The Lucky Ones

by Anna Godbersen

  “I don’t much feel like it tonight,” she said, after a long pause, mostly hoping this would get his hand off her ankle.

  “Aw, don’t be sour.” Charlie stood up, jostling the daybed again, and strode across the room. The way he spoke—rather breezier than the situation called for—Astrid knew he thought he was going to get his way. She peeked beyond the pages of her magazine and saw Charlie still putting potato chips in his mouth with one hand as he fiddled with an ornate cigarette box on a rosewood end table. From behind, she had to admit, he still had something about him. Maybe the way his shoulders stretched out his beige linen jacket. But she tried to remind herself how rank his kisses were just after he smoked. “I know it probably wasn’t the funnest joint I took you to last night,” he went on, as he got the cigarette lit. “But tonight’ll be different. More the way you like it. More class.”

  He was turning back around, so Astrid quickly drew the magazine up to cover her eyes. “I’m really not in the mood, darling,” she answered aridly.

  “Oh, come off it!” Charlie snapped, grabbing the magazine and ripping it from Astrid’s hands. For a moment they stared at each other—his face pulled down in irritation, hers wide open with surprise, her hands slightly raised, holding their position from before the magazine was snatched away. She blinked, and he averted his gaze, as though embarrassed by what he had done. “I’m sorry, Astrid. I just don’t get what’s come over you. I just wanna show you off.”

  Astrid folded her arms over her chest and gave him her profile. “Show me off?”

  Charlie sighed and made an attempt to smooth the crumpled magazine, before tossing it aside and sitting down next to Astrid on the daybed. “Come on, don’t be like this. You’ll like the place we’re going tonight—the Saxton Hotel on the East Side, old clients of Dad’s. They say they just got a new delivery of wine and champagne, classy stuff, down from Canada, so they don’t need us anymore. Well, we got plenty of class, and I aim to convince them they need us, damned as they ever did. Then I’m taking you for dinner, kitten.”

  Astrid took her time in answering. She flattened the bodice of her dress over her stomach and examined her nails, which were due for some pampering. It occurred to her that Rudy Vallée was no longer crooning to her from the phonograph, and she lamented this lack of background music in her thoughts. She cast her eyes about the room before letting them roll back to meet Charlie’s with exquisite languor. “I’m not hungry.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not going to be hungry.”

  Charlie regarded her, his head thrust back on his neck and his eyes burning. “All right, stay here. Stay here all night. But don’t think you’re leaving this property.” He turned away from her quickly, as though already his attention had moved on to other matters. “I’ll tell Victor he’s watching you tonight, and this time, there’ll be no little forays into the city…”

  He was still issuing commands when the door swung shut behind him, and Astrid began to think of all the things she might have said to put him in his place.

  “Evening, Cordelia.” Paulette, the hostess of The Vault, had greeted her boss at the door of the club with a pleasant smile, but there was a telltale sign of surprise in her eyes. Perhaps she knew it was obvious, because she added, “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I know.” Cordelia tucked a few wayward strands into her low bun and surveyed the tables, which were half-full on a hot night when the humidity was so oppressive that nobody seemed to want to move if they didn’t have to. “But I had an intuition it might be busy.”

  The truth was she only hoped it would be busy, or at least busy enough to take her mind off Max—how his feelings for her had ruined his career, and how he’d walked away from her declaration of love without a single backward glance.

  “Might be,” Paulette said doubtfully.

  “You’ll find me in the office if you need me.” Cordelia kept her voice formal and aloof, trying to sound like Paulette’s superior instead of a girl searching for distractions. Even when she’d thought of something happy or amusing that day, it had led her back to Max, because then she had longed to tell him about it, and after that came the realization that she might never be able to tell him about anything again.

  As she strode toward the back of the club she made little nods of acknowledgment to the men behind the bar and patrons that she recognized. A few cigarette girls were leaning against the rear wall, near the big brass doors that led to the old bank president’s office, and though they began to move when they saw Cordelia coming, their eyes searched her a few seconds longer than they ordinarily would have.

  “Go on.” Cordelia shooed them as she went through the brass doors and into the hallway, not glancing back to see if they obeyed. She knew what they had been thinking, of course. They were thinking that she had been going with a black man and were wondering if she had known all along or found out with everybody else.

  In the month following her father’s death she had been so full of self-recrimination and nervous agitation, and she had gotten in a bad way, lurking around the house and lying in the bath long after the water had gone cold, smoking one cigarette after another. She hadn’t stopped until she met Max’s mother, and Mrs. Darby had made it obvious what she thought of girls who smoked. It had been easy to give up, once Cordelia saw what it meant to Mrs. Darby, and she hadn’t really wanted one till now.

  But she was still Max’s girl. At least, she wanted to be. Just because he seemed far away didn’t mean she could go back to her old ways. So she straightened her dress, a loose-fitting flowered chiffon that fell away from her shoulders in tiers, and went to find the distractions she’d come all the way to the city for.

  Someone, it seemed, had been listening to her prayers. A pack of young men in bow ties celebrating the coming wedding of one of their members had taken up noisy residence at the bar, and a flock of chorus girls still in their feathered getups had filled the remaining tables surrounding the dance floor. An alliance between the two groups was in the early stages of negotiation, still as acrimonious as it was flirtatious, and the electricity of the exchange was spreading through the room, and even the music was speedier now. It was no longer an evening for quiet, languid drinking. The bar was low on supplies, and Cordelia was needed downstairs immediately to determine what should be opened next.

  After that there was a rush on drinks and a shortage of ice, and she had to send Anthony out for more. Cordelia joined the men behind what were once the teller windows of the bank to keep up with the demand, shaking and stirring drinks and then passing them to the uniformed bartenders on the other side. When she stepped back onto the club floor, she saw that every seat was full now and two of the chorus girls had climbed onto the bar and were doing an old-fashioned cancan with the enthusiastic support of the band.

  She sent one of Charlie’s men to help Anthony with the ice and the other two to stand under the chorus girls in case they slipped.

  “Don’t ruin anyone’s fun,” she instructed, “but I won’t have either of those girls breaking their necks in my place.”

  “But then there’s nobody at the door,” one of the men protested.

  “Never mind that. Anthony will be back in a minute, and anyway, from what I can see, all the troublemakers are already in here. Let them dance a little longer, and then get them down safe and buy them a bottle of champagne.”

  There was a lot of shouting, customers in bright colors moving excitedly back and forth, and her frenetic labors continued until she went to the front of the place to check on the ice and saw someone who stalled her forward motion. The stillness with which he regarded her was so disquieting that she did not realize for several seconds to whom those eyes belonged.

  “Thom Hale,” she said flatly, as though hearing the name out loud might tell her what his presence there portended. He was standing at the bar twirling a drink like any other customer; the fit of his white linen suit was urbane and roomy, and she remembered with irritation how c
omfortable he made himself everywhere. The last time she had seen him, it had been in someone else’s speakeasy, where he had been just as free of care, so that it came of something of a surprise when she heard how he had presided over Astrid’s kidnapping some days later.

  “Cordelia Grey,” he replied, and the corners of his mouth shot upward like a schoolboy’s. His face was as handsome as always, although more suntanned—almost as dark as Darius used to get—and his coppery hair was combed neatly to one side. Although his father was a gangster, his mother was from the society family that owned the White Cove Country Club, and his features had an aristocratic and knowing aspect. He always seemed a few steps ahead of everyone else.

  “What are you doing in my place?”

  “I thought I might have a cocktail, see what the competition was doing.” He let his eyes scan the room as he sipped his drink, as if to demonstrate to her the innocence of his mission. “That’s not against the law, is it?”

  Cordelia let the tension in her chest dissolve and stepped toward the place he occupied by the bar, in between two groups becoming joyously oblivious to everything around them. She cocked her head and regarded him, and when she spoke again, her voice was light. “No more than anything else we do.”

  He laughed, too quickly, and twirled his drink in the other direction.

  Cordelia gave him a cool stare. “It wasn’t that funny.”

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t.” Thom shrugged and looked away. The bones of his face were strong and fine, and he had the slender height and careless manner that Cordelia had come to recognize in the privileged—in people who had never been deprived of anything. He was gorgeous; even after everything, she was not blind to that. “Actually, I came to talk to you about business.”

  Cordelia’s eyebrows floated upward in surprise. “Why would you want to talk to me?”

  “Because I know you,” he said quietly. He coughed into a closed fist and cast his eyes about the room before continuing. “You know your brother hijacked a shipment of ours the other night?”

  “Is that why he’s so full of bluster these days?”

  “Yes, well, Dad wants to burn Dogwood to the ground, as you can imagine. But I don’t want any more of this back-and-forth.”

  “You want a truce.” Cordelia let this information settle in with her. “But why?”

  “It’s not practical,” Thom said simply, and sipped his drink.

  “You’ll have a hell of a time convincing Charlie that’s a good reason.”

  “That’s why I only want to talk to you.”

  Cordelia nodded but did not reply.

  “I’m sorry about your friend Max, by the way. I never thought he was right for you, but it’s ugly when a man distinguishes himself only to lose his backing and reputation over a thing like that. Aren’t many white men can fly a plane like he can.”

  The mention of Max made Cordelia flush, but it wasn’t exactly embarrassment she was feeling. She was almost angry that Thom was thinking about Max at all. Then she noticed Thom’s eyes on her again, how they scanned the length of her dress when he thought she had glanced away. The memory of what they had done together returned to her, of Thom’s skin on her skin, that they had been naked and he had whispered her name over and over. A feeling of shame seeped into her belly, and she hoped that Max never knew what she had done with other boys before she knew him. When she felt fingertips against the skin of her arm, she almost jumped. But to her relief it was only Paulette at her shoulder.

  “Phone call for you,” she said, before being absorbed back into the crowd.

  Cordelia nodded. When she turned back on Thom, she found that though she ought to hate him, she no longer did. “You look like you’ve been spending too much time in the sun,” she observed. One of the bartenders had ventured in their direction, and she called out to him: “Carl, do you know Mr. Hale?”

  Carl’s attention was being sought from every direction, but he did briefly glance at Thom and nod at Cordelia.

  “See he pays for his drinks!” she yelled. In a voice neither hostile nor kind, she addressed Thom, saying, “It’s good to see you,” before quickly making her way to the back offices.

  The lavender hour had come and gone, and Astrid was still arguing with Charlie in her head. She had been staring at the same page of Vanity Fair for as long as she could remember—it might have been two years—and meanwhile the onset of darkness had done nothing to cool the room.

  “‘There’ll be no little forays into the city,’” she said out loud, pinching up her face and mimicking Charlie’s bossy tone. She went over to the phonograph and started Rudy Vallée again, conjuring in her memory the last time there had been a little foray into the city. It was the night—one of the nights, how many had there been?—when Charlie abandoned her so that he could play dirty with the Hales and she had been ordered to stay in. She had twisted Charlie’s man Victor’s arm until he drove into the city in pursuit of Cordelia and Letty and Billie Marsh, her stepsister. What a grand night that had been! The four of them traipsing from one speak to another, never paying for a drink and being lauded everywhere they went.

  “That was the last time I remember being happy,” she sighed into the gilt-framed mirror by the enameled bar cart. But the phrase was heavy with melodrama, and she knew it wasn’t true. She had been happy in her sewn-together wedding dress, and she had been happy on the pleasure cruiser that she and Charlie had taken to sail through the Caribbean. She had been happy last night with Charlie, before she saw what a grubby business bootlegging really was. Once upon a time she had been good at forgetting all the miserable things in life, and it seemed silly that she couldn’t now rid her mind of that doleful man with the innocent children and the sad little speakeasy behind a pharmacy in the Village.

  “Oh, hell, the heat is getting to you,” she went on, again to the reflection of her pretty, heart-shaped face. “Knock it off, darling, you’ll give yourself permanent lines.”

  So she sashayed across the room, twirling on the old Persian carpets while Good Egg ran circles around her, picking an orchid from one of the potted plants and putting it behind her ear, telling herself she didn’t care what Charlie was up to and that it didn’t matter to her that her best friends were all out in the world, being romanced by new beaux and living very noteworthy lives. After that she felt a little sad and decided that a garden party was the only cure, and called everyone she could think of and told them to come tomorrow at three.

  It was only when the final chords of “If I Had a Girl Like You” sounded that she realized that she’d come down with a bad case of cabin fever, and that she might preserve her sanity if she told Charlie’s boys that Cordelia needed her at The Vault. She straightened her silly dress and smoothed a fluff of yellow hair and headed for the hall.

  But her way was blocked sooner than she anticipated.

  “I’m going out,” she said with expert blitheness.

  Victor blocked her path, his arms crossed over his chest. She sensed that he had been standing there a long time already. “No, you’re not.” His voice wasn’t unkind, but he had something like a smirk on his face, and his stance was wide, as though he were bracing to physically prevent her from leaving.

  “Oh, come.” Astrid smiled in her special plush way, and her posture loosened. There had been a night—the night she tried to cook Charlie a real meal, to disastrous results—when Victor had been assigned to watch her and they’d played cards and had champagne for dinner. It seemed to her that right before she’d laid her head on the big, ponderous dining room table and dozed off, he had said something just a touch flirtatious. Perhaps, she thought, he would still be susceptible to her charms now. “Remember what fun we had last time?”

  “I remember how much trouble you got me in last time.”

  “Oh, it couldn’t have been so bad, or why would Charlie have left me with you again?”

  “He knows I haven’t forgotten.” The smirk was gone, and there was no hint of a joke in Vic
tor’s dark eyes. They just stared at her, placid but unyielding, over that serious Roman nose. “He knows I learned my lesson about being bossed by a girl.”

  “Well!” Astrid exclaimed, as she ducked around him.

  Victor didn’t answer except by following her—he stepped lightly, but the wax floor in the ballroom was hard and there wasn’t much furniture there to absorb the echo. As she went through the billowy white curtains and down the big stone steps of the verandah, she hoped he would stay behind and watch her from the porch of the house so that she could be alone with her thoughts. But by the time the grass was under her bare feet and she was striding beyond the light that Dogwood’s high windows cast across the lawn, she feared he was no longer following her. For a while her pride won out over her curiosity, but when she reached the place on the lawn where the earth began to slope upward, she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she turned sharply.

  There was Victor, not even five yards behind her. He had frozen, but there was something nimble about the way he hovered—he had the cautious watchfulness of an Indian tracker on the hunt.

  “Oh!” she gasped, and then a cascade of laughter flowed through her.

  He was trying to look stern, but her laughter disarmed them both, and a smile that began in fits and starts finally got the better of his face.

  “I thought I’d given you the slip.” She winked at him, and the absurdity of her statement made them both chuckle.

  “Miss Astrid, I’m sorry to say, your technique leaves something to be desired.”

  “Damn! And I thought I’d been so clever.”

  “You are very clever in some ways, but when it comes to not being noticed, you are a little…stupid.”

  “Stupid!” Astrid put her fists against her waist and pouted theatrically. “Charlie would have your hide if he knew you called me names.”

  “I’m pretty sure all Charlie cares about is that I don’t let you leave this property, whether by your own doing or ’cause the Hales want you.”