“Look!” Mabel cried as she swept her arm wide to indicate Drouhin. “Isn’t this perfect? Now we can sit boy, girl, boy, girl!”
The Dolly sisters clapped in harmony and in delight.
“Mr. Levine, I know you’ve met the sisters already, but Mr. Drouhin, this is Jenny and Rosie,” the hostess said, motioning generally in the air, for she was never sure which one was which. “And, of course, this is Mr. Harry Selfridge.”
Mabel smiled while hoping that the older, more sedentary gentleman had just allowed himself a long, luxurious eye rest, but the trickle from the martini glass into his lap betrayed that notion.
“Jenny,” Mabel said tightly through clenched teeth as her eyes darted from twin to twin. “Rose. Mind waking him up before he ruins my new fantastic banquette?”
Rose or Jenny gently shook the department store magnate and managed, without rousing him, to pour the entire martini into the velvet taupe banquette cushion, which immediately absorbed it before anyone, particularly Marcelle, could reach it with a towel or napkin. It was, however, apparently the frigidity of the gin striking his tender inner thigh that finally roused Harry from slumber.
“Ooooh,” he said with a tiny jump and a start. “Is dinner ready?”
“Not before you get me a new banquette, Harry,” Mabel laughed, dead serious. “Although I didn’t buy them from you.”
Selfridge looked at the lake in his lap as Jenny or Rose delicately placed a handkerchief over the widening area.
“And, of course, Lord and Lady Rivington of Dunshshshushire, or however you say it,” Mabel said, laughing. “May I present Mr. Charles Levine, the first transatlantic passenger, and his new pilot, Mr. Drouhin.”
Drouhin bowed slightly, and Levine felt the need to explain his connection, since Hartman, the lawyer, insisted the two men spend day and night together in preparation for their flight and to learn one another’s body language. The English–French dictionary had been disposed of in a wastebasket after numerous pages had been torn out it in a fit.
“Mr. Drouhin, France’s finest pilot, will be flying me back to New York in the first successful east–west crossing of the Atlantic,” Levine announced, then slapped Drouhin on the back, causing the Frenchman to gasp. “And I will be the first man to successfully cross both ways.”
“That’s delightful,” Mabel cooed, placing cold martinis in the hands of both Levine and Drouhin. “What brave men we are to dine with this evening, friends! Tell me, how many does the plane sit? Comfortably.”
“Will dinner be served soon?” Lord Rivington grumbled, an older man with a white mustache so thick it was impossible to tell if he was talking or practicing ventriloquism. “We haven’t had tea today. Or luncheon. Or breakfast. We are a little famished, and the lady is feeling faint. Might we get some broth, perhaps?”
“Patience, my dear.” Mabel giggled, pointing a playful finger at the lord. “For I cannot jump into the pot, now, can I? I believe we have a delightful lamb roast for you this evening. But until then, would you like my olive? I’ve only nibbled on it slightly.”
Lady Rivington, her eyes closed, groaned.
“LADY RIVINGTON!” Mabel squawked. “Please keep your glass upright! My banquettes! I simply won’t lose any more gin to the furniture!”
Just in time, Marcelle announced dinner, and the group moved collectively to the dining room, except for Lady Rivington, who staggered a few feet behind the rest of the herd like a newborn calf. Luckily for her, the lioness had already seated herself in the middle of her two objects of prey.
* * *
Parked precisely between Drouhin and Levine, Mabel was already in second gear and warming up for the duration of the race.
“So, Mr. Levine . . .” she started.
“Charles,” he replied. “The only people who should call me Mr. Levine are a judge or that bastard Lindbergh.”
Mabel laughed delicately in response. “Charles,” she acquiesced. “We have something in common!”
“Is that right?” Levine said after slurping his lobster bisque.
“It is!” she said, gently placing her right hand on his forearm and leaving it there.
“Your plane is called the Miss Columbia, isn’t it?” she said mysteriously.
Levine nodded and wiped his mouth with the napkin, though a little dot of pink soup still remained in the corner.
“Well,” Mabel started again, giving his arm a little squeeze, “I was married to the coffee bean king . . .”
She leaned in closer and opened her eyes wider, the pink dot on Levine becoming even larger.
“. . . of COLOMBIA!” she revealed, following it with a ripply laugh.
“You don’t say!” Levine said, smiling, and simply delighted to be separated at last from Drouhin by a hundred sparkling bracelets and a crop of platinum curls. The Frenchman smelled of shrimp and yeast, and Miss Boll’s lightly sprayed perfume was a much-needed respite from Drouhin’s eau de fish boat.
“I do say!” She gripped his arm again, this time, giving it a little tickle.
“This was your dead husband, right?” Levine chortled. “Or do you have a Colombian king rattling around someplace in here?”
“Oh, no, he’s very dead!” Mabel laughed heartily, shaking her head and coming within inches of Levine’s. “¡Señor Rocha es mucho, mucho muerto!”
Levine wasn’t sure if he should laugh at that, but he did.
“And do you know what the newspapers call me?” she asked coquettishly, batting her lashes, which were so augmented they looked like spider legs.
Levine, headfirst into this game, smiled and shrugged.
“The Queen of Diamonds,” she purred, and shook her bracelet arm, a noise that was so loud that Marcelle thought she was being summoned. “Isn’t that silly?”
She then batted Marcelle away with her much lighter, unadorned arm.
“I am already the Queen of Diamonds, but,” Mabel said daintily, “I’d love to be the Queen of the Air! I’d be tickled to fly in your plane sometime.”
“Oh, yeah? Yeah, we could do that. Sure. How long does it take to get all those bracelets off your arm?” he said, smiling widely, the valley of the gap between his teeth more broadly revealed. You could pass a ship through that, Mabel’s brain clicked.
“I never take these off,” Mabel replied, almost in song.
“Well, what about when you take a bath?” Levine questioned. “You gotta take ’em off when you get a bath.”
“Yeah?” Mabel said, and then winked. “Says who?”
* * *
During the medallion-of-spring-lamb course, Mabel let Levine simmer down a bit while he skirted questions from Lord and Lady Rivington about Charles Lindbergh, despite his protests that they had only met twice. Had they ever gone on holiday together, what sort of chap was he, what were his likes versus dislikes? Was he a randy fellow or well behaved?
Mabel turned to Drouhin, who was daintily picking at his asparagus hollandaise and said, in her pig French, “Moutons de infantile mange amour beaucoup?” (“Sheep of infant ate love much?” Or, more politely translated: “Do you like your lamb?”)
To which he looked at her and said, “Votre chef n’est pas très bon et j’ai vraiment du mal à manger ce repas. Quel dommage q’un jeun agneau devait mourir pour celà. Vous devriez présenter des excuses à sa mère à plusieurs reprises.” (“Your cook is not very good, and I am honestly struggling through this meal. It is a shame that a baby had to die for this. You should apologize to its mother, several times.”)
“Wonderful.” Mabel smiled and nodded, understanding only chef. “Marcelle!” she called, flagging over the maid.
The maid ran over in tiny steps, her arms straight down at her sides.
“This is what I’m thinking, Mr. Drouhin,” Mabel dictated while Marcelle translated and Mr. Levine was telling Lady Rivington, “No, I’ve never been to Lindbergh’s house. Like I said, Your Highness, I wouldn’t exactly call the guy a friend. No, I don’t think I’m
going to finish this . . . Well, sure, hand me your plate.”
“Maybe you can do me a favor,” she continued. “I’m hoping that on your return flight to New York, if Mr. Levine should somehow ask you if it was a good idea if I come along . . . if you could say yes. Would you mind doing that for me? For maybe, say, twenty-five hundred francs . . . or maybe three thousand? An awfully big favor should have an awfully big thank-you.”
A smile spread across Drouhin’s face as Marcelle relayed the message.
He raised one eyebrow, which Mabel sensed was an eyebrow of a partnership, and then slightly, quietly, said, “Oui.”
Mabel didn’t need a translator for that. She smiled and turned back to her lamb, which she found delicious.
* * *
Levine did not get away that night without setting a date with his new friend, Mibs, for a ride in the Miss Columbia, albeit just a little one. She arrived at Paris’ aerodrome, Le Bourget, in her Duesenberg the following week wearing a full-length ermine coat despite the warm breeze of summer and so much jewelry on either arm that drinking was absolutely out of the question. She was ready for her trip into the heavens.
Levine, almost always a gentleman when it came to the more tender sex, helped Mibs into the cockpit as Drouhin took one last look over his instruments.
She settled in and was even a good sport as Levine fixed his leather flying helmet on her head, squashing a coif that she had slept on hairpins for ten hours to achieve.
“I’ll wave to you,” she said with a sly smile. “I hope I see you waving back.”
“I hope you have the time of your life, Mibs,” Levine replied, and gave her a playful knock on the chin.
“You know I will, Charlie!” she said, laughing and shaking her head in delight.
Levine closed the cockpit door and slapped the monoplane on its side twice. With its propeller whirling into a blur in front of her, Mabel could hardly believe that she was moments away from flying, although she hoped that they didn’t get into any trouble up there. Without Marcelle to translate, she would certainly do the wrong thing and end up in an enormous ermine splatter on the ground.
But as soon as they taxied out to the runway and the plane slowly rose into the air, Mabel felt as if she were in a movie. At first she held on tight to the bottom of the seat as if she were on a log ride, but the farther and higher up they went, the smoother it became. She could completely do this for a day or two in order to become even more famous than she already was. It was an easy slide into glory. Mabel Boll, the first woman to cross the Atlantic. The thought chimed in her mind like delicate goblets clinking together. She loved herself for thinking of this marvelous, incredible idea.
“I’m not afraid,” she said to herself, then louder to Drouhin: “I’m not afraid!”
He looked at her and saw her laughing, her eyes bright, her face animated, like a small child. To thrill her more, he dipped the airplane, then came tightly around, almost turning the aircraft upside down. She screamed a little, then laughed.
Famous, famous, famous, sang Mabel in her head.
* * *
Levine had never been much of a ladies’ man. He was already a millionaire when he spotted Grace at a beauty pageant in Brooklyn, and she hadn’t even won yet when he pointed her out and said that was the one he wanted. It was easy enough to court a beauty queen if you had the smell of money about you; it was easy to get Miss Williamsburg to accept a marriage proposal when you drove up in a fancy car, got her a dinner in a place with reservations, and promised things would always stay that way.
But Mabel . . . Mabel had a bite to her. She wanted to lead, not be led. Levine liked that about her; he wanted to play her game. She had her own money; she didn’t have to believe anything about Levine that she didn’t want to, and he knew the same about her. Mabel grabbed life by the ear and made it bend to her, just as he had done. In the short time he knew her, he’d recognized that she was a forward-moving creature, didn’t dwell on the past, and looked ahead to what she would conquer next. The most remarkable things he saw in Mabel were the most remarkable things he saw in himself.
Grace was made to be a mother and a wife, Levine thought, to love, to care, and to comfort; Mabel was made to be herself and nothing less.
Mabel gave him a sense of energy, made him remember things about himself that he had forgotten. Mibs was an unlikely bird, and he couldn’t help but want to capture her.
He could clearly imagine giving her anything she asked for.
And he also imagined that the closer he got, the harder that bite would be.
He smiled.
* * *
Mabel was elated. She had scanned through all of the Paris papers and ultimately found what she was looking for; she yelped with delight and cried for Marcelle to come immediately, then shook the newspaper at her when she entered the room.
“It’s me and Charlie!” she said, laughing and pointing at the grainy black-and-white photo of her in her floor-length sable and wearing the crown jewels of countless ancient civilizations, on the arm of Levine as they entered Maxim’s the previous night. She was smiling brightly; Charlie looked minutely shocked and glared at the camera. No mind, no mind, she said to Marcelle. It was still a good picture—no, no, a great picture—of her.
She was still walking on that cloud when Levine picked her up that night.
“Hôtel Le Bristol?” he said as she snuggled into the backseat and looked at him with twinkling eyes.
“Perfect! They have the best oysters!” she said, moving closer to him. “Did you see Le Figaro today? They had the most charming picture of the most charming couple.”
“Yeah?” Levine said, only half listening. He had just learned that Chamberlin had filed suit against him, and his lawyer, Hartman, said it looked as if Levine was going to have to cough up all the dough because of the signed contract. “Nice. Real nice.”
“I’m glad you thought so,” Mabel said, curling her fingers around his arm. “It made me awfully giddy.”
In his head, Levine saw the Chamberlin headlines in the papers again—with him as the villain. He was always the villain. But a deal’s a deal, right? When did a deal stop being a deal? Chamberlin didn’t make it to Berlin, but the deal was that he would.
“Charlie, I need to talk to you about something,” Mabel said softly, looking at Levine as he gazed out the window.
“Mibs,” he said as he sighed, “you know I’m married. Nothing’s changing that.”
Mabel laughed loudly. “You’re a card, you know? You’re married! Boy, have you got the wrong idea!” She almost had to catch her breath she was laughing so hard, with Levine finally looking at her, puzzled.
“Charlie, the very last thing I want to do is get married again,” she said, sobering up. She didn’t want to share her bedroom, her bathroom, or, most of all, her money. “But what I really want is something only you can give me. I want to be the first woman to make the transatlantic crossing. Remember the crowds waiting for you in Germany? Well, imagine that in New York a hundred times over. We could make a killing in endorsements, speaking tours, you name it. Look at what Lindbergh is doing. It’s your turn to be a hero, Charlie. Just fly me across and, Levine, the sky belongs to us. You the first transatlantic passenger both ways, and me the Queen of the Air. Can you see it? Even Lindbergh can’t beat that!”
Levine looked at her for a moment and then a smile seeped across his face. “Oh, I can see it,” he said, then reached across to Mabel, took hold of her jaw, and kissed her firmly. “We could make a lot of dough. A double bill!”
“Ask Drouhin what he thinks,” Mabel suggested, smiling ear to ear.
“Oh, yeah?” Levine laughed. “How the hell am I going to do that? He don’t understand me when I’m asking him what he wants for lunch.”
At the Hôtel Le Bristol they didn’t even stop at the restaurant, where Levine had arranged for the finest table, but instead went straight up to his suite, where they could pop the champagne and rejoice more pr
ivately.
The oysters hadn’t yet arrived when Levine heard Mabel’s voice calling him. He followed it through the sitting room to the empty bedroom. He heard her coo again and discovered that she wasn’t lying about never taking her jewels off, even in the bath.
She had placed the diamond of the ancient crown of Poland to his lips after he sunk into the foamy, steaming water when the bathroom door swung open and there stood Grace. Behind her was a waiter holding a gigantic platter of oysters.
“Don’t think I don’t know your tricks, Charles!” she exclaimed, her face heating to a boiling point. “Registering under the name Chamberlin, the last man to sue you! And what exactly do you have in your mouth?”
* * *
With the headlines splashed across every paper that Grace was filing for divorce, Mabel hightailed it back to her villa in Chantilly to get ready for the flight. She worried about bandits during her venture into history, but had a flash of brilliance: Arnaud took them to the most reliable jeweler in Paris and had every single piece reproduced down to the facet in paste. When she returned to Paris shortly, they would be finished, and she would place her real gems in a vault at her bank. She would take the title of Queen of the Air while wearing fake gems, but the thought of any of her diamonds sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to sparkle again, was one she simply would not bear.
She had not been at the villa for less than a half an hour before Georges Charlot, a companion of sorts, had appeared in her airy drawing room at the villa. Georges was a Spanish playboy she had met during a silly but flirty drag race on the way to Monte Carlo weeks before. Two handsome, dark young men pulled alongside her in a late-model Bugatti, a double mirage. Mabel laughed as she floored the gas, leaving them well behind her. They ended up in Monte Carlo, and coincidentally, so did she.
Mabel picked the one who had better teeth. The Bugatti belonged to the cousin. Things had been a little dull lately since she found she was a widow, and she was ready to get back into the swing of things.