Free Ingenue by Jillian Larkin Page A

smug grins that suddenly adorned many of the flappers’ faces. She thought she had been whispering, but apparently that hadn’t been the case.
    Vinny groaned. “Not anymore, it’s not. You think you can watch the door for a minute? I’ve got to let ’em all know we’re changing it.”
    Vinny ducked inside.
    “You gonna let us in?” a girl with black hair asked with a smile. “We know the password.”
    “Shut up,” Lorraine snapped.
    “Or what?” the girl asked in an annoying tone.
    “I’m not even going to deign to give you an answer,” Lorraine said, taking a drag of her cigarette and staring the girl down. “I eat girls like you for dinner. No, for breakfast! I could skin you and wear you as my fall coat!”
    The girl looked shocked and stepped away, turning and whispering to one of her friends.
    “Come back here!” Lorraine shouted. The rest of the line was watching, but what did she care? “Open up your purse.”
    The black-haired girl raised one thin eyebrow and was about to protest, but then her friend—another girl around the same age, maybe seventeen or eighteen—pinched her and the girl opened the clasp of her purse.
    “That’s more like it,” Raine said, spotting exactly what she was looking for. A flask. It shone as brightly as the dozens of pairs of earrings the flappers were wearing, brighter than all their necklaces and bracelets combined. She pawed it out and took a swig.
    “Hey, that’s my—”
    “Your mouth is as big as the house I grew up in!” Lorraine said, swallowing the cheap vodka and burping. “And I grew up in a mansion. Here.” She passed the flask back to the girl. “Thanks.”
    “You going to let us in now?” the girl asked, hopeful.
    “Nah,” Lorraine said. “We don’t allow outside hooch in our joint. Against house rules.”
    Vinny returned and gave Lorraine’s hand a much-appreciated squeeze before she went back inside. She took out a cigarette and lit up as she walked downstairs.
    Lorraine was glad to see that everyone was too busy to pay attention to her and her screwups. The band launched into a number, and people began filing downstairs behind her. She watched a group of girls dance the Breakaway together. They were a pretty bunch—a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette, all in dresses with exquisite, Egyptian-looking patterns. Their laughter mingled with the band’s upbeat piano and saxophone. Had she, Gloria, and Clara ever looked like that?
    Clara . She sighed. Thinking of Clara also meant thinking of Marcus, and Lorraine tried to think of him as little as possible. Where was he now? Already in Manhattan? Lorraine knew now that she had been wrong to fall for an idiot like him in the first place. If she saw his swoony blue eyes at school in the fall, she had no idea what she’d do. Vomit? Keel over? Slap him?
    Cecil walked over and gave Lorraine a glass of ice water. She gratefully pressed the cool glass against her cheek.
    “The boss wants you to come talk to him at the bar,” he said.
    Lorraine swallowed as she followed Cecil. A few days after she’d started working at the Opera House, he’d told her a story about a waiter who’d mixed up orders a few years back. The boy had lost a hand, Cecil had said. He wouldn’t tell her precisely how.
    Lorraine slid onto a stool next to Puccini. When he turned to her, his cheeks were rounded into a jolly smile.
    At first glance, Puccini looked almost as friendly as Vinny did when he wasn’t performing his bouncer duties. Puccini was a short, overweight man wearing a fedora and an easy smile. But unlike Vinny, no matter what expression was on Puccini’s face, his eyes remained empty black holes.
    Puccini took off his hat and laid it on the bar, then pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his sweaty face and neck. His thin mustache left plenty of room on his face for his wide, creepy smile.
    He pointed toward Lorraine’s water glass. “I could use something like that myself,” he