Vixen (23 page)

Of course, that had all been before Lorraine had kissed Bastian.

Just admitting she’d done such a thing was difficult enough. Especially because her memory of the visit was so hazy. This was what she remembered: a sofa, a hand on her knee, a scratchy face against her cheek. Then that holy moment when their lips hovered on the brink of meeting.

But their clothes had remained on, so nothing besides a
kiss had really happened. And now that Gloria was coming over, Lorraine had to decide: to tell, or not to tell? But aside from the fact that Gloria was marrying a man who would potentially cheat on her, how would Lorraine explain her presence in Bastian’s penthouse? Gloria would not forgive her.

This would throw their friendship over the edge of a cliff. But Lorraine had known Gloria since they were eight years old! Surely Gloria would feel more allegiance to her oldest friend than to some guy—even if he was her fiancé.

Lorraine made up her mind: She needed to confess and be absolved.

When the doorbell rang through the bright halls of the empty house, Lorraine ran downstairs to the foyer, calling out, “I’ll get it, Marguerite!” If Lorraine wanted to shout, she could: It was only her and the servants in the house this weekend.

Lorraine nervously opened the front door with a bright grin. “Good morning!” she said, about to give Gloria a kiss on the cheek.

Then she took in Gloria’s pale, sleep-deprived face. Her sea-glass eyes were dulled, with puffy purple smudges beneath. Even her skin was pasty, her burnt-orange hair almost dirty. “Glo, you look positively—”

“Ruined!” Gloria cried out, her lower lip trembling.

“I was going to say tired.” Then the crying began. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey there, waterworks!”

“I don’t know what to do!” Gloria wailed, the tears streaming out of her eyes and all over Lorraine’s silver silk kimono. “I’ve made a mess of everything!”

“That’s impossible. The Gloria Carmody I know couldn’t make a mess if she tried.” Lorraine ushered her inside. Lorraine never really noticed how empty the house was until someone like Gloria showed up. Ever since her sister, Evelyn, had gone off to Bryn Mawr last year, the house had felt too big and too cold. “You are going to tell me everything, but first let me get you some coffee. How does that sound?”

“Sure,” Gloria said with a sniffle, wiping her nose on her celery-colored sleeve.

“Go sit in the sunroom. I’ll be back in a second.”

In the vast kitchen, Lorraine instructed Marguerite, the head housemaid, to make a strong pot of coffee and to slice two pieces of that lemon meringue pie with the graham cracker crust. Lorraine was on a faddish Hollywood eighteen-day diet, but nothing calmed a girl like comfort food, so she figured she could depart from the diet for the fourth day in a row to help Gloria in her time of need.

What a lucky break!

Now Lorraine could prove that she was the devoted best friend, provide a shoulder to cry on, and shower Gloria with unconditional love and attention. That way, when the time came for Lorraine to confess her own mess, Gloria would be quick to side with her.

She found Gloria where she had sent her, sitting droopily
on a chintz-cushioned bench in the solarium. It was a pretty room, all glass walls and wrought-iron benches and great big leafy things that Lorraine had tried and failed to learn the names of—a tree was a bush was a plant, as far as her brain was concerned.

Marguerite followed her in with the tray of coffee and pie and placed it on the table in front of the girls.

“Mmm, I feel better already,” Gloria said, surveying the pie. She seemed calmer, though the crying had left her cheeks blotchy.

Lorraine handed her a fork. “Now spill.”

“Whatever I am about to tell you, promise not to judge me?” Gloria said, scraping up a dollop of meringue.

“Consider this the no-judgment solarium.”

“Keep in mind, I didn’t keep this from you because I don’t trust you—of course I do! You’re my best friend. I guess it was just”—Gloria let out a deep sigh—“if no one else knew, it was as if it weren’t really happening.”

Gloria then launched into a minor epic about the Green Mill and Jerome Johnson. The story had all the makings of a racy romance, but it ended up much tamer than Lorraine had imagined. Or, to be perfectly frank, had hoped.

“Glo, you can tell me,” Lorraine said, licking her fork. “What is
really
going on between you and Jerome? It’s a little hard for me to believe he just
gave
you this job.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man has
piano
hands, Glo,” Lorraine insisted.

Gloria slouched down on the cushioned bench, squeezing a pillow against her chest. “Okay, so he’s touched me—”

“I knew it!”

“But in a completely professional way.”

“Say no more!” Lorraine exclaimed, tucking her knees beneath her on the bench and bouncing a little. “I mean,
do
say more. Say everything.”

Gloria poked her. “Raine, I’m being serious. It’s not like that. He’s tough with me—sometimes a little too tough.”

“That’s an obvious indication that he likes you. Men who don’t know how to deal with their feelings channel them into meanness,” Lorraine explained, thinking of how Marcus behaved toward her. “No matter how old or mature they may be.”

“But can I tell you something daring?”

“More daring than the fact that Jerome is
black?
” Lorraine said, breaking off a piece of the thick pie crust.

Gloria blushed. “Lorraine!”

“Well, someone had to say it!” Was Gloria really going to ignore the biggest issue of all? “I’m not blind, you know. What would your mother say if she ever found out?”

“Nothing, because she never will,” Gloria said, kneading her hands. “I know it makes absolutely no sense, but I’m really
attracted
to him. I can’t help it. In a way I’ve never felt about Bastian.”

The inevitable mention of Bastian made Lorraine squirm. “Not even in the beginning?”

“No. There was never the same spark, I guess you could say.” Gloria frowned. “Not like the one I feel when I’m around Jerome.”

Lorraine had felt a spark from Bastian. Their kiss had been electric. She picked up her coffee and gulped it down. “Ow!” she cried as the liquid scalded her throat. She wagged her burned tongue. “For crying out loud!”

“Are you okay?”

“I always tell Marguerite not to make it
très
 … hot! Why is it so hard to follow the rules? I mean, instructions.” Lorraine daintily set the cup down, trying to regain her composure. “I’m sorry—continue. Bastian. I thought you were so in love with him. All those times you called me, after your dates. And coming into homeroom starry-eyed …?”

Gloria looked down at her empty hands. “I was in love with the idea of him—with the whole checklist. Not actually
him
. But really, it was an arranged marriage from the start—he
never
loved me, even when I thought he did.”

Lorraine narrowed her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m just a business deal he signed off on, Raine. A deal he made with my parents! They’re getting divorced, and my mother thinks it will save our name, or some hokum like that—”

“Back up: Since when are your parents divorcing?”

“Since my father had an affair.” Gloria stabbed her fork into the pie. “I swear to God, if Bastian ever touched another girl, I would get a gun and shoot him dead. And the girl, too.”

Lorraine winced. “But, Gloria, you aren’t exactly the picture of fidelity, fantasizing about a black musician—”

“Fantasizing and doing are two different things, Raine. I thought my father was a decent man. I thought Bastian was a decent man. But now I’m not so sure.”

This was Lorraine’s big moment—it was now or never. Gloria
had
to know the truth. If she had already turned against Bastian, wouldn’t knowledge of the kiss (described, of course, to make Lorraine look like the victim of his forceful advances) only confirm these suspicions?

“If that’s the case, then you should know something,” Lorraine began slowly, picking at her cuticles. “This is hard for me to tell you, because the last thing I want to do is sound jealous.”

“Jealous of which—the arranged marriage or the black musician?”

“Jealous of—of—” The confession was on the tip of Lorraine’s tongue.

But she knew that girls were like elephants when it came to men: They never forgot. If Gloria went through with the marriage, every time she kissed Bastian, she would automatically think of Lorraine—and she would never trust her again. So Lorraine might as well say
au revoir
to their friendship—now, when it was getting back to what it once had been and always should be: the two of them curled up on the cushions together, taking turns at baring their souls.

No. She wanted Gloria back. Best friends before boy-friends. Always.

“Jealous of none of the above!” Lorraine announced. “I’ve just been feeling left out, Glo, as if you’ve been deliberately excluding me from your life. The Green Mill with Marcus was one thing—”

Gloria’s brow furrowed. “Oh, God, that was the beginning of the end.”

Lorraine needed to lay on the guilt. “You know I would have never let this happen to you had you not hidden it from me.”

“I’m so sorry, Raine—”

“Because you know I’ve
never
hidden anything from you.”

“I know you haven’t,” Gloria said. “I really am so sorry. I shut you out when I needed you—but now I need you more than ever. I have no one else.”

“So now I have to ask the difficult question.” Lorraine eyed Gloria’s mammoth diamond. “What have you decided to do?”

Gloria fell back against the cushions. “I don’t think I
have
a decision to make. I’ll be Mrs. Grey before I know it, whether I like it or not.”

If Gloria meant to go through with that loveless marriage, Lorraine certainly wasn’t about to stop her. She’d have her best friend back for good. “You and I both know that’s the wisest choice, at the end of the day.”

“Just promise me you’ll still be my bridesmaid?” When Lorraine hesitated, thinking of having to face Bastian across the aisle at the wedding, Gloria added, “Chanel is designing the bridesmaids’ dresses!”

Lorraine drew Gloria into her arms. “You know I’d never say no to Chanel,” she declared over Gloria’s shoulder. “I do, Gloria! I do!”

“I didn’t even know your house
had
a library,” Gloria said, scanning the floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves of books. “Or that your father drank.”

“Every father drinks,” Lorraine said. “Or wishes he did.” She was poking around in the glass-fronted bookcase where her father kept his first editions.

“What
are
you looking for?”

“Daddy has a first edition of
The Secret Garden
, which he had Frances Hodgson Burnett sign to me. Though he kept it for himself.”

“That seems selfish.”

“That’s my father. Ah, here it is!” The book was in a musty pile at the bottom of the bookcase. “This is where he hides the key. He thinks he’s clever.” She opened the front cover and shook, and a heavy iron key fell from the binding.

“Well,
my
father never drank,” Gloria said reflectively, flipping through a copy of something called
Arms and the
Man
. “Or he never did with us, anyway.” She shuddered. “But he probably did with his slutty New York chorus girl.”

“Can you imagine barney-mugging someone our father’s age? All that saggy, wrinkly—”

“Raine, stop!” Gloria covered her ears. “I may need to go wash my brain out with soap.”

Lorraine moved aside the
S
volume of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“
S
for
secret
. You may be seeing a theme here.” Behind the volume was a large keyhole, and she inserted the iron key and turned. With a soft thunk, the entire bookshelf swung outward and a light came on.

“Wow,” Gloria said. “It’s almost pretty.”

The shallow cabinet behind the door contained more shelves, these holding drinking glasses and decanters of liquor. The glasses and decanters were dusty, and the labels—where there were any—were hard to read, but the cut-crystal glasses and the old decanters glittered in the light like jewels.

Lorraine could tell that Gloria was impressed. “This morning calls for one thing and one thing only.”

“Running away?” Gloria said. “A duel between Bastian and Jerome with me as the prize?”

“No, a Buck’s Fizz!” Lorraine’s older sister, Evelyn, had told her the Bryn Mawr girls made them in the morning before going to football games. It sounded fun and sophisticated. She handed a few bottles to Gloria, then hitched up her skirt and revealed her lavender garter.

“Oh, damn—I forgot! Your dear mother confiscated my favorite flask. I usually keep it here, snug against my leg.”

Gloria winced. “Sorry, Raine—I’m sure she’s hidden it somewhere in the house. I’ll get it back for you.”

“No matter. Daddy has plenty.” Lorraine tapped her fingers against an array of flasks on the shelves. “Eeny meeny miny Tiffany!” She plucked out a slim sterling silver one and uncapped it. Setting it atop
The Secret Garden
, she poured some cognac into it. “But first I need to refuel.”