The Gilded Cage (18 page)

Gem guffawed; then, at Toby's look, she smiled at him innocently. “She can't really choose, you know,” she said. “The harem outfits are taken, and she'll have to wear the shawl. Mollie's in the rug, of course.”

Marguerite felt as though her frozen brain was finally beginning to thaw. She had been so stupid, so naive! She thought of Columbine dressing her for an elegant dinner, and she wanted to burst into tears. But that wouldn't help matters. She wouldn't give that snake the satisfaction of knowing how she'd looked forward to this night.

She dropped her fur cape and picked up the shawl. It was light as gossamer, and heavily fringed. She threw it over her shoulders, and the fringe dripped down to a v between her legs. “Wear the shawl? You mean like this?” she asked innocently.

Gem laughed again. “Exactly, dearie. But without the gown.” She held up the spangled gauze. “At least you're covered with
something.”

Slowly, Marguerite let the shawl drop to the floor. “You swine,” she said to Toby.

“Now, Miss Corbeau, I—”

“Procurer!” she flung at him.

“Now wait a minute,” Gem put in. She turned to Marguerite impatiently. “No one is telling you to bed them. They're harmless enough, and half-drunk. All you have to do is prance around, and smile, maybe sit on a lap or two. Whatever else you do is your own business. And if you're lucky, you'll catch Stanny's eye. He's not a bad sort, he'll fix your teeth and be nice to your mum and lend you money without ever expecting to see it again. He gave Dolores diamond earrings—and she didn't sleep with him either, mind. This time I believe her.”

Marguerite's curiosity got the better of her. “Is he married?”

Gem laughed merrily. “Of course he's married, most of them are married. Why else would they be here?”

“Gem, let me.” Toby's voice was kind, even though Marguerite knew he must be terribly impatient. “Marguerite, I apologize most sincerely if I have offended you. I meant to explain before you came—”

“Why didn't you?”

His grin was abashed. “Frankly, I forgot.”

“You
forgot?
” Marguerite couldn't believe it. Toby Wells had been on her mind every minute since she'd met him. She'd thought she dazzled him. She felt enormously hurt.

“It wasn't that I didn't think of you,” he rushed to assure her. “But I was out of town, auditioning for a part in Boston. I just got back tonight. I didn't get the part, by the way.”

“Good.”

“You see,” he said earnestly, “I saw you sitting there with Horatio Jones, bored out of your beautiful mind, and I thought, here's a girl who'll take hold of life and make it hers. You can have it all, Marguerite. You have the looks, and you have something else. You don't even realize that you have it.”

“What do I have?” Despite herself, Marguerite was interested. She'd always been fascinated by what people thought of her.

“You have the ability to walk in the room and possess it,” Toby said. His eyes were glowing, and she felt herself picked up by his vision. “People notice you. You
bristle,
my dear. Now, I don't want to offend you, but the best way I can put it is despite your lack of obvious, shall we say, physical charms, men long to bed you. You have something better than talent. If you can act or sing or dance at all, you could go on the stage. Let me know if you want to. If you have a little talent, it will go a long way.”

Gem had lost interest in the middle of this speech and wandered back to the dining room for more champagne and chicken. “I'm very confused,” Marguerite murmured.

Toby drew closer. “You'll make more money tonight than you'll make in six months, whatever you're doing now. If you're very, very good, you'll make more than you make in a year. And tomorrow you'll wake up and your room will be filled with roses. Maybe even a diamond necklace or two.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Marguerite said, but she saw herself waking up to a roomful of roses, and she was bewitched. She had been respectable, and she had nothing to show for it. She had no scruples, so why was she pretending she did? She had already lost her virginity, and that experience had showed her that she was not the girl she thought she was. She was bad.

Toby had, in a few short words, unknowingly touched upon a secret desire she had nursed since childhood.
The stage
. What if he could really do it? What if he could get her on the stage?

And besides, she rationalized, going on the stage was no longer such a scandalous profession. Hadn't Jay Gould's son George married an actress? Now Mrs. Gould was entertaining in a Fifth Avenue mansion. Marguerite wouldn't be spoiling her chances by participating tonight. She might be ensuring her success!

She turned to Toby. “Could you really help me if I wanted to go on the stage? I can sing. I mean, my mother always said I could sing.”

“Delightful. I knew it. Of course I can help you. I know everyone. You can come to my rooms tomorrow.” He held up one hand. “Just business, I promise. I have a piano.”

He took her elbow. There was no erotic charge to Toby; it was the touch of a brother, of a colleague. Marguerite knew, instinctively, that she could trust him. “But start tonight,” he murmured, close to her ear. “Show me what you can do, tonight.”

M
ARGUERITE WAS SMALL
, the shawl was large, and she raided Gem's little tufted sewing box for pins. She anchored the shawl securely and prayed it wouldn't slip. The gauze left nothing to the imagination. Every time she looked down, she blushed. There were her legs, plain as day underneath her, soon to be stared at by a table full of strange howling gentlemen.

It wasn't too late to back out. Marguerite firmed her resolve with visions of roses and diamond earrings. She had never been shy; why was this unaccustomed modesty cropping up so inconveniently? But it was one thing to expose her breasts for a fleeting instant to Horatio Jones. Flashing them to a roomful of strangers was quite another thing.

The girls waited around the table toying with empty champagne glasses, for Toby had removed the champagne lest they get sleepy. But the silliness had worn off, and now they were bored. Next door at the grand dinner, the toasts went on and on. The longer it took the better, the seasoned girls advised. The drunker the men, the less agile their groping hands, and the sooner the night would end. With any luck, the old goats would be snoring on the tablecloth by two o'clock.

The elusive Mollie Todd wandered in sulkily at ten. She was the most beautiful creature Marguerite had ever seen, with shockingly white skin, pale as milk and translucent as moonlight, and hair the color of the most flaming sunset. She unpinned it before a mirror, and the girls watched, fascinated, as it spilled from a coil at the top of her head to lay, gleaming red-gold in the gaslight, spread across her breasts. Her eyes were catlike, green dusted with gold, and slanted at the corners. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched. She slipped out of her clothes and into a dressing gown and sat smoking cigarettes by a window, her long, luxurious legs crossing and recrossing restlessly.

“Man trouble, I suspect,” Gem whispered to Marguerite. “She's in love with Willie P.”

“Who?” Marguerite whispered, and Gem shook her head warningly and placed a finger on her lips. She mouthed “later,” and Marguerite nodded.

At a quarter to eleven, Toby finally appeared. “You're on, girls,” he said jovially, his amiable face flushed with liquor and excitement. “Mollie?”

Mollie Todd rose negligently, untied the braided cord on her gown, and let it slip from her ivory shoulders. She stood, resplendently nude, her red hair covering her bare white breasts. Marguerite watched, fascinated, as she crossed to the rug in the middle of the adjoining room and lay down on it, arranging her hair to cover her.

Toby was all business now, crossing to Mollie on the rug. “Comfortable?” he asked.

“Just hurry, will you?” Mollie said crossly.

Toby turned to one of the women. “Fannie, call the men in the next room—I'm not John L. Sullivan, I'll never manage to roll her up.”

Fringe fluttering, a plump black-haired girl ran out the other door, and twelve huge, muscled black men marched back in. Their chests were magnificently bare, and they wore gold turbans and silky purple trousers that gathered at the ankle. One of them grinned and winked at Marguerite, whose mouth was open in astonishment, but none of the others even glanced at the rest of the girls. They simply crossed to the parlor, and, with great economy, took an end of the rug and rolled Mollie up in it like a crepe. They might have been a crew of workmen, so brawny and professional was their manner.

“Hurry, will you?” came the muffled voice from within. “I'm suffocating.”

The men hoisted the rug with ease and settled it on their broad shoulders. Then, in single file, they went to the door of the parlor. Toby flung it open, and Marguerite heard their footsteps going down the carpeted hall.

She started after them, but Gem put a hand on her arm. “We still have time. Mollie's first.”

“I want to see!” Marguerite whispered.

Gem grinned. “This way, then.”

She led Marguerite through the other door of the dining room, into a smaller room where the men had been waiting. There, too, a supper was laid out, not as grand as theirs. Gem hurried through the room, opened another door, which led into a long room that Marguerite saw was an artist's studio of some kind. Quickly, they ran across the wooden floor to a double oak door.

“Not a sound, now,” Gem whispered. She opened the door a crack, and pushed Marguerite forward. Then she knelt below her and placed her own eye to the crack.

Like the drawing room she'd entered at first, this room was all damask and voluminous velvet drapery. Huge paintings of pink nudes in ornate gilt frames hung against the crimson walls. Palms scraped the ceiling, and the chandelier was a magnificent creation in crystal hangings and rose-pink globes.

A long table dominated the room, now cluttered with brandy glasses, wine glasses, and champagne. The men lolled about, heavy with their meal, and most seemed either drunk or happy, or both. Toby had not exaggerated; she could see that these men were prosperous. Their evening clothes were impeccable, their white shirtfronts starched and snowy white. They looked portly and magnificent, and ranged in age from their twenties through their fifties, though most seemed in their thirties. But the effect of their magnificence was offset by their headgear. Each man was wearing a fez, and each man looked remarkably silly in it. Most were tilted askew on balding heads, and tassels waved in a feckless manner as the men reached for their wine glasses or laughed, their hands on their round bellies. Marguerite started to giggle, and she could not stop.

Gem poked her to quiet her, but started to giggle, too. Luckily, the double doors at the other end of the room opened, and the men began to cheer, drowning out any noises the two girls might be making. Marguerite stopped giggling and watched in fascination as the twelve black men carried in the Turkish rug.

They headed for a man at the foot of the table. He had a young face underneath a beard probably grown to make him look older. His red fez tilted precariously on his narrow head. He waved a champagne bottle and laughed uproariously. “So this is my present, Stanny,” he said. “A Turkish rug. Original, I grant you.”

“I went all the way to Turkey for that damn rug, Stiers,” bellowed the man at the end of the table. Large and amiable, his hair was sandy red, and his face was flushed with drink and amusement. “It's one of a damn kind, too.”

The table roared as the dozen black men brought the rug to the feet of Stiers. With a flourish, they unrolled it and the exquisite Mollie Todd was revealed. Marguerite couldn't believe the change. Could this be the same sulky, bored creature she'd seen in the other room? This woman was alive and sparkling. Her boredom had changed to an elegant langour. Her green eyes glittered as she stretched and smiled a radiant smile at Stiers. “Happy birthday,” she said.

The men roared louder: they pounded the table with their fists and the floor with their boots. Fezzes went flying and champagne spilled onto the tablecloth. Marguerite traded excited glances with Gem.

“She's something, isn't she,” Gem sighed enviously.

“Magnificent,” Marguerite breathed. She couldn't take her eyes off Mollie. Was this what Toby had told her
she
possessed? Marguerite knew, at that moment, that it was what she wanted. For every man in the room was fascinated by Mollie as she sinuously rose and made her way to Stiers. Their mouths were open, their expressions rapt. Mollie appeared to have no shame about her nudity; she was a wood nymph, a creature accustomed to her body and its loveliness, as natural as a faun. She slipped into the young man's lap and twined a slender arm around his neck. Stiers looked merely embarrassed, and Marguerite found herself liking him for it. He gave a glassy smile as Mollie kissed him lightly on the lips.

“We're up next, dearie,” Gem said in her ear. “Let's go.”

Marguerite tore herself away from the crack in the door. Gem grabbed her hand, and together they ran back to their rooms. The girls were just beginning to stir, prompted by Toby. They grabbed shawls and smoothed hair and checked each other's appearance. Marguerite fussily adjusted her shawl.

“Who's Willie P. ?” she whispered to Gem.

Gem shook her blond curls. “You
are
green. William Miles Paradise, the biggest theatrical producer on Broadway. He has a diamond head on his cane and his dog has a diamond collar. Mollie is the latest of his, oh, shall we say ‘special projects.' He'll put her through hell, but he'll make her a star. Lucky girl,” Gem sighed enviously.

Toby clapped his hands. “Follow me, girls,” he called.

He led them quickly down the hall, pausing before the grand oak doors. He turned to examine them one last time in a professional manner. “Beautiful, beautiful. All right, girls. One, two, three: sparkle!” He threw open the doors, stood aside, and they spilled in.