Louis sauntered up to a marble counter, wearing Anna like a badge of honor. “Mr. and Mrs. Louis Taylor. We have the honeymoon suite.”
The clerk took in the couple with one broad stroke. He frowned his disapproval. “Welcome, Mr…. I'm sorry.”
“Taylor,” Louis said.
The clerk found the name on a list and handed Louis a pen to sign the register. “I see you've reserved the chapel, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor.”
Somewhere in the lobby behind them, two men began a conversation. Anna heard snippets.
“…California has her grip on me…I bought citrus farms…”
“Riverside's a world away from Boston…”
“…my home's being built in Los Angeles.”
“Following the oil? The oil money? You and everybody else. We're finding our place in the world. First city with electric lights. The streetcars are the best in the nation. Telephone system, too…”
“…I'm just here for the weather and the fruit…”
Anna didn't care at all about their conversation or why so many people were coming to Los Angeles, making her city spread out like spilled lemonade. She was giggling at Louis who, reluctant to let go of her, was trying to sign the register with his left hand, having first nearly overturned the inkpot. He finished with an exaggerated flourish, grinning at his almost-wife. She hadn't realized he was so charming.
The clerk turned his back to Louis and picked up a telephone. Louis cleared his throat, “I'm on my honeymoon, sir, and I'd rather not spend it in the lobby, if you know what I mean.”
Without turning, the clerk raised one heavy hand, indicating that Louis should wait.
“If you would just provide us with the key…” Louis said.
The clerk frowned and hung up the phone. “I'll be very happy to provide you a key, sir, once you've paid.”
Louis looked to Anna. She had told him they could have the bill sent to her father.
“You want us to pay in advance? We never pay in advance,” Anna said. It was true. The Blancs always had a tab.
“Forgive me,” the clerk said. “I'm not acquainted with the Mr. Louis Taylors of—where did you say you were from?”
“You have nerve!” Louis said, though the clerk's suspicions were entirely founded.
“Are you familiar with the Blancs of Los Angeles? You can send the bill to Christopher Blanc. He's my father,” Anna said.
The clerk replied evenly, “Shall I call Mr. Blanc—just to tell him you've arrived safely?”
“No!” Anna's exclamation echoed off the tile and faded into an uncomfortable silence. The clerk pressed his priggish lips.
A man's smooth voice came from behind her. “I can vouch for them. This charming lady is Anna Blanc, and I'm sure her father is good for it.”
The clerk's demeanor turned like a well-trained horse on a five-cent piece. He handed Louis the key and bowed to the disheveled couple. “I'm sorry, sir.”
Anna untwined her arm from Louis's, her face as cool and white as the marble counter. She'd rather sleep in the desert than be helped by an ersatz friend who would give them away, accidentally or otherwise. She turned to face the threat and sized the man up the way a lady should—that is, without seeming to. He was well bred, barely noticing her shoeless foot and the toes sticking out of her stocking. His accent said East Coast. He must be important, to be shown such deference by the desk clerk. He was not a politician or a businessman. He didn't have the doughy look of a man who worked long hours. He must simply be very rich. His clothes were perfect, his dark curls slicked back. He was toweringly tall and handsome. She searched her memory for his person and came up blank.
“It's Miss…Mrs…. Taylor. You are…You know my father. Of course. He introduced us at…” She extended her hand and waited for him to fill in the blanks.
He smiled at her with the sweetness of a boy on the brink of adolescence, though he had to be thirty. “Edgar Wright.” He took her hand and then extended his hand to Louis. “Of course I know your father. Everyone does.” He smiled some more. “And don't worry that you don't remember me. We've never met. I saw your picture in the paper at your coming out. Was it two years ago? Of course you'd be married by now.”
Anna spoke with the barest tinge of bitterness. “You would think so.”
Mr. Wright studied her face with too much interest. “You're even more beautiful in person.”
Louis stepped closer to Anna. “I appreciate your good word. Now, if you would excuse us, we're on our honeymoon.” He slipped his arm through hers in a gesture of possession.
Mr. Wright bowed impeccably. “Congratulations. I won't keep you.”
“You won't be seeing my father soon? Or speaking to him?” Anna asked.
“Unfortunately not,” Mr. Wright said.
She smiled her relief. “Well then. Goodbye Mr. Wright. And, thank you.”
Louis jingled the keys in his pocket. “Goodbye Mr. Wright.” He squeezed her arm. “Darling, you should rest. Let me take you to our room.”
Anna immediately forgot Mr. Wright and thought of what might happen in that room. Her stomach flipped like she was on a swing. Louis led her off to a white staircase that wound around and around, up to love.
At the door to their suite, Louis felt for his watch. “Oh boy. I didn't realize the train would be so late. We're due in the chapel in…” He checked the time and winced. “Ten minutes. I'll just pop down to postpone.”
Anna held his arm. “No, don't!”
Louis looked surprised. “We can do it later, Anna. Don't you want to change?”
“Yes, but…Let's do everything right now. Everything.”
To Anna, fashion was a sacrament. It was a testimony to her eagerness that she dressed with no attendant and presented herself for her wedding with a crease in her veil, no powder, her robe nuptiale half-buttoned in back, and only one shoe. She pinched her cheeks mercilessly to give them color and tucked a sixpence into her slipper for luck. The coin was a token from her English mother, who was presently rolling in her grave.
The priest waited at the gilded altar under a domed ceiling painted like the sky. Two hotel maids in white caps and bib aprons stood as silent witnesses. The room smelled like incense and lemon oil. Louis and Anna processed down the aisle, Clara's borrowed lace train flowing behind. For a brief moment, Anna's feet revolted and she dragged on Louis like an anchor. She felt dizzy and had to lean against a wooden pew. Why was this so difficult? In her head she knew she was doing the right thing. Any future would be better than spinsterhood under her father's roof, and she might have just fallen in love with Louis. She looked to the stained glass saints for guidance, then back at the door. The clock was ticking.
Louis put soft lips to her ear. “Don't be anxious, my queen. I'll be gentle.”
“Me, too.” She thought of cigarettes, lively dances, mystery books, brandy, and love—all the things her father denied her. She thought of Louis's hands on the train. She squared her shoulders and willed her feet to move.
The priest began the rite in English. Anna groaned. Here was one more thing she'd have to bring to the confessional. “You promised you'd pretend to be Catholic and get a Catholic priest,” she whispered.
“I tried. The Catholic man wouldn't do an elopement.”
“You could have said we were orphans.”
“We'd be very rich orphans. I don't know what you're so bothered about. People question your loyalties when you're Roman, you know.”
Anna sighed. She'd rather be free and in need of absolution than postpone and get caught. “But now we'll have to do it all over again.”
Louis shrugged.
During the vows, Anna kept looking over her shoulder. She promised to love with sincerity, crossed her fingers when she vowed to obey, and said “I do” before the priest had finished his sentence. Louis slid a band onto her finger—a ring purchased on her father's credit. His chaste, ceremonial kiss tasted sweet, like freedom, and Anna laughed at nothing in particular. She paid t
he priest and Louis led her back to their room to the peals of a thousand bells.
In their suite, a bottle of Cuvée Femme waited, chilling in a bucket of ice with a note from Mr. Wright: “All my best wishes for a blessed union.”
“How kind.” Anna dropped the note on the floor. She was thinking about Louis's hands and wondering what exactly was involved in consummation. She smoothed her wedding gown and perched on a chaise.
Louis poured the champagne and raised his glass. “To you, my queen.”
After two glasses, Anna's head was rushing. Louis was studying her, watching her bring the glass to her lips, watching her sip the amber liquid, watching her drain the glass. She felt scrumptiously self-conscious. He ran his fingers through his crispy, brilliantined hair. “Sunset seems a millennium away.”
“Why don't you ravish me now?”
His eyebrow arched up. “It's 10 a.m.”
Anna shrugged. “Not in China.”
“I see.” He lunged for her, toppling her onto the chaise. Her glass smashed upon the floor. A thousand bells rang in Anna's head, and she knew for certain that she was very much in love with him.
The door burst open with a bang. The desk clerk stood on the threshold with his priggish arms folded, flanked by two breathless police officers.
That marked the end of Anna's golden reputation and her marriage to Louis Taylor.
Anna's room resembled her—dramatic, tasteful, but just barely. The carpets were plush and pink. Flowery paper from the orient climbed the walls, hand-painted with colorful birds. An imperious Louis XV bed draped itself in stiff, white velvet and the windows wore crepe curtains from France. Anna kindled a fire in the marble hearth, never mind it was seventy-two degrees outside. It was Tuesday, and on Wednesday Mrs. Morales would have the floors polished. Someone would be under her bed with a mop. She tossed another log onto the fire.
Raising the shade, she opened the window to cool the room. The outside scent of hot chaparral gave way to the wintry smell of chimney smoke. She could see Catalina Island. A hummingbird with opalescent green wings sucked at the feeder outside. Confused by the smoke, it whirled in circles before flying off.
Anna struggled out of her frock and flopped onto the bed in her chemise and two-piece drawers, sticky with the heat. She reached for a stack of books that sat near a glue pot on the marble nightstand—Etiquette for Young Ladies, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and other boring titles. She picked up a paring knife, stolen from Cook. She unsheathed the knife and placed the tip to a book spine; then, with a voracious rip, she disemboweled it. Slitting through binding threads, separating signatures from the cover, she tossed the paper onto the flames and repeated the process until the pages from every book were burning and the stiff fabric covers sat in a pile beside her.
When she had finished, she slid on her belly under the bed, emerging with dust on her corset and several more books—forbidden books by Doyle and Poe, books about crime, banned by her father specifically because she found them interesting. Books the housekeeper should not find under her bed in the morning.
She slaughtered The Curse Upon Mitre Square—a salacious description of the hunt for Jack the Ripper—this time burning the cover and keeping the pages. She stabbed The Murders in the Rue Morgue through the spine. The sharpened knife slipped, slicing her index finger. Blood dripped onto the floor.
“Biscuits!” She held her dripping finger over an empty book cover, staunching the wound with her petticoats. The blood bloomed into a red hibiscus flower on the cloth and the cut began to sting. After a moment, she pulled away the bloody wad to observe the injury—an inch-long gash.
“Hmm.” She pinched it until it gaped like a mouth and released it. She did it again. How curious she looked on the inside. There was a knock at the door. Anna froze.
An efficient female voice, with a thick Mexican accent, rang from the corridor. “Miss Blanc, may I come in?”
“One moment.” Anna grabbed a silk coverlet and tossed it over book parts, knocking the glue pot. It rolled into the blood on the floor. She struggled into her gown one-handed, an attempt to cover the red stain on her petticoats. She unlocked the door, pressed her unbuttoned back up against the wall, and posed as if it were the natural thing to do. “Come in.”
The door opened to reveal the unyielding countenance of Mrs. Morales. Short, broad, and board straight, she came from an old Los Angeles family. She had run the Blanc household with a cool dignity since Anna was a baby. In a backhanded way, she'd run Anna.
Surprisingly, Mrs. Morales said nothing about the paste, the blood, the disordered coverlet, or Anna's strange posture, although she did sniff briefly at the fire. “A Mr. Wright called this afternoon while you were out.”
Anna looked blank. “Who?”
“Mr. Wright. He says you know him.” Mrs. Morales handed her a calling card. Anna took it and shook her head.
The housekeeper's face was neutral. “He said he's come from Boston and was sorry he didn't get to see you.”
Anna lifted her chin. “He must have the wrong house. I don't know him, and I've done nothing wrong.” She darted a hopeful glance at Mrs. Morales. “You didn't tell father, did you?”
“He left your father a note.”
“Well, that was a misstep. He'll never get to see me now. Next time, just tell him yes, I will marry him, whoever he is, and to meet me in the garden at midnight. Otherwise, I'm going to be an even older old maid. But, I don't suppose you care.”
“Miss Anna, I have other news.”
Anna was impatient for the woman to leave. “What?”
“Louis Taylor eloped.”
After a moment of silence, Anna said, “Oh.” She wrapped her arms around herself. It was only January. The ink on the annulment papers still dripped. “With whom?”
“It's not important. Good night, Miss Blanc.” She proffered no sympathy. Her condolence came in the form of ignoring the blood, the glue, the fire, and the strange posture—all clear evidence that Anna was up to something. As she left and closed the door, Anna wondered if Mrs. Morales loved her.
She threw a chair.
In an upscale millinery shop in downtown Venice Beach, amidst a sea of plumes in every hue, Anna tried on a shimmering peacock-feather headdress. She admired herself in a table mirror from several different angles. She was a vision and she knew it.
Anna's chaperone tried on a scratchy, straw hat adorned with multicolored feathers. She cocked her head, and then cocked the hat. She looked like a macaw. Her name was Miss Cooper. She had the slack-faced look of a mental patient. Anna resented her very existence. No other girls her age had chaperones unless they were courting, which Anna was not. Few men courted annulled girls, and all of them feared her father.
Anna plucked off the headdress and handed it to a sales woman. “Add it to my tab, please.” She began pinning her own chapeau back into place.
“I most certainly would, Miss Blanc, but…your father hasn't paid for the five hats you bought in December.” The sales woman smiled apologetically.
Anna's eyes widened and she flushed crimson. No one ever refused a Blanc credit. “Well then,” Anna said. She put on an air of carelessness and spun around, passing two rich ladies, who were staring, and clipped toward the door. In her beaded clutch, where money should be, there was nothing but a few calling cards, her keys, and a handful of stolen Lucky Strikes.
The shop lady followed obsequiously. “Why don't I save it in the back for you? Then you can straighten all this out and come back tomorrow.”
Anna lifted her chin. “No, never mind. I don't like it.” Bells tinkled as she swung out the door, through the stone arches onto Windward Avenue. Miss Cooper replaced the straw hat and scampered after Anna.
Outside the shop, the air was tangy with ocean smells, dust, and steaming horse manure. The street swarmed with people baking under hats and parasols or seeking the cool shade of the colonnade. Like Anna, they had fled the even hotter city and taken the train to spend a day at the beac
h.
A rumble of distant voices hummed under the crashing of waves and the regular noise of the crowd. Cops in black leather helmets loitered, sweating in wool uniforms. Anna ignored it all, knocking on her forehead like it was a door and she wanted in now. Her new lack of credit foreboded bad things. Why was she in the doghouse this time and, more importantly, what had given her away? Had Mrs. Morales found Anna's contraband books?
Anna peered at Miss Cooper, hoping for a clue. “Father didn't say I couldn't buy clothes. It wasn't part of my sentence. He must be angry at something new.”
The chaperone, who knew little about anything, shrugged and fanned herself with a limp handkerchief that stuck to itself in two places.
Anna no longer felt like swimming, bowling, or being rowed in a gondola through the Venice canals. Even the musclemen had lost their appeal. “Let's go.” She strode toward the Pacific Electric red cars that would take her back to Bunker Hill.
The crowd's noise was distilling into a singsong of female voices. “A ballot for the Lady! For the Home and for the Baby!” Anna turned to look. Hundreds of women came marching around the corner from the boardwalk carrying banners that demanded, “Votes for Women.” They wore dull, dark skirts and a variety of hats, none of them nice. It put Anna's own clothing crisis in perspective. Her countenance brightened. “Jupiter!”
Bells tinkled as people emerged from shops to gawk. A woman in a tricorn hat and knee britches handed out pamphlets as she marched. “No taxation without representation!” Anna took one. The tract featured Paul Revere riding his steed. He had bosoms.
“I think the suffragettes are wonderful, even if they are poorly dressed,” Anna said.
Miss Cooper blew her nose on the handkerchief before mopping her head with it.
The Secret Life of Anna Blanc Page 2