The Lucky Ones

by Anna Godbersen

  She reached for his hand and went on holding it as they talked idly of the days since they had last seen each other. Mostly what Cordelia could remember of them was how often she had replayed the scene out in front of The Vault in her thoughts, savoring the memory of how urgently he had kissed her on the sidewalk that night.

  Not until they reached Harlem did his shoulders begin to relax a little. Still, as they crossed the street to the brown townhouse where his mother lived, he kept looking over his shoulder as though someone might be following them. But the tension dissolved when they came up to the second-floor landing and the door with the number two hand-painted on it flew open.

  “Cordelia! So good to see you again, sugar,” Mrs. Darby exclaimed once she had hugged her son. Taking Cordelia’s arm, she said, “I’ve been after Max to bring you by again. Anyway, come on in. Food’s getting cold.”

  Everything was neat in Mrs. Darby’s parlor—the old Victorian-style furniture was polished and simply arranged and the light was warm and the table was set for three. A fan whirred in the kitchen, and a phonograph was playing a piano concerto in the next room. There were children shouting on the street, and she could faintly hear the people moving around in the apartment upstairs. Here was a room where secrets did not need to be revealed, because—unlike in the rest of the world—none were kept, and for a moment, as they bent their heads while Max said grace, she forgot the things that she had come to New York in search of and was perfectly content.

  Elsewhere in Manhattan the evening was only just beginning. In Harlem, wide-eyed voyeurs from the white parts of town, who had come in search of long-legged brown girls and exotic stage shows, were staring through car windows at the spectacle of the streets. They would likely have been surprised by the tranquility of the scene on the second-floor flat of an old brick townhouse, where two of the tabloids’ newest stars were privately enjoying one another’s company. For Cordelia, there was no place else to be. Whenever she glanced at Max’s pure, handsome face she felt a ripple of pride to think he was hers and he was capable of something few people could do. And for his part, he kept looking at her and then looking away, as though he couldn’t quite believe he had a girl like her in his mother’s parlor.

  After dinner, Mrs. Darby had retired in order that the young people might have some time alone, and Max sat on one side of his mother’s yellow chintz sofa with Cordelia’s head rested on his lap. Her body ran the length of the sofa, with her feet on the armrest, and she had let her eyes sink closed as Max played with her hair.

  “You know, when I lived in Union, I used to go to the library to read the New York papers whenever I had a spare hour…” Cordelia began in a quiet, musing way. “I’d pore over the crime columns and the gossip columns in the hope of catching some mention of my dad. I loved reading about New York, too. I used to collect old guidebooks so I could learn the streets and the subways and the neighborhoods, so that when I came here, I’d never be lost.”

  “Did it look like what you imagined?”

  “Not exactly. It was so much more than I expected! But the funny thing is, I always assumed that once I got here my real life would begin, that I wouldn’t have to be imagining it all the time. But I found out I could be trapped here, too. And I kept reading the papers anyway. And you know whose name I looked for?”

  Max smiled faintly. “Mine?” he answered. His eyes had a quality as though they were contemplating something he was afraid of but that he was determined to do anyway.

  She bit her lip. “Did you ever seek out mine?”

  Leaning forward, he replaced a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Yes. First by accident, and then so I could figure out where the hell a girl like you comes from. Once I knew who you were, I thought I’d better not try to know you any better, but I kept searching for your name anyway, not knowing why.”

  “Do you know why now?”

  “Yes. It’s because you’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met.”

  Cordelia lowered her eyes. Her childhood had taught her how to swat away insults, but she did not yet know how to gracefully take a compliment. Neither said anything for a while after that, and Cordelia would have been happy to let the comfortable silence stretch out a while longer, except that a thought from earlier in the day kept nagging her.

  “Charlie’s up to something tonight.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m not sure, really. I can just tell. He was preoccupied—they all were—and when he left he told me I was to stay close to my bodyguard and that under no circumstances was I to leave Dogwood.” A faint smile played on her lips, and she opened her eyes and met his gaze.

  To her surprise he did not smile back. “What’s he up to, do you think?”

  “I guess it probably has something to do with the Hales, although I can’t be sure. Why are you frowning like that? Aren’t you happy that I’m here?”

  “Of course. But if Charlie thought it wasn’t safe for you to go out tonight, maybe it’s not safe for you to be out.”

  “But I—”

  “Just promise me that in the future you’ll stay put if it seems dangerous, and let me come to you?”

  “All right. I promise.”

  “Good.” Max pushed the hair away from her forehead, as though he wanted an unobstructed view of her face before he kissed her.

  The kiss was sweet, and when it was over, Cordelia felt pleasantly fatigued and lay her head on his shoulder. “I wish I could stay here all night…but that would scandalize your mother, wouldn’t it? And anyway, my poor bodyguard is probably sweating right now, terrified I won’t be back before the boss.”

  “I know,” Max said sadly. Yet they did not get up immediately, and when they did, they moved slowly and a little regretfully out of that quiet room and its low, warm light. At the door, he removed his leather flying jacket from the hook and handed it to her. “Take this.”

  “But Max, you need that! Anyway, it must be near ninety outside; I won’t be cold.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Take it anyway,” he said, and Cordelia realized that what he really wanted was for her not to go out with naked arms.

  “All right.” As they went down the stairs to the ground floor, she slipped it over her shoulders.

  Outside, it was almost as light as day with the streetlights and the passing cars. They could hear music from somewhere, and shouting and laughter filtering from the windows of the higher stories. He reached for her hand and stepped ahead of her off the curb, shielding her from any oncoming cars, and raised an arm. A yellow cab pulled over, and he leaned in the front window to negotiate the price of the long drive.

  “He’ll take you,” Max announced, turning to face Cordelia.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Me too.”

  “I should drive you,” he said suddenly.

  “No… You need to be at the airfield early, and if you take me now it’ll be almost morning by the time you get back.”

  For a moment there was the old stiffness between them, a curious air of formality. Then, gazing at her, he gave a faint little shake of his head, as though he still couldn’t quite believe she was real. His lips parted, and her breath caught, because she was briefly sure he was going to tell her that he loved her. Instead he opened the back door, and watched solicitously as she arranged herself on the backseat.

  “I’ll call you soon,” he said and grinned, and they both knew he had thought it.

  “Good.” She grinned back at him as he closed the door and went on grinning as they pulled away from the curb. Although she did not so much as glance over her shoulder, she knew that he kept on watching. She sank back happily against the leather seat and didn’t notice the silver sedan on the other side of the street making a swift U-turn so that it could follow her cab as it traveled south toward the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.

  4

  VEHICLES ON A CITY STREET AT NIGHT WEAR POKER faces, their features stony and their eyes as ste
ady as the moon. There was that rhythm of headlights as cars zoomed past, and Astrid liked how whenever a beam went over them she got a good picture of her husband, the line of his jaw and the way he filled up his shirt. When she woke up that morning she had been tempted to tell him her grandmother Donal’s secret, but then she remembered her promise to the lady. Instead Astrid had cooed that she couldn’t be apart from him and asked if he’d take her on his nocturnal rounds, and by now anticipation was at a high fizz inside her.

  The world Charlie was taking her into was not one that her mother would ever see, nor any of the girls who were going back to Connecticut to finish at Miss Porter’s in the fall, perfecting themselves only so that they could be married to bores like Beau Ridley—the boy who had taken her first kiss—who would soon enough turn into the kind of musty old husband her mother collected. Virginia Donal de Gruyter Marsh had always been competitive with her daughter, for the silly and incontrovertible reason that she would forever be precisely twenty-two years younger than her, but Astrid had never heard such desperate jealousy in her mother’s voice as she had on the telephone that afternoon. The old lady had been trying to invite herself out with the bright young things, on the flimsy pretext that she missed her daughter. But Astrid knew the real reason—Virginia couldn’t stand that Astrid had chosen to be not at all like her mother and had forgone the chance to collect expensive surnames in order to collect nights like these.

  As they flew down Sixth Avenue, Charlie leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his brown eyes intent on the task ahead. Astrid let a hand rest on his back protectively. He worked so hard, her Charlie. After his father had died he had become a little obsessed with it, and he had pushed hard to make the business grow, especially where it meant stealing clients from the Hales. The Hales had struck back, of course—by kidnapping Astrid—but Charlie had saved her. And now she would save him, however she could, and see to it that he didn’t work too hard, and that there was always lightness at his side, in the pretty form of herself.

  “Here,” Charlie announced, and the driver pulled the Daimler off the wide avenue and onto a tree-lined side street.

  Astrid pressed her shoulders up toward her ears, and a low murmur of expectation escaped her lips as they passed the redbrick buildings of the Village, where markers of the old family neighborhood life were still mixed in with the new fun. She had been down here plenty of times with Charlie and with the fast set from White Cove—young people like her who wanted their evenings frothy and were more likely to see the sunrise at the end of a day than at its beginning. But she had never been in the Village like this—moving stealthily, instead of with the intention of making a scene.

  “Here,” Charlie said again, and the driver stopped the car in front of an old storefront, the windows of which had been painted black from the inside. Over the front door a neon sign blinked PHARMACY. Without looking back at Astrid, Charlie pushed open the door. Astrid scooted toward him on the seat and stuck a leg out, her high-heeled shoe reaching for the pavement. She let out an angry yelp when she felt the steel of the door closing against her calf.

  “Charlie!”

  “What are you doing?” His face was wide open with surprise, and it was only after he saw his wife’s crumpled mouth that he realized her leg was smarting. “I’m sorry, baby. You stay here.”

  “Charlie.” Astrid scowled. “You said I could tag along.”

  “I’ll be right inside, baby, and then I’m gonna take you to the sweetest little Italian place around the corner, all right? Ted will stay with you,” he went on, meaning the driver. “He’s armed.”

  The gold dress Astrid wore glimmered in her wake as she descended to the sidewalk and closed the car door behind her. She brushed a lock of blond hair out of her face and met Charlie’s gaze. He turned his chin up in silent argument, but he blinked first, and Astrid, knowing she had won, spread her full lips into a smile. After another second he gave in completely. With a subtle tilt of the head, Charlie indicated that his bodyguard should precede him. He took Astrid’s hand and moved ahead of her to the door, and she shimmied in her slinky dress to keep up.

  The bodyguard poked the bell with a sturdy finger.

  For what seemed a long time there was no noise within. Then the door was drawn back and a long, wan face with a pair of spectacles balanced on its nose appeared in the crack of the door frame.

  The man’s eyes scanned the three young people in the street. He stared at Charlie and then at Astrid and then at Charlie again, letting his eyes linger the longest on the young heir of the Grey bootlegging fortune. “What seems to be your ailment?” he said suspiciously.

  The bodyguard looked at Charlie, and Charlie said: “I can’t sleep at night.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve slept through the night?” the man asked—incuriously, Astrid noticed with a sly upturn at the corner of her mouth, for she had been a witness to this sort of password ritual before.

  “Eight days,” Charlie replied.

  The man nodded and pulled open the door so that they could follow him through an empty pharmacy, where the medicine bottles hung like ghosts on the mirrored shelves, and into a back room. Several small tables were illuminated by hanging lampshades, their Victorian tassels faded and their cloth coverings threadbare. “Runnin’ Wild” played from an old phonograph. Five couples occupied the room, none of them the type who might be found playing croquet on a White Cove lawn on a Sunday.

  “I see plenty of wedding rings, but I think we’re the only man and wife in the room!” Astrid whispered delightedly into Charlie’s ear as the fellow with the glasses showed them to their table. This seemed funny to her, that they had landed in the kind of out-of-the-way place where people went when they were up to no good.

  “What can I get you?” the man with the glasses asked as Astrid lowered herself into an old wooden chair.

  “I’d like to speak to the owner,” Charlie said without sitting down.

  “Oh, Charlie, let’s warm up a minute! We’ll have two of your finest whatever it is you serve here,” Astrid said with a careless wave of her hand and a theatrical wink. When the man saw her wink, his features relaxed for the first time since they’d entered, and Astrid decided that she liked his face, which was shadowy in some parts and protruded in others.

  Reluctantly, Charlie sat down beside her, and the bodyguard retreated to the corner of the room as their host disappeared behind a curtain. “You see, Charlie, pretty soon I’m going to be indispensable to you! I suspect you needed a little ladylike touch for this sort of business. You can be awfully intimidating, you know.”

  The veins on Charlie’s thick neck were popping slightly, so she softened her eyes at him. She didn’t let up until some sweetness came into his gaze, and then she leaned toward him and said: “Charlie, promise me you’ll never come to a joint like this with some girl who isn’t me.”

  “Why would I ever—”

  Astrid rolled her eyes in the direction of the other patrons, urging him to look around. “You know.”

  “Astrid.” Charlie put both hands at her waist, encircling it. “Astrid, I would never.”

  “I know, I know, just tell me.”

  He lowered himself so that his mouth was close to her ear. “I would never,” he said, his stern voice breaking over the sincerity of the sentiment. She sensed a kiss coming, but their drinks came first, served in chipped white coffee cups.

  Beaming, Astrid brought the coffee cup to her face. But the taste of the whiskey was terrible, so she put it down definitively into its saucer. “Oh, Charlie, don’t tell Mr. Specs, but this tastes awful!”

  A twinkling little laugh escaped her lips, and it broke the sweetness of the previous moment. Charlie turned from her slowly and signaled the host, who came away from the wall toward their table. A new song had come on, another old one—Astrid couldn’t remember the name, but she knew they’d been playing it in the cafés in Paris the year after her mother’s second divorce, when they’d lived ou
t of suitcases in Europe.

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie told the man coldly, “but my wife says this stuff is terrible.”

  “Oh, well, terrible is such a strong word!” Astrid trilled.

  “I apologize.” The man with the glasses kept his voice just as cold and did not look at Astrid again. “But that’s all we serve here. Perhaps Madame would like it better at another kind of establishment.”

  “My wife likes it here fine.” Charlie stood and pushed his chair back. “I’d like to talk to the owner about it.”

  “I am the owner, sir.”

  “Then I’d like to talk to you about it. Alone.”

  The man turned down the corners of his mouth and swung his head, as though he didn’t see the point but was willing to accommodate this unusual request, and then he gestured toward the back of the room. Charlie shot a meaningful look at his bodyguard, and Astrid gave a soft squeal as she hurried along behind Charlie, through the curtain and into a small, dingy office. A desk took up most of the room, and the rest was occupied by a filing cabinet, the top drawer of which was unlocked and open to reveal stacked bottles full of amber liquid.

  “My name is Charlie Grey,” Charlie said, dragging a chair back so that he could sit in it.

  “I know who you are, Mr. Grey.”

  Astrid’s eyes went excitedly to Charlie at this evidence of what a big, important person he was and how his reputation spread even to holes-in-the-wall like this one. Though he didn’t return her look, she stood behind him anyway, delicately placing her ringed fingers on his shoulder, thinking what an impressive accessory she surely was for him.

  “I import liquor. Good liquor. Not like what you’ve been serving.”

  “I know what you do, Mr. Grey.”

  “Try it. We just brought it in through the Bahamas. It’s top-notch.”