  GLORIA

  Gloria had been dreaming about the lights of the Green Mill. Dreaming of dropping her diamond ring into the grate on the sidewalk like a penny into a fountain. But mostly, she’d been dreaming about Jerome Johnson’s hands.

  But now that she’d made it back to the infamous speakeasy, she was hit with the same feeling as the first time: What am I doing here? The second time should be easier, she reminded herself: Her hair was the right length; she knew how to order a martini; she even had an in with Leif, the bartender. But the addition of Lorraine and Clara had unsettled her.

  As soon as they’d all gotten inside, Gloria had escaped. She didn’t need to see Lorraine playing the coy mistress role in front of Marcus for the thousandth time. Nor did she need to see, hear, or be within a state’s distance of Clara.

  The band finished its first set, and Gloria watched as Jerome Johnson stood up from the piano bench, straightened his bow tie, exited the stage, and fell into the arms of a gorgeous black girl.

  Gloria’s heart plummeted. She immediately recognized Gorgeous Black Girl from last time—the one in the silver negligee. This time, the girl’s tall, lean body was draped in bronze silk that tapered into black crystal fringes; her dark hair was pinned with a copper leaf barrette that accentuated her luminous skin. She looked about Gloria’s age, maybe a year or so younger. And her arm was now wrapped affectionately around Jerome Johnson’s waist.

  How could Gloria have been so stupid? What had she been thinking—that this black pianist would fall in love with her? That she could call off her engagement to Bastian and bring Mr. Jerome Johnson home for family dinner? It was unheard of in high society for any white woman to date a black man, but for a Carmody to even be seen with one? She was better off having Bastian’s illegitimate child—not that that would even be physically possible at the rate their relationship was progressing.

  Anyway, her future was predetermined, and there was no way of changing it now. She couldn’t let her family down: It was a promise she had made to her mother, and to herself. Tonight, her sole purpose was to have a bit of mindless fun in the little time left before her wedding. She had to keep reminding herself of that.

  Gloria turned away, unable to look at Jerome Johnson for another second. She should just leave now, before she turned back around and made an impulsive, irreversible mistake.

  “Swank haircut,” a baritone voice whispered in her ear. “Care to dance?”

  She should ha
ve ignored the voice, or protested, or slapped him for talking to her so casually. But one look at his face made her knees weak. He firmly gripped her bare shoulders, as if he were about to play the blues on her back, just as the music changed. The speakeasy’s gramophone began to swell with a slow song:

  I lost the sunshine and roses, I lost the heavens of blue,

  I lost the beautiful rainbow, I lost the morning dew.

  I lost the angel who gave me summer, the whole winter too.

  I lost the gladness that turned into sadness,

  When I lost you.

  Irving Berlin’s lyrics filled in for the words she could not say.

  Though, really, what could she say? Gloria felt as if she had lost Jerome, along with whatever potential they might have had, but she’d never truly had him in the first place. She knew nothing about this stranger whom she felt insatiably attracted to—nothing of his life or his background. She held on to his shoulders as her feet moved beneath her, almost of their own accord. His touch excited her, exhilarated her. His arms were strong and his breath was sweet and warm against her neck.

  The record came to an end. The room was momentarily hushed by the scratchy static and pop of the dead record spinning on the gramophone. Then the crowd resumed its deafening conversation.

  Gloria felt as if she had just emerged from a reverie. She staggered backward slightly, but Jerome caught hold of her. “Thanks for the dance, kid.”

  She watched as he walked off and slid into a booth by the wall without so much as a second glance in her direction. This must be his game, she thought, playing the Too Cool card. Then again, that was everyone’s game here. But now—with her new hair to match her new attitude—who was to say she couldn’t compete?

  She marched over to where he was sitting and sat directly across from him. They stared at each other for a few long moments, Jerome taking drags from his cigarette in the silence. The space between them was brimming with smoke and tension and heat.