Lady Be Good

by Amber Brock

  Considering the previous evening’s events, the remark stung. “I’ve been seeing a few men. What if someone does come along? Before anything happens with Andre?”

  “If you find someone else, someone who can take care of you and my business, then I’ll think about it. Like I say, none of these Rhode Island fellas.”

  “Why not? They’ve got money.”

  “Sure, but they don’t value it. The minute I’m in a box in the dirt, they’ll turn around and liquidate everything. Gamble with your legacy in the stock market, and where does that get you? Plenty of their set loved the stock market until about twenty years ago. Then…” Her father sent his hand down in a swan dive and let it pound on the desk.

  “You don’t know they’d put the money in the stock market.”

  “I do! That’s what they all advised me to do when your grandfather died. He came here with—”

  “I know, I know. He came here with seven dollars and a gold ring stuck in a bar of soap,” she said. She felt like she’d heard the story more than she’d heard her own name spoken aloud.

  “That’s right. And he turned that ring into a men’s clothing store through nothing but hard work. And I turned the money he left me into everything.” Her father gestured to the ink drawings of his hotels and nightclubs that hung in lacquered frames on the wood-paneled walls around him. “Into everything that made your life possible, little girl. So, yes, this time you’re going to listen. You’re going to do what I say. One way or another, these hotels are your future. You can be Andre’s wife, and be set up, or you can start as a maid. Whatever suits you best.”

  Kitty pursed her lips, considering the two equally unattractive options. “What would that accomplish exactly? Why would you want me working as a maid? To humiliate me?”

  Her father held up a hand. “There’s no shame in earning your way. It’s what I did. Learned the business from the inside, and it only took me ten years. If you really won’t consider Andre, you’ll have to prove you can handle the hard work of running these places. But wouldn’t it be easier to marry a man you can trust to do the work for you? You’d make a better wife than a manager, we both know that.”

  Flames shot through her, out to the tips of her fingers. Kitty hated not having an answer, but she couldn’t think of a solution that would satisfy both her and her father. She suppressed the urge to toss the crystal ashtray at her father’s head and smiled instead. “Sure, Papa. I’ll think about it.”

  “No thinking about it. I want you to promise me you’ll make some time for Andre.” Her father tilted his head, and his tone softened. “Go out with him. I’m sure he likes you. I won’t tell him about the Palm.”

  Internally, Kitty shuddered. “Fine. I promise.” It was the only way to be done with the conversation.

  Her father let out a relieved whoosh. “Good. Good.”

  Kitty gave him the Broadway-footlights smile, the one that never failed. “So I can go? Hen’s coming over in a little while.”

  “You can go.” Her father’s mouth eased from its tight line, and his eyes sparkled. Her smile had hit the bull’s-eye yet again. He stood and held out his arms, and she swooped around the desk to hug him.

  “You girls don’t get into too much trouble, all right?” he called as she went to retrieve her shoes.

  “Never.”

  Kitty pulled the door closed behind her and padded in stocking feet down the corridor toward the elevator. She had some thinking to do before her best friend, Henrietta, came by that afternoon. No way was she going to let Andre start squiring her around town. He’d chase off the real game, the boys who wore light suits to the shore every summer and whose families owned polo ponies. Andre was the dictionary definition of solid, but he could never give her the life she was after. She had started to wonder, however, who could. All the men who had the social cachet she’d need were already involved with other women. As Raymond had proven, most of them were still all too willing to take her out. Fewer were willing to ditch their appropriate society match for a girl like Kitty.

  She stepped off the elevator and opened the door to the penthouse, a space she was used to inhabiting alone given her father’s long hours. When Kitty was very young, before her mother died, her father was home much more. Then again, in those days, the critical pieces of Nicolas Tessler’s empire were all located in New York. The Vanguard Hotel, his first, was the only hotel he’d owned when Kitty was born. They still lived there, surrounded by furnishings her father had picked out himself before the hotel opened, down to the plush hand towels in each bathroom. Her father liked the old-world look, a European grandeur that set the standard in the newer properties of his growing empire. The Vanguard had its thick Persian rugs and lamps on low mahogany tables in the hallways. The Maxima, his second property near Madison Square Park, had green marble in the lobby and sparkling chandeliers. Kitty would have preferred a more modern décor, but when she’d suggested refreshing the interiors, her father insisted people wanted the glamour of a bygone era. In her opinion, the present day had glamour enough for anyone with good taste, but her father stuck by his polished woods and embroidered curtains. When he’d expanded to Miami, he’d had to concede somewhat to the pastels and stucco that ruled South Beach. Still, he’d chosen plain white wood plank walls and wicker furniture. Kitty hadn’t been to the Miami hotel since her father had first opened it, but as she recalled, it had a sense of luxury that set it apart.

  In addition to the touches of her father’s particular style, the three hotels had two other unifying elements. One was an adjacent nightclub with a big band and a Spanish theme. The other was a suite high above the busy streets that always sat waiting for him or his guests, just like the one Kitty entered on the top floor of the Vanguard at that very moment.

  Loco sat patiently on the couch, wagging away, while Kitty rifled through some magazines on the glass coffee table. Hidden under the stack, she located a carefully placed book. She curled up beside the dog, turning to one of the many marked pages. “Let’s see what inspiration we can find in here. I need a plan,” Kitty murmured.

  The doorbell startled Kitty out of reading. She slid the book back under the stack of magazines and picked up the glossy on the top. She opened it to an article about achieving the perfect blush effect. “Come in,” she called.

  Loco bounded off the couch to greet the girl who entered. Henrietta let out a happy gasp. “Ooh, someone looks so pretty,” she cried, leaning down to pet the dog.

  “Why, thank you,” Kitty said. “Must be this new lipstick.”

  Hen giggled. “Not you, silly. Although you always do look pretty. Did little Miss Loco have a trip to the groomer’s?”

  “She did.” Kitty wrinkled her nose. “She looks good, but they never dry her enough. Everything smells like wet dog.”

  “I still can’t get over it,” Hen said, straightening up. “A salon for a dog.”

  Kitty clicked her tongue, and Loco ran to rejoin her on the couch. Hen dropped onto the chaise longue. Though dropped wasn’t the right word. Hen had all the definition and heft of a mosquito. She pretty much drifted everywhere she went.

  “Whatcha reading?” Hen reached for the magazine.

  “Nothing, actually. Couldn’t keep my mind on it. I just had a ‘meeting’ with Papa, you know.”

  “About what?” Hen asked. “It wasn’t bad news, was it?”

  “It’s nothing I can’t fix.”

  “I believe that. So what did he say?”

  Kitty stroked one of Loco’s silky ears. “Papa seems to think it’s high time I got married.”

  “But you don’t even have a boyfriend. Who are you supposed to marry?”

  “As luck would have it, Papa’s already got someone picked out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Andre.” Kitty stuck out her tongue. “Good thing Papa’s in the hotel business. H
e’d be a lousy matchmaker.”

  Hen shook her head. “I’ll say. So what did you tell him?”

  “What could I say? He said either I marry Andre or work as a maid in the hotel.”

  “He’s not serious, Kitty. He can’t be. He’d never make you work.”

  Kitty pushed herself off the couch and inspected her makeup in the large mirror on the wall. “He wouldn’t. That’s what worries me. He must be attached to this Andre idea if he didn’t give me a real alternative.”

  “Why not set you up with a trust fund?”

  “He says he’s made mistakes with me, that now’s the time to put me on the straight and narrow. I think he wants me to settle down with someone stable. And Andre’s stable, I’ll give him that.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What I always do.” Kitty flashed her reflection a smile. “I’m going to play Papa like a fiddle.”

  “You’re so bad.” Hen’s eyes shone with admiration.

  “Problem is, I’m not sure yet how to get around him this time. I need a plan, and until I have one, I’m going to have to play nice with Andre.” Kitty started for her room, which was on the left of the French doors that led from the living room to the massive balcony. “Come on. Let’s go freshen up the war paint. I think we need to go out tonight.”

  Hen lay down on the four-poster bed in Kitty’s room, her tiny body dwarfed by a sea of lacy pink pillows. Kitty took a seat on the poufy cushion of the stool at her vanity table. While Kitty touched up her nail polish—always Arden Pink Perfection—she let Hen offer suggestions of ways to get out of her predicament. Kitty pretended to consider each of Hen’s thoughts while she silently considered the other, equally serious dilemma she was facing. That problem was not one Hen could help Kitty with, since Hen refused to admit that her fiancé, Charles, qualified as a problem in the first place.

  Charles Remington was the king of what Kitty’s father derisively called “the tennis club set.” He seemed perfect: handsome, a talented athlete, and a member of all the right clubs and societies at Harvard. He strode with purpose and cracked other men’s knuckles with his handshake. On paper, the match was unimpeachable: a union of two families who dominated the New York social register and had done so for generations. In such elevated circles, this was just the way things were done. Hen and Charles were thrown together as children because their families’ beach houses were side-by-side, and it didn’t matter one bit that they had nothing in common except coastline property that their ancestors laid claim to when they arrived on the Mayflower. Once their parents had decided they should marry, the relationship was set in stone. Unfortunately, Charles was not a particularly faithful partner.

  When they were newly engaged, Hen was quick to cover for Charles by embroidering the details, even as news of his conquests filtered down the grapevine. Hen always had some explanation to excuse his behavior—wasn’t he so kind, paying for that girl’s drink? She must have forgotten her handbag. Oh, that girl he shared a cab with must be the sister of a friend from college.

  Then he’d done something Hen couldn’t explain away. She’d come back from a summer stay at her family’s beach house, shrunken from days of crying. Kitty had comforted her on the couch in the penthouse living room, handing her tissues and urging the whole story out of Hen.

  After Hen revealed everything, Kitty had leapt up in a fury.

  “You’ve got to ditch him, that’s all there is to it.” She paced the room. “Somewhere public. Make a scene. He’ll be sorry he treated you like this when we’re done.”

  “No.” Hen’s voice was a miserable croak.

  Kitty had rejoined her on the couch, placing a hand on Hen’s. “You can’t stay with him after this.”

  “Mother said we’re not to split up. So we won’t. Mother said I’ll forget about it. So I mean to forget. We’ll forget.” She’d locked eyes with Kitty, and Kitty had no doubt who we referred to.

  Despite Charles’s most outrageous offense, Hen’s mother had made certain that Hen would never be the one to break it off. Liberating Hen from Charles would be Kitty’s duty alone. She couldn’t let her dearest friend spend a lifetime with a man like Charles. It would be cruel. He had to go. Kitty welcomed the task, even though it wouldn’t be an easy one. After all, she owed her friend.

  The truth was that Kitty had been trying her best to take care of Hen for the entire history of their friendship. Hen was the first girl Kitty met when she enrolled at Alastair Preparatory Academy in the sixth grade. It had taken the better part of a year to convince Papa to let her transfer to Alastair from the dreary Catholic school she previously attended, but Kitty was already thinking of her future. She knew greater social possibilities lay elsewhere, and she’d found them in the person of Henrietta Bancroft.

  Most teachers at Alastair assigned seating based on alphabetical order, but Miss Turner allowed the students in her care to choose their seats. Kitty had scanned her new homeroom, evaluating potential friends. Since all the girls wore matching plaid skirts, blue cardigans, and saddle shoes, she didn’t have much to help her distinguish the wheat from the chaff. She rejected one girl for the oversized bow in her hair, and another for her snooty smirk. Then, at last, she spotted Hen: shirttail untucked, shoelace untied. Kitty had decided that the easiest way into her new social world was to find a partner who needed Kitty’s help as much as Kitty needed hers. She could tell from Hen’s hopeful, welcoming smile and glance at the empty desk beside her that Hen was on the lookout for a companion.

  At first, Kitty imagined she would merely tolerate Hen as she advanced in the pecking order, but Hen had defied Kitty’s expectations from the start. As soon as she learned Hen’s family name, Kitty understood that her new friend’s less-than-sophisticated toilette would never damage her reputation. If she wore a clown costume to school, the other girls would all be wearing red noses the next day. Her place at the top of the hierarchy was immutable thanks to her pedigree, which meant she wasn’t much interested in the cold symbiotic partnership Kitty had hoped to establish. Instead, what Hen wanted was someone who was different from the baby debutantes she’d grown up with.

  Hen wasn’t much for confrontation, but once she had befriended Kitty she was fiercely loyal. When the other girls tried to snub Kitty that first week at school, Hen’s quiet choice to sit with Kitty at lunch every day meant that the other students began to accept Kitty, at least outwardly. They had to, if they wanted to keep a Bancroft at their table. Though years had passed, Kitty continued looking for ways to repay Hen for the initial—and life-changing—kindness no one else would show her in the classrooms of Alastair Prep. Getting rid of Charles would be an enormous undertaking, especially with Hen’s formidable mother as a barrier, but preventing a lifetime of misery was not inappropriate in light of the debt Kitty owed.

  Hen’s voice broke into Kitty’s thoughts. “I love this lipstick,” she said, holding up a sultry red.

  “Is that the color you want to wear tonight?” Kitty blew on her nails.

  “No way. Too bright for me.” Hen laughed.

  “You think they’re all too bright. Here.” Kitty handed her a tube of a light rose color. “This will look great on you.”

  After attending to her own makeup, Kitty grabbed a full-skirted blue dress with a frothy underskirt out of her closet and insisted her friend borrow it before they left the suite. “I’ve got shoes you can borrow, too.”

  “But I’m not trying to impress anyone,” Hen said, making her way to the bathroom to change anyway. “Charles already knows what I look like.”

  You and every other girl in a ten-mile radius, Kitty thought, gritting her teeth. “So Charles is joining us, then?” she asked Hen, raising her voice so she could be heard through the bathroom door.

  “Yes.” Layers of fabric muffled Hen’s voice. “He’s going to meet us downstairs.”

  Kitty clipp
ed an earring on her lobe and inspected her makeup one final time. “I’m going to ring Papa, too. Better make sure Andre’s at the club tonight. Don’t want to waste our time there if we could be somewhere more exciting.”

  “But your father’s clubs are exciting.”

  “You just think it’s fun that the drinks are free.” Kitty pulled the receiver to her ear. After two rings, Miss Jones answered. She asked Kitty to hold, and then her father spoke.

  “Yes?”

  “Papa, it’s me. I was wondering if Andre is working this evening at the club. Thought it might be nice to go down and see him.”

  Kitty could almost hear her father’s smile straining his face. “Well! That will be very nice. Yes, he’ll be there tonight. And tell him he can leave Herman in charge for closing. In case you kids want to go out after.”

  “Thanks, Papa. I’ll tell him.” Kitty sighed and set the receiver back in the cradle. “Just peachy.”

  “What is?” Hen said, emerging from the bathroom.

  Kitty stifled a giggle. “You’ve got the dress on backward, Hen. Let me help.”

  After the dress was righted, Kitty and Hen took the elevator down to the first floor. This time, instead of turning down the long, quiet hallway that led to the offices, Kitty headed toward the noise of the club, which drifted subtly through the lobby.

  Charles stood at the double doors of the entrance. Kitty noted that his gaze lingered on her décolletage before he even glanced at Hen. Still, it was Hen he reached out for. At least he still had the good sense to pay some attention to his fiancée.

  “Darling,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her cheek. He turned. “Hello, Kitty. How are you?”

  “Fabulous, as always.”

  He opened the door and she swept past them, nodding at the man standing behind the host’s stand.