Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

  “I’m here to talk about Gloria,” she began, but just saying those words aloud made her throat close up. “Your fiancée?”

  “Yes, I know who she is. And I assumed you weren’t here to talk about yourself.”

  Bastian picked up her empty glass. “Let me refresh your drink with something a little stronger.”

  He strolled over to his bookcase, which was lined with rows of leather-bound volumes. They looked well-read—left over from his college days, no doubt. Lorraine watched as he picked out an oversized dictionary.

  “I do enough vocabulary in school,” she said.

  “Patience, Lorraine.” Bastian opened the book. It was completely hollowed out, and nestled inside was a tiny bottle filled with what looked like bourbon or Scotch.

  “It’s not every man who keeps his liquor hidden in a book,” Lorraine said, thinking of her father. “Anyway, I thought you were rah-rah for the Prohibition.”

  He chuckled. “I suppose I’m not every man.” Then he opened the bottle and poured two shots into short crystal glasses. “There is a difference between what you do in the privacy of your own home and what you display to the public eye.”

  Lorraine wondered if he was talking just about drinking. She imagined Gloria sitting in the spot where she was now, having intimate conversations with Bastian late into the night. How was it possible that he and Gloria had only ever kissed? If he’d been her fiancé, Lorraine wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from pinning him against that floor-to-ceiling window and ripping off his clothes.

  “Raine, are you well?” He handed her the drink and then put the bottle back into the book and onto the shelf, where it blended in with all the others.

  “I’m—” She avoided his eyes. “I’m a horrible human being.”

  Bastian placed his hand on her thigh. “I highly doubt that,” he said.

  She knew she should pull away—even slap him. But she hadn’t been touched by a boy, really touched, in a long time.

  This was the time to tell him. Now, now, now!

  But the second Bastian removed his hand, she began to think clearly. Did she really want to be held responsible for destroying her best friend’s impending marriage, not to mention her future? Lorraine could already feel the guilt brewing in her chest. No, she couldn’t do that to herself; she couldn’t do that to Gloria.

  If she was going to get back at Gloria for betraying her trust, she would have to do so in a way that would be untraceable.

  “Bastian, I’m a horrible person for not asking your permission,” she said, improvising, “but I’d like to surprise Gloria with a weekend escape to Forest Lake Spa—as my bridesmaid’s gift to her.”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” Sebastian said with a short laugh.

  “Oh. Well, that’s a relief.”

  “But you are still a horrible person.”

  She was about to say something dirty, then stopped herself. Bastian was definitely flirting with her, which made her feel … unsettled.

  “I really should be getting home,” she said finally, standing up. The whiskey rushed to her head. “I have a French examen to study for.”

  Bastian grinned. “Since when do you study?”

  She slumped back down and kneaded her forehead with her hand. “I am rather tired.”

  There was his hand again, warm on her knee. “At least finish your drink before you dash off.”

  Lorraine looked into his steely green eyes. She couldn’t read them: What did he want? Was he coming on to her, or was he setting her up for a trap?

  “You know,” Bastian said, inching closer, “has anyone ever told you that you’re a choice bit of calico?”

  Lorraine nearly snorted. “Are you feeding me a line?” It was impossible to determine Bastian’s motives. He was nothing like she’d thought he was. He kept booze in books, for heaven’s sake!

  And she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. She didn’t want to give her virginity to Bastian, she knew that much, but her head felt stuffed with cotton balls and she was definitely a bit zozzled … and his hand felt so nice.

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lorraine,” he said. “Even women have needs, and I think we both know that Gloria is nothing to me but a convenience. A means to an end.” He licked his lips. “There’s no reason I can’t take care of your needs, too, so long as you’re willing to take care of mine.”

  He cupped her face with both hands and moved in.

  Just before Lorraine closed her eyes, one of the forgotten vocabulary words from tomorrow’s examen popped into her head:

  adulteress (noun feminine): femme adultère

  GLORIA

  Gloria stood in the center of the Green Mill.

  The place was empty. No bartender, no band, no gangsters. Just chairs upside down on tables, and racks of washed glasses stacked on the bar. For a moment she felt a hot panic. Had she gotten the day wrong? The time wrong? Wasn’t this where she was supposed to be for her first voice lesson with Jerome? She had found the back door propped open as promised, but where was he?

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” she called out.

  No answer.

  It was early afternoon, but you would never be able to tell down here—the Green Mill existed in a perpetual midnight. What was she doing, wasting her time in this dank, dark, empty club? She should be in her English class that was this very minute going on without her: twelve girls sitting around Miss Moss, reading the second act of Othello aloud. She loved her English teacher, which was why it had pained her to present the note—with her father’s forged signature—saying she had a doctor’s appointment “for matters to do with her upcoming nuptials” and would be absent from class. Gloria never skipped class. She only missed school when she was sick, and even then she usually managed to force herself out of bed.

  But now things had changed.

  It was a rule that you couldn’t wear street clothes on school grounds, but Gloria couldn’t show up at the Green Mill looking like a student. She had changed out of her school uniform—ankle-length gray skirt, short-sleeved white cotton blouse that was positively bristling with buttons—in the gym’s locker room and donned her favorite Patou floral day dress, a bell-skirted, high-waisted shepherdess-style frock. Then she had pulled a broad-brimmed hat onto her head and strolled out the back of the school. If anyone had seen her, they would have thought she was a substitute instructor, or one of the more glamorous mothers.

  Gloria reached the street and found waiting the taxicab she’d arranged for early that morning.

  Now Gloria crossed the dance floor, her clacking heels the only sound aside from the low drum of water through pipes. This was her third lesson, technically, since she had sat in on two of the band’s rehearsals, but her first private lesson with Jerome. Alone. She hadn’t slept a wink last night, she was so nervous with anticipation. It was like the feeling of going out on a first date with someone you’re crazy about.

  Except this wasn’t a date. It was a singing lesson. And Jerome wasn’t someone she was crazy about, because she had a fiancé. Jerome was a musician, and her boss, and he was nowhere to be found!

  “I thought there was a tap show going on out here.”

  “You’re late,” Gloria said, wheeling around. When she saw him, her heart seemed to stop: Jerome Johnson, all long limbs and long fingers, mysterious and poised and oh so sure of himself. He was wearing tan trousers and a black shirt that was open at the neck, exposing the smooth skin of his chest. She gulped. “By twenty minutes.”

  “You’re in the music business; you’d better get used to it.” He grinned, his smile lighting up the room. “We should get started. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

  “I’m ready for it.”

  “That’s the kind of attitude I like to hear from my pupils. Though they’re usually about yea high,” he said, marking the air at his hip.

  “Oh, you teach children?”

  “One of my day jobs—giving piano lessons to little pea
nuts.” Gloria thought it was cute that he referred to the kids as peanuts; he obviously had real affection for them. This surprised her. She hadn’t pictured Jerome Johnson as a sensitive type. “What, you think I can pay my rent from this gig alone?” he asked.

  “Right, of course,” she said, shaking her head. But what did she mean? Right, of course. Gloria had never thought about paying rent before, let alone paying for anything else. Or working to survive. Or the life of a struggling musician.

  “Don’t tell me you were depending on this job to get by,” Jerome said.

  “Of course not! I’ve got a … a …”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “God, no!” She laughed uncomfortably. “I was going to say a … waitressing job. As a waitress. In a … diner.”

  “I thought I saw you with some blond boy at the club, so I just figured …”

  He must have meant Marcus. “He’s just a friend,” Gloria reassured him. “One of the only ones I have here since, uh, moving.”

  There was an awkward silence. She hadn’t been prepared for the boyfriend question. Jerome had noticed Marcus—maybe he’d been paying more attention to Gloria than she’d suspected.

  “Come on,” Jerome said, walking back behind the bar. Gloria watched as he studied the floor. It was untiled, just darkly painted wood, still dirty with scuff marks and footprints from the night before. Then he bent and hooked his finger into a nearly invisible latch. When he pulled, a section of the floor came up on hinges.

  “It’s where they store all the liquor,” Jerome said. “Also, in case we ever get busted by the cops, there’s a tunnel to the next street over.”

  With everything else going on—her fledgling singing career, her disturbing attraction to Jerome Johnson, the hasty preparations for her wedding with Bastian—Gloria had nearly forgotten that the only reason places like the Green Mill existed at all was because alcohol had been made illegal.

  She’d been fourteen when the Prohibition started, and hadn’t fully understood it at the time. Later, in her civics class at school, she’d been made to study it—its actual name was the Volstead Act, passed in 1919, but everybody called it the National Prohibition Act or the Eighteenth Amendment. Suddenly, in 1920, it was against the law to make or sell alcohol anywhere in the country. Which sounded like a good thing on the face of it.

  But people weren’t so eager to give up their booze. Right after the amendment passed, speakeasies began appearing—places where people could go and drink and have a good time. They were open secrets. Always hidden, with passwords needed to get in, and in places no one—especially the police—would think to look. Yet everyone knew they were there.

  Not only was Gloria breaking her curfew to sing at the Green Mill, and her parents’ trust: She was also breaking the law.

  Jerome snapped his fingers. “You ready?” He motioned down the flight of steps. “I would say after you, Miss Carson, but I’d better lead the way.”

  He descended the steep staircase, and Gloria followed. On the penultimate creaky step, her heel slipped and she tumbled into the darkness.

  But Jerome was there to catch her.

  She clutched his sturdy arms and found her balance. Neither of them moved. His breath against her cheek, his hands around her waist. In the dark, hidden from the world above, he wasn’t black or white. He was just a man.

  Gloria felt that something was on the brink of happening. But then he gently released her. She stepped backward, shaken.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He flipped on a flashlight.

  Following its narrow cone of light, she felt as if she were walking through a haunted house. Or a tomb. Corpses of cockroaches littered the floor, piled up next to soggy boxes of liquor; loose electrical wires and rusted pipes ran across the ceiling. Every so often, they passed a half-open door, and Jerome would say things like “Poker parlor,” or “Conference room,” or “Room I really shouldn’t talk about because if you knew what they did in there you’d never want to come back to this joint.”

  “Here we are,” he said. He yanked a chain dangling from the ceiling and a dusty bulb lit up. The room was barely big enough for the two of them, let alone the decrepit-looking piano that filled the space.

  “This is where we’re practicing?” she asked, shivering. It felt like a meat freezer.

  “Were you expecting Carnegie Hall?” Jerome lifted the cover away from the aged upright and coughed as the dust settled around him.

  Gloria was used to rehearsing in the grand hall in the music wing of her school. But looking at Jerome, she felt ashamed. What did he know of grand concert halls? How snobbish of her to sneer at this practice room. “I’m sorry,” she said, “this is completely jake.”

  “We’re going to begin with some breathing exercises. Do you know where your diaphragm is?”

  “I beg your pardon?” She took a step back.

  “Your diaphragm is a muscle system, fastened to your lowest ribs. It’s what singers use to control their breathing.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “See, if you breathe high in your chest, your breath is just gonna come out as air. But if you breathe deeply, all the way into your diaphragm, where your solar plexus sits, then it’s gonna come out as emotion, sound, color, vibra—” His eyes narrowed. “Is that gum you’re chewing?”

  Her jaw froze. “I guess I forgot that it was still—” She began to rummage through her purse for a scrap of paper, for anything. “Here, let me just—”

  “Give it to me.” He held out his hand.

  Mortified, she plopped the spearmint-green wad into his hand. “I’m really sorry,” she managed to squeak out.

  “If you’re not gonna take this seriously, then don’t waste my time.” All the funny, sweet things he’d been saying earlier were instantly forgotten. “I’m not the one who needs to learn how to sing.”

  “I do take it seriously. I said I was sorry.”

  “And stop apologizing.” Jerome tore a piece of newsprint from a daily paper on the floor and wrapped her gum in it. He looked up at her. “If you’re gonna get up there and make every single person in that audience fall head over heels in love with you when the first note comes out of your mouth, you gotta own that stage. And your voice. And who you are, no apologies. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Gloria said. Jerome’s intensity was infectious and unnerving—he was passionate. Bastian didn’t even consider jazz to be music. Bastian didn’t have an ounce of passion in him—not even when he kissed her.

  “Now, are we ready?” Jerome asked.

  “Ready.”

  “I want you to start imagining your voice as a beautiful maple tree. Here,” he said, touching the top of her head, “is the top, made up of a thick bunch of rusty leaves.”

  “Gotcha,” she said, trying to stretch her spine and stand as tall as possible.

  “And here,” he said, touching the sides of her ribs, “are your branches. You wanna fill them up while keeping ’em very still.”

  She filled her lungs with air and puffed out her chest. “Not like this?” she asked.

  “No, not like that.” His grip tightened around her waist like a corset. “Try again. Inhale, but don’t move my hands.”

  She tried, but how did he expect her to control her breathing with his hands sending out-of-control vibrations through her body?

  “You need to work on that,” he continued. “Finally, here’s the base of the trunk—your diaphragm.” He placed a hand right beneath her rib cage. “The most crucial part of your voice. Besides your vocal cords, anyway. This is where your breath begins.”

  Gloria began to squirm as if she’d been tickled. Though she wasn’t ticklish at all, and this certainly didn’t feel ticklish. It felt heavenly. Just as she had imagined his hands would feel. Strong. Intense.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked sharply, removing his hand from her stomach.

  “Nothing!”

  “Is this
funny to you, country girl?” His voice was suddenly harsh. “Does this seem like a joke?”

  “Not at all,” she insisted. She couldn’t tell him that no man had ever touched her so easily before, and that it had startled her.

  “This is serious business—you’re going up on that stage in one week. And if you look bad, not only will you never work in this town again, but I’ll get all the blame,” he said, his eyes darkening. “Think you’ll be laughing when that happens? Do you have any idea what Carlito will do to me?”

  Gloria cringed at the gangster’s name, and at Jerome’s tone. “Do you speak this way to all the girls?”

  “While you’re working for me, I can speak to you however I want.”

  Gloria stared at him in disbelief. “You’d better watch your tongue, because I can walk out for good at any second.”

  “This is your big break—you wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh yeah? Think again.” She turned toward the door. “Let’s see who gets the last laugh. It certainly won’t be your boss.”

  He caught her wrist and pulled her close. She could see flecks of gold in his eyes. As confused as she was, there was something pulsing and sparking between them like an electric current. She couldn’t tell whether she loved or hated him. She couldn’t tell whether he was about to kiss or slap her.

  “Show me where it is again.”

  “What?” He let go of her wrist.

  “The base. Of the maple tree. Where is it?”

  Jerome relaxed. “Here,” he said softly. And ever so gently, he placed his palm back beneath her sternum.

  She took a deep breath in, then let it out. This time, she didn’t laugh.

  Jerome sat very straight at the piano bench and placed his fingers on the keys. “Why don’t we just start singing?”

  Then he played the first few chords of a melancholy song she had never heard before, though some part of her felt as if she were born to sing it.

  The more Gloria stared at her shrimp cocktail, the more she imagined that the shrimp were staring back at her with their beady little eyes.

  “Darling, are your shrimp undercooked?” Bastian asked. “Because if they are, we can send them back.”