Two
T here was a sense of weightlessness on the lawn of the house.
As though our spirits were not only tied to our bodies, we floated across the lawn, not realizing we had moved until there was another drink in our hands. Champagne—real champagne—flowed, glasses towered into pyramids atop golden tables, liquid shining like the ichor of the gods.
We certainly believed that if we drank more, we were that much closer to divinity.
Dixon, Flora, and I had arrived on the overflowing lawn nigh to midnight, arms linked, stumbling out of his Duesenberg, which he parked expertly amongst a row of similarly gleaming and polished vehicles.
The man was forgotten as soon as the cool night air hit our skin, our wonderful chauffeur, our sentry .
It was strange, the combination of stares, of curious attention, and the sense of anonymity.
As we made our way from the drive onto the lawn, my heels sinking, the soft grass caressing my ankles, I thought perhaps we had stepped onto some sort of stage set.
“Helena! Look!” Flora clutched me tighter when she saw the house erupt from the trees.
Every window lit, dazzling against the black of the midnight sky. The white columns of the house appeared as bright as though it were mid-day, gas lamps illuminating the porch, strings of lights hung over the lawn, their bulbs mingling with the stars. Flickering, glowing softly, alighting like fireflies. Crafted from stone, spires reached upward, stabbing through low-hanging clouds.
Though, it was not simply a house.
“It’s a church.” Flora’s voice was steeped in wonder.
“Who wants to live in an old church?” I said, my eyes swimming. “What if there are ghosts—”
I stumbled, my toe catching on a stone step, and Dixon was there immediately, grabbing my arm. His fingers were firm, and I gasped, then laughed at my clumsiness.
“Thanks.”
He didn’t say anything, but instead lifted a brow and sighed, steering us down the path toward the front of the house—church. “Vince Thornton, that’s who.”
“Vince Thornton?” The words felt strange in my mouth.
“Of course you know him,” Flora rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know him,” Dixon said, as though association with the man was an insult. “His name just keeps coming up. ”
Vince Thornton.
“Who is he?” I asked, realizing I was holding onto both Flora and Dixon as though my knees were about to give out. I eased my grip, taking a deep, sobering breath.
“No one.”
“Well, that’s not true,” Flora said. She gestured to the grand party on the lawn. “It’s not just no one who can manage this.”
It was at that moment that a server swooped by us, light on his feet, somehow carrying a tray of impossibly full glasses, never spilling a drop. He stopped momentarily to offer us a drink. Dixon, gentleman that he was, grabbed two of the crystal chalices and promptly handed them to Flora and me, without taking one for himself, before ushering us on. Perhaps we really were a handful, the two of us.
The server whirled to offer his ambrosia to other guests.
Heaven burst on my tongue. A heady warmth traveled down my throat, across my shoulders, settling in my bones. Easing my tension, carrying away the strange feelings left behind by Brancato.
“Trust me,” Dixon said, his hand a grounding force on the small of my back. “Do not think about Thornton for a second.”
“Kind of hard not to,” Flora said, linking her arm with his. “Look at this place!”
The carousing of the speakeasy held nothing to the party at this mansion.
I’d lived in the city my whole life and never knew of this feat of architecture. We had attended many parties in the area, but it was as if this particular house had sprouted from the ground, growing like the forest of trees around it, to impossible heights. I felt as if I were stepping up to a castle. Perhaps it was abandoned, its new benefactor bringing it back to life, into the light.
Its lit exterior glowed like a palace from the heavens. Everyone on the lawns was dressed in their best—flapper girls with short skirts, straight hems, and strings of beads flying around them; other women and men in their evening dresses and suits, pressed and steamed and ironed, so they looked like they’d jumped right off an Arrow Collar page in the papers. Gelled and wavy hair, cigarettes on long holders, deep rouge on the cheeks of the girls, blending in with flushed skin from the liquor.
Many times, I almost lost Flora and Dixon, having fallen behind. I just couldn’t take my eyes away from what was before me.
As we entered the house, my neck ached with the urge to look upward, to gaze at the painted ceiling of the foyer. Cherubim, devils, angels, gods, all twined together, an image perhaps a century old but so fresh I could reach up and smear the paint. The figures watched as we entered, the devils with skin so gray it was nearly pitch black, figures with horns and tails and bat-like wings, wearing nothing to hide that which they didn’t find sinful. Their roped muscles were splattered with blood, crimson and bright against their dark flesh. They grabbed at the angels with feathered wings, snatched them right out of the sky, dragged them downward. But I could not look away from these hellish beings with fangs and claws. Snarling with delight, while the beneficent gods watched in horror.
“Helena!”
I was pulled from my stupor as Flora grabbed the bones of my wrist and scolded me like a child. “Don’t get lost! I’ll never be able to find you again,” she laughed, pulling me to where Dixon waited in the center of the crowd.
And she was right—the place was so large, hundreds of people crowded in, she could lose me in the blink of an eye.
The ballroom before us was an explosion of light and laughter. ‘Ballroom’ wasn’t the right word—because it was perhaps the congregation room, yet was so expansive it felt impossible that we were in a house, that a man lived here on his own. A massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling glittered with electric bulbs, red ribbons streaming down and across to the banisters of the grand staircase that crawled up each wall and met on the far side of the room. Each step was packed with people, women clinging to their man’s arms, the men shouting above the noise to hear each other, drinks in hand.
Flora easily slipped her grip from me, back to Dixon’s elbow again, sending me a wink.
I envied them.
Dixon was a viscount, come from England for “business ventures”, which we all knew was code for taking advantage of the money there was to gain in American prohibition. Flora, no higher in class than I, had somehow snared him at a party we went to a few months prior, and now, as soon as they were in the same room, they were inseparable. Of course, this did not stop her from entertaining other men in the meantime.
I longed for the consistency of a companion such as Dixon, of the advantages of falling in with a British man with a title—someone who could whisk me away from the city, from my mother, from Lucas .
I used to joke with them that perhaps Dixon could line me up with one of his business partners, or anyone, really, from across the sea. None of these men, not Marcel nor the other dozen I had fallen in with over the past few years, could even compare. We were all the same—new money, wealth acquired that had not yet gone very far, families masquerading as the effortlessly rich names we heard often from overseas.
It felt dirty; it felt as though we were all wearing masks, playing at being people we were not.
People we could only hope to be.
As we traversed the room, shoving against bodies jumping and gyrating, shrill shrieks and splashes of champagne littering the floor in scintillating puddles, a server swooped in, as if with the heels of Hermes, and offered up a platter stacked with glasses of all sorts. Each crystal sparkling and filled with an amber liquid that dared to slosh near the lip of each glass, but it never spilled. He skipped over us upon seeing our glasses were still somewhat full.
The room was packed from wall to wall, men smoking, some women even, the smoke curling and dancing like the girls peppering the floor. There was the sound of shattered glass, a shout, a cackle. The faint sound of stringed instruments and a horn, a trumpet, hidden somewhere out of my sight. Girls moving so quickly, their feet never seemed to touch the floor. Men slinging them around, twirling them into other partygoers, bouncing off each other like Dodgems.
The center of the room seemed to hold all the revelers, the people lost to the bliss of it all—and on the outskirts, or what I could see of it, were people who seemed entirely too sober. The edges of the room were where a more grim party seemed to take place: appraising eyes, watching those spin with ecstasy in the center, sipping their glasses calmly, whispering amongst each other. Observers. A few seemed amused, smiling at the stray girl whirling with her man and shrieking in delight; others’ lips curled at the display of carefree, unrestrained merrymaking.
I made a mental note to avoid the grumps in the room.
I plucked a petit four off a server’s tray as they passed, never looking at who they were serving, only where they were going next. There was a dullness to their eyes, their faces plain, empty.
Perhaps exhaustion.
I had heard these parties happened weekly, and some weeks, even nightly. Throughout the summer, slowly waning in the deep winter, picking up again now that it was after New Year, with spring right around the corner.
How had we not attended one of these extravaganzas before?
Everyone was talking about it this year: the mansion up on the hill, the mansion that used to be a church, of all things, and the man that lived within, throwing lavish parties where you could be anyone, meet anyone, and get drunk doing it.
Lucas would hate it here. Hate that I was here.
I smiled into my glass, letting the bubbly champagne simmer on my tongue, almost burning, sending a heady rush of warmth down my throat.
Yes, Lucas would hate this. All the more reason to do it.
“Ooh, Dixon, look!” Flora said from behind me.
A woman, dressed in naught but wide ribbons, wrapped around her breasts and the widest part of her waist, streaming down her legs, stood atop a table in the center of the room. Her hair was wrapped up on her head, the blood-red ribbons laced throughout, brown locks twisted and knotted atop her skull. Her lips were painted the same dark, bleeding red, her brows lined, a streak of kohl like wings at her eyes.
My champagne-addled brain thought for a moment she seemed to turn to one of the winged devils.
Men whistled, women gawked. Outstretched hands reached for her, wanting to touch the nearly naked woman above the crowd. She drew all eyes in the room.
How many eyes were on her? Whatever the number, it seemed not to faze her.
She gazed upon everyone before her, the corner of her mouth lifted in a smirk. Moving elegantly, limbs gliding from one position to the next, her hips moved the way a snake slithered, from side to side, red ribbons threatening to expose her to the room.
She motioned to the band, who had quieted amongst the ruckus, and who then began to play something akin to what was played in a cabaret.
Glancing back to my friends, I saw Flora entranced, eyes wide and gleaming. Her mouth hung open, hand still clutching Dixon’s arm, as though she feared she’d fall over in her hypnosis.
Dixon met my eyes briefly, unreadable.
“What, are you scandalized?” I teased.
But he didn’t laugh with me, and I realized why a second later. He wasn’t looking at the beaut standing atop the table; his gaze went past her, tracking the movements of a line of people, cloaked, in the same blood-red color, making their way up the stairs, behind the revelers gawking at the banisters .
What the hell?
I watched as the snake of people wound up that grand staircase, only a few of them, but enough that I could always see at least one of them through the crowd of bodies.
They walked with purpose. I thought their heads seemed bowed, and when they arrived at the top of the stair, they disappeared around the corner. Down another hall, perhaps.
And the solemn, silent observers around the walls noticed, too. Some of them even weaving through the crowd to follow.
Odd.
But stranger things had happened at these parties, I supposed.
I brought my glass to my lips again, about to turn to Dixon, when once more my attention was stolen.
The carousing continued, shouts directed at the near-naked woman towering above the crowd. She moved sinuously to the band, though the music was nearly swallowed up again by the noise of the partygoers. She writhed, hands wandering on her body, coy and demure as she made sure every man around her had her attention.
I had the distant thought that perhaps it was intentional; her arrival and the sneaking of the cloaked people behind the crowd.
But I was entranced by a different figure.
High above it all, a man, easy to miss, standing upon the balcony of the stairs. His being solitary cast a beacon upon him. Hands splayed out on the banister, his head turned, so I saw only his profile. I could not see his features, just that his hair was long and dark—unfashionable to anyone else—and there was a sobering look about him as he gazed down upon his revelers. A true king of his court, feeding the masses, giving them their bread and circuses.
And somehow, like there was no one else in the room, his eyes found mine. I could feel it, deep inside me, like he had shot a bow and arrow straight at me. His eyes cut through me, dissected me.
I gasped.
A harsh grab to my arm. Dixon pulled me out of the reverie. “We should leave.”
“Leave?” Flora gasped. “It’s not even that late! We just got here!”
I opened my mouth to retort, but it died on my tongue.
Dixon dragged us off immediately.
I felt entirely like I had just seen a ghost.
Felt it in my bones that I had looked up at a dead man.
And when I peeked over my shoulder once more, that man was gone. Eaten up by the crowd, as though he were a wraith and had never existed at all.