The Lucky Ones by Anna Godbersen Read Free Book Online Page A

ordinary person. For a moment Letty watched him disappear into the crush of bodies, but then she heard Sophia calling her, and she followed the turquoise train of her dress into the limousine, and, like that, they were on to the next attraction.
    Astrid didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when Charlie came in, waking her. The turret room that had once belonged to Darius Grey, but was now theirs, was strewn with clothes not yet put away from their travels. Light from the guard tower slanted in through the high windows. She turned away from the door so that he would not know she was wide-eyed, and she stared at the window wishing she could sleep as she normally did—the happy, solid sleep of girls who are just the right amount selfish and do not have to begin their days at any particular hour. The light was already in the sky, and on the other side of the room she could hear Charlie careening back and forth.
    The evening came back to her, a series of ugly scenes. How Charlie had dragged her all over Manhattan, bragging about her looks and family and his bootlegging prowess, how he was going to be bigger than Coyle Mink. When she’d finally prevailed upon him to take her back to Dogwood, they had been intercepted at the door by Jones, and when Astrid went up to bed ahead of him, she heard Charlie shouting from the second floor. The fight must have gone on all this time.
    Now Astrid listened to Charlie wrestling with his jacket and with his shoes, and she knew that he was even drunker than before. Finally he got himself undressed and fell, hard, against the mattress beside her. Immediately he began to snore. Snoring was not something she had minded particularly while they were on their honeymoon—she had not wanted to sleep while they were away, and anyway, snoring seemed like something that men did, and for that reason it had delighted instead of tortured her. But now she knew that it was torture.
    She turned over so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, and then she turned back over again. The beginning of the dawn was on his high slab cheekbones and the curve of his closed eyelids. For hours, it seemed, she stared at that face, wondering what went on behind it, until she had the idea to disentangle herself from the white bedclothes and go to the sofa, where she lay herself down and closed her eyes.

5
    “WHAT DID I TELL YOU? SOMETIMES IT’S MORE FUN just us girls.”
    To punctuate her point, Sophia flagged down a passing waiter and took two champagne flutes off his brass tray, although Letty was pretty well convinced already. By then she’d realized how disappointing it would have been to go home and talk about the movies when she had a real party like this one to go to that was as grand as anything she’d ever seen on screen.
    “Val’s a romantic, you know. He’s absolutely in love with the pictures, worries himself sick about his lines and all that. But it’s just as important to leave the house now and then, especially on nights like these, when the important people are out and in a good mood, and there are so many people to see you looking your best!”
    “Oh, yes, I can see that.”
    Glancing around the great expanse of Jack Montrose’s living room, Letty thought how the gentlemen in tuxedoes and women in the latest styles did practically glow with importance. Although she was also pretty sure that just about anyone would feel important in such a setting. The dimensions of the room were almost improbable—it seemed to go on forever in two directions. Behind them was a wall of gold-flecked mirrors, and in front of them a series of glass doors were thrown open onto a terrace that floated above the soft topography of Central Park treetops. Clustered seating areas were scattered throughout the room, low white sofas and chaises separated from each other by potted rosebushes. At their feet lay a bearskin rug.
    “You never know who you’ll meet at a party—if you remember nothing else I tell you, honey,