Vixen (4 page)

“Aunt Bea, hi,” Clara said in her sweetest tone. “It’s so good to see you!”

Aunt Bea swept down and gave her a chaste tap of a hug. As she pulled away, her eyes carefully scanned Clara’s face. “Why, my dear, I barely recognize you. What a … woman you’ve become.”

“I’m only a year older than Gloria.”

“And yet, interestingly enough, she’s the one getting married,” her aunt replied. It was a barb intended to sting, Clara was sure of that. “You must be exhausted after your long journey. Claudine, Gloria’s maid, will unpack your luggage for you and—”

“No! I’ll unpack it!” Clara practically shouted. She didn’t know what would be worse: the maid finding the bottle of gin or her diaphragm. Not as if she planned on using the latter. “I mean, I would prefer to do it myself,” she said.

“Of course.” Her aunt raised a suspicious eyebrow. Clara guessed her parents had told Aunt Bea almost everything, but she wasn’t entirely sure. “Why don’t we have some tea while we wait for Gloria to come home? It’s the perfect opportunity for us to get reacquainted.”

Her aunt led her down an endless hallway into a mahogany-paneled drawing room. A table was set with an elaborate spread of tea, coffee, pastries, and a variety of finger sandwiches, with a maid waiting to serve them. Her aunt, uncle, and cousin were New Money, that much Clara knew. And New Money, as opposed to those who had been rich for decades, had a tendency to put everything—including themselves—on display.

Her aunt beckoned for Clara to sit beside her. “Tonight I will be hosting a small dinner party for Gloria’s fiancé.”

“Oh yes, I’m excited to finally meet him,” Clara said. “Since I’m here to help plan their wedding, of course.”

Aunt Bea’s smile vanished. “There is no use
pretending
with me, young lady. We both know I am doing you the biggest favor of your life by taking you in.”

Clara almost spewed her coffee. As if slaving away for prissy Gloria and Aunt Bea were a favor to
Clara
. “You talk as if I were a stray dog—”

“At this point, my dear, you are little better than one.” Aunt Bea lowered her voice to almost a growl. “I know all about what happened in New York.
Everything.
”

Clara felt something tighten in her stomach. What had
really
happened to her in New York was Top Secret—no one besides her roommates knew. Not even her parents. The booze, the jazz, the men, getting thrown into jail—that was all common knowledge. But the Cad … well, her roommates would never tell anyone. A city sister’s oath. Surely her aunt was bluffing. “Aunt Bea, I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

“Don’t be smart with me, Clara. I know all about the arrest, and your night in the New York City penitentiary.”

“Oh.
That.
” Clara breathed a sigh of relief. Not that her jail time was something she was particularly proud of, but at least Aunt Bea didn’t know her darkest secret.

“It is no small matter,” Aunt Bea said with a wave of her hand. “Gloria,
my
Gloria, knows nothing of your year of sin. And I fully intend to keep it that way.”

“As do I, Aunt Bea,” Clara said. “I fully intend to leave my ‘year of sin’ in the past.”

“You can’t fool me that easily. A leopard doesn’t change her stripes.”

“You mean spots?”

“I mean what I say!” Her aunt placed her teacup in its saucer with a shrill clatter.

“But I
have
changed. I mean, just
look
at this outfit!” Clara
protested, referring to the pink blouse that was buttoned up to the base of her neck.

Her aunt cleared her throat. “I certainly hope your behavior is not as cheap as that blouse. If it is, I have no qualms about putting you on the first train out of here.”

“You mean, back to my parents’ house?” Clara asked hesitantly.

“I mean,” Aunt Bea said with a calculated pause, “to the Illinois Girls’ School of Reform. A boarding school for ‘lost girls’ such as yourself.”

Clara put a hand to her chest. “Surely you can’t be serious, Aunt Bea!”

“I already have your parents’ instructions. They have given a deposit to the headmistress, guaranteeing your place at any point during the year.
That
is how serious I am.” Her aunt selected her words as if they were bonbons on a silver platter. “Of course, you can avoid this fate by helping to ensure that your cousin Gloria turns from
Carmody
to
Grey
as smoothly as possible. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Clara wasn’t entirely sure what her aunt meant by all this marriage business—hadn’t the engagement been finalized? And had her parents really paid in advance to send her to a reform school without even telling her? How could they? Clara was about to further question her aunt, but she felt the contents of her stomach roiling—coffee, whiskey, cigarettes, train food. If she didn’t escape within
the next 8.2 seconds, it would end up all over the Persian rug beneath her feet.

She quickly excused herself, sprinting out of the room and up the grand staircase, dashing into a room that was marked with a golden
G
on the door—
Guest
?—and took a deep breath. Now she was feeling better.

Until, that is, the blitz of carnation-pink
everything
actually caused her to gag. The room reeked of rose water and French soap and looked like a life-size dollhouse. The quickest scan of the room confirmed that
G
stood for
Gloria:
An essay on
Great Expectations
, with an A+ marked in red on top of the desk; a silver hairbrush and a pair of pearl studs atop a crystal tray on the vanity; and on the nightstand, a gilt-framed photograph of cherub-cheeked Gloria gazing adoringly at a blandly handsome man, whom Clara could only assume was Sebastian Grey. If her stomach hadn’t already began to settle, Clara would have lost it all over this pink hell.

She slumped down on the pink tulle bedspread, feeling overwhelmed.

Already in this new place, this new city, her Manhattan self—the one she had taken such pains to create from scratch—was slowly slipping away. And though she was reluctant to admit it, perhaps there was something to be said for that. Would taking a break from playing the Fearless Flapper be such a bad idea? Maybe it was the key to finally getting the Cad out of her head. For good.

She would prove Aunt Bea and her parents wrong. Of course she could change! But it would require her to create a whole new role for herself. She would have to improvise as she went along. If this were a play, how would her character be described?

Clara Knowles (18): Sweet-as-pie and innocent-as-a-lamb farm girl, with aspirations to be a humble schoolteacher, comes to the big city for the first time. Country mouse. Wide-eyed and naïve.

Didn’t all the movie magazines say that reinvention was the secret to a “new, improved you”? Perhaps that was the ticket: reinvention. She would leave behind her seedy New York ways, her lost love, her tarnished heart, and don the hat of a Chicago society girl like her cousin Gloria. Out with the old Clara, in with the new.

And God help anyone who got in her way.

LORRAINE

Lorraine had watched her best friend, Gloria, pace frenetically beneath the red and white barbershop pole for the past ten minutes. Frankly, she’d had enough.

“Glo,
calmez-vous!
” Lorraine caught her friend’s petite shoulders, bringing her to a jolting halt. “You’re acting as if you’re going in for surgery!”

“At least they’d put me under if I was,” Gloria whined.

“A true flapper shows more guts than
that
!” Lorraine said, steering Gloria to the door. “If we hang around out here any longer, they’ll start to think we’re a couple of streetwalkers.”

“They’d only think that about you, Raine.”

“Because
I’m
the only one who’s dressed like an adult,” Lorraine said. “Now let’s go!”

A bell clanged as the girls entered the shop. A long row of
men—cheeks covered in marshmallowy lather, suits covered in black smocks—gawked at them in the mirrors that stretched along the wall. Lorraine watched as Gloria’s sea-green eyes widened in panic at the realization that she had just set foot inside a
men’s
salon.

Just then, one of the lathered-up men raised a hand and began to wave.

“Speak of the devil! Well,
two
devils.”

“Marcus?” Lorraine called out. “Is that you?”

Before Lorraine had cajoled her father’s secretary into booking the appointment, she had done her best investigative work to find out that a certain Marcus Eastman was scheduled for a haircut on October fifth at 2:30 p.m. She had then booked Gloria’s appointment for October fifth at 2:45 p.m. sharp.

“Quelle coincidence!”
Lorraine continued, trilling in mock surprise.

“
‘Quelle coincidence’?”
Gloria repeated. “Really, Raine?”

Lorraine gave a little wave to Marcus. “The best coincidences, I always say, are the ones you prepare for.”

Lorraine had nurtured a huge crush on Marcus for years—the type that actually felt as if her heart would be crushed by her rib cage whenever she saw him. She sought out every opportunity to run into him—whether it was convincing Gloria to crash his baseball game, or dragging Gloria over to his house so he could help with her (already completed) mathematics homework. Marcus had yet to
come to the realization that Lorraine was the One, and that their (prospective) fairy-tale romance was a classic fit for the
Chicago Daily Journal
’s Wedding Section. Lorraine blamed Marcus’s almost incestuous relationship with Gloria.

But now that Glo’s diamond-encrusted hands were officially hands-off, it was Lorraine’s great opportunity to make Marcus at last recognize how simply
fabulous
she herself was.

Pretending to ignore Marcus, Lorraine sat Gloria down on a banquette along the wall. “Now remember, nobody’s forcing you to do this. You can always come back another day after—”

“I can?”

“Well, not really. But imagine that you have a choice here.”

“You’re right, I can’t live another day with my hair like this,” Gloria said, twisting her long coppery braid around her finger. “I’m sick of being my parents’ perfect little girl.”

It was frustrating to hear Gloria complain about a life most girls would die for. With her peaches-and-cream beauty, immaculate grades, and angelic singing voice, Gloria had always been
that girl
, the one other parents wished their daughters could be like. But Glo also defied the principles of girl jealousy—it was nearly impossible to hate her. Gloria made life feel like a glass of champagne: sparkly and festive and luxurious. And she was completely unaware of how guilelessly charming she was.

That is, she had been until Sebastian Grey had come
along. All of Chicago was celebrating their engagement as if it were some Hollywood movie, complete with ball gowns and horse-drawn carriages.
Boring
.

Lorraine was happy for Gloria, but …

She’d always been Gloria’s one and only—they did
everything
together. But after Gloria started dating Bastian, she began to cancel her weekly movie dates with Lorraine—a tradition for years—because she “couldn’t get out of” a country club dinner or the latest gathering with Sebastian’s fellow bankers. And then she wasn’t allowed to go with Lorraine to society parties because Sebastian didn’t approve of her being “surrounded by roving bachelors.” If Gloria was already slipping out of her life
now
, what would happen after she actually got married? Lorraine feared she would be left without a best friend. Completely alone.

The week Gloria and Bastian got engaged—just before their senior year began—was the week Lorraine bobbed her hair. She was the first member of their class to go through with it, clinching her place as baby-vamp-in-residence. Lorraine could
perhaps
see a correlation between the events (the engagement came first, the bob came after), but so what? It had given the girls something else to talk about besides Gloria’s fat diamond. Gloria didn’t
always
have to be the one in the spotlight, did she?

Still, she and Gloria were like sisters, and Lorraine could sense that something wasn’t quite right. Why else would Gloria be so determined to cut her hair, knowing full well
Bastian would disapprove? Lorraine knew that, as her best friend, she shouldn’t let Gloria go through with the bob. But another, more sinister part of her was driven to push Gloria just to see what would happen.

“You’re not the only one brave enough to have your hair bobbed, Raine.”

“You couldn’t be more right,” Lorraine agreed, patting Gloria’s hand. “But I’m also not the one who has to sit in the same room tonight as your fiancé, your mother, and, lest we forget, your freak show of a cousin.”

“Ughhhh, don’t remind me!” Gloria groaned, slumping deeper in her seat.

“What is the princess ughing about now?” Marcus walked over to where the girls sat, whipping off his smock and jutting out his newly shaven jaw. “Ladies, what do you think?”

“Not as if you had anything there to begin with,” Gloria teased.