1
Cordially Invited
LEVI
“It smells like a urinal at the Port Authority back here.” My nose wrinkled up so tight, I wasn’t sure it’d ever be smooth again.
My footfalls—and those of my buddy Ash and the couple ahead of us—echoed off the towering brick walls on either side of us, a rhythm to match the muffled beat of a drum and a bass line coming from behind the iron door standing silently at the end of the alley.
Ash laughed, an untroubled sound. “Oh, come on, man. It’s no worse than any other alley in Manhattan.”
“This can’t be the location of the party. I swear to God, Ash—if I got all dressed up just to get mugged, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.”
Again with that laugh, coupled with a flash of teeth that made it almost impossible not to smile back.
I somehow managed to resist.
He clapped me on the shoulder and snapped my suspenders like a dick. “Come on. Be a good sport.”
A derisive noise from somewhere in the back of my throat was my only answer.
“Listen. You wanted me to get you into one of these parties—”
“After you badgered me for months to come with you—”
He shot me a look. “Not on one of the nights I had Lily James on the hook—I’ve been waiting five years for her to be single. But I’m a good fucking friend, so I brought your ass instead. So live it up, bucko. Next time, you won’t be so lucky. So wear your suspenders and quit bitching, would you?”
I jerked my chin at the couple ahead of us as they approached the door. “They didn’t dress up in ’20s gear.” When the guy turned his head, I leaned toward Ash and said under my breath, “Wait—is that who I think it is?”
“You’d think he’d play along with the ’20s theme. He played the Gatsby, after all.”
Some commotion went on at the door, and Leo turned, blowing past us, mumbling swear words with his date trotting behind him, trying to keep up. Out of nowhere, he whirled around, jabbed a finger at the door, and yelled, “Bullshit!” His date plowed into him, and the two spun around before he righted them, snagged her hand, and stormed toward the mouth of the alley.
Ash’s sideways smile noted his pleasure at the sight. “Not even Leo gets in without a costume, golden ticket or not.”
At the mention, he reached into his inside coat pocket and extracted the invitation, printed on heavy black paper with gold foil deco detailing and our instructions:
The Bright Young Things
do cordially invite you
to ruckus and rebellion
by way of jazz and whiskey.
The brighter, the better, darling.
Password: The Tattler
The address, which wasn’t so much of an address as it was a general direction, was printed underneath, the words catching what little light shone in the dim alley, glinting like a promise.
It was typical of the Bright Young Things—vague, melodramatic, and undeniably intriguing. Since the recent turn into the modern ’20s, the enigmatic social group had taken over—first New Yorkers, followed quickly by gossip columns, and then the country as a whole. Copycat parties had swept the nation, but none were so extravagant as the trendsetters’. Presumably founded by a pack of anonymous socialites, the parties had become a topic of voracious interest. Where would they be? What spectacle would follow? And most importantly, who was Cecelia Beaton?
The name was a play on the illustrious Cecil Beaton, an icon in fashion photography and notorious member of the original Bright Young Things. The infamous, irreverent youths had overtaken London newspaper headlines through the late 1920s for all the same reasons as their namesake: they were wild, rebellious, and glamorous with exclusivity that was almost impossible to break into.
Cecelia Beaton signed her name to any contracts and invoices for parties, paid in cash, and generally flummoxed everyone regarding her real identity. If she even was a she. No one knew, and none of the fifty or so core Bright Young Things would talk. The mystery of it ate the general populace alive. So they wondered and watched and salivated in unison at the sight of celebrities’ Instagram posts from the parties and stalked Twitter for any sliver of gossip they could inhale. Two hundred invitations went out for every party, and not one single attendee would risk their coveted spot by leaking any important details leading up to an event. Just enough to whet the appetite of the public, amplifying the intrigue exponentially.
As far as I knew, I was the first reporter to actually make it into one.
And I intended to make the most of it.
The steel door we stopped at was imposing, set under an unassuming tin-topped light in the brick wall—a rusty, bolted, ten-ton affair with a metal slide at eye-level. When Ash knocked to the beat of “Shave and a Haircut,” the slide rasped open, and a pair of suspicious eyes glinted from the shadows.
“Password,” he growled.
But Ash flashed that smile he flung around so easily, along with his invitation. “The Tattler.”
The slide slammed shut, and with a creaky grind, the door slid open.
I wasn’t a small guy—six-four with no shoes on, my shoulders broad enough to intimidate most anybody into submission. But the man behind that door wasn’t so much a man as he was a rhino, with a jaw like a brick and a neck like a tree trunk. He could have pounded us into the ground like a stake with nothing more than a hammer-swing to the skull. But instead, he stepped out of the way and let us pass, watching us as he rolled the door back in place and lowered a metal arm dense enough to stop a battering ram.
“They don’t fuck around about security, do they?” I asked, glancing once more over my shoulder.
“Don’t want the rabble getting in, do we?”
“Anything but that,” I answered flatly as we trotted down a set of narrow stairs as black as pitch.
The stairwell dumped us into a long, dimly lit hallway, and at the end was a doorway, a portal to decadence, a glittering window to music and laughter, gold and velvet. Luxury incarnate.
In a rare act of nerves, Ash grabbed his homburg hat by the indentations, lifting it just high enough to run his free hand through sandy-blond hair. Where he wore a double-breasted three-piece suit, complete with pocket square and pocket watch, I’d decided on the ’20s workingman. Shirtsleeves cuffed to my elbows, no tie, slacks with a higher waist than I preferred for authenticity, suspenders, and a tweed newsboy cap.
Never was one for suits. Ash, however, had been born in Armani with a silver spoon in his mouth and a G & T in his hand. Just like almost everyone on the other side of that threshold.
Though I had plenty of rich friends—and I mean, filthy rich, old-money friends—their extravagance always made me uncomfortable. Not for the underscoring of what I didn’t have, but for the sheer lack of normalcy, the flippancy at which they’d spend twenty grand in a night while there were so many who had nothing. That sort of grandeur was so out of touch, it bordered disrespect.
But that was what it was and happened to be exactly why I was here. For a fairy tale of riches no commoner would ever see.
I tried to put away my disapproving frown, lifting my chin and straightening my spine. My lungs expanded with a fortifying breath.