Ingenue (9 page)

GLORIA

St. Louis woman with her diamond rings

Pulls that man round by her apron strings
.

T’weren’t for powder and for store-bought hair
,

The man I love wouldn’t go nowhere
.

Gloria blinked in surprise when Jerome stopped playing. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Sheet music marked up with notes in both Gloria’s and Jerome’s handwriting was strewn all over the piano and kitchen table. They’d spent the morning trying to figure out what she would sing for her debut at the Opera House. “St. Louis Blues” was one of her first choices.

“Don’t be afraid to let yourself go,” Jerome said. “This whole song is a buildup of emotion. You start out just moaning about being sad, but by verse three, you’re finally able to belt out everything you feel. Understand?”

Gloria nodded. Practicing with Jerome had come a long way since the time when he’d explained to her how to breathe with her diaphragm in the dingy basement piano room at the Green Mill. These days he was teaching her how to maintain volume and control her phrasing. And he was teaching her about nuance, about interpretation: how to convince the audience to feel the songs as though she were singing just for them.

There was still so much to learn. How could she ever hope to make it as a professional singer? But then Jerome would stop, take her in his lithe piano player’s arms, and whisper that anybody who didn’t think they could always learn something new was just silly—everyone could get better and better.

“Even you?” Gloria would ask, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Especially me,” Jerome would say.

Now he began again to play the short, woeful introduction. “Let’s start from the top.”

Gloria straightened up, breathed deeply, and began to sing:

I hate to see the evening sun go down
.

I hate to see the evening sun go down
.

’Cause my baby, he done left this town
.

Jerome banged the keys hard and stopped playing. “You need to get out of your head.” He pointed to the area a few inches south of his throat. “
This
is where the song needs to come from. Let’s try again.”

She got only a little further before Jerome slammed the keys again. “You’re using too much vibrato,” he said, sounding annoyed. He rubbed his temples with his fingers. “You’re not singing in a damn school recital.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Marion Harris uses plenty of vibrato when she sings it.”

He gave a mean laugh. “Just ’cause you got yourself a gig doesn’t make you Marion Harris, darlin’.” He shuffled through the pages of music strewn on top of the piano, then handed a few to her. “This might be more your speed.”

Gloria read the title: “Second Hand Rose.” Fanny Brice had sung it in the Ziegfeld Follies and it had been a huge hit. Gloria hated the song. It was a cutesy tune, annoying, whiny—and about as sexy as her mother in her flannel nightgown. And singing it required hardly any real skill. She wanted songs that would show her off, that would make people at the Opera House take her seriously. She’d thought Jerome wanted that, too.

“I think ‘Second Hand Rose’ is a little boring,” she replied in a measured tone.

Jerome looked away. “If you don’t want boring, then stop singing like that.”

Gloria slapped the sheet music down. “Okay, that’s it! What is the matter with you?” Jerome had always been a strict but straightforward coach, never snide. “This can’t just be about my singing.”

Jerome stared ahead in silence for a moment, then turned to look at her. “Aw, honey,” he said, reaching up to stroke her cheek.

But Gloria ducked away. “Seriously. What’s wrong?”

He moved over to one side of the bench, patting the spot next to him. Gloria sat.

Gone was Jerome’s scowl—now he just looked sad and tired. “Glo,” he began, “you know I’m proud of you for getting this gig and all. I really am. But it hurts, having you pay the bills, having you support me like this.”

“Because you think
you
should be supporting
me
,” Gloria replied. “How many times do I have to tell you? That doesn’t matter to me.”

“Well, it matters to
me
,” he said quietly. “How do you think it feels, you bringing home cash when all I do is sit around all day and nick some food when I can?”

Gloria clasped his hand in hers. “You’ll find something soon,” she said. “Me making the money, that’s just temporary.”

“Even if I do, it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to afford to marry you.”

Marriage
.

Jerome had told her before they ran away from Chicago that he wanted to marry her, but they hadn’t discussed it since. They had enough problems to deal with in the present—the future could wait. “So? It’s not like we’re in any rush.”

Jerome chuckled, but there was a hollow note to his laugh. “I don’t know why I’m even worrying whether or not we could ever afford to get married. Who would marry us, Gloria? They’d chase us down with torches and pitchforks first.”

He touched a black key on the piano, the sound ringing through the heavy silence in the apartment. “I’m this.” Then he moved his finger a little to the right and played a white key. “And you’re this. Nobody minds seeing all this black and white together on a keyboard, but that’s not how it is out in the world.”

This wasn’t exactly news. Gloria forced a smile. “What good is marriage, anyway? What does it mean to anyone?”

“It means not living in sin, Gloria.”

“My father left his marriage the minute he found a younger woman he liked better. Harris Brown was going to marry some girl, but that didn’t stop him from carrying on with Clara and almost ruining her life. All that pressure to get married had
me
ready to shackle myself to Bastian!” She took both of Jerome’s hands in hers. “Marriage doesn’t prove anything. It’s love that counts, and we’ve got more than enough of that.”

Jerome looked down at their intertwined hands. “Well, I love you, but I’d also love to marry you. If that makes me a fool, then so be it.”

“Jerome …” Gloria trailed off, unsure of what to say.

She moved closer and kissed him on the lips. His arms wound themselves around her, and he kissed her back. Hard. As he wove his fingers through her hair, a single tear rolled down her cheek. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.

The truth of it was, she didn’t think Jerome was a fool at all. She wanted to marry him, too. She wanted a house and children with him. Their strange living arrangements were all right for right now, but a year from now, would she still be stuck climbing through a fence to get to her apartment? In three years? A decade? Would their love
ever
be acceptable?

Jerome leaned his forehead against Gloria’s. Then he stood abruptly and shuffled the sheet music into a tidy stack. He slid the pages into his worn-out brown briefcase.

Gloria watched, confused. “What are you doing?”

Jerome took his straw hat off a hook on the wall. “I need to take a walk, get some fresh air.” He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Sorry for being a jerk before.”

Without looking back, he walked out and shut the door.

This was the closest she and Jerome had come to having a fight since they’d arrived in New York. They’d been so focused on trying to survive each day, they hadn’t had time to argue about the future. But he was right: What could they do when no one out in the world would ever accept them as a couple?

What would happen if Gloria called the whole thing off—if she crawled back to her mother in Chicago?

Beatrice Carmody would be angry, but Gloria knew she would be happy to see her daughter. Her mother was probably the one behind all those
LOST GIRL
flyers, after all. Her mother would hug her and scold her and hug her some more. Then Claudine would make Gloria hot tea with lemon, Gloria would take a bath with lavender bath salts, and she would sink into her pink bed and sleep for days. She would miss Jerome, of course, but he would understand. They would be better off—free to find people of their own races to love.

No! She could never just abandon Jerome like that. And even if she could, Jerome wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t return to Chicago. There was a darker reason, and that reason had had a name—until Gloria had snuffed out his life: Tony.

On the few occasions when she allowed herself to remember the cherry-red blood flowing from his body, smoke rising from the hot pistol at her feet into the winter air, she also remembered that she could never go back to her old life. That life had died with Tony in the pearl-white snow.

She sat down at the kitchen table and shuffled through the newspapers piled there, her fingers pausing on a recent Chicago
Tribune
. Back when they’d had money, she had extravagantly bought a year’s subscription by mail. It helped the homesickness to know what all her old socialite friends were up to in her absence.

She started in the society pages. Witless Ginnie Bitman was engaged to Wallace Worthington II. Boring. Then a familiar image caught her eye: a small photograph of Bastian, standing in a light-colored suit against a dark background. His hair was slicked back and his mustache was perfectly trimmed. Gloria had almost forgotten how handsome he was.

She let out a gasp at the headline next to the photo:

KILLER OF ARISTOCRAT STILL ON THE LOOSE

The search for the murderer of Sebastian Grey III, 23, continues. The deceased was a banker and a well-loved stalwart on the Chicago social scene. Grey’s body was found on a dock at the Chicago Harbor early Sunday morning. Police have no leads as of yet, but friends remain hopeful.

Gloria took several deep breaths. Bastian had been
murdered
?

She had grown to hate Bastian while he was still alive. He’d never loved her—he had only wanted to marry her for her father’s steel fortune. And Bastian had been behind Carlito’s attempt on Jerome’s life. Bastian was the reason everything had gone so wrong. The reason Gloria could never go home again.

Staring at Bastian’s photograph, the man she’d once thought she loved—who
looked
the part of a proper husband, crisp and dapper and handsome and
white
, who impressed her parents and knew the right things to say at parties, who’d gone to college and liked holding her hand when they took walks in the park but hadn’t ever really loved her—Gloria wondered what would have happened if she’d never decided to run away with Jerome. If she had walked away from the Green Mill and everything that went with it to marry Bastian.

If she had, Tony would still be alive. Jerome would be still playing at the Green Mill. Gloria would have been away from all that, living in a beautiful house with Bastian and all the money either of them could ask for. They wouldn’t have been happy, but at least they’d have been on the right side of the law. And alive.

If Bastian had been killed, it was because of the people he ran with. The people who were hunting Gloria and Jerome. And if they had come for Bastian, they might come for her. For heaven’s sake, what was she doing here in this apartment, a sitting duck? She was just a schoolgirl, after all—lost and confused and scared and barely eighteen.

For the first time in a long while, Gloria wished she still had Bastian’s pistol.

She was going to need a gun.

LORRAINE

It had been a Bad Night.

Lorraine hadn’t slept very well or for very long and was planning to stop by Julia’s Café and have a long, lazy breakfast before she went to work. After the day she’d had yesterday, she was pretty sure she’d earned it. Besides, she needed to catch up on her
Vogue
.

She started when she heard a light tapping on the door.

Another knock? Another mystery caller? Lorraine ran her hand over her bob and straightened the sailor collar on her burgundy day dress. It was always necessary to look good—one never knew when a gorgeous young man might come tip-tapping on one’s apartment door.

Lorraine smiled and opened the door. “Hello there,” she said. “What brings you back so soon?”

The young man’s chestnut-brown eyes glittered at her from under his dark hair. “I just wanted to apologize for disturbing you last night. It was awfully late to come asking a stranger for a screwdriver. But that leaky sink would’ve kept me up all night.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lorraine said quickly. “I was happy to help! No one likes a drip.”

He’d been the only bright spot last night. Allowing her new neighbor to think he’d woken her was a far better excuse for her disheveled appearance than admitting that she’d been crying her eyes out.

“So you need a screwdriver?” she’d asked, wondering if she had any orange juice and vodka and whether suggesting a drink to this tall, dark stranger would look desperate or oh so cosmopolitan. “That’s made with …?”

“It’s a tool with a flat blade used for tightening screws,” he’d said with a dazzling smile. “I’ve got to fix up the tap before it washes everything in my apartment into the street.”

“Right!” she said. “Daddy sent me a tool kit when I moved here. Now to find it.”

The young man’s friendly manner and easy smile were just what Lorraine needed. They’d only spoken for a minute or two before she found the tool kit beneath a teetering pile of hatboxes she’d built into a pyramid in the hall closet. She handed over the screwdriver and said, “Any time you need anything, just say the word.”

“Thanks,” he said. And then he paused. “What word should I say, exactly?”

She thought hard. “I don’t know.”

And then she’d shut the door in his face. Without even getting his name. So clumsy! But it didn’t matter: She knew he would be coming back for more.

Besides being in his early twenties, he was absolutely
gorgeous
. With his tanned skin and chiseled features, he was the opposite of a soft, boring prep-school boy like Marcus Eastman. Lorraine had wanted to jump into his arms the moment she saw him. She hadn’t, though. Restraint was key. Anyhow, there was always time for a quality smooch session once the important questions had been asked, such as “What’s your name?” And “Do you drink?”

And here it was the next morning, and he was back. Thank
God
she’d had the wherewithal to put on a decent outfit and some makeup. “Would you like to come in?”

He nodded and followed her inside. He removed his newsboy cap and held it in his hands. In his gray vest and plain white shirt, he looked simple yet elegant. He had taste, and that was important. Sort of.

“I’m Hank,” he said, breaking the silence.

“That’s so … masculine,” Lorraine said, fanning herself with her hand.

He chuckled. “Well, Henry, really, but everyone calls me Hank.”

“Who’s everyone? Your dozens of girlfriends?”

“Naw,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m single. I guess just my friends. My mom. You know—the important people.”

The awkward silence began to take root again.

“And
you’re
Lorraine,” he continued.

Had she told him her name? She didn’t remember that, though she might have talked about herself in the third person—she was doing that way too much lately. “Lorraine would never stand for that!” and “Lorraine will have something to say about that!” and so on—Spark was always making fun of her for it.

“Would you like some … coffee or something?” she asked, hoping she
had
coffee.

“That would be great, actually,” he said, and sat down on the sofa.

There was a bag of ground coffee in the icebox. As she spooned it into the percolator and put it on the stove, she hoped the resulting brew would turn out all right.

“Be right back!” she called, scurrying to her bedroom to check her appearance in the full-length mirror. She freshened up her mascara. She bit her lips and pinched her cheeks for added color. There, that was perfect. She looked good. Ish. Good-ish. It was morning, after all.

A few minutes later, she rejoined Hank with two cups of hot coffee.

She sat next to him on the sofa, though not
too
close. She didn’t want him to think she was too much of a roundheel. “So, Hank, what do you do when you’re not fixing leaky faucets?”

Hank took a sip, then set the cup on the coffee table. “Nothing as of yet. I just moved here from Los Angeles.”

Lorraine set her cup down, too. The coffee didn’t taste so great. “Oh, California! I’ve always wanted to visit. Ever meet any movie stars?”

“I thought I saw Norma Talmadge in a coffee shop once.”

“
Smilin’ Through
is my favorite movie!” Lorraine exclaimed. She’d seen the film the year before with Gloria, and it had had her in tears by the end. “It’s
so
romantic.” She touched his arm lightly. “So what did you do for a living out there in Los Angeles?”

Hank stirred his coffee. “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.” He met her eyes. “What do
you
do, Lorraine?”

Lorraine wasn’t allowed to talk about her job at the Opera House, of course. Puccini and Carlito insisted she be “discreet.” But what was discreet for a nun, say, was different for a flapper—how discreet did she need to be, really? Hank was being so evasive, she had to wonder whether he did something similar for a living. She made a quick decision.

She leaned back against the purple sofa cushion. “Tell you what. I’ll tell you about my job if you tell me about yours.”

Hank gave her an apprehensive look. “All right. I’m outta work now, but the truth is … I’m a bartender. That’s not news I really like to broadcast.”

“I can get you a job!” Lorraine said with a little clap of her hands. She could help this beautiful man
and
have an excuse to spend tons of time with him. It was just too exciting. “I work at this swanky new joint called the Opera House, and we just fired—misplaced—lost our bartender.”

Hank cocked his head in surprise. “Well, now. There’s some good timing.”

Suddenly Lorraine remembered she’d sworn off bartenders.
Oh well
. What fun were rules if she didn’t give herself permission to break them every once in a while?

Note to self
, Lorraine thought.
Get rid of current bartender. Pronto
.

Lorraine took a deep breath as she stepped down the spiral staircase. She’d never fired anyone before. But it couldn’t be too hard. It was good luck that Cecil wasn’t working tonight. She wasn’t sure she had the heart to kick him out to make room for Hank.

Instead, the bartender who greeted her when she got downstairs was Roderick, an older man with frizzy gray hair and fuzzy gray eyes. He was actually pretty good at his job, but …

“How’s it going, Raine?” Roderick asked as Lorraine approached. “Fancy a drop?”

She shook her head. “It’s not going too well, Rod. I’m sorry, but we’ve got to let you go.”

“Excuse me?”

It was a bit much to hope he would just accept what she said and walk out the door. “Rod, you heard me. I don’t want to get into all the messy details. Now scram.”

Rod set the bottles down and walked out from behind the bar. He pointed at Lorraine, his finger only inches from her face. “Now, you listen here, missy. What kind of authority have you got to fire me without even tellin’ me why?”

“You broke that bottle of gin last week.” Lorraine took a step back.

“No,
customers
broke that bottle and I gashed my arm on broken glass cleaning up after them.”

“That was clumsy of you. We can’t have you bleeding all over our customers.”

“I got shoved by that crowd of drunks!”

“And you complain too much.”

He raised his bushy eyebrows. “I’m complaining because you’re firing me for no damn reason! I got a wife to support, and—”

“Okay,
fine
. You can stay and push a broom around or something. And be careful with broken glass. Use a dustpan.”

“Is this a joke?” Rod looked around as though there might be someone else running the show. Lorraine hated it when her employees did that.

“Push a broom? I’m an old man, Raine. That ain’t my job. And the tips! I
live
off those tips!”

She shrugged. “Not anymore, you don’t. It’s either Broom Boy or no job at all—your pick.”

He met her gaze stubbornly for a few moments, then scowled and walked in the direction of the broom closet. She leaned her hand against the bar and exhaled. There, that hadn’t been so terrible, had it?

Then she noticed Jimmy walking toward her.

He wiped off his brow the sweat caused by whatever work he’d been doing upstairs. “Hi there, Lorraine.” He noticed Rod sweeping the floor and muttering under his breath. “What’s Rod doing with that broom?”

“Not your problem,” Lorraine replied. “What’s up?”

Jimmy handed her a small white envelope. “This came in from Western Union earlier.”

Lorraine felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. Only one person sent her telegrams. “Thanks, Jimmy.”

She ripped open the envelope.

ABOUT TIME YOU FOUND BIRD. STOP. JOB ONLY HALF DONE. STOP. NOW YOU NEED TO FIND BIRD’S MATE. STOP. GET HIM AND YOU GET YOUR REWARD. STOP.

She read the telegram a few times, then folded it and slipped it into her purse. The odds of Jerome’s falling for an oddly specific ad in the paper were slim.
WANTED: BLACK MALE PIANIST TO PERFORM WITH REDHEADED FEMALE SINGER WITH WHOM HE IS ALSO LIVING IN SIN
. No way.

But once Lorraine reeled Jerome in, she’d be done. She’d have her revenge on Gloria and then she’d prance off to school, a little extra spending money in her clutch to burn on nights out with her Barnard classmates.

She looked up as Spark walked into the barroom. He wore his customary straw boater, suspenders, and a purple and green polka-dotted bow tie. You could say this for the man’s taste: It was entirely his own.

He grinned at Lorraine. “I see you noticed the new mirror.”

“What mirror?”

Spark gestured toward a new mirror behind the bar. It took up the entire area between the shelves of bottles, and
THE OPERA HOUSE
was written in cursive across it. “That way there’s no more confusion about the new name. Looks nice, right?”

Lorraine glanced at it again. She almost didn’t recognize the girl staring back at her. Sure, the girl in the mirror had the same dark bob, the same milky complexion, smooth cheeks, and made-up lips as she did, but this girl’s eyes looked scared and weary. She was a bit too thin, too jittery, and there was something about her … something like guilt. That girl in the mirror wasn’t a person who would fire an old man to spend time with a cute new guy, who would betray her (former) friends to a bunch of mobsters.

Lorraine blinked. The girl in the mirror was still there.

But then she turned around, focusing her gaze elsewhere—on the crimson mural, on the hardwood dance floor—and thankfully, the girl in the mirror was gone.