The sound of a gramophone crackling to life startled Blaine, who had been sleeping fitfully on his wrought-iron day bed. He rubbed his eyes at the room slowly came into dim focus: the large burgundy canopy bed pushed up against the far wall, the ornate crystal chandelier which hung heavily from the ceiling and the table where the gramophone sat. Next to the table stood a dark, feminine figure holding a bundle against her chest. The ragtime music from the gramophone floated softly across the room as the figure spoke.
"The party at the Hummel mansion starts in an hour, Mr. Anderson," she said. "I pressed your shirt; I'll just lay it out next to the rest of your clothes." She walked over to the bed and spread out the crisp blue-and-white striped shirt next to a pair of white pants and blue argyle socks. She herself was dressed in a plain, unflattering housekeeper's dress, though Blaine thought her face strikingly beautiful in the blood-orange light of the setting sun coming in through the bay window. He shook his head to clear it of the distracting thought and picked up a half-full glass of lemonade from the floor next to the bed.
"Thank you, Miranda," Blaine grumbled, hoisting himself off the day bed and stumbling over to where she had arranged his clothes, taking a drink from the glass. "Have the car ready in ten minutes."
"Yes, Mr. Anderson," she said, bowing her head slightly as she turned to exit the room.
"Oh, and Miranda?"
She stopped abruptly, mid-stride. Blaine admired the way she went up on tiptoe to turn around and face him. "Yes?"
"Thank you," he said, smiling. Miranda blushed slightly.
"You're welcome, sir." And with that, she swiftly turned around and left.
When Blaine was sure she was out of earshot, he went over to the gramophone and turned up the volume, dancing along to the swinging rhythm as he stripped off his day clothes, until finally he was down to just a white undershirt and boxers. He whistled as he pulled on his socks, remembering how utterly overjoyed he'd been to find them at Macys on his last visit to Manhattan. Blaine lived a comfortable distance away from the main island in a rather stately mansion in Beechhurst, just across the Sound from Locust Point. Having recently graduated from Columbia with a degree in history, Blaine decided to take the year off in his parents' house while they were off touring in Greece and Italy. Despite the freedom to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, Blaine could not shake the undeniable truth that, aside from the servants who took care of the house, he was very, very alone. Blaine frowned at this thought as he buttoned up his shirt and tucked it neatly into the waist of his pants. He picked up a red bowtie and pulled it around the collar of his shirt before grabbing his navy blazer, eager to get on the road as soon as possible. He needed to get out of this house; he needed to see new people.
The clock on the wall struck the quarter hour as Blaine descended the staircase into the foyer. A copy of the New York Times on the parlor table announced the toll of a devastating hurricane that hit Miami earlier that week. The day was Friday, September 24, 1926. Blaine finished tying his bow tie and pulled open the large oak door to the exterior of the house and the horseshoe-shaped driveway. The sun had almost disappeared behind the Manhattan skyline, giving the buildings a hauntingly beautiful glow of deep crimson. A black Studebaker sat idling in front of him with his driver, Stanford, sitting patiently behind the wheel. Blaine hopped in the back seat and spread his arms out behind him.
"All ready, Mr. Anderson?" Stanford asked in his slightly posh Connecticut drawl.
"To Manhattan, Stan, and full speed ahead! It's nearly eight o'clock and I'm still not drunk!" Stanford chuckled quietly as he put the car into drive and rolled out of the driveway and onto the main road. Blaine settled back into the leather seat, settling against the side of the car and stretching his legs across the seat. He sighed quietly as he looked out the window of the car, passing house after house, each one containing a family which was no doubt gathered around a dinner table at that very minute, wanting for nothing…
Blaine loved his parents, though sometimes he wondered if they remembered he even existed. Starting when Blaine had barely learned how to walk, his father had encouraged him to take an interest in business in the hopes that one day his son would be able to take over for him as the head of the largest newspaper syndicate on the Eastern sea board. Blaine grew up with a very romantic notion of life, however, not at all suited to the high-powered demands of the business world. His father took it as a rather nasty shock when, after two years into his college education, Blaine declared himself an American Studies and European Histories double-major. A year later, he broke off his engagement with Lola Merrick, a young writer at Barnard who wrote novels about love affairs in the Midwest. Ever since he had remained unattached; every Christmas and summer he would return to the house in Beechhurst, seeing his parents only at breakfast and dinner and spending most of his time reading in his room or down by the shore. Occasionally, one of his college friends would stop by (Finn Hudson in particular loved to toss a football with Blaine in the yard on bright, warm afternoons), but for the most part, it was just Blaine.
The lights of the city began to flare up in front of them like matchsticks in the high windows. Blaine leaned out the window of the car and breathed in the night air.
"Only a month graduated and you're already heading back to the island, eh?" Stan quipped.
Blaine smiled quietly to himself. "You of all people should know, Stan, that Beechhurst was never made for someone like me. I need the hustle and bustle of city life more than my father. It just –" He struggled to find an adequate word to describe it. Stan nodded perspicaciously.
"It's exciting, isn't it?" he said, not so much a question as a recognition of shared feeling.
"Exactly," Blaine exhaled, relieved. "It's exciting."