An older woman stood up and offered her a seat. Gloria tried to say no, but the woman insisted with a smile, saying, “A lady shouldn’t be standing.” It was as kind as anyone had been to Gloria in days.
The other thing about the riders was this: Nearly all of them were black.
At first, she felt as if she stuck out and that men and women alike would stare at her with contempt. Old stories from school came to mind, and she clutched her purse in front of her and tried not to meet anyone’s gaze. But the ride was long and her patience was short. Soon enough, she was looking up at people.
A few glanced at her now and then, always turning back to a book, or a newspaper, or some knitting. No one much noticed the white girl in the fancy clothes. It was as if she didn’t matter to them at all.
And Gloria realized that was true: She didn’t matter. These people had lives—real lives, in which they struggled for things they cared about. A lovesick girl in a bad hat? There were more important things to worry over.
When she reached her stop, Gloria joined the passengers stepping down from the back of the bus.
She was shocked to find the streets full of activity. Astor Street, where she lived, was always eerily quiet. But here, noise was everywhere. Children playing stickball, running to the sidewalks when a car passed. Older women with baskets of laundry on their hips loudly gossiping on the corners. And there were black teenagers, leisurely sitting on stoops and smoking cigarettes, and couples walking hand in hand.
As she passed, she felt some people stare at her. This was different from the train. She kept her eyes cast modestly downward and prayed she wouldn’t get lost.
Any trace of warmth had disappeared from the air, and a windy November chill had settled in. Still, she was drenched in sweat by the time she arrived at the address Evan had given her.
Jerome lived in a run-down three-story building on a block of brownstones. There were empty flower boxes in some windows, shirts drying on the fire escapes, music coming from slightly opened windows. It was a nice place. As nice as it could be.
Jerome had told Gloria once, during rehearsal, that he had moved out of his parents’ house a year before, at eighteen, having earned enough money from playing piano to start life on his own. His father didn’t approve of his career and wanted him to take over the family business, a grocery store on Garfield Street. Vera, who was Gloria’s age, still lived in their childhood home. Their mother had died when they were young, and Jerome’s sister was his only link to his father, whom he no longer talked to.
She pressed the buzzer for 2B, next to the initials J.J.
Her heart raced.
There was no answer.
Her finger was poised on the button, about to buzz again, when she froze. She took a step down the front stairs and caught her breath. It wasn’t meant to be, a voice said crisply in her head. It was never meant to be.
There was nothing to do now but go back home.
A cruel shiver of defeat ran through her. She knew life was a series of near misses, but this one was tragic. The reality of never seeing Jerome Johnson again sank into her, and she staggered and gripped the railing and thought, No! She knew in that moment, clutching the rusty banister, in this all-black neighborhood with everyone staring at her, that she wanted him. Needed him. Only felt alive when she was beside him. Loved him with all of herself, with whatever she had in her to love him with.
That was when the front door opened and the dark silhouette of Jerome Johnson stood before her.
She wanted to run back up the stairs and into his arms. But the look on his face quickly killed that fantasy.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, her voice seemingly detached from her body.
“What do you want?” He was wearing only a white T-shirt and a pair of old slacks.
“I’m—” she started, seeing that his eyes held no sympathy. “I’m freezing.”
He was about to protest when he saw that she had no coat.
“You can come in,” he said, “but only for a second.”
Without a word, Gloria followed him inside. The interior hallway was dark, the wallpaper peeling, the carpeting worn.
His apartment was small but charming, with a bohemian air that Gloria hadn’t expected. Hundreds of books and records were stacked on the floor, and a few bold unframed paintings hung on the walls. At one end was a tiny kitchen—just a sink and a burner and two cupboards—and at the other was an alcove that curved around a corner, leading to what she assumed was his bedroom. An old baby grand piano took up nearly half the room. She went to it, running her hand over the piles of sheet music strewn across the top.
Jerome watched her.
She wanted to appear comfortable, even though she was so uncomfortable. She turned to him. “See, I’ve warmed up already.”
“What do you want?” Jerome demanded again, staying on the other side of the room. “I hope you didn’t come all the way out here to see me. Is your driver waiting, Miss Carmody? Or should I say, Mrs. Grey?”
“I deserve that. No, my driver isn’t waiting. I took the subway. And I am still Miss Carmody,” she added.
Jerome didn’t respond. He folded his strong arms across his chest.
“May I have some water?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Sure,” he said. “Get it yourself. We don’t have maids here.”
Gloria shuffled over to the kitchen, took a glass out of one of his cupboards, and turned on the tap. She was used to Jerome’s rough manner, but this was entirely new. He was angry at her. Which meant he was hurt. Which maybe, just maybe, meant he actually loved her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a long sip.
Jerome rocked back and forth on his heels. “When you’re ready to tell me what you want, you let me know,” he said. He walked to the window, sat in a chair, and lit a cigarette.
Gloria had grown so used to men making everything easy for her. She never had to know what she wanted, only what she didn’t want. Now the opposite was true. “I want to explain.”
“Why should I believe a word you say?” He exhaled a thin stream of smoke, unimpressed. “You’ve already lied to me once. What makes you think I would trust you?”
“Because before, I had everything to lose,” she said. “But now that I’ve lost everything, there’s nothing left to hide.”
Jerome just kept staring out the window.
She walked across the room and sat in the chair next to his. “Please,” she said, placing a hand on his knee.
“You don’t owe me anything.” He didn’t brush her hand off, but he didn’t grasp it, either.
“You’re right, I don’t. We don’t owe anything to anyone but ourselves and the ones we love,” she said defiantly. His eyes widened at the word love. “But just hear me out.”
She told him everything.
About her background, her family, her schooling. She told him all about Bastian, how the engagement was nothing more than a business deal with her parents. About her father, and how he had basically deserted her and her mother, leaving them to fend for themselves, make their own reputations and fortunes. How everything now rested on her shoulders. And how her world was slowly coming apart at the seams, but how singing had temporarily sewn it back together.
His face showed nothing as she talked—no emotion, no reaction, no flicker of understanding. She began to feel that she had misjudged those moments together, during rehearsal, in the dressing room. That almost-kiss—maybe it truly had been only about the eyelash. Had this all been in her head?
“So,” she said, “do you believe anything I’ve just said?”
“Not yet,” Jerome countered. Her heart plummeted.
She had to remind herself that whatever happened, at least she had given it a good try. “I don’t know what else to say. I just told you everything there is to know.”
“Not everything.” He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray, then placed it on the floor. There was nothing separating them.
“You haven’t told me what I should call you.”
He knew her name now. He knew her real name. What was he getting at? “Oh!” She let out a short laugh. “Gloria Rose Carmody.”
“Gloria Rose, Gloria Rose,” he repeated, as if tasting the words in his mouth. “Now, that is a killer stage name. Next time you sing, that’s how you should be billed.”
“I doubt there’ll be a next time.”
“You have a beautiful voice, kid.” He stared straight into her eyes. “I would hate to see you give it up.”
“Then you need to keep teaching me.”
Jerome got up and moved closer to the window. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not,” he said. “You should find another teacher.”
“I don’t want another teacher!” She went to him. If she didn’t say it now, she never would. “I want you. That is what I want. That is what I came over here to tell you.”
Jerome’s eyes blazed as Gloria touched his shoulder. He stroked her hair gently, tilted her face up to his. “You can’t know that yet. You can’t know what that means.”
“Then show me,” she said, pulling closer. “Show me.”
He wrapped his arms around her. When their lips finally met, it was as if they had been waiting for this one kiss their entire lives.
CLARA
“Did you know that the Green Mill is named after the Moulin Rouge—the Red Mill—in Paris?” Clara said to Marcus, gazing at Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge. In the painting, a bunch of top-hatted men and well-dressed women sat around a table, while in the foreground, a goblin-faced woman seemed to be giving the viewer the evil eye. It was unnerving.
“Well, look at you, scholar,” Marcus said, nudging Clara.
“Consider me your personal tour guide.”
“I must say,” Marcus murmured, “I’d rather be at the Green Mill than the place in this painting. None of these people look like they’re having any fun at all.”
They were at a special exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. And it was quite a big event—bigger than Clara had expected. The main exhibition hall was packed with so many people decked out in their finest that Clara would have wagered that all of Chicago’s elite were here, drinking seltzer and squinting at paintings.
Clara, too, was dressed to the nines, wearing one of the only valuable pieces she had managed to salvage from her New York stash. It was a boxy silk Chanel, and it had cost one of Clara’s beaux a small fortune. The skirt was almost too short to wear out in polite society, but Clara looked beautiful in its intricate black and bronze patterning, and beauty excused lots of things.
“Have I mentioned how incredibly gorgeous you look in that dress?” Marcus said again.
“I think that makes twelve times,” Clara said. “But who’s counting?”
A week after Gloria’s Green Mill fiasco, a week after Clara had met the ghost of her past face to face, Marcus had called, inviting her to this opening.
She’d eagerly accepted. Now that Clara had finally seen Harris Brown, the tiny sentimental part of her that was still clinging to his memory had been exterminated. She could move on with her life, full speed ahead. She could be around Marcus and not feel those endless questions nagging at her. She was free.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Clara asked Marcus now.
“You seem to be full of them,” he said as he pulled her toward a waiter holding a tray of shrimp.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He dipped a shrimp into the bowl of red cocktail sauce and popped it into his mouth. “Nothing. So what’s your secret?”
“It’s my dream to go to Paris and hobnob with all the literary expatriates.” She searched Marcus’s face for a reaction but couldn’t read his expression. He hadn’t been in touch with her all week—no phone calls, no house calls—and then this invitation had come, albeit at the last minute. Had Marcus spotted her talking to Harris at the Green Mill? Was that why he’d been absent? “So have you been?” she asked, sipping her ginger ale. “To Paris, I mean?”
“I’m thinking of taking a trip there next summer—all around Europe, actually.”
“How original of you.” But then, realizing that sounded snotty, she added, “To get it all out of your system before you get tangled up in the Ivy?”
“I have nothing I need to get out of my system. Do you?”
“Um, simmer down, Columbia.” She linked her arm in his. “Besides, I’m jealous. I’ve only been as far as—” She stopped herself before she said the obvious.
“As where?”
“As here, I was about to say. Chicago.”
“Are you sure about that?” He removed her arm from his and dramatically turned toward her. “No detours in between?”
“I don’t know what kind of detours you mean, but—”
“Clara Knowles, I didn’t expect to see you here!” That high-pitched squeal could belong to only one person. “Why, Ginnie, what a surprise!”
“My father is on the museum’s board of trustees,” Ginnie said, blinking her close-set brown eyes.
Clara had leaned in for a cheek-brushing kiss when Ginnie spotted Marcus and practically pushed her off to one side. “Marcus! I didn’t even—I thought you weren’t—” Ginnie stammered breathlessly, twisting her hair around her finger.
“Lovely to see you again, Virginia.” He took Ginnie’s hand in his while she fanned herself with her other hand. “Actually, we were just talking about you.”
“You were not!” Ginnie snatched her gloved hand back and clapped both hands together with glee.
“We were,” Clara confirmed, happily playing along. “We were just discussing how lovely your high-tea party was the other week, and how sorry we both were we had to leave so abruptly—”
“On account of Clara’s delicate stomach,” Marcus reminded Ginnie.
“Food poisoning,” Clara said, grimacing. “It really was the worst.”
Ginnie wrinkled her nose. “Really, you don’t need to say any more! I’m just so happy that you’re feeling better!”
Marcus placed a hand on Ginnie’s arm and whispered loudly, “We suspect it was Mrs. Carmody’s undercooked salmon.”
Ginnie giggled. “It was so sad you had to leave before the clown arrived.”
“Buster Keaton?” Marcus asked.
“No, Daddy couldn’t book him,” Ginnie said, staring dumbly at Marcus. “But wasn’t that so sweet of you, Marcus, to escort Clara home?”
“So sweet.” Clara took a fresh drink from a tray passing by and gulped it down—sparkling cider. Ugh. She wished it were champagne.
Suddenly, Ginnie looked from Marcus to Clara and back again, pursing her lips in thought. “Are you two here … together?”
Marcus said, “Yes.”
“No,” Clara said simultaneously.
Marcus and Clara locked eyes for a brief, tense moment.
“I invited her, yes,” Marcus said. “As my date.”
“So you are here together!” Ginnie gaped, growing more excited than jealous.
Clara felt herself blushing. “I guess so.”
“But Gloria’s not here, is she?” Ginnie asked, her face suddenly serious.
“No, unfortunately she couldn’t make it,” Marcus said, looking past Ginnie now, as though scanning the crowd for someone.
“Because she’s still grounded?” Ginnie made a big show of looking in both directions. “For singing at that seedy black place?”
“You could say that,” Marcus said coldly. He patted Ginnie on the back and gave her a little push. “Again, it’s been so lovely to see you, Ginnie!”
They made their way toward Van Gogh’s lonely The Bedroom. But before they could reach it, Marcus had to say hello to half a dozen couples. The girls seemed to know him and gave Clara a cold eye, and the boys were all like Freddy Barnes—young, rich, and not yet out of high school. In fact, Freddy was at the center o
f a bunch of them.
“I say, Eastman,” he said as they walked past. “This is the second time I’ve seen you with that bird. You two been nesting?”
“You are as witty as ever, Freddy,” Marcus said. “Which is to say, not at all.”
Freddy bowed toward Clara and said, “I’m just teasing. We’re all happy to see Marcus here settle down. After he quit student government and disappeared, we feared vile Ginnie Bitman—”
“Tedious Ginnie Bitman!” one of the other fellows chimed.
“Nightmarish Ginnie Bitman!” another added.
“Clearly, words fail us,” Freddy said. “But we feared for his manhood with that chunk of lead.”
“As you can see, my manhood is intact. Now, if you’ll excuse us.” Marcus’s hand at her back steered Clara away. “Those guys,” Marcus said. “What a laugh factory.”
“I didn’t know you were in student government!” Clara said.
“I was impeached. It’s too tragic to dredge up now.”
“Well, if you ever need a girl to stand by your side as you’re dragged through the mud, I think you could do a lot worse than Ginnie Bitman.”
“Really? I don’t know. She may well be the worst of the worst.”
“In other words, exceptional. And perfect for you.”
He placed his hand over his heart. “My boyhood dream: fulfilled. Ginnie Eastman.” Then he cleared his throat. “And what about you, Clara? Who’s your pick?”
“Oh no,” Clara laughed. “I don’t have a litter around me like you do, with little Ginnie and her friends all wagging their tails.”
“But you do have some bigwig New York politicians. What would you call them?”
Clara froze. So he had seen her and Harris that night. The thought made her sick to her stomach.
She peered up into Marcus’s honest face—there was no anger there. No, he looked wounded. He liked her. This beautiful boy liked her. She was not going to allow Harris Brown to ruin her life again—once was enough.
Clara took a deep breath. “What you may have seen the other night: It wasn’t how it looked.”
“A man like that kisses you and it’s not how it looks? I’m not stupid, Clara.”
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