Ingenue

by Jillian Larkin

  Then she noticed Jimmy walking toward her.

  He wiped off his brow the sweat caused by whatever work he’d been doing upstairs. “Hi there, Lorraine.” He noticed Rod sweeping the floor and muttering under his breath. “What’s Rod doing with that broom?”

  “Not your problem,” Lorraine replied. “What’s up?”

  Jimmy handed her a small white envelope. “This came in from Western Union earlier.”

  Lorraine felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. Only one person sent her telegrams. “Thanks, Jimmy.”

  She ripped open the envelope.

  ABOUT TIME YOU FOUND BIRD. STOP. JOB ONLY HALF DONE. STOP. NOW YOU NEED TO FIND BIRD’S MATE. STOP. GET HIM AND YOU GET YOUR REWARD. STOP.

  She read the telegram a few times, then folded it and slipped it into her purse. The odds of Jerome’s falling for an oddly specific ad in the paper were slim. WANTED: BLACK MALE PIANIST TO PERFORM WITH REDHEADED FEMALE SINGER WITH WHOM HE IS ALSO LIVING IN SIN. No way.

  But once Lorraine reeled Jerome in, she’d be done. She’d have her revenge on Gloria and then she’d prance off to school, a little extra spending money in her clutch to burn on nights out with her Barnard classmates.

  She looked up as Spark walked into the barroom. He wore his customary straw boater, suspenders, and a purple and green polka-dotted bow tie. You could say this for the man’s taste: It was entirely his own.

  He grinned at Lorraine. “I see you noticed the new mirror.”

  “What mirror?”

  Spark gestured toward a new mirror behind the bar. It took up the entire area between the shelves of bottles, and THE OPERA HOUSE was written in cursive across it. “That way there’s no more confusion about the new name. Looks nice, right?”

  Lorraine glanced at it again. She almost didn’t recognize the girl staring back at her. Sure, the girl in the mirror had the same dark bob, the same milky complexion, smooth cheeks, and made-up lips as she did, but this girl’s eyes looked scared and weary. She was a bit too thin, too jittery, and there was something about her … something like guilt. That girl in the mirror wasn’t a person who would fire an old man to spend time with a cute new guy, who would betray her (former) friends to a bunch of mobsters.

  Lorraine blinked. The girl in the mirror was still there.

  But then she turned around, focusing her gaze elsewhere—on the crimson mural, on the hardwood dance floor—and thankfully, the girl in the mirror was gone.

  Finally Lorraine was alone in the back office. She had only just begun to experiment with her new set of false eyelashes when someone knocked on the door. She groaned and put the eyelashes aside.

  It was the new waitress, Ruby, holding a layout for a glossy poster.

  “Sorry to bother you, Raine,” Ruby said, “but Puccini’s son brought this mockup from the printer and said it needs to be approved as quickly as possible.”

  Lorraine took the poster. It showed a beautiful redheaded woman in a red dress singing on a stage under the white cone of a spotlight.

  It read:

  10:00 P.M.

  JULY 12TH

  A beautiful songbird debuts: Zuleika Rose

  GIRLS! DANCING! MORE GIRLS! MORE DANCING!

  Catch Spark for the Locale and Password

  Lorraine handed the poster back to Ruby. “This looks fine—consider my approval given. Oh, and Ruby? Send in Spark, would you?”

  A few minutes later, Spark walked in. “You asked to see me?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Lorraine removed a tube of lipstick and a compact from her purse and touched herself up in the mirror. “We need a new piano player.”

  Spark sat across from her, frowning. “What’s wrong with the one we’ve already got?”

  “You saw how he played during that girl’s audition.”

  “Yeah, but Felix … he’s a good kid.”

  “And the man smiles too much. And he has too many teeth, I think. It’s unnatural.”

  Spark stared at her in silence for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.

  “And that goes for you, too,” she snapped, slapping her hand against the desktop. “Why the smiles all the time? What is everyone so damn happy about?”

  “All right, Raine, Felix is gone.” Spark pulled a pad and pencil off the desk. “How do you want the ad for a new one to read?”

  “We want somebody with experience, of course, and handsome. Young, nineteen or twenty. Dark hair, big brown eyes, and he shouldn’t be too tall. Five-ten or five-eleven should do it,” Lorraine said, thinking of Jerome. “Oh, and he needs to be black.”

  Spark looked up from his pad. “With a white band?”

  “Yeah. People like seeing blacks and whites onstage together.”

  Spark blinked slowly. “Which people?”

  “Shut it,” Lorraine replied. “What about that joint uptown, the Cotton Club? It’s all the way up in Harlem, and our customers are flocking up there in droves. We need a little of that jumpin’ jive down here. A black pianist with a white singer will give us a line around the block, trust me.”

  Spark shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll put the ad in the paper tomorrow. Does it need to be so specific?”

  Lorraine put her hand up to stop him as he started to stand. “Actually, an ad might not be necessary. How about you ask that new singer we hired—what’s her name? I’m sure she knows tons of musicians.”

  “Black ones?”

  “She does live awfully close to Harlem.”

  Spark stood up and stretched. “I’ll ask her. Any other requests, my liege?”

  “My lady, you mean.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “I put Rod on cleaning duty.”

  “Yeah, I noticed him yelling at the mop.” Spark paused, seeming to wonder whether he should ask the next question. “So who’s gonna be tending bar tonight?”

  “A man named Hank is coming in for an interview in about twenty minutes. And you’re going to hire him.”

  It was only after Spark had left that Lorraine allowed herself to grin.

  Being powerful felt good.

  CLARA

  Clara waited as patiently as she could outside Parker Richards’s office—which wasn’t quite as glamorous as she had expected.

  In her mind’s eye, the place had been a series of glass-walled private offices with a secretary stationed at a desk in front of each door, typing. Clara loved the noise of a typewriter. It sounded to her like hard work, and joy, and a little bit of magic.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. When she’d dropped off her first article a few days earlier, she’d gotten an eyeful. Instead of a line of smartly dressed secretaries and glass doors, Clara saw only two older women at the front of the office, garbed in drab dresses. Most of the writers worked in a bull pen, and there were only a few offices at the back of the common area. Worse, nearly all the men in the office were bald, bespectacled, a tad overweight, or all three. You don’t have to look good to write well, she told herself.

  “Clara?”

  Parker gestured for her to come inside his office. Clara followed him and perched on the edge of the cushioned chair across from his desk. Now, this was more like it.

  Parker’s office was stylish and professional—with floor-to-ceiling windows, and framed articles and magazine covers on the ivory walls. The oak desk was flanked by matching bookcases, filled with newspapers, issues of Vogue and Vanity Fair, and books. Behind Parker’s leather office chair, Clara could see a gorgeous view of midtown Manhattan.

  Parker didn’t look too bad himself. He was casually devastating in a dark green blazer that brought out his eyes, and a white dress shirt, his wavy hair slicked back and fixed with a bit of pomade. She immediately thought of Marcus and felt slightly guilty that she’d been admiring Parker, but there was nothing wrong with looking, was there?

  And there was something unique about Parker. More than his good looks, it was his energy that made him attractive. Intelligence shone like a light behind his eyes, and his presence, or charisma, or whate
ver it was that he radiated, made the spacious office seem too small to contain him. She waited for the smile that would finish off the effect.

  It didn’t come.

  Though Parker undoubtedly looked good, Clara’s editor did not look happy. He held up Clara’s first column. The pages were so marked up with red ink, she wondered if anyone would even be able to read the words she’d typed.

  “You want to tell me what you were thinking?” Parker asked. “Because this flat tire of a story could have been written by any of the stiffs in the city morgue.”

  Flat tire of a story? She’d obsessed for hours over her column—over the metaphors she chose, over the way she described the dresses, over her clever jokes.

  It was about an evening she’d spent at the Spotted Hen. She’d never been to this particular speakeasy in her flapper days, but she’d needed to go to a bar where no one would recognize her. There she’d been free to sit on a wooden stool at the bar with her seltzer and observe the drunken antics all around her—the slurry shenanigans of the flappers and their beaux.

  She’d written a fine portrait of three rookie flappers trying to dance the latest dances, and how awkward they’d looked. And she’d made what she thought were some very witty comments about two men who had argued with the dealer during a game of poker, eventually revealing that they didn’t understand how to play the game at all.

  “What’s so wrong with it?” Clara asked, a defensive edge in her voice.

  “What isn’t wrong with it would be the better question.” Parker tossed the article into his wastebasket. “Manhattanite readers want to read about the swanky palaces they wish they could go to but can’t—not the two-bit gin joints that any dumb Dora can waltz right into. You’re supposed to have the inside track.”

  Worse than having her writing torn apart was the realization that Parker wanted the old, wild child Clara.

  “Listen, you are an excellent writer—I was completely right about that,” Parker said in a softer tone. “But you can’t watch the party from the shadows. You need to get into the thick of it! You have to hobnob with the best and the brightest, the drunk and the dumbest. You have to dance in the middle of the flapper-packed dance floor and lead all those dizzy girls in a toast with your flute of champagne.” He shook his head. “If I just wanted someone to sit on the sidelines and take notes, I would’ve saved myself some trouble and hired my mother. And she’s dead.”

  “And what if I can’t do what you’re asking?”

  Parker huffed. “If you can’t give me that insider scoop on the scene, then I’ll need to find someone else. It would be a shame, though. I thought it was fate, you know, when I saw you at the Pink Potato. The kind of mischief you used to get up to …” He grinned at a memory, and for a brief, burning moment Clara was reminded of just how dynamic and handsome he was. “I remember you once convinced a party at the Ritz to steal a bunch of mattresses and—”

  “Ride them down the grand staircase!” she finished for him, laughing despite herself.

  He laughed, too. “How did you manage to get away with that?”

  “Bellboys can be very agreeable if you treat them kindly,” she replied, comically fluttering her lashes a few times. “And if you’re a girl.”

  “That’s where I always fouled up.”

  “We only got through a few runs before they kicked us out. They never did get those silk sheets back, though. My friends and I wore those as dresses for the rest of the evening.”

  Parker stood up. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He stepped around the desk so he was standing directly in front of her. “There’s a big to-do going on at the Plaza tonight. It’s Maxie Gabel’s eighteenth birthday party. You come out of there with a story like the one you just told me, and we’ll be in business.”

  “Really?” Clara was excited that Parker was giving her a second chance, but part of her was filled with dread. It was one thing to write about other people having a grand time and getting sloppy, but it was another thing entirely to join in and lead the charge.

  But she wouldn’t really be joining. She would be pretending until she could go home and write about it.

  Perhaps she could do both: be a reporter and be the girl she wanted to be—for Marcus, and for herself.

  “Will you be going to this party?”

  Parker laughed. “Are you kidding? They’d never invite me—I’m a journalist. This party’s meant for beautiful flappers like yourself, so be sure to wear your glad rags.”

  “So, are you excited about seeing Try It with Alice?” Marcus asked over the phone. “Paul said he practically died laughing when he saw it. And you know Paul—he’s only ever laughed twice before in his life, and both of those times were just so he could fit in.”

  Clara gasped. She’d completely forgotten: she and Marcus were supposed to see a Broadway show that evening!

  After leaving Parker’s office, she’d dropped by Leelee and Coco’s. Getting into a party without an invitation had never been a problem before. But now Clara couldn’t count on her reputation to open doors, while Leelee and Coco’s should be more than enough to get them all in.

  And then she’d stopped in at a barbershop to have her hair transformed back into its old bob. She walked out and relished the feel of the summer breeze on her neck. She barely had enough time to purchase a shimmering Chanel masterpiece overflowing with gorgeous beadwork before rushing home to get ready. She’d used most of the cash she had to buy the dress, but as long as she kept the tags on, she could return it the next day.

  She sighed and sat down on the bed, holding the black telephone receiver to her mouth. “Marcus, I’m sorry, but I think I have to cancel.”

  “What?” he said. “It sounded like you just said ‘cancel,’ but that can’t be.”

  Clara had resisted the telephone that Marcus had insisted she let him install in her apartment. He wanted an easy way to talk to her when she was “all the way out in Siberia.” But right now she was thankful: Marcus couldn’t see her half-made-up face and her apartment strewn with shoes, stockings, and headbands. She was lying to him. Just as she had when they’d first met. Only, now she felt terrible about it.

  “I’m so sorry, Marcus, I should’ve called earlier, but I’ve just felt so awful. I’ve had this—cough, cough—horrible cough since the afternoon. I think I may even have a fever.”

  “Oh, darling,” Marcus replied, all annoyance gone. “I guess I’ll try to get tickets for another night. How about I bring you some chicken soup?”

  “No, no, you don’t have to brave that subway ride for my sake,” she said quickly. “I think I just need to get some rest.”

  Marcus was silent for a moment. “Are you sure? I really don’t mind. You know I’m kidding around when I whine about trekking out there to visit you.”

  Clara checked the clock. She still had to finish getting ready, spend an hour on the subway, and meet up with Leelee and Coco. “I’m honestly falling asleep over here. Go out and enjoy the night with your friends.”

  “Paul did say Charles Drakeman just got into town,” Marcus said hesitantly. “They’re going to play pool. And not the billiards sort, apparently, but something to do with big blue pools of chlorinated water and bathing beauties in floats. It sounds stupid and decadent.”

  “Yes, do that!” Clara said with too much enthusiasm. She tried to cover with another cough. “I mean, that sounds like fun.”

  “It won’t be fun without you.” Marcus exhaled. “All right, I will play pool. Rest well, and we can meet up for lunch tomorrow if you’re better by then. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Clara hung up. She’d done the right thing. Marcus wouldn’t understand what she was doing for the Manhattanite—he’d worry that she would fall back into her old ways.

  But Clara would keep hold of her new values, and she would go to this party purely to work. She would prove to Parker and to everyone else that she wasn’t a stylish but brainless floozy. She would
prove that she could be something on her own.

  Clara twirled her martini glass and watched the olive spin around.

  When they’d reached the Pulitzer Fountain and seen the crowd of photographers and reporters swarming around the Plaza’s entrance, the party had looked promising. And once they’d pushed through the people and gotten inside, it had looked more promising still: The ballroom upstairs had recently been renovated, and even Coco had to admit it was beautiful. The city at night was visible through the grand arched windows, and delicate chandeliers bright with light hung from the coffered ceilings.

  At the far end of the room, across the vast polished parquet floor, Clara saw Joseph C. Smith’s band on a bandstand, and a bar discreetly tucked into the corner behind an explosion of palm fronds. That was where the partygoers were thickest, where the guests could drink booze served by waiters in tuxedos. Maybe it was just the blaze of the chandeliers overhead, or the soft jazz that pulsed in the room, or the two drinks she’d already had, but from this distance, for a brief moment, it seemed to Clara that all the young men here were terribly handsome and the women were elegant goddesses in sequins and gold lamé.

  The illusion was quickly dispelled.

  While these girls looked like flappers, they certainly didn’t act like them. Where were the wild toasts and vamps dancing on tables? Could the New York social scene have changed so much in her absence?

  “To think we all got so dolled up for such a yawn of a party,” Clara said. But her old roommates did look fantastic. Leelee’s feathered headband coordinated beautifully with her sheer, netted dress. Coco was a shock of silver fringe, and a glittering headdress covered most of her dark bob, accentuating her sharp features.

  “Oh no, darling,” Leelee said with a hand on Clara’s arm, “if anyone is a waste of beauty tonight, it’s you. You should move back in with us only so I can steal that dress from your closet.”