Diva

by Jillian Larkin

  Lorraine kept a hawk’s eye on Philosophy Hall’s arched doorway. Any moment, Marcus Eastman would walk through it, straight from his French class. After that he would head across campus to physics. Then he would be done with classes for the day, until he went off to calculus tomorrow morning.

  Lorraine couldn’t help but feel proud of herself. They’d only been at school a few weeks and she’d managed to memorize Marcus’s entire schedule.

  Most days, Lorraine was perfectly situated to bump into Marcus, to listen sympathetically to him as he talked about his difficulties in class, to offer to renew the friendship that had sustained her throughout her high school years. She was there for him, as a true-blue friend should be.

  Of course, the two of them hadn’t technically spoken yet. Lorraine had only seen Marcus a handful of times, and whenever he noticed her, he quickly took off in the other direction.

  When Lorraine had run into Marcus at the Opera House weeks earlier, he’d given her such hope. There she’d been, heartbroken after her too-perfect bartender beau, her first true love, turned out to be an FBI agent who’d only been using her for information.

  But then Marcus showed up. And he’d been nice to her! He even told her she looked good! He’d never done that back in Chicago. Let FBI Hank go off and solve crimes and look ruggedly handsome while doing it. Who cared? Not Lorraine! She belonged with someone like Marcus; that was clear. A handsome boy her own age from the same world as she.

  But that notion had come crashing down after Gloria told Marcus what Lorraine had really been doing at the Opera House. How she’d been helping the gangster Carlito Macharelli trap Gloria and her colored fiancé. After that, Marcus had wanted nothing to do with her.

  It wasn’t fair. Didn’t it matter that once Lorraine learned Carlito was planning to kill Gloria and Jerome, she’d worked with the FBI to save them? How come no one ever focused on that part? How come no one held Lorraine Dyer up as the heroine of this sordid tale? She’d been lied to, been lost and alone, and then she’d come through and saved her friends from an unsavory end.

  That was the story Clara Knowles should have written up in the Manhattanite.

  Lorraine would explain everything to Marcus in touching detail when he finally deigned to speak to her. After dating a liar like Clara Knowles for so long, Marcus had to understand what it was like to be misled and confused enough to make a few mistakes.

  A shadow fell over the cover of Vogue and Lorraine looked up, her heart swelling.

  But the boy standing in front of her wasn’t Marcus—he was in fact the blond Adonis’s polar opposite. Where Marcus was tan and muscular, Melvin Delacorte was rail thin and pale, with a dusting of freckles over his nose. It was hard to tell what color his eyes were behind his thick, black-framed glasses, only that they were small. His fiery shade of red hair looked beautiful on a girl like Gloria but was completely ridiculous on a boy of nineteen.

  Today he was wearing a gray sweater vest, a rumpled button-down, and baggy knickers—but his clothing selection didn’t really matter. No matter what he wore, one truth was evident: Melvin was one of the biggest killjoys Lorraine had ever met.

  He was also one of the only friends she’d been able to make at college. At a Columbia-Barnard academic honors dinner early in the semester, Lorraine had been unable to stop poking fun at the stuffy old professors’ outfits. Melvin had been the only student sitting nearby to laugh.

  Or maybe he’d just been coughing. His laugh and his cough sounded remarkably similar. But Lorraine loved to talk and Melvin loved to listen. All in all, not a bad arrangement.

  Melvin slouched down next to her on the bench. He followed Lorraine’s gaze past the Venetian Well Head to Philosophy Hall. “I see you’re on the watch again,” he observed in the rich, deep voice of a handsomer man.

  Lorraine rolled her eyes and went back to shuffling through her mail. “Yes, yes, you know me so well,” she said, bristling. But spying the name “Eastman” on the corner of an envelope sent every other thought straight out of Lorraine’s mind. Could it be a love letter? A heartfelt apology for how Marcus had been avoiding her?

  Her spirits plummeted when she noted the letter was from the Eastman family, not Marcus.

  Melvin watched her eagerly rip the letter open. “Were you recruited for the Academic Decathlon? Our schools compete together—we could be teammates!”

  “What? God, no—Melvin, just stop talking.”

  Lorraine pulled the thick folded card from the envelope and opened it. Immediately her eyes were drawn to the black-and-white photograph of Marcus, his golden hair slicked back with pomade. The boy certainly could wear a suit—the pale vest, trousers, and jacket hung beautifully on him. The smile fell off Lorraine’s face as she noticed the classically beautiful woman standing next to him. The girl wore the sort of long, frilly deb dress Lorraine had always despised. Her delicate hand was tucked around Marcus’s arm as if it belonged there, and something lovely and very, very expensive glinted on her finger.

  “He’s getting married!” Lorraine exclaimed, looking away in shock and horror.

  At just that moment, the boy in question walked through the heavy black doors of Philosophy Hall. Instantly he saw her and smiled his widest grin, showing off his perfectly white, gleaming teeth.

  Lorraine breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Marcus had probably sent this fake wedding invitation just to make her jealous. Now he would walk straight over to her, laugh at his elaborate joke, sweep her off her feet, and tell her all was forgiven.

  She felt her face break out into a smile as she got to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Melvin asked, but he’d see soon enough.

  “Why, hello there, han—”

  But Marcus strode past Lorraine and Melvin and onto the quad without a second glance.

  He walked straight into the arms of the striking girl from the photo, who’d been waiting behind Lorraine. How had she never noticed this girl before? Could it get any worse? Lorraine wondered.

  It could: They kissed in the center of the quad. It went on longer than it should have. Lorraine and Melvin weren’t the only people staring. The couple looked amazing together. The girl’s hair was a rich auburn that shone like mahogany in the sun. Her annoyingly stylish blue belted Patou dress set off her ivory skin beautifully. With Marcus in his casual but refined V-neck sweater and trousers, they could have been models.

  Lorraine got a flash of herself and Marcus back in Chicago, when they used to be friends. When she’d hoped that she would be kissing him someday. When she and Gloria were still best friends. How far away that all felt now.

  “Why are you standing?” Melvin asked.

  After a break for air and then another kiss, the couple walked in the other direction, arm in arm. Lorraine clenched her fingernails into her palms.

  “Lorraine, are you all right?” Melvin asked, and tugged at her arm.

  “Perfect!” she said in a shrill voice. She slipped the photo, the invitation, and the bills to be forwarded to her father into her purse and handed her trash to Melvin. “But, um, I have to go.”

  “Do you want me to throw this away?” she heard Melvin ask from somewhere behind her. But she couldn’t answer.

  She marched away as fast as she could and didn’t stop until she had reached her dorm room. Her dogs were killing her, but at least she didn’t have any stairs to climb. Her parents had made sure Lorraine got the largest room available in Brooks Hall, the newest and most luxurious dormitory at Barnard. They’d pushed for a single, but when Lorraine opened the door and saw the second, perfectly made twin bed, she was glad for her roommate.

  Becky was neat as a pin and kept up with the chores, like cleaning and whatever else one did to keep a room looking nice—Lorraine couldn’t be bothered with menial tasks. The silky bedspread drooped lazily over the edge of the unmade bed on Lorraine’s side of the room, and her bureau was littered with half-empty bottles of perfume, tissues covered with blotted lipstick, and heaps o
f tangled necklaces and earrings.

  Lorraine kicked off her heels and kneeled on her bed. Above it hung a wide bulletin board cluttered with smart ads from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Their models wore dresses Lorraine wanted and some she already owned—she was eager to use her closet to prove that fact as soon as she convinced a friend to come over. Next to the ads was an essay from American History emblazoned with an A++. Melvin’s braininess was rubbing off on her. She hoped that was the only thing about him that was contagious.

  Or maybe Lorraine was only doing so well in school because she didn’t have any parties or shopping trips or gossip sessions to occupy her free time. She’d been so confident when she’d marched out onto Lehman Lawn on the first day of orientation for the New Students’ Block Party. She’d observed all the Barnard girls in their unfashionably long pastel frocks, standing stick straight and drinking lemonade. They’d probably spent their summers doing nothing more interesting than playing golf with their parents at Martha’s Vineyard.

  Lorraine, on the other hand, had real stories to tell.

  But when she’d tried to join Margaret Templeton and Lillian Burnstrom, two heiresses she recognized from the society pages, in conversation, they’d pretended she wasn’t even there. As Lorraine walked away, astonished, she overheard Margaret whispering, “That’s Lorraine Dyer. I hear her parents basically disowned her after she got caught working in a third-rate speakeasy this summer.”

  “She’s the one who got Gloria Carmody arrested!” another girl announced.

  The others gasped, and all turned the full power of their glares on Lorraine, the woman who’d dared to oppose their new Patron Saint of Flapperdom. Even the bespectacled, acne-ridden girls wouldn’t speak to Lorraine after that.

  It was like Laurelton Prep all over again, except now Lorraine didn’t have Gloria to lean on.

  Lorraine had planned to have her father take a picture of her in front of Brooks Hall with her newfound friends before her parents departed for Chicago the next day. But instead, she’d stood in front of the double doors alone, smiling her widest, brightest smile as her father fussed with the camera.

  Now that photo hung on her corkboard, and Lorraine tacked the photograph from the invitation beside it. It was such a good picture of Marcus—a pity that shrew was there, too. Struck with an idea, Lorraine took the invitation out of her bag as well and folded the top of it like the French fan hung artfully on her wall.

  She tacked the invitation right next to the photograph so they overlapped a little and she couldn’t see the girl in the photograph. (What kind of name was Anastasia, anyway? Was she Russian?) Now there was just Marcus’s smooth, handsome face, right next to Lorraine’s. From a distance, the two of them looked like a normal, happy couple. Or maybe even just good friends, as Marcus and Lorraine had once been. Marcus’s easy charm had quickly made him one of the most popular boys in Columbia’s freshman class. With a friend like him, the Barnard girls would overlook Lorraine’s Mafioso-ridden past in a heartbeat.

  Looking at their photographs, Lorraine vowed that somehow she would get Marcus to forgive her. It wouldn’t be easy. Marcus had made it clear that he didn’t plan to let Lorraine explain herself any time soon. She’d have to find some other way to get into his good graces.

  There was nothing Lorraine loved more than a challenge.

  GLORIA

  Sun-dazzled, Gloria reached for the glossy issue of Life magazine resting on the patio table beside her. At the last moment her hand latched on to her freshly mixed dirty martini instead.

  She took a sip from the crystal glass and sighed. Even her family’s old mansion on Astor Street in Chicago paled in comparison to the luxury in which Forrest Hamilton lived on Long Island. A perfect turquoise pool filled the space in front of her, ringed by a white-marble-tiled patio. At the far edge of the patio, stairs led straight down to the beach of Long Island Sound, which was a deeper, more beautiful blue than the water of a pool could ever be.

  To the right of Gloria’s reclining lawn chair was a sandy beach, where sunbathers lay under colorful umbrellas. And behind her was a broad white pavilion with wicker tables and chairs, where Forrest’s guests could grab a bit of shade after too much sun—it was unusually warm this fall. Still felt like summer. There was a bar in the pavilion, with a bartender who looked similar to but was an entirely different person from the other full-time bartender Forrest employed within his enormous villa. Gloria wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

  The girls lounging on either side of Gloria were beautiful. They were both blondes, but one, who called herself Glitz, had nearly white dandelion-fluff hair, while the hair of the girl who called herself Glamour was a burnished gold. Glitz and Glamour wore scandalous Annette Kellerman swimsuits with plunging necklines and only tiny shorts to cover their tanned legs.

  Gloria might have felt like a prude in her modest black swimsuit with its delicate overskirt, but on the other side of Glamour, Ruby Hayworth was sunbathing in an almost identical suit—only hers was sapphire blue. What was good enough for Ruby was good enough for her, Gloria decided.

  Ruby let out a heavy sigh and put down the thin script she’d been reading. “Ugh, this musical Marty’s been bugging me to read is just horrible.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t sign on to do Forrest’s musical already,” Glamour replied in her low, sultry voice. “You’d make him the happiest man on Long Island.”

  “You wouldn’t have to do his musical to do that,” Glitz added with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.

  All four of them laughed.

  A little embarrassed, Ruby just shook her head. “Marty says this is a very important time in my career. I have to consider all my options.” She dug through her canvas beach bag and frowned adorably. The girl probably even looked pretty when she cried. “Drat. I left the other script in my room, and I need to let Marty know what I think by tonight.” Ruby smoothed back her dark hair, still damp from a recent dip in the pool, and laced up her bathing slippers. “Enjoy the sun, ladies.”

  Ruby made her way across the lawn, and Glamour and Glitz leaned close.

  “I can’t believe the leash that husband of hers keeps her on,” Glitz observed, her lavender-blue eyes narrowed. “Forcing her to work on vacation! Wettest blanket I’ve ever met. And I’ve dated politicians,” she added dramatically. “I really don’t know what she sees in him.”

  “A whole lot of green—that’s what Ruby sees in Marty,” Glamour said. She gulped down her third gin and tonic of the morning. “Her show needed financing and he needed a pretty dame. Bingo!”

  “So she doesn’t love him?” Gloria asked. “She only married him for her career?” Gloria had only known the actress a few days but Ruby didn’t strike her as the gold-digging type.

  “I should do that!” Glitz called out. “It’s as good a reason as any to shackle yourself to a man, eh, Glam?”

  “Sure, but it only works if you have a career in the first place,” Glamour replied.

  “Hey!” Glitz exclaimed with a pout. “I’m a model.”

  “A model rube. You were in one magazine.”

  “It sold out!”

  “Only because those biddies from the Women’s Christian Temperance League bought all the copies to burn those pictures of you in that sheer skirt.”

  Glitz gave a delighted giggle. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, Glam.”

  Glamour straightened her red polka-dotted swimming cap and peered at Gloria. “Maybe you should marry some fat cat who produces musicals. I’d suggest Forrest, but he only has eyes for Ruby. She just leads him on and he follows her around like a puppy.”

  “A puppy with a diamond collar!” Glitz chimed in.

  Gloria worked hard to match their smiles with one of her own. But it wasn’t easy. All this talk of marriage kept turning her eyes toward her own empty left ring finger. On her release from prison, Jerome’s engagement ring had been returned to Gloria. But Hank had forbidden her to wear it around Forrest
.

  “His lips won’t be anywhere near as loose around you if he knows you’re off the market,” Hank had said.

  So now Gloria could wear the ring only when she went to bed at night, strung on a gold chain around her neck. Each morning she deposited the ring in the drawer of the oak vanity in her room. And each night she slipped it on before going to sleep.

  After five days in Great Neck, the huge guest room had already started to feel like home. The mattress on the four-poster bed was cloud soft, and the artwork on the walls was strange and beautiful—“By this young Spaniard named Picasso,” Forrest told her. But Gloria would’ve gladly gone back to the lumpy bed with its poky springs in her old Harlem apartment if it meant she could fall asleep each night in the circle of Jerome’s arms.

  She hadn’t intended to stay longer than a day at Forrest’s villa. But without even asking her permission, Forrest and the girls had sent a telegram to the prison to request that Gloria’s things be sent to Great Neck. “What do I even have this huge house for if I can’t fill it with talented young things in need of a place to stay?” Forrest had remarked.

  Gloria had been shocked when a huge steamer trunk arrived on Forrest’s doorstep a day later. In the privacy of her room, she opened the chest to find the most resplendent dresses she’d ever seen. One silver sheath dress looked like it was woven out of moonlight, and there were high, sparkling heels to match. Another was short, black, and had a generous slit in the back. It was maddeningly sexy in its simplicity. Gloria looked at the labels and felt she was reuniting with a troupe of old girlfriends: Coco Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Jeanne Paquin, and the Boué Soeurs.

  Along with the chest came a note in annoyingly neat handwriting:

  Here are your weapons, kid. Now go knock ’em dead.

  —H

  And so here she was, until she found out whatever she could that would satiate Hank and the FBI about Forrest.