“Now,” Sophia went on, her words turning saccharine, “why don’t you just run along, dear.”
In Letty’s imagination, Sophia had been her friend, but now that she saw her in person, she shrank in embarrassment—after all, it was Valentine who had been so generous and familiar, and she wondered now if this impressive-looking woman would care about a little girl from the country with her silly big-city dreams.
Letty froze, waiting for the right moment to escape. But before she could, Sophia tipped her head to one side and fixed Letty in her gaze. A radiant smile spread over her red lips, and in a very different voice, she said: “You must be Letty.”
The fan swiveled around and regarded Letty with a mixture of envy and awe.
“Yes,” Letty tremblingly acknowledged.
“Well, don’t just stand there, honey, come on in!” Sophia extended her hand, and with a guilty bob of her head Letty allowed Sophia Ray to shepherd her into the pink marble lobby of her apartment house. “Valentine will be along shortly—we just had lunch at the Plaza, and then some people recognized him on the way out and insisted that he play the piano a little for them, and he’s always so giving that way, as I guess you know by now, and he couldn’t say no. You see, my dear, how exhausting it all is…”
It took a few seconds to sink in with Letty that she was the “dear” in question, but once it had, she nodded exuberantly. “Oh, yes!”
“It’s a lucky thing Valentine found you before you got too far along in this business. We’ll keep an eye on you and show you the ropes.”
“Thank you!” Letty gulped. “I feel so grateful that you’re letting me come live with me—I mean you—I really do.”
“Oh, honey, I’m lucky too. Val’s told me all about you, and I can already tell we’re gonna be fast friends. You know, it’s terribly difficult for a girl like me to make friends. Most other girls are jealous of me, and the ones who aren’t just want free hand-me-downs, or to be introduced to someone important, or to be photographed standing next to me. But you’re not like that, are you?”
“No!” Letty shook her head with as much gusto as she had put into nodding a few seconds before.
“Yes, I can sense it already. You I can trust.”
Letty beamed up at Sophia. She was so overwhelmed by this welcome that she was more or less speechless, but luckily the elevator made a dinging sound before the silence became awkward, and the large brass doors drew back.
“Well, of course we can trust her!” Both women turned and saw Valentine standing behind them. He was grinning, and his chestnut hair rose in a healthy ridge above his tan forehead. The warm, confident timbre of his voice caused a blush to creep from Letty’s cheeks down across her neck.
“Yes, honey, you’re one of us now, whether you like it or not!” Sophia led the way into the elevator, and Valentine and then Letty followed. Sophia pressed the button that had no number and instead read PH. As the doors closed, Letty glanced up, her eyes darting from one of her idols to the other, as though if she looked away for too long they might disappear. She squeezed her eyes, but when she opened them Valentine and Sophia were still there, and the floor beneath her had begun to rise.
The heat had abated not at all when Astrid Donal stepped out of her chauffeured car and heard her grandmother’s appraisal of her appearance.
“You look like your mother,” Mrs. Earl Donal, née Caroline Oakhurst, announced flatly from the wide wrap-around porch of the grand Victorian house where Astrid’s father had been born.
This was not precisely a compliment; Astrid had heard plenty of what these two ladies had to say about each other over the years, and she knew what her grandmother really meant. It was as if mother- and daughter-in-law had set out to define one another in opposition, for where Caroline was decorous, Virginia was louche, and where Caroline was regal, Virginia was blowsy. Their disagreements often began at money, but over the years each woman had come to treat the other as a repository of everything one should avoid in life. Astrid, for her part, had learned to hear as little as possible from either party and remain always carelessly above it all, which was more or less the spirit in which she advanced across the lawn now.
“Oh, Nana, please,” Astrid replied as she came up the steps and embraced the elegant lady waiting for her. Although her grandmother wore her ash-blond hair in the high pouf of her girlhood, and though her black crocheted dress was cut in the conservative style more commonly seen before the war, she was not strict about the old social ways with her only grandchild—she returned the embrace, as though Astrid were still a little girl and thus exempt from the elaborate formalities she usually preferred. “Don’t be unkind—I am far too blond for any of that, and don’t you think I have the Donal nose? You always used to say so.”
“Let us hope and pray.” Grandmother Donal took Astrid by the hand and brought her into the house. “The true Donal nose does not fully emerge until one is at least twenty-five, so you have some time yet. I presume that boy loitering by the car is not your husband?”
“No! That’s my bodyguard. Charlie’s awfully sorry he couldn’t come tonight—he did want to.”
“If you say so,” the older lady replied indifferently.
They had come through the long, wide hallway that ran down the middle of the house and into the parlor that faced the Sound.
“Ahhhh…” Grandmother Donal sighed, as though she had just returned from a long day in the rough-and-tumble of the world (which she most certainly had not). With a clap of her hands she sank down into a scroll-armed pink satin fainting couch, and within seconds her liveried butler appeared with a silver tray bearing two sweating highballs. “It’s good to have you back in civilization, dear.”
Astrid accepted her highball and surveyed her grandmother’s definition of civilization: walls cluttered with portraits of seven generations of Donals and Oakhursts, rosewood furniture that might have once been sat upon by nobility. The house itself was large and airy, but hardly as palatial as Dogwood or Marsh Hall; although her grandmother could afford a more monumental sort of home, she took a snobbish pride in not replacing that which did not need fixing.
Astrid paused to swallow a gulp of cocktail, the lime and tonicness of which provoked a series of involuntary associations. It was the smell of her grandmother’s breath when she read her good-night stories, but then it was the smell of her mother’s breath, too, when Virginia had scooped her daughter up and taken her on a tour of Europe that lasted years. “Where are you getting your gin these days?”
“Darling, my butler takes care of that; I don’t ask.” Grandmother Donal turned her face so that her strong profile was illuminated against a pink lampshade, which was her signal that she had nothing more to say on the topic. “A grotesque business, from start to finish—I was never one of the sanctimonious women who made themselves hoarse arguing the dry cause, but I love this country still, and I’ll not tarnish that love by flouting her laws.”
“Well, Nana,” Astrid forged blithely on, “perhaps I could help you with all that, or rather we could, now that Charlie and I are hitched, for as I’m sure you know he does a good trade in the booze racket.”
“Yeee-eee-ees,” Grandmother Donal replied ominously, drawing the word out so that its meaning changed as it took on syllables and eventually became everything but affirmative.
The elder lady cleared her throat and walked across the room to a sideboard that bowed under a complete set of Shakespeare with aubergine cloth covers and gold lettering. She paused, her back toward Astrid, and tilted her head to look at the grand portrait of her late husband, whose face was as long and thin and patrician as her own. “It is fortuitous that you came alone tonight—I do want to meet your fellow, of course, some other time. But I have a wedding gift that is for you alone, and it seems that now is the time to give it to you.”
“Nana!” Laughter burbled up through Astrid, and she waved her hand at her grandmother before going on buoyantly: “Charlie and I are man and wife, and I am terribly sorry
—for your sake, if not for Mother’s—that we didn’t do it more properly and invite everyone and have it announced beforehand in the papers. But we are married now, really and truly married, which means we share everything.”
“Of course.” The older woman’s voice had turned soft, which was unlike her. Usually she spoke in a high, fluty tone that was an accent all her own. She paused, running her hands over the books on the sideboard, until she reached Othello and plucked an envelope from in between its covers. Then she strode back toward her granddaughter, where she began to speak with such urgency that Astrid found she could not maintain her smile of the moment before. “Just the same, humor me. I don’t pretend to know how you young people do things nowadays, but criminals are not new to the world, and I have seen the final acts of a few lawbreakers in my time. Money can’t save anyone, but it can certainly help those who, in a bad situation, desire to help themselves. It isn’t a huge dowry anyway, my dear, just the right amount of money for a woman coming out in the world. My hope is that you and Charlie will live happily for many years and have no need of it, and you can give it to your daughter.”
The older woman handed over the envelope, and Astrid—still taken aback by the uncommon tone of their conversation—could think of nothing to do but open it. Inside was a little green booklet with the words WHITE COVE SAVINGS & TRUST embossed on the cover. She ran her fingers over the pages and saw that while her grandmother was right—the figure she had settled on was not outrageous—it was nonetheless far more than Caroline had ever allowed the widowed Virginia, and also much more than even Astrid would ever know what to do with.
“Don’t worry, it’s in a nice, safe little savings account, and it can remain there comfortably for some time. Only—you must not tell Charlie. The terms of the gift are that you and you alone may withdraw from the account. You understand me? This is to remain a secret.”
“Thank you,” Astrid mumbled. She wanted to protest that she couldn’t keep a secret from Charlie if she tried, but she was stunned by the serious intensity with which her grandmother was regarding her. She blinked and put the booklet back in the envelope. For the first time, she resented Charlie for not coming tonight—if he was there, her grandmother would have seen that they were a married couple, and that he could be trusted. Plus, Charlie would have known what to do with the money, instead of leaving her to deal with it alone.
“Wonderful!” Grandmother Donal clapped her hands, her tone once again aristocratic and detached. “Come, darling,” she went on, taking Astrid by the elbow and drawing her up from her chair. “I’m sure dinner is ready by now—oysters and a light fish soup—and I believe we’ll have some champagne to celebrate your being married and so grown-up-looking.”
As they came into the hall, Astrid caught a glimpse of Victor, the bodyguard, keeping watch on the lawn, and for the first time since becoming Mrs. Charlie Grey, the notion of being married and so grown-up-looking seemed a little less than a glittering, endless party.
3
“ANTHONY,” CORDELIA CALLED FROM THE ENTRY TO the second-floor poolroom, leaning against the door frame and crossing one driving moccasin over the other. Her hair was in a loose braid, and she was wearing a man’s blue work shirt—tied at the waist and with the arms rolled to the elbows—over a black slip dress. To a man she probably looked like a girl ready to spend an evening reading fashion magazines at home, but Astrid—still in the chic black dress she had worn to her grandmother’s earlier—gave her friend the up/down, and a little crescent moon appeared at the corner of her lips. With a spark of female imagination, she had seen what her friend was up to. “Anthony?”
“Yes?” he answered without turning to look. He was bent over about to take his shot and did not sound pleased about the disturbance. Charlie was out already, going about the business that had kept him and Jones tense all day, and he had his best men with him. His second-best men were on the perimeter of the property and stationed on the rooftop with rifles, so the poolroom at that hour was occupied by the youngest members of the Grey outfit, their faces pink between what scrubby facial hair they could grow. “One of the headlights on the Marmon needs fixing. Will you take me?”
Anthony took his shot and turned around, so that he missed the cue ball going wide of its mark and bouncing harmlessly against the green felt side barrier. “Now?”
“Yes, now.” Cordelia stared back at him, letting the steady, unblinking quality of her sweet brown eyes dispel the peculiarity of her request. “If I take it now it will be ready tomorrow,” she added firmly, as though that explained everything.
“But we’re in the middle of a game—”
He cut himself off when Cordelia stepped away from the door and raised her chin imperiously. “Yes, but if we go now we’ll be back before dark. Charlie says we’re not to leave the property after dark, and I want to make sure it’s ready for tomorrow.”
When Anthony realized that Cordelia was not to be argued with, he threw the cue down on the table and walked huffily toward the door ahead of his boss’s sister, who twirled her feet around before giving Astrid a wink and following him down the big main stairwell. They didn’t speak as they crossed the grass toward the garage. He was still angry about the interrupted game and didn’t notice that both headlights on the Marmon were working fine when she started up the motor and honked at him to follow her in one of the old Model T sedans that the Greys kept on hand for minor missions of this kind.
As they drove through the wooded lanes toward Old Oyster Town, she watched Anthony in the rearview mirror, noting the fierce expression he wore and the distraction in his eyes. The expression was unchanged as he pulled into the filling station, and so she didn’t bother to talk to him, only signaled that she was heading into the garage to find the mechanic. He waved at her indifferently and unfolded a newspaper to read while he waited.
Inside the office, an old man in grease-stained overalls sat behind a desk with his feet up. When he saw Cordelia come through the door, he hastily put away the bottle that had been next to his feet and finished what was in his paper cup. His body was thinning in the arms and legs, but the lost mass appeared to have repositioned itself around his gut.
“You needn’t worry about me,” she said with a smile.
“Silly of me, I suppose, but it’s hard to know who to trust these days,” he grumbled, as he reached for his bottle. “Now I get a look at you, you seem all right. Even so, we’re closed for the day, miss.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I was just wondering if I could leave my car on your property till tomorrow; would that be all right? The Marmon coupé out there.” The man’s eyes must have been blue when he was younger, but they were almost silver now when he narrowed them. “There’s ten dollars in it for you if you say yes.”
“That’s a lot of money to pay a night watchman,” he observed.
“Not if you include the fee for letting me slip out the back door.” She smiled brilliantly, and added: “Plus the cost of a shot of that whiskey. And of course, you’ll have to give a note to my friend Anthony when he comes after me.”
The man took another paper cup out of the drawer where he’d been keeping his whiskey and poured out a shot. Cordelia stepped toward him and put a ten-dollar bill on the table along with a folded piece of paper that had Anthony’s name written on it. Inside was a note explaining that she wasn’t in any trouble, and that if he didn’t want to be, he should keep his mouth shut, and that she’d be home before Charlie noticed. Meeting the old man’s eyes, she raised her cup to his. As she drained it, she was reminded that the Indians were said to call alcohol firewater.
“Thank you,” she said, and then scrawled a number on the newspaper lying on the desk. “That’s how you reach my brother Charlie, if you ever want to get some imported whiskey. He doesn’t usually do small accounts, but if you tell him you’re a friend of mine, he’ll make an exception. My name’s Cordelia.”
Realization came slowly into those silver eyes. “Thanks, miss,” he sa
id.
She smiled again and went to the window, where she motioned to the driver of a black roadster that had been idling by the pump. Its lights went on, and it rolled slowly into motion. She watched Anthony glance up from his paper and glance away when the roadster turned so that its snout was pointed in the direction of the city.
“Will you keep this for me too?” Cordelia said, taking off the blue work shirt and hanging it on the hook by the door.
“Sure thing, miss.”
Dusk was settling in as she stepped through the back door and made her way across the dusty lot. It was that hour when the light is strange and plays tricks on unaccustomed eyes and making out much of anything is difficult, particularly if what one ought to be watching for is dressed in black.
They didn’t speak until they were a half-mile down the road. Once they left the Old Oyster Town road for the main county highway, Max pulled over suddenly and reached for her. The kiss rocked them back and forth for several seconds until Cordelia softly pulled away, smiling. “I’m sorry, I must taste like second-rate whiskey. I didn’t think the old man trusted me, so I took a shot with him.”
“I don’t care,” he said, starting up the car again. She had forgotten how handsome he was, with his short dark hair just a dark shadow on his skull, and his pale blue eyes as serious and unwavering as ever. He held her gaze and swallowed. Then a rare and genuine smile began to spread beneath the stern outcropping of his nose. “I’m just happy to be with you.”
The feeling Max stirred in her now was the same one she’d experienced when she first saw him. She had just arrived in New York, and he had been flying his airplane above Pennsylvania Station, leaving puffy white lettering behind him in the sky. “That’s Max Darby,” an onlooker had told her impatiently when she’d inquired, and the name would always hold for her the wonder of that first breath of the city. She was not even really surprised—only a little awestruck—when, a few weeks later, after everything had gone terribly wrong, he had fallen out of the sky right in front of her, forcing them both to see her true mettle. That was the way she always felt when he turned his quiet, intent gaze on her—that he was capable of great things, and so she must be, too.