Richard froze with indecision as he felt the first tendrils of panic set in. He never thought he would see this day, and yet he was waking up in Clara's bed as the first light of day streamed through the balcony door. Clara stretched across his left side, a dizzying combination of silky skin and soft flesh and sharp bones, the bad side of his face buried in her hair. There were many things not right. He had drooled so much that her hair and forehead were wet, and he felt the bite of shame. The arm underneath Clara had pins and needles. He really shouldn't be in her bed as the day began.
Last night felt a dream. Yet he was still here, and she was still with him. He had more than he ever thought he would. The problem was, he wanted more. And he wanted it now.
Clara stirred against him. He was still here, she thought, their skin warm and damp where it pressed against each other. Part of her had been certain that when she woke up he would be gone. She stretched, feeling soreness in new places. Her mouth was so dry it felt like her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Oh goodness, if her mouth felt like that what did he feel like?
"Is the carafe or the glass better for you?" Clara asked as she unpeeled herself from him and leaned over to her nightstand.
"Mmm, I don't need..."
"I think the time for modesty between us has passed since we are, you know..." she gestured to their utter nakedness.
He turned red.
"The carafe. Please."
They both turned away while they drank. Clara fell back on her pillow, her mind trying to work out the various puzzles of her life.
Richard's hand shyly traced up her arm. "Are you. Okay?"
Clara rolled over so she was looking at him and smiled as she ran a fingertip down his chest. "Sad that we only have thirty minutes left before you should leave. I figure you'll need, what, ten minutes to get ready?"
As he pulled her closer, he thought he had always been a very efficient person. They could accomplish much in twenty minutes.
Clara also considered herself an efficient person, but she had never showered so thoroughly in such a short amount of time. Last night, before Richard knocked on her door, she'd sat on her balcony and listened to the sounds of summer beginning. As an Atlantic City girl she understood in her bones the importance of summer; Clara also felt the importance of this particular summer. After all, she thought, Memorial Day had certainly changed her life, hadn't it?
For so long the fight between Jimmy and her father left her sick and scared, yet she had fully believed that she wouldn't have to make a choice, wouldn't have to act. The last twenty-four hours showed her she was going to have to do her best to make sure this feud didn't end in bloodshed. As the water rushed over her, she accepted one simple truth. She was her father's daughter. And therefore she was going to decide what she wanted, determine what she could live with, identify her allies, and act accordingly.
Everyone wanted her to be some version of Princess Clara. Well, she was dreadfully tired of all of it, but today, she thought. Today she'd give the people what they 'd be Princess Clara, but only to achieve her own ends.
She purposefully chose one of the dresses her father ordered her to buy from Bonwit Teller, a blue abstract floral dress with elbow-length sleeves trimmed in white. The money was lodged in her glove, her largest day bag had everything she could need, and she set off with purpose.
"Leroy, I was hoping you were still on duty. You worked last night?" Clara asked in her brightest voice as she stepped into the elevator.
"Yes, miss. Everyone's working long hours this weekend."
Clara touched her hand to Leroy's, leaving behind a fifty dollar bill (it's a maneuver she'd watched her father perform countless times). "Well, I just wanted to say thank you for all you do to keep my guests and me safe, and our comings and goings private." She met his eye the whole time.
"Of course, Miss Thompson."
Leroy watched her walk down the hallway towards the main lobby. Since the day that masked man had carried her onto the elevator while she'd clung to him like she'd never let go, he'd thought they had something going on.
People paid more attention to the three boxes of sfogliatellas from Formica Brothers she carried than they did to Clara when she walked into the Sheriff's office.
Eli looked terrible, she thought. He'd barely shaved, and she was fairly certain she could see tissue under his collar where he'd cut his jaw. "You look horrid," she said when Deputy Halloran closed the door and she sat down in the wooden chair across from her uncle's disastrous desk.
Eli looked at his niece as he took a lobster tail. The outfit she wore probably cost as much as his mortgage payment. Combined with her dress from yesterday, the price of both would probably keep all of his eight kids fed, housed, and clothed for a month. Her hands were still in her lap, not moving anxiously across her skirt like they were yesterday. She'd started doing that after Mabel, he remembered. He'd watched Clara's small hands smoothing her pearl-gray skirt over and over as they sat in the pew during the funeral mass.
Actually, he thought, today she was positively glowing. "I take it Harrow found you," he said, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice.
Clara finished pulling off her gloves and reached for a pastry. "He did. Uncle Eli, I think we need to talk. Really talk. Don't you?"
Eli stared at her wordlessly. What did she know about what happened after he saw her yesterday? The fight with Nucky, O'Neill, who told her? He realized he was being ridiculous.
"About the fact someone scalped Jackson Parkhurst last night?"
"Did they? I can't say I'm sorry," Clara said in a purposefully blank voice. "No, I think we need to talk about all of it. Father was...he was rough in the car. I realized I've never considered what he'll do-to you, to Jimmy, to Richard-if you aren't successful. And Uncle Eli, I don't know what's going on, but I know what his day with Henry Daugherty means."
Fuck, he didn't know what Henry Daugherty means, he thought, and now both Clara and Nucky had brought it up. "Tell me," he said.
"I think Father is calling in favors from the Harding administration. I assume he's going to have his charges moved from state to federal court, and then have Attorney General Daugherty assign a friendly prosecutor? There was a young man with the party last night I didn't recognize. And Uncle Eli, that party last night? It was a full-on bacchanalia."
"I don't know what that is," Eli said, annoyed that Nucky, Jimmy, and Clara all used words no one else knew.
Closing her eyes, she reached for another word before giving up. "An orgy. It was a loud orgy. So loud I heard it from my room."
Eli stammered and looked down at the pastry in his hand. No little girl should have been raised at the Ritz, he thought. He wondered how many bachawhatchamacallums Clara had heard over the years. He still remembered the Nucky's Nocturne party for the state government back when Clara was thirteen or so when the drunk commissioner wandered into her bedroom while she slept. Nucky's response had been to take over more of the eighth floor and build a private hallway to Clara's room. No wonder she fell for Harrow, he thought. For all her father's money, he doubted that she ever felt truly safe.
"So now it's your turn. You need to tell me everything." Clara said, looking straight at him.
It was like lancing a boil. Once he started talking he couldn't stop. Gillian, the Commodore's stroke, the warehouse explosion, Jimmy's disastrous meeting at Parkhurst's house, all of it spewed forth.
"So what's the plan?" Clara asked when he was done, careful not to let her horror show. No one had an overarching plan, she thought. They were just doing things and hoping it all worked out. She could think of seven ways to bring them to their knees; she shuddered to think of what her father would be able to dream up.
He stared at her. "To overthrow your father."
"But how are you going to get there, other than the charges?" Eli didn't answer, and Clara's heart sank.
Clara sighed. "Look, I need to go. But I will not allow this to end in bloodshed. We have to figure out a way through. Take me to lunch at the Knife and Fork in a few days?"
Angela heard the knock and smiled to see Clara standing on the porch holding a box from Formica Brothers.
"I come bearing gifts," Clara said as she walked in.
"You brought lobster tails!" Tommy cried out when he saw the box.
"Sfogliatella," Clara and Angela said in unison.
Tommy took one and ambled back to the sunroom.
Angela looked over Clara, who seemed a thousand times happier than she had the day before, and yet Angela could see that her eyes were still shadowed with anxiety. She'd worried about Richard and Clara all morning, thinking about how he looked when appeared on her doorstep the night before, and Clara's frantic worry yesterday while they lay on the beach.
"Did you find Richard?"
Clara smiled at her. "He found me. I need to talk to Jimmy. Is he here?"
"He's sleeping."
"Is he?" Clara gestured to her dress.
"I think so," Angela replied and Clara smiled before she ran up the stairs.
Jimmy was sound asleep on his back, snoring like the dickens, and she could see the straps of his undershirt. Thank god, she thought. On his bedside table was a half-empty glass of water. She picked up the glass and emptied the contents on his face.
Jimmy sat straight up sputtering, assuming Tommy had spilled water on him, only to be confronted by Clara holding an empty glass.
"Oh good, you're awake. I think we need to talk, don't you?" Clara said, smiling down at him like she was paying a social call.
"What the fuck, Clara?" Jimmy wiped the water off his face. "You're damn lucky I didn't shoot you!"
"Really? Because judging from recent events I think I'm lucky you didn't scalp me! Or, rather...ask Richard to do it?" Clara tilted her head and smiled, but he knew her well enough to hear the venom in her voice.
His head felt like he had slammed it against a cement wall, and he could feel the remnants of adrenaline, steak, and whiskey in his stomach. He did not fucking need this. When the high of the night, of eating steaks and drinking with Richard ended, and he lay smoking in bed a seed of doubt sneaked in. Clara putting into words his deepest doubts was not how he wanted to start his day.
"What the hell were you thinking? You've already lost an entire warehouse of liquor-what's that worth, a hundred thousand dollars, more or less?-so those old Yacht Club men are already furious, and now you've scalped one? What's the play, Jimmy? What are you doing?"
"He insulted me."
Clara blinked and started laughing. "He insulted you, so you scalped him? The hell, Jimmy? Do you know why Father's so successful? He doesn't dignify the taunts of old men with a response. If he did, the Commodore would have been sewn into one of his own horrid taxidermy projects long ago. Father knows when to act, and he knows when to do nothing."
Jimmy swung his legs out of bed. If Clara didn't want to see him in his boxers she shouldn't come busting into his bedroom. Jesus, where was Ange? Tommy? Richard?
Richard. "So I send Rich to you last night and you make him talk?"
Clara was prepared. "Richard? Do you remember who you are speaking to, James? I know everyone you are gathering in that horror show of a house and you'd be amazed at how quickly they share information when I look at them like I care and make sympathetic noises. You might want to try that."
"I don't need your advice-"
Downstairs Angela opened the door. "Richard, I'm glad to see you." He looked so much better, she thought. That horrible vacant expression from last night was gone.
Richard heard heavy footfalls and raised voices from upstairs.
"Clara's here," Angela said quietly. "She and Jimmy are...talking."
Upstairs, Clara snapped back. "Oh, you don't? Because from what I hear the Commodore is incapacitated, and your mother's tongue isn't just in your ear, it's in your mouth. In front of everyone."
Jimmy glared at her. He'd never hit a woman, but did Clara count? Some sort of sibling exception?
"Now that it's clear Father has a new plan, what's yours?"
Damn it, Nucky had a new plan? Fuck it all. He lit a cigarette and tried to think through what Clara could mean.
Clara rolled her eyes. Goodness, she thought, was she the only one who could see the obvious? "I'm going to let you parse this for yourself. Think about who Father's guest was at the Dedication, and let me add that the party Father threw for said guest is illegal in all 48 states."
Jimmy sucked on the cigarette. The Attorney General, but the charges were at the state level. Shit, he realized. Damn Nucky.
"Ah, I see you've gotten there. So what's your plan if Father beats the charges?"
Silence.
"Okay, that's concerning. What about what his Irishman did to your warehouse?"
The blank look on his face told her what she needed to know.
"Why do you think the Irishman blew up the warehouse?" he finally asked.
"There's this whole idea that information is power you might consider. Do you ever read a damn newspaper?"
"Fuck you, Clara."
"Am I not saying it right? Let me try this,"Clara's voice became higher, breathier. "James, you are so big and strong and smart. The world is going to be so impressed when it finds out what kind of a man it's dealing with. Where does one find such a man not afraid to slaughter his own chances of success by answering a playground taunt with a scalping, thereby angering his only source of financial and political support? When has the world ever seen such a leader before?"
Clara's voice changed back to her own as Jimmy angrily began putting pants on. "You can not listen to Gillian. Jimmy, you have thrown all of our lives into the fire. You have to have a plan. Or, hell, let's go to my father right now and we will both beg forgiveness. Because I swear to you, this summer will not end with me standing in tears by a grave. I will not allow it. You have twisted everyone I love into this nightmare, but I am not going to lose anyone. Not over your ill-conceived coup."
Jimmy brushed past her and started down the stairs. Clara followed close behind.
"Am I not doing this correctly? When I whisper things in your ear, are you supposed to feel my breath? Should I use my tongue?"
It was only the sight of Richard and Angela standing at the bottom of the stairs staring up at them that made Jimmy and Clara stop.
"I was going to come up. Gillian's on the phone," Angela told them, looking from one to the other.
Jimmy stifled a groan.
Clara's face twisted. "What you are doing? Better hurry," she said with faux brightness before her voice turned gravelly. "Mommy's calling."
Jimmy slammed his fist against the wall as he went to answer the phone.
Clara covered her face with her hands for a moment, mostly to block out the shocked faces of Angela and Richard. When Richard had last seen her she was kissing him goodbye in her kimono. A few hours later she was yelling at Jimmy on the stairs. It had already been a day.
"My apologies. We had...family issues to address," Clara said when she started down the stairs again.
"Is everything okay?" Angela asked, and Clara's fury raged again as she thought how horribly unfair it as that Angela didn't know what Jimmy was doing. How long, Clara wondered, would her loyalty to Jimmy outweigh her other concerns?
"You need to ask Jimmy," was the answer she landed on, but she didn't miss the look of betrayal on Angela's face.
Tommy called, and Angela walked away. Clara smiled sadly at Richard.
"Mmm. Long morning?"
"Busy," she said simply as reached up to touch the back of his neck. "You cut your hair."
"Can you fucking believe it," Jimmy complained to Angela in the kitchen. "She came upstairs and threw water in my face, and this is what he gets."
"Miss Clara Thompson is here to see you," Mary announced as Leander Whitlock sat down at his desk.
Leander stared at his maid. What could Thompson's daughter possibly be doing here? Thompson's daughter, he remembered, but she and Darmody considered themselves siblings. Couldn't be a coincidence the girl was here now, after the morning he'd had.
"Show her in," he instructed.
Clara looked around the house as she was shown in. Very Victorian, she thought, and she'd love to take down the velvet curtains and apply white paint throughout. But it was the home of a cultivated and civilized man, she decided, looking at the paintings and lack of horrific decor choices already made him the best of the Yacht Club men in her mind.
"Clara, what an unexpected surprise," he said, taking her hand. "What brings you here?"
"I find myself in need of a lawyer."
What an unexpected answer, Leander thought. What an unexpected morning.
"Your father has attorneys."
Clara smoothed her skirt. "My best interest, my priorities, and my father's don't always align."
He stood and moved to the bar cart. "What's your pleasure?"
"Oh, I..."
"If you are grown-up enough to hire a lawyer, you are grown-up enough to have a drink with him."
She nodded. "Whiskey and water, please." Clara pulled her checkbook from her bag. "How much is the retainer?"
Leander pushed down a laugh at the idea of little Clara Thompson ready to write him a check. "Twenty dollars."
After she finished writing the check she laid it on his desk and accepted the drink.
"Does this mean we have attorney-client privilege?" Clara asked.
"It does. Here's to a prosperous relationship," he said as they clinked glasses.
"Did you know that Jackson Parkhurst was scalped last night?" he asked. Parkhurst wasn't one of the girl's favorites, he knew. He remembered the Easter dinner where Clara looked like she was going attack him across the table.
"I know from my own grandfather how sometimes the elderly can have the most unlikely accidents. It's amazing the damage a fall can do," Clara said levelly, wondering if she was going to have to discuss it with every man in Atlantic City.
"A fall pulled off his scalp?"
Clara looked up at him with large, innocent eyes. "Is that not what happened?"
Leander sighed. "That's what almost everyone will think, yes. After we pay off Jackson's manservant, who has a story about two young men, one with a distinctive face..."
It was slight, but he saw her wince. How interesting.
"We are going to be honest with each other?" he asked, and Clara nodded.
"The relationship between Jimmy and his mother..."
"If Gillian wasn't whispering in his ear I'd sleep better at night," Clara said. "Jimmy is smart, and brave. One day he's going to be a great leader. But he needs good advice, sound advice, and Gillian's own...desires interfere."
"And what are your goals that don't align with your father's?" he asked.
"Well, I want to be successful. On my own. I have a new contract from the Stratemeyer Syndicate for my next books and I thought it would be a good idea to have a lawyer look at it before I signed it. I also think I'll have to file taxes next year, and I'm not sure I'm keeping my records correctly." Clara retrieved her papers from her bag.
Leander looked through them briefly. They were neatly organized, and Clara was making money with her writing, he saw. He should have charged her more.
"Give me two days to look over this. What other goals are you and your father at odds over?"
Clara sighed. "I don't want the people I love destroyed."
"And you love your father, your uncle, James?" he asked.
She nodded.
Whitlock reached for a name but it wouldn't come to him, and there was no way to describe the man that wouldn't insult Clara if his instinct was correct. "And James's friend?"
Clara looked down at her hands."Richard Harrow. Yes."
Dear god. He fought the urge again to laugh. Had Nucky Thompson set out to raise two brilliant, headstrong, impetuous, rebellious children? Thompson raised them to be the Prince and Princess of the Boardwalk, but these two took their cues straight from the royal children of the Medicis.
He absolutely should have asked for a higher retainer.
It was three o'clock when she returned to the Ritz. Clara wanted a nap, and to get in a few hours of writing. Instead, there was a note on her door that just said 'See me.'
Her father was in the drawing room, still in silk robe and pajamas, eating.
"Join me," he instructed. She took grillades and broiled tomatoes. The only thing'd she'd eaten all day was a lobster tail pastry with Uncle Eli, and the mix of stress, exhaustion, and whiskey was taking a toll.
"Feels like when you were in school," he said. "You'd come home, I'd be getting up, we'd eat together." She was well-dressed, he saw. "Where have you been?"
"Errands," she answered simply.
"I hope you weren't able to hear my guests while you were trying to sleep," he continued.
Clara smiled. "I certainly hope none of your guests heard me."
Nucky sighed. "I doubt anyone heard your typewriter, Clara. Is this how its going to be?"
She pushed her food around on her plate. "How would you like it to be?"
"I'd enjoy loyalty and appreciation from my only child."
"I appreciate the brilliance of your gambit with Harry Daugherty."
Nucky's eyes narrowed, "Who told you about that?"
Clara laughed. "Who told me? Dear lord, Father, do you think me an imbecile who can't add two plus two?" Her father continued to glare at her. "What, are you going to lock me in my room for impertinence?"
"You'd be amazed at the places I could lock you, Clara."
Clara forced herself to remain still, not even allowing her hand to smooth her skirt. "I think it's time I make my own life, and move out. I'm almost twenty-three, it's past time really."
"No."
"No?"
"I don't need people thinking I can't control my own daughter."
"Yes, of course. I don't ever want to betray the visuals."
They finished eating in silence. Clara knew she needed to defuse the tension. "Oh, I meant to tell you. Do you remember my friend Romola, from boarding school? You took us to dinner at the Red Fox Inn when you came to visit Middleburg?"
Nucky cast his mind back. Pretty girl, dark haired, he remembered. She had been in a film.
"What about her?"
"She was at Dorothy Grenville's wedding. Romola said you do business with her father?"
Interesting, Nucky thought. "What does her father do?"
"He was a lawyer in Chicago when Romola and I were at school, but now he lives in Cincinnati and is in...your line of work."
"He's a county treasurer?" Nucky answered with a smile, and Clara smiled back.
"Something like that. His name is George Remus?"
"Your school friend is George Remus's daughter?"
Clara nodded. "He left Romola's mother and married again. Romola's stories about her new stepmother make me grateful all over again for Margaret."
"You like Margaret?"
"You know I do."
When Clara rose to go back to her room Nucky reached into his pocket. "Here," he said.
"Thank you," Clara said, "But I don't want your money. But thank you, Father, for lunch and for...all of it." Clara went down her hallway, knowing she had already made her decision.
He watched her walk away, and later opened the door to her hallway, listening to the sound of the typewriter. She writes fast, he thought. At some point he should read something she wrote. Maybe it would help him understand the pretty stranger who shared the eighth floor with him.
Richard hurried back to his room. He was supposed to meet Clara in the alley in less than thirty minutes, and he wanted to clean up a little. As he walked past Mrs. Siddons's house he saw someone was sitting on his small porch. His hand moved to the Glock, but then he saw a straw shoe.
"Clara?"
She smiled up at him. "I missed you. I didn't want to wait. I hope that's okay?"
He helped her to her feet. She wasn't wearing the society girl outfit from earlier, he realized. She'd changed into a skirt and blouse. "Of course."
Even now he was hesitant with her, and his hands couldn't quite decide where to settle.
"Do you know what was going on in my father's suite last night?" Clara asked.
Richard nodded.
She badly wanted to say the next part, but she was anxious. She took a breath."I want to be with you, as much as possible, when we aren't working or busy. But I don't want to be with you at the Ritz, because I don't want all of that near us. So I'm basically inviting myself...here."
"I. Mmm. Yes. But it's not as nice. As your room," he said. The thought of how he could support Clara still haunted him, because how could they have a life together if he couldn't? Although when she stood on his porch in a skirt it was a less daunting thought then when she wore her best clothes.
Clara smiled. "I really don't care, as long as it's just us."
Richard nodded and pulled the key from his pocket, and took Clara's hand to pull her through the door ahead of him. He took one last look to make sure no one was outside before he shut the door behind them and locked it.
