Splendor: A Luxe Novel by Anna Godbersen Read Free Book Online Page A

black skirt that was secured with a wide, brown leather belt. Her pretty skin had grown rosy with exertion, and her lashes formed black, pointed coronas around shiny eyes. A mad piano played in the corner, encouraging the droves to drink faster and laugh louder—an imperative they merrily obeyed.
    “The rain will begin soon,” Señora Conrad said from her perch at the end of the bar.
    “But,” Diana returned gaily as she poured glasses of straight rum for the gentlemen who watched her from the other side, “it is not raining now.”
    Señora Conrad’s was off the Plaza de Armas, and the bottles shone with reflected light from the candles lining the elaborately carved wooden shelves. Mostly men came there—Cuban businessmen as well as hordes of the American servicemen who had been stationed on the island since the conclusion of the war.
    The proprietor was the first wife of an American whose interests in Cuba had dried up. She decorated her generous figure in black as though she were a widow, although in fact Señor Conrad had simply returned to Chicago, where he began trading commodities again and started a second family with his third cousin.
    But he had loved his Gertrudis, and had left her with a business of her own to live on. There were plenty of gold flourishes in the place, just as there would have been in any of the gentlemen’s watering holes in New York, although the effect was shaded with a heady dose of Spanish gloom. On a Friday night, all the little round tables were circled by men in uniform, who stretched their long legs across the old stone floors and toasted to being far from home.
    A thunderclap close by shook the bottles and rattled the windows. The saloon customers quieted momentarily and turned toward the street. Although a distinct wetness hung in the air, still nothing fell from the sky. Señora Conrad made a low, whistling noise; a moment later, the din rose again. Then everyone moved toward the bar, rowdily calling out that they would have another. As the crowd began to roar, the old gentleman bartender, who worked in front of the large oval mirror to Diana’s right, removed his bow tie as if to say that now, finally, he was ready to get down to business. Beads of sweat clung to file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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    his forehead—even they were too lazy to move—and though Diana thought it might be interesting to go on observing him, voices all around her were demanding one more. She bent forward, shoveling ice into glasses, setting up another row of drinks.
    Working made her arms weary, but it was a kind of fatigue that she’d grown to like. It wasn’t that she needed the money so much anymore—she had saved what she’d earned on the luxury liner, not to mention what she made selling pieces of gossip about the top-drawer people on board to Barnard back in New York, as well as a few little local color sketches, which he had complimented excessively. She was beginning to see that stories were not only to be overheard on the plush settees of drawing rooms at teatime, but might also be observed when one is out, at night, where people congregate.
    “What’s a pretty American like you doing in a place like this?” called a man with a wide bushy mustache as she pushed a full glass in his direction. Diana, who was used to such questions, and the rather forward flattery that followed, took his money with an evasive smile. At first it had surprised her how differently men behaved toward her here, uttering phrases or asking favors as they never would have dared in New York. But she quickly came to see that they were a long way from home, and from the women and children they were bound to there, and that distance as well as drink had a way of lowering men’s inhibitions.
    A fresh-faced soldier appeared behind the mustachioed man, who was still leering at Diana with rummy eyes, and called out for a beer in a timid voice. He seemed as young as