Beautiful Days

by Anna Godbersen

  Almost before The Vault opened its doors, it was predetermined to be a success. This had been decided by all the chattering about the young lady who was said to be in charge of the place, and then by the chattering about the handsomeness of the building itself. It was decided by the reputation of the Greys’ liquor and the reputation of the Greys themselves, who might have fizzled away like so many criminal enterprises when their leader had gone, but had instead grown stronger, more brazen, and then had made themselves into hosts. It was decided by the newspapermen, who had taken a liking to Cordelia when she went out and found that she made good copy, and by the children of the night, whose limousines inched down Fifty-third Street, honking in their eagerness to be already at the center of everything.

  Although Charlie had told Cordelia that the droves would flock to her if she opened a club, she could still not quite believe what she saw, even right there in the middle of it. The place pulsed, the whole room swaying to the exuberant band. The mosaic tiles on the floor were impossible to see, because girls in their newest and chicest dresses and boys in suits were packed in next to every type of person: sportsmen and card players and tourists and writers and fortune tellers and politicians. Men who had never worked a day in their lives, shoulder to shoulder with those who had been working since they were tall enough to see over the counter at the candy store.

  As she moved through the crowd, in a pomegranate dress with voluminous sleeves and a devastatingly low back, the guests reached out to grab her by the arm. There were kindly gentlemen who wanted to tell her a story about her father, and girls who hoped she’d lend them some of her light by pausing at their tables. Soon enough she discovered that there were people who wanted to know about private stores, and whether they could have the really special champagne, and also those who had lost their precious tickets, and wanted them replaced free of charge. These soon learned that her youth did not make her easy.

  Cordelia had just departed the table of a sharply dressed man who claimed to have run liquor down from Canada with Darius in the early days of Prohibition when she was stopped by a throaty female voice saying, “Hey, doll.”

  Mona Alexander wore a plum velvet evening dress, the V-neck of which went nearly to her navel. She was sitting at the bar with men on either side, and when Cordelia saw her she went straight over.

  “What a place you put together,” Mona said, patting the waves of her black hair. Her eyes were droopy and heavily made up, and her cheeks were flush with her own celebrity. “Your daddy would be proud of you. I’d say you have a little of him in you, even.”

  Cordelia beamed. “Is the barman being good to you?” she asked, and Mona bobbed her head exuberantly and lifted her Ball jar of champagne in Cordelia’s direction.

  “I’ll see she gets what she needs,” said the man next to her, who was dressed in a deep green suit that almost shimmered in the low light. He gave Cordelia a nod and drew the singer back into his conversation.

  Already that night Cordelia had overheard a few of her guests speaking in awestruck tones of “the legendary Mona Alexander,” and so she was grateful for the lucky coincidence of meeting her only weeks ago. Of course, these days, luck seemed like nothing less than her due. But there was much to see to, and she was happy not to dwell on the events that had led up to this moment. Without fanfare, Cordelia moved on, along the bar that flanked the old teller windows.

  A line had formed by the hat-check girl, and she paused there to see why. The girl was a wisp named Connie who had come in yesterday asking for a job, and now she was run off her feet, her bowl filled up with bills.

  “Connie.” The girl was wild-eyed, and Cordelia had to call out to get her attention.

  “Is everything all right?” Connie asked as she hurried toward her boss.

  “Put the bowl behind the window. You never know which one of these fellows is going to run off with everything.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Oh! And this came for you.”

  Connie bent and retrieved a paper box, the lid of which she pulled back with a smile. Inside was a corsage of white orchids set in crimson tissue paper.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I peeked,” Connie explained shyly.

  Despite the fact that Cordelia herself had visited a florist earlier that day and ordered flowers to be sent, she was taken aback now by how lovely it felt to receive a gift of that kind. No one had ever sent her flowers before. She glanced over her shoulder, as though expecting to see the sender. When she looked back, Connie had already fastened the corsage to Cordelia’s wrist.

  Because she didn’t want to show how much this gift affected her, Cordelia gave a curt nod, turned around, and began walking out into the crowd, moving between the tables, checking to make sure that glasses weren’t piling up and that drinks were full. Her eyes flickered over the sea of faces, wondering which one of them had wanted to pay her special attention. She was just coming to the conclusion that it must be a random admirer when she saw Charlie talking to the guards at the door. A number of men were stationed in that vicinity, vetting any would-be revelers, and watching out for any retribution on the Hales’ part, too. The big fellow with the hat pulled down over his face nodded, and then Charlie stepped away from him and began to walk toward the back of the club. Of course, she thought, Charlie sent it to congratulate me.

  She turned around and began to walk in his direction, but he was moving faster, almost pushing people aside. His big slab features were frozen in concentration, and his eyes were dark and fixed straight ahead. She had to almost run to catch up to him and was nearly at his side when he careened into a petite girl decked out in yellow sequins.

  “Ooooooo!” she wailed, when she realized that her cocktail had been knocked out of her hand.

  “Hey, you!” the man next to her yelled after Charlie, standing up fast so that his chair fell away behind him. Cordelia saw the attention of the surrounding tables follow Charlie, and she hurried to apologize to the sequined girl and her fellow.

  “Here,” she said, pulling a few red tickets from her sleeve and handing them to the girl. “Enjoy yourselves, please.”

  Whether or not the girl appreciated this gesture, Cordelia had no idea. There was a stone in her belly. Something had gone terribly wrong. She had seen it in Charlie’s face, and now she was pushing through the crowd to find out what. The band was playing loud and everyone was shouting, but as soon as she went through the big copper doors that led to offices and dressing areas, she heard Charlie’s voice over the rest of the din.

  “How the hell did this happen?” he yelled. He went on yelling as she lingered, frightened, in the doorway.

  Chapter 20

  THE NIGHT AIR WAS FULL OF MIST WHEN LETTY ARRIVED on Fifty-third Street, and she felt momentarily shy about going to Cordelia’s club when she saw the activity outside the old bank. Girls dressed exquisitely, in jewelry and satins fit for a ball, huddled waiting to get in, and across the street men with big cameras mounted with flashbulbs leaned against the sides of their cars, as though hunting some elusive prey. She wished that she had heeded Cordelia and worn the red dress that the Greys had bought for her the day that the three of them went into the city for matching bathing costumes. But there was nothing to be done about the dusty pink sleeveless dress she’d put on that morning before taking the train. It was another of Astrid’s old things, and had to be belted because it was slightly large for her, as was the fawn-colored cardigan she wore to cover her shoulders.

  With small, timid steps, she went forward to the entrance. She could hear the noise from within, and yet the doors themselves were closed and gave no indication that they would be welcoming. Letty swallowed, raised her fist, and knocked on the metal door. The noise this made was louder than she had anticipated, and she stepped back, embarrassed at having called attention to herself.

  A curly-haired girl wearing a tiara glanced at Letty over her shoulder, scowling. “They’re full up right now,” she said through her nose.

  “Oh.” Let
ty turned back around to face the door and hoped that Cordelia would be the one to open it, so that this girl would feel a fool when Letty was whisked in. “Thank you.”

  A few seconds of agony followed, during which it seemed she would be standing outside forever. But then the door did swing out, and though Cordelia was not the one to do it, the girl standing there was almost as welcome a sight.

  “Paulette!”

  The taller girl’s hair had a new marcel and her dark red lips opened wide when she saw Letty. She bent to kiss both of Letty’s cheeks, and then drew her inside, toward the noise. The door slammed behind them, and Letty smiled in satisfaction to think that the girl in the tiara was still out there in the sticky night, and had been taken down a peg or two.

  Inside was a riot of color and laughter. Across the vast floor, people were crammed into tables, leaning over the backs of their chairs to flirt and gossip, turning their faces up toward the stage, buying cigarettes from girls dressed all in gold as though they were the bank’s currency itself. The big man with the hat who’d been at the door the day before was there, along with a few other men of his type, and they seemed to be scanning the crowd for trouble. On the right side of the building, the band was set up on the stage, which had been built out in front of the old teller windows with some of the same mahogany wood. On the left, Letty could see what Cordelia had been describing the day before. A girl checked hats in the first teller window, and in the next one another girl sold tickets. After that the bar began. Men wearing bow ties took orders from the customers who lined up there, then turned to the teller windows behind them, where some invisible person would produce the requested beverage.

  “That’s so if there’s a raid, the liquor won’t be out in the open,” Paulette whispered, as she drew her onto the floor. “There’s an old system back there for dropping deposits down to the basement, and we figure if federals ever come in, we can drop the hooch down to the basement and cover it up quick.”

  Letty nodded and bent her neck back to look at the ceiling with its tarnished, celestial murals. She couldn’t believe how packed and frenetic and gigantic the place was—perhaps not so much more wild than Seventh Heaven used to be, but far more incredible, because it was the work of a girl she’d known forever.

  “Thanks for telling me about this place. Your friend Cordelia is a real solid broad—soon as I told her I knew you, she said I could have a job overseeing the cigarette girls.”

  “I guess she is,” Letty replied with a shrug. The mention of Cordelia reminded her that she hadn’t really come to marvel at the scenery or drink cocktails, but to show her old friend that she wasn’t sore about not being the nightclub’s singer. “Where is Cordelia, anyway?”

  Paulette pushed up on the balls of her feet and looked out across the room. “I just saw her—hold on, I’ll find her. I’m sure she’ll want to show you everything herself.”

  With that, Paulette forged forward into the crowd. Unsure whether she was supposed to follow, Letty hung back, smiling shyly at the doormen and occasionally trying to catch the view between the shoulders of the various men, all taller than she, who loitered at the edges of the room. It was through this partial view that she recognized a young man and woman who had just come in. Grady wore a tuxedo, just as he had the night he’d wanted to take her to dinner with his parents, and his sweet and attentive eyes focused on the girl around whose waist his arm draped. The girl wore a marigold-colored Grecian-style gown with one shoulder, and her strawberry-blond hair was cropped short, and tucked behind the ears, the simplicity of which only highlighted the aristocratic features of her face. On her wrist, she wore a cuff of diamonds that looked like fire in the low light.

  Letty’s feet were heavy and her chest felt like one big days-old bruise that keeps getting kicked. She wished for two things in that moment: that she had gone home to get some rest, and that Grady had any girl but Peachy at his side. For the sight of her long legs had always made Letty seem short, as her rich dress made Letty feel poor, and the length of her neck and the way she carried her head perched on top of it could reduce Letty to nothing. The bruised sensation spread outward from her heart to the pit of her stomach and up to her temples, and she began to take in the full scope of her loss.

  Because seeing Grady escort Peachy—the lovely girl that his parents had always wanted him to marry, according to Astrid—across the floor, did not make Letty yearn for limousine rides or dinner at the Colony or diamond bracelets. It was the way his hand rested like a feather at the small of her back. Even at a distance, she could practically feel that touch, gentle and without lasciviousness, but with a decided pressure that said over and over again I am at your side. She stared at his hand, which was so close and yet would never reach out to reassure her again, and thought how recently it was that he had seemed willing to do anything for her. That was the third thing she wished for—that she’d been born smarter, so that she could’ve held on to Grady when she had him.

  Letty knew she ought to look away from the couple by the door, but she couldn’t help but go on watching as Peachy whispered something, and Grady inclined his head to better hear her over the raucous sounds of young people at play. He nodded and his eyes went across the room and landed on Letty.

  Instinctively, she brought her arms up over her chest and stepped away. He stared at her, his face only slightly changed by the recognition, and she retreated further, faster this time, as though she could walk straight backward out of his line of sight. Before she began to worry about the fact that there wasn’t really anywhere to go, her foot caught on something, and she fell, landing hard in the lap of a man she’d earlier noticed brushing noses with the girl beside him. The table hit her elbow, which smarted, though not as badly as her pride.

  “What in hell . . . ?”

  “Terribly sorry!” Letty gasped as she leapt up. Keeping her head down, and refusing to look back in the direction of Grady, she began to make her way through the tables, deeper into the club. The tables were tight together, and everyone was crowded around them, so this involved a great deal of stepping over legs and leaning against tables laden with cocktails in Ball jars, but she was determined to move as fast as she could and not to get stuck. As she passed the band, the guitar player looked down on her and grinned, and then she knew what a spectacle of herself she was making. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was to emerge at the other side of the club, safe out of Grady and Peachy’s view, and find Cordelia. For Cordelia, despite her indifference as of late, was the only person in the world who knew how low down Letty could get, and also how to build her back up.

  When she managed to get past the last table and emerge on the far side of The Vault, she saw the two great copper doors that she’d gone through to see Cordelia the day before. Now she was finally granted a wish, because the man standing in front of them was Anthony, one of the guards she knew from Dogwood, and he opened a door for her without a question, ushering her into the inner sanctum.

  The sound of the telephone receiver being put down into its cradle was as loud and shocking as a gunshot. Charlie stood with his broad back to Cordelia, saying nothing. Her scalp was cold and her throat was hot, and she watched him with unblinking eyes and waited for him to speak.

  “They have her.”

  “Who?”

  “Astrid. The Hales.” He glanced at her wrist, at the tiny white flowers that adorned it. “What are those?” he asked reproachfully.

  “You didn’t send them?” She looked down at the corsage as though she’d never seen it before.

  “Those are from Landry’s. Expensive. I’ve ordered flowers from there plenty times. But those ones aren’t from me.”

  “Oh.” Cordelia’s face burned as she examined the corsage in a new light. Slowly it began to dawn on her that the only man she knew who was capable of sending rare and expensive flowers was Thom. The hatred that had been simmering in her for weeks, and which she had acted on that morning, shifted slightly. His face when she conjured it
in her thoughts was still repugnant to her; but then another picture of him eclipsed it, the way he had been at the place with the mattresses on the floor, how jittery he had seemed that night, and how strangely sincere. With the swift certitude of a premonition, she knew that he had been trying to warn her of what was to come tonight.

  Cordelia stepped toward Charlie and put a hand on his back. “How did it happen?”

  He shook his shoulder, knocking her hand off, and leaned forward, putting his fists against the big desk and resting his full weight on his arms. “They got her in some West Side dive. God knows what she was doing there.” He spit out the words, and for a moment, Cordelia couldn’t tell if he was angry at Astrid or at the Hales.

  “What do they want?” Cordelia’s mind raced. She was afraid for Astrid, but she felt certain that if they acted quickly, no harm would come to her. In all the many newspaper columns she had read about Darius Grey and his kind, she’d never seen a mention of a special lady friend or a child harmed, and it seemed likely that if they kept their heads they could have her back soon.

  “Damn that girl!” he yelled again.

  “Charlie,” Cordelia said in a firm voice. She put her hand against his shoulder again, and though she could tell that he bristled at the touch, he did not this time immediately shake her off. “What do they want?”

  “They want us to say we’re sorry,” he sneered.

  “That’s all?” Cordelia replied in the same even tone. She could hear the caustic quality in his voice, but refused to be scared off by it.

  “They want us to say we’re sorry with dollars, lots of dollars. They want us to back off their territories in Manhattan. They want all the business we took from ’em. They want us to lay low for a while, and crawl around on our hands and knees, and act like monkeys.”

  “All right.” Cordelia took a deep breath. “All right, we’ll tell them we’ll do that, then.”