Vixen (24 page)

Gloria watched her curiously. “Don’t you mean refill?”

“Refill, refuel, refresh, same thing.”

“Since when do you carry a flask, Raine? Wait, let me rephrase that: Since when do you carry a flask on a Saturday morning?”

“Where else would I carry my booze? Seriously, Glo, I can’t very well hide
this
in my garter!” She hefted the cognac bottle.

“But won’t your father notice it’s missing?”

“The only thing he would realize was missing from this entire house is in the
other
cabinet.” Lorraine pulled down another book and slid another key from its binding. “First edition,
War and Peace
, in Russian. He is
so
obvious. I’m sure the key to my mother’s chastity belt is in his copy of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
!”

“Raine! Your mother does not have a chastity belt!” Gloria laughed, and Lorraine felt it as a personal victory.

“Not that I know of, but she doesn’t need one. Have you seen her without her makeup?”

Gloria laughed again and covered her mouth.

Working a hidden latch, Lorraine eased aside another bookcase. Racked in rows along the wall behind it were a score of guns. “Bang, bang, you’re dead.”

There were guns of all shapes and sizes—shotguns and long rifles and one with a flared end like a trumpet. “What in God’s name is
that
?” Gloria asked, all thoughts of Bastian and Jerome gone at last.

“It’s called a blunderbuss,” Lorraine said. “I think they’re used to kill elephants.”

And tucked in between the rifles were handguns. There were enormous revolvers and short snub-nosed pistols and cute little two-shot Derringers. The cabinet reeked of oil and gunpowder. Gloria sniffed loudly. “These smell—have they been
fired
recently?” she asked.

Lorraine took a nip of cognac—really, it went well with the pie and coffee—and said, “Sure. Daddy likes to have target practice out back. Always keeps the guns loaded even though Mommy tells him someone’s going to get hurt one day.”

She dragged her hand along the lean, oiled muzzles, triggers ready for an index finger.

Gloria fidgeted nervously. “When did your father join the Mob?”

“Are you kidding? My father was a member of a Princeton eating club,” Lorraine said, taking down a smaller automatic pistol. “He just collects them.” She held the gun at arm’s length and sighted down the barrel. “Bang, bang,” she repeated.

“May I?” Gloria said, and Lorraine handed over the pistol. “It’s heavier than I thought it would be.”

“I know,” Lorraine said. “First you have to do this.” She showed Gloria how to unlock the safety catch.

Then Gloria took the pistol and pointed it at the wall. She fingered the trigger.

“Whoa there!” Lorraine almost shouted. “It’s loaded!” She took the gun away. “You’ve got to be careful with these things!”

Lorraine replaced the gun, closed both bookcases, and slipped the keys back into their respective books. Then she palmed the flask and headed toward the door. “Come on.”

Gloria was still staring at the bookcases.

“Glo? Did you hear what I said?” Lorraine flicked the lights on and off. “Fizz time.”

“Right, Buck’s Fizz,” Gloria said, taking a step back from the case. “What are we celebrating, again?”

Lorraine wrapped her arm around Gloria. “Loyalty, of course.”

And for the first time in her life, Lorraine wished she meant what she said.

GLORIA

Gloria had arrived.

“Red’s here!” Evan, the trumpet player, blared his horn from the corner of the greenroom, announcing Gloria’s arrival. “It’s about time!”

He was the only one who seemed to notice. There was a cozy chaos going on backstage; everyone else was busy getting ready by seeming not to get ready at all.

Evan grinned and shrugged. Then he went back to softly playing along with a record that was spinning on the gramophone—Joe “King” Oliver and his band. Over in the corner, Tommy the bass player, already dressed in his cheap tuxedo, was in the middle of a heated discussion with Chuck the drummer, who was lying on the couch in his undershirt and suspendered trousers—“If that’s three-quarter time,
daddy-o, then you’re Frederick Douglass,” he said, before accepting a bottle of bourbon from Chuck and taking a sip. Two light-skinned black flappers sat, bored, in the center of the room, smoking pencil-long cigarettes. One was in a sequined, ruffled black getup with a peacock feather jutting out of her hair; the other wore a canary-yellow number with rhinestone trim. Their legs were bare and shamelessly resting on the edge of the coffee table. Sitting between them on the coffee table itself was the band’s trombone player, Bix, but he seemed blind to the room, just kept working the slide, drawing out notes and bending them and then scowling at his instrument as if it had betrayed him. The room was a swamp of smoke and popcorn, booze and sweat, but there was a preshow energy buzzing like cicadas on a hot summer morning.

Gloria stood in the doorway, out of breath from the stress of sneaking out of her mother’s house and finding her way downtown. This time, she had told her mother she was going with Clara to a showing of a new movie.

Now she was here, with a half hour till the first set, her pianist nowhere to be seen.

“Does anyone know where Jerome is?” she asked. She had to repeat herself at a shout before anyone noticed.

The band members shrugged, but the girl in the yellow dress nodded. “He always disappears before a show,” she said in a husky voice.

Evan walked over. “Want me to find him for you?”

“No, I’ll find him myself,” Gloria said. She was carrying a dress bag and a case of makeup that felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. She needed to put it down before she collapsed.

Was she expected to change in front of all these people? She knew musicians were loose and uninhibited, but she needed a moment to herself to focus and warm up. “Is there maybe a bathroom or a closet or just a dark corner somewhere I can change? Alone?”

“At the end of the hall—the diva gets her own dressing room.” Evan winked, knocking her cheek lightly with his fist. “You ready for your big debut?”

Gloria gulped. “Yeah, if I don’t keel over.”

“If you do, just make sure you aim for the floor, not the drums. Those things cost a fortune!”

The “hallway” was just a narrow space that ran behind the back curtain to another little area where a mop sat in a bucket, and where chairs were stacked in an untidy pile. Gloria opened one door and found a foul-smelling bathroom. Behind another door was a tiny square room that held a sink, a clothes rack, a mirror ringed with lights over a small counter, and a wobbly stool. There was wiring exposed in the ceiling. Well, what did she expect, the lounge for the Ziegfeld Follies?

In the doorway, Gloria suddenly tuned in to the muffled roar of the crowd beyond, which only made her heart pound faster, joining in with her already buzzing head and jittery limbs.

She caught her breath in the stuffy dark.
This is it
, she told herself.
This is the night when everything changes
.

“The star’s dressing room!” said someone behind her.

Startled, she fumbled and dropped her dress bag, set down her case, and turned.

Three people had come backstage: Carlito Macharelli, a tired-looking young woman, and a child in a pin-striped suit. Gloria squinted into the dark. No, not a child, but a tiny little man, like a gangster made on a smaller scale. The midget openly eyeballed her. It was unnerving, so she turned the full wattage of her smile on his boss.

“Mr. Macharelli!” Gloria said.

“Call me Carlito,” he said. He gestured at the midget and the flapper. “The little one’s Thor. He’s small, but he packs a big punch. And this here’s one of my newest girls. I wanted to introduce her to you before you went out. Give her a little backstage preview before the big production. Maude, say hello to Miss Gloria Carson. She’s a farm girl with a real bright future.”

“Sure, Carlito,” the girl said, and stepped forward.

Maude Cortineau. Gloria would have gasped if she could have breathed at all. She recognized the famous flapper from her first night at the Green Mill, when Gloria had accidentally
spilled Maude’s drink. Gloria could only pray that her haircut and makeup and fashionable dress would be disguise enough. She didn’t want Maude to recognize her and spill the beans that “Gloria Carson” was a fake.

But Maude just stared at the sequins on Gloria’s red shoes. She was wearing a wrinkled party dress, a shimmery silver sleeveless number that was belted with loops of black beads and had a fringe that rattled when she walked. Maude looked worn out. And scared. “Pleasure to meet you,” Maude said, never looking up. This was not the same girl Gloria had first met: Maude, the sheba of underground Chicago. It was as though the life had been drained from her.

If Carlito could steal the sparkle from Maude, what else could he do?

“Give us a ditty,” Carlito said. “Sing us something ah-ka—ah-ka-whatever it is. You know, without music.”

Was he serious? “Um, I don’t have anything ready,” Gloria said.

“Come on, songbird,” Thor the midget said. His voice was raspy and deep, as if he gargled with broken glass. “Let’s hear you tweet.” He produced a pack of cigarettes and lit two, then handed one to Carlito. “I like me the pretty songs.”

“I’m not kidding around,” Carlito said.

Gloria closed her eyes. She thought of Jerome and let the club’s hubbub and the cigarette smoke and the dark of the backstage area fall away. She thought of a silly little
song from the Great War, and in a grim, throaty whisper, she sang,

In the silence afterward, she heard the weak applause of three people.

“She was good, wasn’t she?” Carlito asked Maude, squeezing her bare shoulder.

“Sure, Carlito, she was oodles of good. She was hotsy-totsy.” Maude at last lifted her eyes from the floor and looked right at Gloria. But there was nothing much left of the old Maude Cortineau in her gaze, and she didn’t seem to see Gloria at all.

Carlito snapped his fingers and the midget produced a rose from behind his back.

“This,” Carlito said, “is for you. Maybe you can wear it in your hair or something.” His expression was cold. “A lot of
people are counting on you, kiddo. Make sure you knock ’em dead out there tonight.” Without another word, he turned and walked through the curtains, followed by Maude and the creepy little midget.

“I’ll knock ’em dead, all right,” Gloria said to herself.

In the dressing room, she flipped on the lights ringing the foggy mirror.

Deep breath.
Do something normal
, she told herself. Applying makeup would be a good first step, she thought, getting out her cosmetics case. The more she thought about Carlito and Jerome, the spotlight and the song set, the audience—the more her stomach clenched up.

Now was not the time to panic. Except that she
was
panicking.

She went to the sink, splashed cold water on her face, and studied herself in the mirror. Without makeup, she was all pale eyes, round apple cheeks, and a tiny pimple on her chin. She looked young. She
was
young. What was she doing here, singing for gangsters? Weeks ago she wouldn’t have dared set foot inside a speakeasy, and now she was headlining at one. She wasn’t the same Gloria she used to be.

She picked the rose up from the counter, sniffed it. But it had hardly any scent. It was old, already wilting, just like everything else in this place.

It helped, slightly, to imagine her friends out there in the audience. She had promised Lorraine she wouldn’t keep any more secrets from her, and she was sticking to her vow. And
inviting Lorraine meant inviting Marcus. He was the one who’d first brought her to the Green Mill, after all. Clara’s presence she could live without, but nothing was perfect. She just hoped that none of them would expose her true identity: Gloria Carmody, fiancée, debutante, socialite. Here she was just Gloria Carson, the mysterious ingenue with no strings attached. “Right?” she said to her reflection.