Diva (The Flappers) - By Jillian Larkin Page 0,32
softly around her doll-like face like some kind of halo. She’d gained some of her weight back since her stint at the Opera House, but those sharp cheekbones and that world-weary depth in her big, pale eyes were here to stay. Her dress was pink, as it had been the night of her first and only performance at the Opera House. But that dress had been pale pink—just a rosy shade darker than white. Lorraine remembered thinking how well the color would’ve suited the blushing ingenue Gloria had once been. This dress was a deep, sultry pink that suited the full-blown diva Gloria had become. This Gloria knew men, life, and love—and she knew how to make the audience feel all she’d been through with a flash of her emerald eyes. She wasn’t the by-the-book deb Lorraine had grown up with, but she wasn’t the beaten-down, desperate woman who’d walked in to audition at the Opera House, either.
No, the Gloria who held her hand to her chest, closed her eyes, and wailed onstage was someone else altogether.
I ain’t got nobody,
And nobody cares for me
That’s why I’m sad and lonely,
Say, won’t you just take a chance with me?
’Cause I’ll sing sweet love songs all the time
If you will be a pal of mine
’Cause I ain’t got nobody,
And nobody cares for me.
Through everything, Gloria had never completely lost her adorably naïve innocence, that hopeful fire that had allowed her to march into a love affair with a black man without looking back. Now Gloria’s innocence had just been bruised. The audience could see it in the way Gloria sometimes hugged herself as she sang, the faraway look she got in her eyes. But that vulnerability made her even more fetching and compelling. Gloria Carmody didn’t just sing the blues—she lived them; she was their very essence.
As Gloria wailed on about her sorrow and loneliness, it made Lorraine wonder where Jerome Johnson was. Gloria was so convincing when she sang about her broken heart. Had something gone wrong between her and her fiancé?
As soon as Gloria finished singing, the room exploded into deafening applause. Before Gloria had come onstage, small groups had been convening around the furniture scattered throughout the room—playing cards on the wooden coffee tables, sitting in cushioned chairs around the dark fireplace, lounging on the long couches and davenports that stood near the ivory walls. Now those cards lay forgotten on deserted tables, and several guests had dragged their chairs and couches closer to the stage and dance floor. Lorraine could barely see Gloria over the heads of the scores of men who’d risen from their seats. Everyone in the large room had leaped to their feet with such enthusiasm that more than one flute of champagne had tumbled to the floor.
The guests chanted “Encore, encore” until Gloria whispered to the band, taking the mike for a second time.
Clara’s silver bangle slipped down to her elbow as she brushed away tears. “I keep thinking she can’t get any better, and then she goes and does something like that.” In her amazement at Gloria’s performance, she seemed to Lorraine to have forgotten how angry she’d been a few minutes earlier.
Which meant Lorraine needed to tell Clara about Marcus now.
The bald piano player banged out a short, upbeat introduction, his shoulders rocking. This was the orchestra that had been playing all night, but they had found a new energy with Gloria onstage. She turned to give the musicians a dazzling smile before she launched into a faster tune.
There ain’t nothin’ I can do or nothin’ I can say
That folks don’t criticize me
But I’m going to do just as I want to anyway
And don’t care if they all despise me.
Many of the guests abandoned their chairs and couches for the dance floor, shaking and shimmying all over the place. Lorraine gulped down the rest of her second martini before someone’s jabbing elbow could knock it out of her hands. She’d already sacrificed half a drink on her night of freedom—she wasn’t going to let any more good booze go to waste.
“That’s Gloria Carmody?” Becky asked, her brown eyes full of awe. “The way you described her, I expected her to be less … just less, I think.”
“Yeah, gosh, isn’t she amazing?” Melvin exclaimed with a goofy smile.
No one, not even Lorraine’s best friends at school, could help falling head over heels in love with Gloria Carmody. Didn’t they remember the way she had abandoned Lorraine, how she had believed Lorraine would tell Gloria’s