Free The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott Page A

That and, with the rise in popularity of actresses with more generous waistlines like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, my figure, which I’d attempted to diet away as a teenager, worked to my advantage in prying secrets out of powerful men.
    I walked right out of there with my head held high, then rallied the girls for drinks followed by dancing at Café Trinidad until closing—which, in D.C., was unfortunately at midnight. But the next day, after I nursed my hangover with a cold compress and a Bloody Mary, I had a minor breakdown at the realization I had no job, no income, and no savings. The latter due to one of my blessings and curses: a heightened appreciation for beautiful things. The blessing was that my innate sense of style made people think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth in a place like Grosse Point or Greenwich, and not a clapboard row house in Pittsburgh’s Little Italy. The curse was that my good eye often exceeded my means.
    I knew I needed to formulate a plan before my bank account dwindled to Code Red level. There was no running to Mommy or Daddy, as some of my friends had the luxury of doing when times got tough. That evening, I’d flipped through my little black book and set up a stream of dates with the D.C. lobbyist and lawyer set, an occasional diplomat, and one or two congressmen. The dates were tedious and exhausting, but at the end of the day, the rent was paid on my Georgetown apartment, I’d gotten some nice dinners out of them, and the men whose company I’d pretended to enjoy kept me in couture that rivaled Bev’s. I was not attracted to them, and yet how easy it had been to convince them that I was.
    That line of work suited me fine. But after a while, I grew bored with the taxi, dinner, hotel, taxi, dinner, hotel rotation. That and the high level of personal upkeep were wearing me out. The brushing, tweezing, plucking, dyeing, waxing, bleaching, squeezing—even the endless shopping—were beginning to take their toll.
    I thought of becoming a stewardess. For one, I’d look great in Pan Am’s signature blue. Plus, I loved to travel. It’s what I liked most during the war—the possibility of being uprooted to a new place every few months. But they’d take one look at my age—thirty-two if I was being honest or thirty-six if I was actually honest—and say I was “overqualified” for the position.
    The truth was, I missed intelligence work, missed being in the know. So when Bev rang one last time to beg me to go to the party, I said yes.
    “So many familiar faces,” Bev said, scanning the crowd. The music had started up again and people were dancing and spilling their gin fizzes on one another. I spotted Jim Roberts across the deck, breathing down some poor girl’s neck. Jim had once cornered me at an embassy party in Shanghai, putting his hands around my waist and saying he wasn’t going to let me go until I gave him a smile. I did smile, then I kneed him in the groin.
    “Maybe a few too many familiar faces.”
    “I’ll toast to that,” she said. Bev leaned over the rail and brushed a piece of her dark brown hair out of her face. Bev was the kind of woman whose beauty came late, passing over her high school years, college years, and early twenties entirely, only to arrive in her late twenties and not reach its full glory until her thirties. Bev had had many Jim Roberts experiences herself. “But still,” she continued. “I wish all the girls could’ve been here.”
    “Me too.” Bev and I were the only two of our old crew still living in Washington. Julia was in France with her new husband, Jane was in Jakarta with someone else’s husband, and Anna was in either Venice or Madrid, depending on what mood she was in that month. Our group had first met on the Mariposa, a former luxury liner recommissioned to shuttle GIs to the front line. The only women on board, we shared a cramped cabin outfitted with metal bunks, one toilet, and a tub that sputtered cold