Bright Young Things
THE HANDFUL OF WEDDING GUESTS WERE ALREADY assembled in the clapboard Lutheran church on Main Street, and though they had been waiting for a quarter hour, any stray passerby might have noticed a lone girl still loitering outside. It was past four o'clock on that sleepy Union, Ohio, Sunday, and the dappled afternoon sun played on her high, fine cheekbones and on the strands of her loosely braided honey-and-bark-colored hair. The girl was just eighteen, and had graduated from Union's one-room high school two weeks earlier. If that passerby had bothered to ponder her eyes -- which were the sweet, translucent brown of Coca-Cola in a glass -- he might have recognized in them a brewing agitation.
She let those eyes drift to the glaze of sun between the tree branches overhead; her lips parted, and she let out a breath. The homemade dress she wore was of simple white cotton, and though the style was not entirely appropriate for the event -- she had tried, but mostly failed, to sew it in the shorter, sportier fashion now worn in cities -- the color marked her as the bride.
Through the narrow windows she could see the guests in their pews and the tall figure of the only boy in Union who had ever paid her any attention, standing patiently at the altar. He was wearing his father's black suit, and his sand-colored hair was a little overgrown and rough around his face, which was big and pleasing but not yet a man's. The sight of him made her agitation worse, and she drew back a little and closed her eyes. Everything had happened so quickly. She hadn't really believed there would be a wedding until that morning, when she woke up and it suddenly dawned on her that her situation was quite real.
"Cordelia!"
She turned at the sound of her name and saw her best friend, Letty Haubstadt, whose eyes stood out like two pure blue planets against the white oval of her face. Her dark hair was parted down the middle and pinned back, and her petite body was clothed in the same black dress and black tights and black shoes her father always insisted she wear. The sight of Letty reassured Cordelia some, even if her garb was a little funereal for a wedding, and she managed to almost smile.
"I'm sorry it took me so long," Letty told her, smiling more broadly. Then she untucked the folded yards of mosquito netting that she'd been carrying under her arm, shook it out, and stood on her tiptoes to arrange it over the taller girl's head. "I know your aunt says you don't deserve one, but I just think it wouldn't be a wedding if the bride wasn't wearing a veil."
There was a sharp rapping on the windowpane, and both girls looked up to see Cordelia's aunt Ida, her thin lips set in a hard grimace, looking down at them expectantly. Cordelia gave her aunt a curt nod and turned back to her friend.
Letty handed her a bouquet of yellow wildflowers, which she must have picked on the way there, and then asked, "Are you ready?"
Cordelia glanced up to make sure her aunt had returned to her seat, and then pulled the netting away from her face so that she could look directly at her friend. She swallowed hard, and said, "Let's go tonight."
Letty's smile fell, and her face grew pale. "Tonight?"
"You'll never be a star if you stay here." Cordelia fixed her friend with an intense gaze. She was merely saying out loud what they both knew to be true. "The train leaves at six fifty-two from the Defiance Station."
There was only one train a day in that part of the state that would carry you all the way to New York City -- a fact Cordelia had known for years. She knew the timetable by heart, for running away was an obsessive fantasy that had carried no special urgency until the dawning hours of that particular day, when the notion that she was to be married had ceased to seem absurd and faraway, and she had begun to apprehend it with a kind of dread. By the time she'd risen to help her aunt with breakfast, the plot to leave had taken on a decided shape, and though her mind had pulsed with it all morning, Cordelia had not imagined she might be brave enough to go until she said it out loud to Letty.
"Tell us," chorused her roommates, as they pushed themselves up and inclined themselves toward her. But she was already hurriedly crossing the alcove by the entry. She pulled a cocoa-colored felt cloche over her bob and pulled open the door.
"I'll be back later!" she called with a frantic wave of the hand, and then she went out of the dim basement and into the day.
As she came up onto the sidewalk, her embarrassment and sorrow began to ebb, and with it her desperate need to flee. She paused there on that narrow, curving street, in the kindly shadow of the two-and three-story brick townhouses and the tall trees in full leaf overhead.
That was when she saw Grady Lodge across the street, leaning against his black roadster, with his hands in his pockets.
A floppy cap created a wedge of shadow on his face, but it could not hide the patient yearning in his deep-set gray eyes. He was wearing the tweed trousers of a knickerbocker suit, his rust-colored socks visible to his knees, although the jacket was nowhere in sight. That was what they called "natty," Letty supposed, except that everything about him was just slightly askew.
"Hello there!" he called.
Feeling bashful again, she glanced behind her, but the curtains to her apartment remained drawn. Seeing him in the daylight was peculiar, but she was happy now to have been given a direction. With a little feint of surprise, she let out an "Oh &hellip; hello!" and then crossed to him.
He reached out for her hand and kissed her knuckles.
"How did you know where I live?" she asked when he brought his eyes up to look at her again.
"Your friend Paulette told me last night," he explained. "Maybe she felt sorry for me, when she realized how many hours I'd sat at the bar waiting to talk to you &hellip; "
For a moment he appeared to lose himself in looking at her, so Letty simply smiled in a girlish way and waited for him to say something more.
" &hellip; and when I woke up this morning, I thought perhaps, you being from Ohio and all, you would like a tour of the city."
Reasons why not brimmed in her throat. But the day was lovely, just as she had told her roommates, and she had after all not ventured very far beyond Greenwich Village. Cordelia seemed to be going everywhere, and why shouldn't she? "Well, all right, but I haven't got the whole day," she said, trying not to sound too eager.
A grin filled his boyish face. "I'll take you for as long as you can spare."
Hurrying around the side of the car, he opened the door for her, posing in a courtly way until she was settled in. Once he'd secured the door behind her, he came around and started up the car. For a brief while she felt nervous and a little shy, sitting in a car with a stranger, but eventually the sights drew her in. They drove down blocks where every storefront was filled with flowers by the bucket, and streets where the signs were in red Chinese lettering.
Perhaps sensing how foreign these sights were to her, he said, "You're awfully brave to come all this way by yourself."
"Oh &hellip; I didn't," Letty replied. "I came with a girl named Cordelia, but we don't know each other anymore."
Grady glanced at her. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Perhaps I could help you find her?"
"That's very kind, but -- but -- I don't think she cares about me anymore. You see, she came in the club last night, but left as soon as she caught sight of me."
"I can't imagine anyone not wanting to know you."
"Oh, that's very kind," Letty told him, pushing aside the melancholy that had crept into her dreams. The day was so pretty and the city so full, and she didn't want to be sorry over anything -- and anyway, it felt good to tell someone about Cordelia and her unkind departure. "I've made better friends since then," she said brightly.
"Yes." Cordelia turned to leave that cold, hygienic light. "I guess he is."
The fear and urgency that had driven Cordelia to that field had dissipated by the time she settled back into the car. It seemed a long time ago that she had pointed a gun toward Thom Hale's head, and longer still that she had wanted him so badly, she'd thought of giving up everything. Dawn was already brightening the sky, but she did not feel tired. The last bedroom she'd called her own was in a house full of bootleggers who probably had little interest in her survival anymore. But she wasn't afraid. By chance, she had been handed a finer sense of her powers. Her life had taken a wonderful turn, and then an awful one, but there would be a great deal more of it yet. She started the engine and turned the car in the direction she was always heading for -- toward White Cove.
"They're waiting for you in the library," said Anthony, the night guard, when Cordelia pulled up to the gates of Dogwood.
In fact, they met her on the front steps. Charlie and Astrid were both still wearing their black funeral clothes and carrying a woolen blanket, which they wrapped around Cordelia's shoulders.
For a moment she could do nothing but glance from one to the other.
Charlie put an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder with his big palm. "We'll get 'em, don't worry."
Astrid stepped forward and took Cordelia's face in her hands. "You look like hell, darling. But we'll make you all better tomorrow."
"I can stay here, really?" Cordelia said.
"'Course." Charlie managed to give her something like a smile. "Dad would kill me if I didn't look after you."
"Can I go to bed now, then?" she asked. "I've never been so tired."
"Yes, but -- "
"There's someone here for you," Astrid finished his sentence. "In your bedroom."
Cordelia pulled the woolen blanket around her shoulders as she climbed the stairs. Her legs ached, and it took her longer than usual to rise to the third floor. By the time she entered her room, her lids were heavy, and she had almost forgotten there was a guest.
But then she opened the door and saw Letty sitting on one of the stuffed white sofas by the window. She appeared more petite than Cordelia remembered, in the old black dress, with her slick dark hair framing her tiny white face. One of her eyes was swollen and bruised, and there was a rather scrawny greyhound lying at her feet. She appeared fragile and exhausted.
"What happened to you?" Cordelia asked.
For a moment Letty didn't reply, and Cordelia remembered that the last time they had seen each other, they had been angry. But then the younger girl giggled and said, "What happened to you?"
Turning, Cordelia caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughed outright. "I guess neither of us are at our best," she said after a while. "Do you hate me?"
Letty lowered her eyes and shook her head. "No."
"Are you going to stay awhile?"
Letty lifted her head, and her blue eyes rose under the line of black bangs. "I don't have anywhere else to go," she said. Perhaps she feared that sounded insufficiently grateful, because she quickly added, "I mean, I'd love to, if that's all right with you."