The Lucky Ones (18 page)

“But I
did
see it. I’m married to a man who—who does that sort of thing, so why shouldn’t I see it?”

“If you were my girl—” Victor broke off. The maze had turned, and they were standing in an empty corner, and it was suddenly very quiet. Neither moved, and though Astrid turned her heart-shaped face up in his direction, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. His gaze went up to the sky in a tortured arc and back down to his feet. “Then it wouldn’t have happened like that,” he concluded, his voice breaking a little over the words.

“But I’m not your girl.” She said it simply, as though this were neither a good nor a bad thing. There was no invitation in her voice, but even so he moved in her direction and put his hand against her hip.

“No,” he replied, with equal simplicity. Then his eyes flicked up to meet hers.

“You shouldn’t—”

“I know.” He withdrew his hand and fitted his thumb in his belt buckle. She had thought this would be a relief and was unprepared for how overwhelming the disappointment was when his touch was taken away. “I know I shouldn’t. But I keep thinking about that kiss and…”

Before he could finish Astrid began walking farther into the maze. “Well, don’t,” she said, putting on a careless tone, even though she was now thinking about that kiss, too. How much she had wanted it; how airy and wonderful it had felt. “I don’t imagine your odds would be very good if you decided to play that game.”

“It’s not a game.” She was walking fast now, but he kept pace with her as the path curved and took them deeper in. “I kept thinking—”

“Nobody saw, Victor.” Her eyebrows swung together and away as she went, and her words got faster and her heart kept ticking ever more rapidly. Her feet were moving so quickly she was almost running. “You’d be dead already if anybody knew.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. I’ve thought about all that. But that’s not what worries me. I’m not worried for myself. I’m worried that—”

“Damn!” Astrid exclaimed with a furious stomp of her foot. She had come around a corner and found herself staring up at a dead end, its high wall overgrown with vines. A vein in her forehead twitched, and she glared at that wall, as though if it were only a little more accommodating, she might be able to climb over it and into some other life. With a slow shake of her head she turned around. “I’m sorry I kissed you, Victor, I’m a selfish, impulsive girl, and I oughtn’t to have put you at risk like that and—”

“Don’t do that. Don’t take it back.”

She wished he wouldn’t stare at her that way, with those serious, shrouded dark eyes, like a peasant boy who has just seen the queen for the first time and can’t quite believe her splendor. “Oh, Victor, what? What would you have me do?”

“Listen to me.”

“All right.”

“I’m not worried about what could happen to me. I’m worried because I keep thinking about that kiss, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop myself from kissing you again. I’m worried because Charlie Grey is a violent man, and I’m in love with Charlie Grey’s girl.”

“Love?” Her insides felt woozy and her throat itched. She wanted to reach for him, but he was too far away. He was just standing there on the grass, so tall and slender. When she compared him to Charlie in her mind he looked almost feminine, and she thought about what Charlie had done to that other man and what he could do to Victor, who was slighter of body and so much more thoughtful.

“Do you think you might love me, too?” he said eventually.

“I don’t know!” She put her hands over her eyes. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Neither said anything for a while, but the quiet didn’t calm her. Her chest kept heaving and her face felt hot and her heart wouldn’t unclench.

“Because either way I’d better go. You see that, don’t you? And if you love me, you should come, too.”

“Oh, goddamn!” Astrid took her hands off her face and balled them into fists at her side. She gazed at Victor with a washed-out, desperate expression and wished that he would just come toward her. That he would pick her up and press her against the soft, leafy wall, and she could wrap her legs around his waist and run her hands down his spine and pretend she wasn’t married, like she wasn’t Astrid Grey, that she could still do anything and none of it would matter. But he didn’t move. “Damn,” she said again, this time a low, whispered curse.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know, Victor. I don’t know anything. It all sounds so crazy.” She took a step toward him, but her legs were as unsteady as a fawn’s, and she knew that he would have to come forward to catch her. Already his watchful gaze had registered something wrong with her. “I might,” she went on as she sank against his chest and looped her arms around his neck. “The only thing I know is that I want to be held. Could you hold me? Just for a little while? Please?”

It couldn’t have been the answer he hoped for, but he put a delicate kiss on her hairline anyway. “All right,” he said as she rested her whole weight against him.

The dream that she came out of was a pleasant one, but Cordelia’s brain began to tick as soon as she realized that the room around her was unfamiliar. She lurched up, pushing the covers aside, and saw that she was still wearing clothes. A simple black dress with a long, slender tank bodice and a scalloped hem that fell just below the knee in the front, and slightly longer in back. Then she remembered: She had put it on to go dancing on the St. Regis roof, and later she’d worn it to the all-night diner with Max, and he had driven her out to Long Island as the sun was coming up. He had seemed so happy and proud of himself, and he had wanted to show her his apartment. Try as she might, she couldn’t recall arriving at the apartment—he must have carried her in. With a sigh, she closed her tired lids and fell back into the pillows. Sooner or later, she and Max were going to have to learn to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

But she didn’t fall back asleep, and after a few moments passed she climbed out of the narrow bed—which, besides a three-drawer chest, was the only piece of furniture in the room—and tiptoed through the open door. The second, larger room was nearly as spare. Two chairs were pulled up to a square table in the center; a gas-station calendar hung from the wall. The floorboards were wood, but they had been painted a light grayish blue that had been worn thin in places. Under the window was a basin sink and next to it a small stove, and that was the whole kitchen. But it was impressive, for all that. Though Cordelia had run away to live in a mansion, she knew that even a room like this would have felt like a castle after she left her aunt Ida’s, so long as it was really and truly hers.

Twisting her hair over her shoulder, she stepped around the table to the sink. She wondered where Max had gone, but it didn’t trouble her particularly. Perhaps he had gone out for the newspaper, to see if Eddie Laramie had made any new public insults, or maybe to get them breakfast. She might have gone on smiling privately to herself had a voice not whispered in her ear:
Cordelia, look up
. She twirled around, but there was no one in the room with her. Was she still asleep, or was she hearing things? But when she turned back to the window, she knew that she was wide awake, and she was grateful to whatever strange magic had called out for attention.

The view was of the airfield, a great expanse of half-ruined grass, and though the bad weather appeared likely to return before long, there was a patch of blue above the hangar. It was big enough to highlight the red biplane making loops in the sky, leaving behind puffy white lettering that she was coming to recognize. The plane had completed the
C
and
O
and was beginning on the
R
, and then the
D
.

By the time he completed the
A
she felt that she was beaming with her whole body, with every inch of skin. She could hardly believe that Max—who had been so stoic and resistant when she first met him—was capable of this grand gesture. It was as though he’d climbed to the tallest mountain he could find just to shout her name into the clear, thin air. Even with no one there to see her she blushed a little, and she couldn’t wait until he came down so that she could throw her arms around his neck and tell him she felt the exact same way.

19

“PERFECT! PERFECT!” MR. BRANCH EXCLAIMED AS HE scurried into the brilliantly lit center of the vast studio. From her place in the shadows, Letty had determined that the little man wearing the panama hat was the famous director Lucien Branch.

It had taken her some time to wind her way through the vast studio and find the enclosed stage where
The Good Lieutenant
was filming. But once she arrived she stood still, watching intently as Valentine did take after take. He was positioned on a fake hill next to a fake tree in front of a painted backdrop of a countryside populated by windblown orchards and houses with thatched roofs. After he finished his lines, a pack of people would descend upon him—adjusting his coat, fixing his makeup, moving the big camera around. He would remain composed through this routine, and then when they fell away, his shoulders would draw back and he would gaze off into the distance, exactly like a man haunted by the sorrows of war. To Letty, observing the goings-on with a swiftly beating heart, that bright, busy set was just how she’d always imagined heaven would be.

Now Valentine stepped down off the artificial turf-covered mound and in so doing shrank back to human size.

“Perfect!” Mr. Branch repeated. “I’ve got my shot.”

“Do you really think so?” Valentine asked.

“You were a man without hope. A man without
joy
. It was fantastic!” Mr. Branch enthused as he led Valentine away from the set to the high folding chair with the name
MR. O’DELL
stenciled on the back.

She might have stood there forever, quietly taking it all in, had Valentine’s polished head not rotated in her direction. “Oh, Letty!” he almost shouted. “Come over here.”

“Hello!” she called as she came darting forward from behind a giant plaster cannon. “I’m right here.”

A warm shade spread across Valentine’s face, and she was gratified that he didn’t try to hide how happy he was to see her, even now that they were in public. “Mr. Branch, here’s the young lady I told you about—Letty Larkspur. Sophia and I have taken her under wing. She is a magnificent talent.”

“How do you do?” Letty gave the director a shy smile and curtsied.

“Ah, very lovely!” Mr. Branch’s shiny cheeks bulged indulgently. “What a beauty you are! I saw you perform, you know, the night The Vault opened. You are even more incandescent up close.”

Letty wasn’t sure what
incandescent
meant, but she thought it sounded nice, and glanced at Valentine to see if he had heard the compliment.

“Letty, did you think the scene was good?”

“Good! I thought you were
marvelous
.”
Marvelous
was a word Sophia used frequently, and Letty was pleased by how sophisticated she sounded as it rolled off her tongue. “Really marvelous.”

“A chair!” Mr. Branch squawked. “Will someone get Miss Larkspur a chair?”

In seconds a man appeared with a chair. It was just an ordinary kitchen chair, hard and without the superior vantage of the director’s and star’s thrones, but Letty couldn’t help but thrill to the deferential way her seat was presented to her.

“Did you think I was too much?”

“No, I thought you did it just right. Why, you made me cry a little.” Letty was gazing up at Valentine and didn’t think to hide the look.

Valentine beamed at this proclamation and then accepted a goblet of water from one of the many assistants scurrying around them. “She’s a wonderful actress, you know. We’ve been training her.”

“Have you?”

The two men glanced at each other and then down on the petite girl sitting before them. Valentine placed a thoughtful index finger over his lips and turned his head to one side. “Yes, singing, dancing, elocution. All with our own coaches. Sophia has taken
such
a liking to her.”

“Yes, yes, I can see why. Well, we’ll have to find a little role for her, don’t you think?” Mr. Branch crossed his legs and clasped his hands over the higher knee and regarded Letty, as one might a prize pony at a state fair. “Will you do me the honor of auditioning for me, my dear?”

Letty’s eyes popped at this suggestion. “I’d be honored,” she said.

“You won’t be disappointed.
Wait
till you see what my Letty can do.”

A thought clouded Mr. Branch’s eyes, and he shook his head, and Letty tried to keep her shoulders back even though she sensed that the dangled role was about to be taken away from her. “It’s a pity, really,” he began musingly. “You are so like my idea of Marie. So much more
gamine
than Sophia… Ah, well. Stay around, my dear, while we film the next scene? And perhaps if there is time afterward, you can read something for me.”

When he turned back to Valentine, she was overcome by a tingling sensation, the same sensation she’d experienced that first night at The Vault as she hovered on the margin of the stage and knew that she already had within her everything she needed to succeed. All that was required was the courage to step into the spotlight. But now she saw that her moment of opportunity was slipping away from her—Mr. Branch’s attention had moved on and might not return—and she stood up, sending the chair away from her with a squeak, determined not to miss the moment.

“The other night I helped Valentine with his lines,” she announced. Mr. Branch’s eyes returned to her, and though they gleamed with interest, he didn’t quite seem to follow. “I read Marie’s lines,” she charged on. “It’s a wonderful script—I mean, I really enjoyed it—I mean—”

“What
do
you mean, Miss Larkpsur?”

The way Mr. Branch stared at her, she wasn’t sure what she’d meant at all. She briefly experienced her body as though it were floating in a tank and she were speaking through water. But she reminded herself of her feet and felt them touching the ground. She lowered her chin, took a breath, and knew precisely what she’d meant. “Well, you said I looked just like your idea of Marie. I thought perhaps you’d like to see me and Val do a scene.”

“It’s true.” A moment ago, Valentine’s face had been rigid with surprise, but now his words tumbled out. “She was exquisite as Marie. Why don’t we do the scene where the Lieutenant and she finally confess what they really mean to each other? If you get good closeups of me, you may even be able to use them later.”

Mr. Branch hesitated for several seconds, during which anticipation built to a boil within Letty. But when he addressed her, it was solicitously. “My child, would you do us the honor?” He extended his hand in her direction, and she stepped toward him, allowing him to kiss her hand. “Would you perform for us?”

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

“Fantastic!” Mr. Branch let go of her and clapped. Then he began shouting commands. “Change of plan!” he cried. “I need the makeup girls to do up Miss Larkspur as Marie. Lighting—this is an afternoon scene, so you’ll have to…”

There was more, but Letty was hardly listening. She was being ushered toward the dressing rooms by a woman in a formless black dress and a severe bun who didn’t appear to share in Letty’s delight over her miraculous break. Everybody was moving again, more frantically this time. She glanced back once and saw that the only person not hustling was Valentine. He was gazing at her, and there was such a mix of pride and adoration in his face that she almost couldn’t stand being led away from him.

Was this all a little too perfect, or was it exactly what life had planned for her? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure she cared. All she could think was that she was going to say those beautiful lines for the camera. She was going to audition for Lucien Branch, with Valentine O’Dell at her side.

“I was a broken man when the war ended.” Valentine turned his profile to the camera, and a ripple of feeling passed over his features. “I thought my life was over, and wished I
had
died in that ditch along with my men…”

“But you have done so much for our village.” Letty stepped toward him and lifted her chin in his direction. She was wearing a wig with a long heavy braid that rested on her shoulder and hung down over her chest. The dozens of lights pointing at her from every direction were hot on her skin, and the makeup was thick on her face. But she scarcely felt any of that. Mostly she felt the emotion between Marie and the Lieutenant. Her lips trembled with it. “Much more than we will ever do for you.”

“I am gratified to see the village coming back to life, after so much death and dying…” Valentine’s gaze focused suddenly on her. “But you cannot think I did it for them.” He gripped her shoulders with both hands. “Everything I have done, I have done for you, Marie…”

“I don’t believe it,” Letty protested as she gazed up at him in adoration. “I don’t believe you weren’t thinking of all of us when you—”

She broke off and they stared at each other for a few seconds. Then the kiss came, bending her backward like a strong gale. It went on and on, until Letty was weak with it. This was a lengthier kiss than the one they had rehearsed that night in the kitchen, and she supposed it was for Mr. Branch, to show him Letty wasn’t just a kid and could do the really passionate stuff. But she knew that some part of it was Valentine, wanting to kiss her again. When he drew back, his eyes were misted over.

“Do you think you could ever love a man like me?”

It wasn’t in the script, but Letty knew how to answer. “Yes. Oh,
yes
. I love you as I could never love any other man.”

“More even than you loved your husband?”

“Don’t ask me about him.” Letty threw herself against Valentine’s chest and closed her eyes. “Let’s never talk about the past. Let’s only look to the future.”

They held still like that, a tableau for the camera, Letty with her eyes shut softly and Valentine holding her. Then Mr. Branch yelled “Cut,” and she waited for him to release her. The stage lights were hot against her back as she lingered in the embrace a few more seconds. Somebody coughed, and she remembered that she was Letty, not Marie, and she stepped away from Valentine.

“Incredible! Unbelievable! Amazing!”

When she came off the set, her eyes had to adjust, and she squinted at Mr. Branch as he came forward. “It was magical, my dear little darling. Magical! Did you feel the magic?”

“Yes,” Letty whispered as she was ushered back into the unilluminated world of snaking black cords and huge, mysterious gadgets.

“Ha, ha! Look at you, my boy. You are drained by what you have given.”

Letty glanced back at Valentine and saw him smile in rueful acknowledgment.

Mr. Branch was moving about in circles, his pudgy hands fluttering just above his head. “I have had a vision. A vision of the picture I always wanted to make. You two understand, you share my vision, I know you do. You were living it there! We hardly needed
words
—you have intuited everything I wanted from your performances. I can see the whole work of art. I have had a glimpse of the divine. It is all at my fingertips.”

As if to demonstrate, he took two handfuls of air and drew them into his chest. Letty was watching breathlessly and holding on to her long braid as though that might steady her. She knew she had been good, but the approval of Mr. Lucien Branch was so beyond anything that she had ever hoped for that her legs trembled.

“I can’t allow this vision to vanish. We can do the scenes between the Lieutenant and Marie in a few days and finish the rest afterward. Only I don’t want to stop. I must keep that glimpse in my sights. Are you with me?”

“Of course,” Valentine said, flashing that rakish smile he had used so often on screen.

“And you, my exquisite child?”

“Yes,” Letty whispered. Then, to her regret, she heard herself say: “But what about Sophia?”

“What about art?” Mr. Branch exclaimed. In a more subdued voice he added: “Perhaps she can play your mother. Would that satisfy you?”

Letty thought for a minute about how if Sophia were here and not traipsing around with Jack Montrose, there would have been no question of the part going to Letty, and none of this would have happened. So she nodded, and felt how her luck had changed forever.

In Valentine’s dressing room, he threw himself down on the couch, crossed his ankles against the armrest, and opened his arms wide, beckoning her into his embrace. She slipped the wig off her head and tiptoed toward him, hovering uncertainly. Did he mean for her to perch beside him on the edge of the couch, or sit next to him on the ground? But then he drew her in, so that she was lying on top of him, her legs against his legs and her chest against his chest and her nose almost brushing his nose. They had kissed, and they had talked into the night, and they had shared plates of spaghetti with red sauce, but they’d never been in so terribly familiar a position as this. Yet it felt natural, after what they had been through in that scene. Performers and artists did things differently; she saw that now. They were affectionate and free, and they didn’t obey the rigid rules of places like Union.

“Letty,” he said softly, letting his index finger draw the line of her chin. “You know those words I said in that scene, the ones that weren’t in the script?”

“You mean: ‘Could you ever love a man like me?’ That bit?”

Valentine put his arms around her middle, hugging her to him. “I really meant them.”

“You did?” Her body felt weak, like it might disintegrate into tiny motes and blow away on the wind.

“It’s all a sham between me and Sophia; you can see that, can’t you? We haven’t understood each other for a long time, and everybody knows about her and Jack Montrose.”

Letty averted her eyes in shame. She had protected Sophia, because she thought Sophia could teach her how to be a star. “I know,” she began haltingly. “That night at his party, I saw them…”

“Hush.” Valentine kissed each of her temples. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t love her anymore. How could I, when all she cares about is fame? When she would do anything for it? And with that great greasy ape, Jack Montrose…”

“I’m so sorry.”

“No…no. Don’t be. I’ve despaired of meeting a woman who could understand me, who could understand what I do. Now I have. That is all that matters.”