The Flaming Corsage

by William Kennedy

  “Take a uniform away from a cop,” Cully said, “you can’t tell he’s a cop no more.”

  Edward saw Francis moving up behind the tough who held the pistol, and he decided to act.

  “You goddamn pack of jackals,” Edward yelled, and he threw a beer mug at the tough with the gun and hit his chin. The man fired once and hit a stranger next to Edward. Francis came up behind the tough and pinioned him with a life preserver, then kneed him in the crotch and kicked the gun toward Edward. Cully fired a second shot into the deck before Edward could pick up the pistol. Another tough rushed to pick it up, but Cadden, with the energy of rage, stood and grabbed the attacker’s arm, smashed his nose with his fist. Cadden snapped the man’s arm like an ear of corn, dragged him to the railing.

  “Let’s move,” Cully yelled, and he fired again into the deck. The toughs backed away from the bar as Cadden flung the man with the broken arm into the river.

  Edward picked up the fallen gun as Black Jack and men from the crowd with knives and clubs moved toward Cully and crew. Cully led his toughs up a ladder, firing over the heads of the crowd as they went. Nobody followed them.

  Giles was suddenly there as Edward and Maginn lifted the wounded stranger and the two savaged policemen onto tables where Giles could treat their wounds. Edward saw Maginn going up the ladder the toughs had climbed.

  Word reached the captain and he pulled his tug close to a man in a rowboat to tell him of the riot on board and to send a message to the Albany police. The captain turned the tug and the barges in a semicircle and moved at high speed back toward Albany. Edward saw the rowboat man pulling the tough with the broken arm out of the water.

  Edward thought: When you look at Cully Watson you know what you’re looking at, but when you look at Maginn you don’t know what he’s become since yesterday. You could not know he would follow Cully and his gang, which scattered among the crowds on the four decks of the two barges. You might have predicted that by the time the Albany police rowed out to the barges at the Columbia Street pier, Cully and his toughs would be elsewhere. But you could not have predicted that Maginn would row Cully to the Rensselaer shore across from Albany, then row back to the barge.

  When Maginn climbed back aboard from the lifeboat, he said he’d found Cully at the stern of the second barge, taking up slack on the rope of the lifeboat that trailed the barge in the water. Cully told Maginn to drop into the boat and row him and the boys ashore or he’d shoot him.

  “What could I do?” Maginn asked.

  “Why couldn’t he row himself?” Edward asked.

  “He wanted to see who was following him.”

  “Why didn’t he have one of his pals row?”

  “He thinks they’re stupid.”

  “But you’re intelligent enough to row a boat.”

  “Cully doesn’t like me, and you don’t argue with a man with a pistol.”

  “Why doesn’t he like you?”

  “Something I wrote about him in the paper.”

  “Will you write about this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Naming names?”

  “Do you think I’m suicidal?”

  A police sergeant, finding no culprits on either barge, arrested Maginn for aiding a felon, and for taking a lifeboat from a river vessel, a federal offense. As police led Maginn away, Felicity’s aunt waved a handkerchief at him, and Maginn, in hand chains, vigorously waved back with both hands.

  Edward and Giles posted bail for Maginn, but after his interrogation, the charges against him were dropped. Cully left Albany a fugitive, the only one of the gang known by name. At a hearing Edward and Giles testified to the beating of the police, and to one tough’s shooting a man in the crowd. Police arrested three men, but ten witnesses in their behalf testified they were sunning themselves on an upper deck during the fight. No other witness came forward to testify against the wild boys, and all charges were dismissed: a victory for numerical perjury, and triumph of the worst and the least.

  Maginn never wrote about the brawl for The Argus. His editor said nobody believed his rowboat-kidnapping story.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER the excursion Giles called Edward to say Cadden’s head was mended, and they were ready to play. They all met at Keeler’s men’s bar and Giles revealed that Sally would welcome a visit from Maginn tonight, after nine o’clock, when the house was empty. She wanted to hear of Maginn’s encounter with the hoodlums, and had heard he was a writer, as was she. She was writing a love story on the order of Wuthering Heights.

  “Where are these rooms she’s taken?” Maginn asked.

  “About three miles down the river road,” Giles said.

  “Then I need a ride,” said Maginn. “The trolley doesn’t go that far.”

  “Are you serious about this, Fitz?” Cadden asked. “That lovely woman really wants this clown to visit her in her rooms? At night?”

  “She did seem excited.”

  “This is unbelievable,” Cadden said.

  “It’s normal,” Maginn said.

  Maginn, at forty-nine, could not be called good-looking. His hairline had moved backward, his drooping gray mustache was ineptly darkened with mustache wax. He did not fit the lothario image, but his sensuality gave him an exotic appeal to many women. Why shouldn’t the fireman’s wife be one of his herd?

  “I can take you down,” Giles said, “but you’ll have to find your own way back.”

  “Maybe I’ll stay the week.”

  “Just be careful. Her husband’s got a temper.”

  “Isn’t he in Westchester?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Then why shouldn’t we believe her?” Maginn asked. “What do you think, Edward?”

  “I don’t know what to think about you, Maginn. And I certainly don’t know what to think about this woman. You’re making a career out of intrigue.”

  Edward said he had a meeting but would drop by at Giles’s house later to learn the outcome. Giles and Cadden drove Maginn to the house of assignation, which was dark.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Maginn said.

  “You want us to wait?” Giles asked as Maginn stepped down onto the carriage drive.

  “I’ll go with him, make sure he gets in,” Cadden said.

  Maginn mounted the steps, knocked, won no response. He turned to Cadden, who stood in the moonlight at the bottom of the stoop, and shrugged, knocked louder. A light went on and Maginn smiled at Cadden.

  “Who is it?” a voice from inside whispered.

  “Is that you, Sally? It’s Thomas Maginn, your admirer from the barge.”

  The door flew open and from interior shadows a male voice boomed, “So you’re the one who’s seeing my wife! Well, you’ve seen her for the last time, you home-wrecking son of a bitch!”

  A man loomed from the shadows, pistol in hand, and fired two thunderclaps at Maginn, who was already on the run down the carriageway with Cadden.

  “Hurry up, for God’s sake,” Cadden said.

  “So there’s two of you!” yelled the man with the gun, and he fired another shot. Cadden fell on his face and Maginn kept running, turned to see the man coming toward him, and clambered wildly into the carriage.

  “He’ll kill us all,” Giles said, whipping the horse. And the carriage careened down the drive. Maginn looked back and saw the man pointing his gun at the inert Cadden.

  “Christ,” Maginn said, “that bastard shot Cadden for no reason. He’s killed him. He’s a lunatic!”

  “Some men are like that about their wives,” Giles said, urging the horse to a wild gallop.

  “We should go back for Cadden,” Maginn said.

  “You want to get us shot too?”

  “But he’s hurt. We’ve got to call the cops.”

  “And tell them what?”

  Maginn did not answer. They drove to Giles’s town house and found Edward waiting, sipping whiskey in the drawing room. Maginn manically recounted the terror, the fall of plucky Cadden, inc
oherent flight, his desire to straighten things out. Edward listened with head-shaking sympathy.

  “If Cadden is dead he’s dead,” Edward said. He paused for reflection. “If he’s not dead he’ll probably admit to that irate man what was happening. But if he mentions Giles’s carriage, they’ll come here looking for you.”

  Edward stood and paced.

  “What you need is an alibi,” he said to Maginn. “We’ll go upstairs and get you into bed and if anybody comes we’ll swear you’ve been here for hours.”

  “You’d do that?” Maginn asked Edward.

  “What happened wasn’t your fault, was it?”

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “An alibi worked for those fellows who beat up the cops on the barge,” Edward said. “And what choice do you have?”

  “I’d get into that bed if I were you,” Giles said. “We’ll figure out what to do about Cadden. I’ll get in touch with Sally. Here, have a drink.”

  He poured a whiskey for Maginn, who swallowed it in a gulp.

  Giles led the way to an empty bedroom and lighted a lamp. Maginn sat on a chair and took off his clothes.

  “Underwear too,” Giles said. “If you’re naked it’s a better alibi. Am I right, Edward?”

  “It’s logical.”

  Giles handed the lamp to Edward, diminishing beside light, then pulled down the covers so Maginn could crawl beneath them.

  Cadden walked into the room.

  “Aren’t you in bed a little early, Maginn?” he asked.

  Maginn by then had rolled fully under the covers and was lying in ten pounds of soggy gingersnaps that had been mixed with four quarts of warm chicken fat and spread between the sheets.

  The puerile reduction of Maginn was a supreme success, but gave no satisfaction. It generated a predictable withdrawal in Maginn, but also in Edward, whose guilt was such that he stopped work on his new play, yet another confounding of intentions. Whatever seemed the right thing invariably proved otherwise. Could it be, Edward, that you were meant to be confounded unto the grave, that your destiny is linked to the everlastingly wrong choice? Was Katrina the wrong choice? Weren’t you ambivalent about your Stolen Cushion, about The Baron? Hasn’t Maginn made you doubt even The Car Barns? Is the play-in-progress a mistake? You’re a mindless achiever, moving toward you know not what. “Edward Daugherty, a formless lump of matter, was born into this world yesterday for no known reason.” Your sadness is a pose, Edward, your Weltschmerz sliced like liverwurst. You are different from everyone you know. You can’t afford to consider Maginn’s idea that all effort is a quest for the great cipher. You need a pair of spiritual spectacles to see things as they are. Understand this, Edward: you are still living your preamble.

  THE HEAT WORSENED. All screened windows of the parlors and dining room were open, all curtains and drapes tied back to the extreme; but the house was without a breeze. Dinner would be wretchedly uncomfortable and Edward was almost ready to take off his coat and tell Giles to do the same.

  The women were another matter. Neither Felicity nor Katrina could easily shed a layer of clothing, nor were they likely to, whatever the degree; but then they were used to suffering for their plumage. Why do they do that to themselves? Edward decided he would wait for the missing guests before suggesting a dinner in shirtsleeves. Sweating through the city’s hot spell, instead of spending the holiday week in the Adirondacks, was his choice: a chance to meet socially with Melissa Spencer, the young actress Maginn was bringing to dinner.

  With great verve in projecting the volatility of young love, with a face that demanded one’s attention, and a foxish smile that kept it, Melissa had taken Edward over when he saw her onstage; for she seemed the incarnation of the female lead of his new play. Suffer the heat for such gain.

  And so he had begun this Independence Day holiday by taking Katrina to Washington Park for the morning band concert and reading of the Declaration of Independence, then lunch at Keeler’s and out to the Woodlawn Park track to see Giles’s trotter, My Own Love, foal of Gallant Warrior, the horse Edward had tried in vain to give to Katrina’s father. He had given it, instead, after neither Katrina nor her mother would accept it, to Giles, who had won frequently with it for years, then put it to stud, and now was reaping second-generational benefits; today the foal won its heats and also tied a track record, 2:01 for the mile.

  Edward poured sherry for the Fitzroys, a pony of very old port for Katrina, and a Scotch whisky and water for himself. They were all in the Daugherty drawing room, sitting near the windows to harvest the breeze, should it arrive, rubber plants and ferns in lush leaf among them. The room’s personality reflected Katrina’s devotion to the revered dead. Geraldine, Jacob, and Adelaide, in hanging portraits, and Katrina’s poet, Baudelaire, in a pen-sketched self-portrait, all stared down at the occupants of the room. On a table between French porcelain vases and jade dragons the marble bust of the naked Persephone (a Katrina look-alike Edward had given her for their first anniversary) now seemed apt, chiefly as an adornment for the tomb of the Katrina-that-was: full woman then, now suitable only for admiration. Jacob Taylor’s pendulum clock hung silently on the wall, permanently stopped at 8:53 to memorialize the approximate instant when the burning stick pierced Katrina’s breast. And atilt on its hook opposite the mantel, a large gilt-framed mirror ensured that with even a cursory glance, one could monitor one’s own or the collective image of this overheated quartet: all eyes, including her own, always on Katrina and her chamber of venerated memory, her sumptuous crypt of exhausted life.

  “Maginn is late, as usual,” Edward said.

  “When we’re gathered around his deathbed,” said Giles, “he’ll be someplace else.”

  “Do you have him to dinner often?” Felicity asked Katrina.

  “Now and then. Why do you ask?”

  “I find him so coarse, rather low-class in his tastes. And he paws you if he finds the opportunity.”

  “He’s tried to get next to Felicity for years,” Giles said, “hasn’t he, love?”

  “He has. It’s quite obscene what he once said to me.”

  “Whatever did he say?” Katrina asked.

  “I wouldn’t repeat it.”

  “Paraphrase it,” Edward said. “Give us a thrill.”

  “It had to do with anatomy,” Felicity said. “Mine.”

  “And a splendid anatomy it is,” said Giles.

  “Maginn does like women,” Edward said. “He’s also tried his hand at Katrina.”

  “Not at all,” Katrina said. “It’s all talk.”

  “He went after you in our garden.”

  “No, no, no. He was flirting.”

  “What I saw was beyond flirting.”

  “We are never sure of what we see.”

  Edward let it go. She would forever deny the slightest dalliance. On Francis Phelan, she was vehement. Even Giles’s pitiful effort at a beach picnic (“May I touch your naked shoulder?”) she dismissed as an excess of friendship (“Just a lovable, silly man”). Like flies after sugar. The veneration of sugar.

  “Maginn is afflicted, like a man with a stutter or a limp. He can’t help it,” Edward said.

  “When God was handing out social graces,” Giles said, “Maginn was elsewhere, trying to seduce an angel.”

  “Aren’t angels sexless?” Felicity asked.

  “That would merely present Maginn with a challenge,” Edward said.

  “But he’s just a reporter, such a common person,” Felicity said.

  “I used to be a reporter,” Edward said. “Is that your view of my social position?”

  “You’re very different.”

  “You really mustn’t speak about people as ‘common,’ ” Giles said. “You shouldn’t type people that way.”

  “Not even if it’s true?”

  “It’s snobbish. Not everybody has the good fortune to be born into money and social status.”

  “Are you quite sure that’s good fortune?” Katrina said.
r />   “Who is this woman he’s bringing?” Felicity asked from her severe pout.

  “Melissa Spencer, an actress,” said Katrina.

  “Oh dear,” said Felicity. “Isn’t ‘actress’ just another name for, you know . . .”

  “Felicity,” Giles said, “you have no idea who this young woman is. She’s only eighteen and she’s going to be in Edward’s new play.”

  “Oh I am sorry,” said Felicity.

  “Don’t waste your sorrow on Melissa,” Edward said. “She’s a very talented young lady. I saw her in a Sardou play in New York, and I knew if she toned down the melodramatics, she could act my heroine. She’s at Proctor’s this week in a comic opera, and so I sent her a script, and yesterday my producer came up from New York and we auditioned her. She was perfect—articulate, with an open heart, and a beauty that’s hard to define. She commands one’s attention.”

  “She certainly commands yours,” Felicity said.

  “Why shouldn’t beauty be appreciated?” Katrina asked.

  “It should, I suppose.”

  “It should be cast in bronze, carved in marble like Persephone there,” said Giles, pointing to the marble bust. “Beauty is how we stay alive. It’s why I married you, my love,” and he patted Felicity’s wrist.

  “That’s a ridiculous reason to marry, Giles,” said Katrina. “I don’t believe that’s what drew you to Felicity.”

  “I swear it’s true,” said Giles.

  “I doubt it. People want an unknown they can embrace. Something mysterious.”

  “Do you really think we’re so anxious for the exotic?” Giles asked.

  “But of course,” Katrina said. “What else is love but the desire for prostitution?”

  “Oh my,” said Felicity. “You don’t mean that.”

  “She means prostitution as a metaphor,” Giles said.

  “Not at all,” said Katrina.

  “I’ve been dying to ask what you’ve chosen for dinner,” Felicity said. “I always love your menus.”