Diva (The Flappers) - By Jillian Larkin Page 0,11
tore open each envelope, pocketed the checks, and left the letters on the bench beside her. Maybe some aspiring writer would find them and use them to write the world’s most boring novel.
Lorraine planned to write her memoirs one day, but they would be fascinating. How could they not be? If there was one good thing about all the trials she’d been through, it was that they made it impossible for anyone to say that Lorraine’s life had been dull.
She took a break from sorting, picked up the latest issue of Vogue, and tried to compose her face so that she’d look alluring and inviting and like a budding socialite. It was unseasonably warm for September, and Lorraine felt perfectly comfortable in her pale brown chiffon blouse and ivory flared skirt. An ivory cloche hat with a brown cloth flower rested on her short, dark bob. Lorraine would admit that her heels were a little high for running from class to class, but they looked sensational.
Besides, Lorraine didn’t have class for another two hours. Plenty of time to hobble there. For the moment she sat on a bench on Columbia’s campus, directly across the quad from Philosophy Hall. Magnolia trees dotted the campus, and their blossoms sailed onto the grassy sward in the light breeze. Cobbled walks crisscrossed the quad, and a fountain gently burbled in the distance.
The buildings on campus were old, but not old like Lorraine’s dreadful aunt Mildred’s collection of antique, rusty teapots. The buildings and statues here seemed old in a mature way, as if generations of knowledge had been infused into their very foundations over time. Lorraine could imagine the professors trying to gently hammer that same knowledge into the minds of their disinterested students. She watched the students now, the handsome young men in sweaters and knickers tossing a football, while others sat on picnic blankets and entertained equally attractive young ladies.
These boys weren’t focused. What they really needed were appropriate wives who would help motivate them. Women like Lorraine.
She sighed. She had been surprised by how much she enjoyed her classes at Barnard, but she still wished she could go to school here. It was only just across the street, but Barnard felt miles away from Columbia’s dashing young men.
Lorraine kept a hawk’s eye on Philosophy Hall’s arched doorway. Any moment, Marcus Eastman would walk through it, straight from his French class. After that he would head across campus to physics. Then he would be done with classes for the day, until he went off to calculus tomorrow morning.
Lorraine couldn’t help but feel proud of herself. They’d only been at school a few weeks and she’d managed to memorize Marcus’s entire schedule.
Most days, Lorraine was perfectly situated to bump into Marcus, to listen sympathetically to him as he talked about his difficulties in class, to offer to renew the friendship that had sustained her throughout her high school years. She was there for him, as a true-blue friend should be.
Of course, the two of them hadn’t technically spoken yet. Lorraine had only seen Marcus a handful of times, and whenever he noticed her, he quickly took off in the other direction.
When Lorraine had run into Marcus at the Opera House weeks earlier, he’d given her such hope. There she’d been, heartbroken after her too-perfect bartender beau, her first true love, turned out to be an FBI agent who’d only been using her for information.
But then Marcus showed up. And he’d been nice to her! He even told her she looked good! He’d never done that back in Chicago. Let FBI Hank go off and solve crimes and look ruggedly handsome while doing it. Who cared? Not Lorraine! She belonged with someone like Marcus; that was clear. A handsome boy her own age from the same world as she.
But that notion had come crashing down after Gloria told Marcus what Lorraine had really been doing at the Opera House. How she’d been helping the gangster Carlito Macharelli trap Gloria and her colored fiancé. After that, Marcus had wanted nothing to do with her.
It wasn’t fair. Didn’t it matter that once Lorraine learned Carlito was planning to kill Gloria and Jerome, she’d worked with the FBI to save them? How come no one ever focused on that part? How come no one held Lorraine Dyer up as the heroine of this sordid tale? She’d been lied to, been lost and alone, and then she’d come through and saved her friends from an unsavory end.
That was