Vixen (2 page)

“Barney-mugging,”
Gloria whispered huskily. Then she blushed, embarrassed to have said out loud the dirtiest term she knew for sex.

The Eye’s slit closed and the door opened. “Welcome to the Green Mill.”

It was as if she had walked right into the rebel side of heaven.

A dense cloud of smoke hung near the ceiling of the windowless room—everyone seemed to be holding a lit cigarette. The smoke was shot through with dazzling beams of light from the stage, and from the sequined dresses and
the crystal
coupes
of champagne. At the front of the room, a mahogany bar overflowed with debonair men in suits and tuxedos, nursing tumblers of amber liquid and puffing thick cigars. And in the plush green booths along the walls were more men, shifty-eyed and menacing even as they chewed on hamburgers and slapped down cards.

And moving among all the men, flitting about in glittering flashes: flappers. That’s what today’s independent women called themselves, Gloria knew. As carefree and glamorous as if they’d been ripped straight out of a glossy fashion spread in
Vogue
or the set of some extravagant Hollywood movie. They were everywhere. Lazily dallying, dangling long cigarettes between their jeweled fingers, showing off their Charleston moves on the dance floor, and flirting shamelessly—all pouty lips and cocktails. With their fiery red boas draped over their bare shoulders, peacock feathers shooting out of silver headdresses, oxblood lipstick painted in perfect bows, and strand upon strand of creamy pearls, sequins, and rhinestones, they looked like exotic birds. And there was so much
skin
. More exposed skin than Gloria had even seen at the beach.

She had never felt so out of place. At Laurelton Girls’ Preparatory, she was the president of the Honor Society, an example for the rest of the girls. But here, Gloria was that poorly dressed, unwashed foreign exchange student from wherever—Arkansas, maybe—whom nobody bothered to eat lunch with. Her peach chiffon sleeveless dress, with its
delicate lace on the shoulder and billowing skirt, was positively flapperesque in the store yesterday. Now it not only looked entirely too long, too plain, but
pink
, of all colors, in this dim lighting! She felt like a Victorian.

She tried to locate Marcus—at least he could give her some consoling compliment he didn’t really mean—but he was nowhere in sight.

A tuxedoed waiter passed with a tray of mismatched teacups, coffee mugs, and glasses. “Do you have any water, by any chance?” she shouted over the music.

He handed her a teacup, and she drank down the clear liquid in a single gulp. It wasn’t until after she swallowed that a sharp burning sensation flooded her throat. She wheezed, and tears leaked from her eyes. Then she remembered why a spot like the Green Mill existed in the first place: so that people could drink.
Illegally
. She had been fourteen when the Prohibition began, so she’d never had alcohol and didn’t know what she was missing. Now that she’d had her first drink—it tasted like a bottle of her ancient grandmother’s perfume—she couldn’t imagine why anyone would miss it in the first place.

Until about two minutes later, when it hit her. Hard.

Everything began to spin: the twirling dancers and swishing glasses and dazzling dresses. Gloria stood paralyzed at the edge of the dance floor, not knowing quite what to do with herself. Feeling and looking like she did, she certainly couldn’t join the Charleston-crazed flappers, no matter how
much she wanted to. She watched them enviously, their lithe bodies gyrating with blissful abandon in an almost reckless loss of control.

Gloria swayed to the melody, trying to memorize the steps. Suddenly, she had the strange sensation that someone was watching her. From the direction of the tiny stage. It was filled by a group of black musicians accompanying the vocalist, who looked stunning in a skintight sequined scarlet dress. Gloria skimmed her eyes across the band: drummer, bass, trumpet, saxophone …

His fingers never strayed from the keys, but the pianist was staring at her. Under the bright stage lights, his face seemed to glow with its own radiance. There was something sensual in the way he played, his entire body rocking back and forth, following his roving hands. His fingers struck the keys like lightning.

As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t look away. When he stopped playing, a flock of girls pressed in around her, blocking her view. Gloria elbowed her way toward the front of the crowd.

“You spilled my drink!” one girl shrieked, holding her mug out in front of her as if it were a ticking bomb. Lustrous strands of pearls were haphazardly wrapped around the girl’s swanlike neck.

Gloria suddenly felt like a gawky ugly duckling. “I’m really sorry, I was just trying to find my friend—”

“Do you even know
who
you’re apologizing to?” asked
another flapper, who was wearing enough black kohl around her eyes to scare a raccoon. “You just spilled Maude Cortineau’s martini. You’re lucky if she doesn’t claw your face off right this second.”

Gloria had heard this name before. Allegedly, Maude had dropped out of school during her junior year and become the unofficial flapper queen of the Chicago speakeasy set. She fit the part—skin like a porcelain doll, in an opalescent taffeta dress that hugged her curveless body, and a jet-black sequined headband as a dramatic contrast to her wispy blond bob.

“It’s copacetic, beauts,” Maude cooed, handing her glass to the mousiest girl in the group. She fingered a lock of Gloria’s hair. “But Rapunzel here better let down her hair somewhere else next time. Somewhere far, far away.
Tu comprends?
”

“Oh no!” Gloria’s hands shot to her head. The inconspicuous French twist—which she’d obsessively secured with only a million bobby pins—had come undone, and her long, wavy locks were loose. She realized that each and every one of the girls was bobbed. Blond or brunette, straight or crimped, it didn’t matter—their hair was cut short. She might as well have showed up wearing her gray and white school uniform and called it a night.

Humiliated, she ducked toward the back of the club and the only refuge: the powder room. En route, she had to pass
through a group of men at the far end of the wraparound bar. As Gloria took a step closer, she saw that these were no ordinary men. Blue pin-striped suits, tilted-up fedoras, clouds of cigar smoke: These were most definitely gangsters.

She recognized one of the men from the tabloids. Carlito Macharelli, the twenty-year-old son of one of the mobsters who owned the place. With his bronze skin and oiled black hair, he looked almost exotic.

Gloria met his steady gaze and felt a damp chill creep over her. She almost thought he was about to say something.

In the powder room, Gloria gazed into the mirror. Her reflection seemed faraway and blurry.
This is what
drunk
must feel like
, she realized. She found a few bobby pins in the bottom of her purse and pinned her hair back as tightly as she could. She would have to hold her head like a statue for the rest of the night, but it would do. Then she readjusted her breast-flattening bandeau brassiere—essential for achieving that boyish flapper figure, but it was cutting off the circulation in her upper body—and fixed the smudge of kohl that had started to bleed onto her cheeks. Now she was ready. Or at least, as ready as she could be.

Fighting the surging tide of the crowd, Gloria stumbled to the bar, grabbing on to an empty stool as if it were a life raft. She closed her eyes, relieved. The only thing calming her was the feathery tranquility of the band’s song, wafting through the room like a sad summer breeze:

The singer’s buttermilk alto sank deep into Gloria’s skin. The song was one of her favorites. Gloria’s voice lessons were strictly limited to operatic arias, but whenever her mother wasn’t home, she turned on the family’s brand-new radio and sang along with the latest popular tunes. Even though she’d only performed publicly for school events and the occasional society party, Gloria was overcome with a fierce longing, wishing it were
her
up there instead, soaking up the spotlight’s beam.

“Hey, no sleeping allowed at my bar!”

Gloria’s eyes shot open. The bartender was leaning over the long mahogany counter, his face inches from her own. “And beauts are no exception to that rule.”

Something about his wild shock of hair, the shade of a dull penny, against the crisp white tuxedo made him seem more like a cartoon character than a real person; strangely, she felt
she could trust him. “I wasn’t sleeping, I was listening.” She forced a half-smile.

“In that case, there’s no
dry
listening allowed at my bar.” He tapped the bar like a drum. “What’ll it be?”

“Um, how ’bout a …” Gloria hesitated. What did a proper flapper ask for in a bar? She was used to ordering a cream soda at the movies. Besides, hadn’t that one accidental drink been enough? “I just came here for the music.”

“That right?” He mopped at the bar with a rag. “If you enjoy the music so much, tell me the name of that singer, and your drink is on the house.”

Gloria’s stomach churned. After the eyelock she’d had with the pianist, she couldn’t bring herself to glance at the stage again, though she could hear the sharply struck notes from the piano rising above the clamor of the crowd.

“I’m Leif, by the way. But everyone calls me … Leif,” he said, raising his chin.

Gloria forced a little laugh.

“How come I don’t recognize you?”

“Because,” she confessed, “it’s my first time here.”

“A virgin!”

“No! I said it’s my first time
here
.”

“Right. A virgin.”

“Just because I’m new doesn’t mean I’m a virgin!” she said, raising her voice as the blasting music came to a sudden halt.

A roar of laughter rose from the crowd. Gloria felt her face grow hot. Would people notice if she crawled underneath the bar stool? She couldn’t have felt more humiliated.

“You just earned yourself that free drink,” Leif said, chuckling. “Though you should know, for next time, that her name is Carmen Diablo. And her accompanist is the best piano player this side of the Mississippi: Jerome Johnson. They say he’s the next Jelly Roll Morton.”

“Jerome Johnson,” she repeated to herself. “I knew that.”

“Sure you did. So, what’ll it be?”

“She’ll have a dirty martini.” The voice, filled with cigar smoke and Southern privilege, came from behind her. She turned. He was startlingly handsome, with slick salt-and-pepper hair and eager eyes.

“So confident for a man who knows nothing of my taste,” she said, keeping her eyes glued to Leif as he shook her martini. After a minute, he strained the liquid from the shaker into a mug, added a spear of olives, and slid it across the bar.

As she picked up her drink, Gloria caught the man glaring strangely at her hand. “Would you like the first sip?” she asked, thinking maybe that was polite in speakeasies.

He frowned. “I think that privilege has been reserved for somebody else.”

Then she caught the focus of his gaze and felt the blood drain from her cheeks. On her left hand sat an enormous diamond and platinum engagement ring. She had forgotten she was wearing it! But even worse, she had forgotten she
was engaged. And if her fiancé, Sebastian Grey III, saw her now, the engagement would be called off. Immediately.

Bastian.

Gloria took a huge gulp of her martini, wincing as the strong, salty liquid slid down her throat. Getting sloshed wouldn’t change the fact that Bastian was a proclaimed leader of the Prohibition’s “Dry Camp.” Or that he condemned speakeasies and all they represented: flappers (“floozies”), bootleg liquor (“Satan’s H
₂
O”), black jazz (“voodoo tom-tom witchery”), and yes, barney-mugging (well, Gloria and Bastian avoided this topic altogether).

Of course, none of this had really mattered before tonight. She had always overlooked Bastian’s conservative values because he was at the top of the “B List”—the unofficial ranking of Chicago’s most eligible bachelors. (The formula was high-level calculus. Among the variables were x = wealth, y = industry, a = estates, b = family, c = swooniness, d = education, and q = size of his [ego, trust fund, etc.].) Bastian was also a blue-blooded import from the British royal family (how distant in relation, nobody really knew), and therefore about as close as one could get to Chicago aristocracy.

But, Gloria rationalized, she had six months before her diamond turned from promise to vow. She twisted off her ring and slipped it into her purse with an uncomfortable laugh.

Salt-and-Pepper gave her newly bare hand a squeeze. “I know what’ll look better between those little fingers of
yours.” From the inside of his suit coat, he retrieved a silver cigarette case, which he flipped open like a traveling salesman.