Vixen (5 page)

Marcus bent down so his cheeks were at her eye level. “Go ahead, you know you want to feel.”

Gloria caressed his cheek with the back of her hand. “Oh, Marcus, could you be any more of a cake-eater?”

Lorraine watched and felt a pang of jealousy. Why did Gloria get to have both Bastian
and
Marcus? Wasn’t one enough?

“You’ve got to feel this, Raine,” Gloria said, taking Lorraine’s fingers and guiding them across Marcus’s jaw. “Baby smooth, right?”

It was a simple movement, really, but Lorraine felt as though she were about to explode. She was touching Marcus! And he was letting her! Zing! Marcus blinked his beautiful, long lashes in her direction as she felt the cleft of his chin—so sturdy and square. Her stomach flip-flopped.

“Well?” Marcus asked.

“So … so … 
smooth
,” Lorraine said.

Gloria snorted. “Marcus can’t risk giving Alissa a stubble-burn tonight.”

Lorraine sat up straight. “Alissa—Wait, Alissa Stock? That blond freshman who got her wiggle on with half the football team? What happened to Sybil Quince?”

“Where have you been? That was
weeks
ago,” Gloria said.

Marcus ran a finger along the inside of his collar. “Sybil threatened to kill me after she heard about Muriel Trethewey.”

“How many girls
do
you date?” Gloria said.

He shrugged. “My dance card is full.”

To Lorraine, this news was about as indigestible as her mother’s egg salad. She knew Marcus had a reputation for being a playboy, for breaking girls’ hearts left and right, but there was no way she could compete with the Alissas of the world. Lorraine, after all, wasn’t a quiff. She didn’t sleep around. She only had eyes for one guy: Marcus.

Raine’s thoughts were interrupted by François, le Barber Extraordinaire, waddling over to where they sat.

“Oh,
mon dieu.
” He pursed his lips and exhaled a very French
pfffffffff. “Dîtes-moi:
Is le female illiteracy rate on ze
rise? Or did you choose to ignore le sign that says
men’s
barbershop?” He gave Gloria’s braid a tug and she yelped.

“François, you don’t remember me?” Lorraine asked, fluffing her bob.

He twisted his black handlebar mustache. “Ah,
mais oui!
” He leaned in and gave her a fond
bisous-bisous
on both cheeks. “You are looking like—how do you say?—one hot tomato!”

Lorraine beamed, thrilled to be complimented in front of Marcus. She pointed at Gloria and said, “She’s here for the bob.”

“With those finger waves?” Gloria said, her lower lip quivering.

Lorraine’s eyes widened. Her own haircut was of the ordinary variation—straight and slick. “Are you sure?”

“How’s the big cheese, Sebastian Grey the Third, going to feel about that?” Marcus asked. “He’s always struck me as the king of the prigs.”

“Well,” Gloria said, eyeing her long red locks in the mirror, “if I
am
going to sin, I may as well sin badly. I mean, boldly.”

“Come on, Rouge, let us make your daddy
très miserable
.” François threw a black smock around Gloria’s neck and pulled her toward the back of the shop.

Lorraine and Marcus were left alone together. This was her chance to prove that she could fill Gloria’s place once Gloria was married. Or even better, be something more than
Gloria ever had been. And she could reveal her big secret. It was so big, even Gloria didn’t know. As of 11:57 a.m. (or 11:59, if you didn’t include her attack on the mailman), Lorraine had been accepted at Barnard College. Which was the sister school of Columbia University. Which was where Marcus was studying next fall.

If only he weren’t flipping through a magazine as if she weren’t even there.

She moved closer, crossing her legs so that her kneecaps (“most underused erotic body part” according to
Jazz Baby Magazine
) were exposed. “Bastian is going to put her under house arrest when he sees that bob.”

“Yeah, what a prune pit,” Marcus said, not bothering to look up.

“I didn’t have to worry when
I
got
my
hair bobbed.” Lorraine selected a red lollipop from a jar on a side table and unwrapped it. “I was actually the first girl in our class to do it.”

“You must have been trying to prove yourself to someone, then.”

“Well, not so much to prove”—she paused, popping the lollipop into her mouth—“as to
please
someone.”

At that, Marcus finally raised his eyes. “And did it? Please
him
?”

Clearly, pulling the lowest card in every girl’s deck—jealousy—was the only way to up her game. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

Marcus leaned in closer, removing the lollipop from her mouth. “So there was kissing, then?”

Lorraine could feel her pulse quickening as she stared into his bottomless blue eyes. “I—I—I—”

He stopped her stammer by planting the lollipop back in her mouth. “I’d better go check up on Gloria.”

Lorraine’s heart plummeted. One second she could have sworn he was flirting with her, and then he couldn’t get away from her fast enough! She couldn’t figure it out: She’d spritzed herself with the Fragonard perfume her father had brought her from Paris, and she was wearing her little black Patou day dress. Everything was perfect. Or was it?

Perhaps it was the setting. A barbershop wasn’t particularly sexy. Certainly not the right place to reveal herself. When she told Marcus that she loved him, everything had to be Just Right. Mood lighting. Good music. It Girl dress.

Lorraine got up to join Marcus. “Better make sure the princess is still alive,” she said.

François was busy snipping the finishing touches into Gloria’s hair when Lorraine approached. He swiveled Gloria around so that they had a full view of her.
“Voilà! C’est magnifique, non?”

Gloria’s hair swept across her forehead like a crinkled autumn leaf, billowing over one sea-green eye before delicately ending in a soft edge along the line of her jaw. She blinked at them with wide, apprehensive eyes. “Oh no, do I look like a boy?”

“More like a movie star!” Marcus whistled.

Lorraine glimpsed her own bob in the mirror and nearly cried. How was it that she suddenly looked like a dowdy Joan of Arc and Gloria looked like a doe-eyed starlet?

She pushed her jealousy away. It wasn’t Gloria’s fault that her hair turned out so smashing, right? Lorraine kissed her best friend’s cheek. “You look like the bee’s knees, darling!”

“You’d better not be lying,” Gloria said, standing up from the chair.

François brushed the stray hairs off her shoulders. “Even if they were, is too late now.”

“C’est vrai,”
Gloria said. “All we need now, François, is a little bathtub gin to celebrate your masterpiece.”

“Since when do you drink gin?” Lorraine laughed. “Wait, since when do you drink,
period
?”

“I mean … hypothetically speaking.”

Lorraine caught Gloria shooting Marcus a furtive glance. It was the look she gave to her confidants, a look that said,
Only you know my secret
. There was nothing Lorraine hated more than being kept on the outside of a secret. Well, nothing she hated more than being kept on the outside of a secret that included
Marcus
.

“Wow. My head feels so much lighter. Is that normal?” Gloria asked nervously, smoothing her hair down with her hand.

Her
bare
left hand.

Lorraine gasped. “Why aren’t you wearing your engagement ring?”

The color drained from Gloria’s cheeks. “I must have forgotten to put it back on after—”

“After we went swimming yesterday!” Marcus was all too quick to fill in.

Lorraine frowned. “Gloria, you went to the library with me after school yesterday, remember? Unless the Oak Lane Country Club pool was suddenly open after five for the first time since Roosevelt was president.” A thought that haunted Lorraine’s nightmares came to her: “Are—are you two having an affair?”

“No!” Gloria and Marcus exclaimed simultaneously.

“That’d be like dating my
brother
,” Gloria said, horrified.

François clucked like a French chicken. “I think I’ll give this
ménage à trois
some space,
non?
” He ambled away.

Lorraine sat in the empty swivel chair next to Gloria. “Spill,” she commanded. “I need to know everything.”

“All right,” Gloria said, extending her pinkie finger. “But first you have to swear you won’t tell.”

Lorraine groaned. “Are we still going to be pinkie-swearing after you’re married?” She hooked her finger with Gloria’s and kissed the end. “Fine, I swear.”

“Okay, so you know how my cousin is coming to ‘help out,’ thanks to the genius idea of my mother? Well, she is a total
reuben
—I mean, she’s basically never left her
hometown in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Last I heard, she wants to be a schoolteacher. Maybe even a
nun.
”

“A schoolteaching nun!” Marcus exclaimed. “The horror!”

“The last time she visited, she barely did anything but read Darwin’s
Origin of Species
the entire time,” Gloria said. “So we
tried
to get her to at least go with us to the movies, and she said she wasn’t allowed to because, get this—” Gloria rolled her eyes. “Because her parents think the movies are
immoral.
”

At that, the three of them laughed so loudly that one of the old men at the front of the shop said, “I say! You three keep it down a little!”

Lorraine was confused. “What does any of this have to do with your missing ring?” She was tired of being a third wheel to Marcus and Gloria’s antics.

Gloria began slowly. “Because last night was my last chance for fun before the nun arrives, so—”

“We snuck out under cover of darkness, and we intrepidly made our way into the big, bad city, where we went to the Green Mill—”

“And it turns out not to be green at all. The only thing green in it—”

“Was our dear Miss Carmody here, and not just because she can’t quite handle her liquor.” Marcus grimaced. “Men threw themselves at her.
Bodily
. But every single one of them crashed against the rocks—I mean, the
rock
—on her finger.”

“Which is why I had to take off my ring!” Gloria finished
with a small clap of her hands. “Not because I am interested in other men, but—”

“I beg your pardon? Stop.” Lorraine didn’t know where to begin with her questions. Not only had her best friend gone to the Green Mill without her, but she’d gone with
Marcus
instead? Lorraine felt like ripping the newly shortened hair right out of Gloria’s head.

But Marcus was there, and she wanted him to think she was … nice. So she smiled sweetly and said, “I mean, you set foot in the Green Mill dressed like—like you normally dress?”

“You’re wondering why they even let her through the door,” Marcus said, patting down his hair. “Doubtless it was the handsome devil at her elbow.”

“Hardly!” Gloria said. “Anyway, it
was
mortifying. I looked like such a bluenose. And that is why we now have to go back lickety-split, so that this time I can actually show my face. Proudly. Oh, and you can come with us, of course.”

“And we mustn’t forget dear Country Clara,” Marcus added.

Gloria let out a little huff of disgust. “She would probably run off to the convent forever if she even heard us
mention
the Green Mill, let alone actually usher her through its doors.”

“Precisely!” he said roguishly. “One prissy toe of hers in the Green Mill, and she’ll be scampering to catch the next train back to Hicksville.”

A wicked grin spread across Gloria’s face. “Tell me more.”

“So I was thinking,” Marcus continued, working the pomade into his hair, “that I, say, make Country Clara fall in love with me—”

“And then you break her like a twig!” Lorraine offered. “I mean, in a nice way.”

“It seems Miss Dyer and I are in agreement,” Marcus said, winking at her. Lorraine could have swooned.

“I don’t know,” Gloria said, tilting her head and watching her hair move in the mirror. “Doesn’t that seem excessively cruel? Even for you, Marcus.”

“What is cruel, my little red morning glory, is that your cousin is here to ruin your life before—”

“Before Bastian does!” Lorraine chimed in.

“I was going to say before your wedding. And besides, the girls around here are such a bore. Some fresh blood will really spice up my game. I know you think I’m horrid, but it’s true. Dating is like a sport, and as with every sport … practice makes perfect.”

“Now I’m beginning to see why Columbia accepted you.” Gloria leaned forward and ruffled Marcus’s unmoving hair. “Besides the building named after your father, that is.”

Lorraine closed her eyes, wishing
she
were the one running her fingers through Marcus’s golden locks.

“Normally I wouldn’t approve of such a cruel plan,” Gloria mused, “but Clara is an absolute bore. The last thing I want is for her to ruin my wedding.” She extended her hand
and shook Marcus’s. “I applaud your plan, Mr. Eastman. Let’s get Clara out of here for good!”

“Hear, hear!” Marcus said, turning to Lorraine. “Raine? You in?”

Am I ever
, Lorraine thought. Everything began to crystallize: She would help Marcus with his plan to break Clara’s heart. Only, really, she would be working to make Marcus fall in love with
her
. Against the risqué background of a speakeasy, the stage would be set for romantic sparks to fly. Their love would bloom, and they would head off to New York City in the summer. Together.

It was foolproof.

Lorraine took Gloria’s hand and, along with Marcus, headed for the door.

In that moment, with her best friend and her future husband close to her side, Lorraine was happier than she’d been in ages. Everything seemed about to turn around. And in her favor, for once.

GLORIA