The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  Despite its grimy windows and tattered awning, Somerset’s had beckoned to me before, but I’d never gone inside. In San Fran, I used to spend entire afternoons in the North Beach used bookstores. I’d pick up an old novel, flip through its yellowed pages—as I often still do my mother’s books—smell the old ink and musty paper and fantasize about who’d owned it before. Did she like it? Did she stay up reading it all night? Or did she give up and set it aside? Or did it change her? Does she still think about it? Occasionally I’d come across notes scrawled in the margins or on the inside of the cover, and I’d invent a story about its owner, usually some assertive and free-spirited version of my mother. It made me feel closer to her, as if she were there, dreaming along with me.

  At the back of the store, a black velvet curtain hung over a narrow door. Judy peeked through the thick drape. “Come on,” she said. “No one is here.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, but I knew.

  Judy slipped in, but I stalled, letting the curtain fall back in place. I knew rooms like these existed, but I’d never dared to go in before. During a slumber party several years ago, one of the girls dangled her father’s 1945 pin-up calendar in front of us. We all huddled around its glossy pages, gawking and giggling like morons. All the models were contorted in impossible poses. Their backs were arched, butts cocked, and toes pointed down as if they had been broken and reassembled to create the right look. Their faces gaped with surprise and delight. They seemed somehow both humiliated and thrilled you’d just stumbled on them in the dressing room or the bathroom or the kitchen or on the sidewalk half-undressed. Sure they were. But I couldn’t lie. As each month fluttered past, my heart quickened a little more.

  Judy poked her head out and grabbed my arm. I resisted, but behind me, the doorbell clattered. Her grip tightened, and I feared being spotted loitering by the smut room, so I let her pull me in. Rows of out-facing books and magazines wrapped in brown paper lined the walls of the cramped, windowless room. I imagined what they concealed: Oiled men and slippery women moaning and writhing and thrusting against one another, their eyes rolling back in their heads. My face flushed, and I felt a little sick. Judy picked up a magazine, slid the paper off, and began flipping through it. “Jesus,” she said and flashed it at me. There it was: an erect penis in full color, veiny and greased, and a naked woman gripping it like a microphone. My eyes fell across her forced smile, her neck, her breasts, her crouching shape, and I felt a rush of sadness for her. The doorbell jangled, and I gasped. Judy closed the magazine and began replacing the brown paper, unfazed, it seemed, by the thought of a lurking customer. My heart was in my throat. I didn’t want to be caught. God, how would I ever explain this to Dad?

  I went to the curtain and peeked through it. Fifteen feet from me, a tall man in a fedora was browsing in the aisle. I withdrew and began gesturing to Judy.

  Ignoring me, she said, “This is a book we should read,” holding out Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “It’s been banned in the US since the twenties. This copy must be black market.”

  I shushed her, pointed, and mouthed, “A man.”

  She rolled her eyes and shoved me aside for a look. After a minute, she spun and said in a shrill whisper, “That’s him! The gray ghost.”

  “What?” I looked again, parting the thick drape with a trembling hand. The man’s face was in profile, shaded by his dove gray fedora. He wore a well-cut charcoal suit, and his black oxfords gleamed. I turned to Judy. “Are you sure?”

  “I recognize his suit—and the hat.”

  “He’s tall and looks… strong.”

  Judy paced the room, tucking Lady Chatterley into her sweater. I would’ve objected, but I was too distracted, too afraid. Why was he here? How long had he been following us?

  “We’ll either have to wait or make a run for it,” Judy said.

  “If he’s following us, he’s not going away,” I said. “Anyway, can you imagine the headline: ‘Teenage Girls Attacked in Dirty Book Room!’ Read all about it!”

  “Okay,” Judy said, making eye contact. “We’ll have to rush past him. On three, we make for the door.” She breathed in, her face puckering like a tennis player about to serve. “Are you ready?”

  “Wait!” I said, clutching the flesh of her upper arm, digging my nails in.

  “One,” she said.

  She yanked her arm away but gave me an encouraging nod.

  “No, no—” I begged.

  She grabbed my wrist.

  “Two.”

  Her grip tightened.

  “Three!”

  She flung the curtain open like a big flap of a wing, and we hurtled forward toward the bright pane of glass in the front door, the goal, the gateway to freedom. As we rushed past the ghost, Judy jabbed him with an elbow. He fell forward, crushing the brim of his hat against the shelf and swiping several books with his flailing arm. As they hit the floor, I thought about the linchpin novel—Great Expectations? Anna Karenina?—about its thick spine, about its fluttering pages, about its musty odor, about how easily everything could come tumbling down. That’s when the gray ghost’s cologne hit me, the heavy metallic scent I knew from Miss Martins’s apartment. It was the same man!

  We ran north on 7th, and then southeast toward Lincoln Park on North Carolina. The ghost was following us. We dodged pedestrians, servicemen, and even delivery men carrying a large rectangular mirror, its surface catching us, flushed and panicked, in a brief tableau. We barreled through traffic at a red light, chrome bumpers glinting, horns blaring, and stony faces gazing over their steering wheels. The wind was still up, stirring leaves into little tornadoes. Everything seemed to be spinning—and the man was still pursuing us, but lagging, his hand now on his fedora so it wouldn’t fly off. Once in the park, we broke into a full sprint, Judy now clutching Lady Chatterley in her hand.

  Once we bounded across East Capitol and stumbled onto Tennessee Avenue, we slowed down. I couldn’t see our pursuer. Perhaps he was held up by traffic on the other side of the park? We tore up the front steps into Judy’s house, locked the door behind us, and fell against each other, gasping, chests aching, legs burning. Judy tucked the filched book into her sweater and said, “Come on.”

  JUDY, OCTOBER 30, 1948

  We leaned over the raised cornice on the top of Hill Estates, searching for the gray ghost. We spotted him standing near the statue of Lincoln, his fedora twitching back and forth. He was bewildered, then resigned, then gone, swept away in a group of sightseers.

  I retrieved a matchbook and my pack of Chesterfields from the chimney while Philippa slid below the top edge of the cornice, shielding herself from the wind. I sat beside her, my back against the cold bricks. I cupped a match and lit my cigarette. Philippa edged over to me, the outside of her upper arm pressing against me. I recoiled a little. I didn’t like her so close. It was confining, suffocating. But she didn’t move away; in fact, she scooted closer. Although I was annoyed, I let her warmth fend off the chill spreading through me. I took a drag on the cigarette and absorbed the soothing smoke. I offered it to her, and she snatched it out of my fingers without hesitation.

  “He’s the man I saw in Miss Martins’s apartment,” she said, letting the smoke drift from her lips. “He’s the one.”

  “How do you know?” I said, my jitters abating as the nicotine did its job.

  “His cologne.”

  “Lots of men could have the same cologne. Bart douses himself with Seaforth to cover up the alcohol fumes. I’ve smelled it on other men. Drunks too.” I reclaimed the cigarette and took a puff.

  “This smell, it’s distinctive. Perfume changes when you put it on. It mingles with your scent. It was the same man.” Her expression clouded over, and her brow wrinkled.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No,” she said, glossy-eyed. “He was on top of Miss Martins, crushing her, and she was gesturing to me, wanting me to help. It must’ve been what happened, and I did nothing. I just ran.” She wiped her runny nose with her
sleeve. “The gray ghost knows about me, about us. I bet he found Love’s Last Move and forced Miss Martins to tell him who I was. And now he’s coming after us.”

  So, it seemed, Philippa had decided that what she’d witnessed was rape. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what she really saw. But our minds are like mazes with many blind corners and dead ends, and memory is like a string that is supposed to lead you out, but sometimes it crosses and tangles and leads you in deeper. Hell, I can’t even remember why I have scars on my arms. Maybe Philippa was shocked to see Miss M with a man. Perhaps she needs to believe she was attacked. She’s a bit of a ninny when it comes to sex. She even broke into a goddamn sweat at Somerset’s.

  After taking another pull, I said, “You’re positive the man you saw was forcing himself on Miss M?”

  “Yes, something happened to her. She changed.”

  “If he’s the same man, if he attacked her, then he wants to hurt us, or at least scare us, but I wonder why he followed me the other day. I mean, wouldn’t he go after you? You borrowed the book.”

  She shifted even closer, pressing her arm to my arm, her leg to my leg. I was aware of her rough wool coat, her smooth nylon stockings, her crushed velvet Mary Janes, and even her soft, wind-tangled hair as it brushed against my shoulder. At first, I resisted these little details, these quiet fireworks popping, but then I gave in. I scanned the curve of her breasts, the gentle slope of her neck, and even the bean-shape of her small ears hung with small silver hoops. I breathed in her flowery perfume, which was similar to Miss M’s, detecting a hint of sweat underneath. The images from Somerset’s backroom rose up, rustling behind their brown paper wrappers like insects caught in a bag. My body tensed. I’d never felt this way about a girl—or if I’m being honest, a boy. Sex isn’t all that if you ask me. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was feeling.

  “Are you sure you couldn’t have misread the situation at Miss M’s?” I said, fidgeting with my coat sleeves, ordering my feelings to retreat.

  “I know what I saw,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek.

  My cigarette suddenly became ashy and sour, so I tossed it. “Maybe Miss M liked it that way, like a character in one of her shitty pulp novels.”

  “No! Jesus.”

  “Maybe we should’ve told your cousin more.” I didn’t believe that, though.

  “About the ghost?”

  “About what you saw at Miss M’s,” I said, studying my fingers, noting a chipped nail.

  “We also didn’t tell him everything about our visit to the Closses, not even Elaine Closs’s menagerie of pills.”

  “Slow down. It’s not a good thing to show all your cards,” I said, trying to curb her impulse to run to Quincy and blurt everything. “But, yeah, maybe if we’d shared more, we might’ve learned more.”

  Philippa shifted, rubbing her leg against mine, setting me off again, making me itchy and uncomfortable.

  “We need to find Miss M,” I said, shoving my body away from the wall, relieved to put space between us.

  “She has to answer our questions now,” she said, holding her hand out for me to pull her up.

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 30, 1948

  Why did she do it? Why drag me into Somerset’s dirty book room and shove smut under my nose? At first, it felt like a punch in the gut: “Here, Philippa, see how ugly the world is! I’ve seen it all. Now you need to see it, to get me.”

  But now, I don’t know.

  Sure, the image was crass, but the sadness in the woman’s eyes tugged on something in me. Since I can remember, I’ve been curious about other girls. They always seem to possess some secret knowledge, something I missed along the way, perhaps something my mother would’ve whispered to me. Over time, my yearning became wondering. I wanted to know what it’d be like to run my hand over their arms and down their legs as if they were my arms and legs. I wanted to see what they saw in the mirror. I wanted to feel the air in their lungs. All this, because I don’t feel like one of them. Sure, I can give my hair the right amount of wave and curl, apply lipstick with deft strokes, and wear a rotating array of pastels, but I’m playing pretend. I’m a fraud. Perhaps there are other girls who feel like they’ve arrived at the party late and don’t get the inside jokes. Maybe Judy’s one? Although she seems to get all the jokes.

  The smutty photo also picked up the thread of a particular memory, which now that I’m alone in my room, I can pull on. Two summers ago, at Camp Bothin, I met a girl named Thea Ray from Sacramento. She was pals with the sporty girls, the golfers, and the archers. For the most part, they let the bookish ones, like me, be. Toward the end of the summer, after the barriers between the social groups had dissolved, a result of living in close quarters, a group of girls went on a candy-fueled tickle attack. They called it the Battle of Midriff. Can you believe it? Groan. Anyway, in a fit of giggles and blond curls, Thea pinned me to my cot, dug her fingers into my sides, and pressed her body against mine, giving me a peck on the lips that lingered a beat too long. She was trying to get a rise out of me and embarrass me. But her kiss branded me and burned for weeks. In my mind, the peck grew into a longer, deeper kiss. It lasted for ages, our clothing gauze-thin and sweat-damp between us, our lips, breasts, stomachs, and limbs melting together. It took pure willpower to drive her away, like kicking the Spanish flu. Even now, I can still smell her, the funk of her sweat, like a mixture of tennis balls and athletic tape.

  This is the first time I’ve written about it, afraid that putting it down would’ve sealed my fate. Thea tore something open inside of me, wiped her lips, and was gone—all in the name of “good fun.” Not writing about it made little difference. When Judy flashed that photo at me, the dormant Thea, the Thea I’d driven into hibernation, woke up, yawned, stretched, and dug her nails into my insides.

  Judy is always treating me like I was born yesterday, endlessly horrified by my apparent naivete. I wonder: Is she just another eye-roller, sniggering behind my back? Did she lure me into the dirty book room to torture me? Is she another Thea?

  Like me, she’s worked hard to cultivate her look: the angular cheeks, the chopped black hair, the elliptical eyes. But it’s a barrier. She reminds me of a Klimt portrait that I once lingered on in a massive art history textbook. In the painting, this dark-haired woman, Adele something, is emerging from a geometrical gold-leaf background. She’s in motion but still trapped somehow, like an anesthetized butterfly. I loved it and was unsettled by it. Judy is like that woman. It’s like she’s flattened against a plate of sun-drenched glass, bits of her seeping through the cracks, two dimensions trying to become three, like when she froze at Sophie’s cellar door or when she’s struggling to remember her childhood. If she’s not like Thea, then maybe, just maybe, she’s the antidote to Thea.

  * * *

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 31, 1948

  Bonnie cooked a pork roast, rosemary potatoes, twice-cooked green beans, baked fresh rolls, and served pumpkin pie for Sunday lunch. She didn’t usually go overboard, but Quincy was coming, so she dusted off the fine china and expanded the menu. Although the conversation veered toward Cleve several times, Bonnie and Dad guided it away, fearing, I can only guess, that it might be too morbid for me. Quincy and I made knowing eyes at each other. I even dared an eye roll. Afterward, I asked Dad if I could show him my room.

  After a cursory tour, I plopped down on my bed, grabbed Mr. Fred from my pillow, and held his scrawny body close to me. Quincy picked up the photo of my mother and studied it. After a moment, I said, “Any news about Cleve?”

  He smiled, but it was guarded. “Nothing.” He wasn’t going to share.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get it. We rushed you at Horsfield’s. I don’t want you to lose your job.”

  His eyes lifted, and he placed the frame back on the dresser. “That friend of yours, she thinks she’s very clever.”

  “She is,” I said sharply and thought, “She’s extracted information from you, information you still don’t realize you shared.” B
ut I could tell he was bewildered by her. He wasn’t alone.

  “You know,” she said. “She felt bad about how she behaved at Horsfield’s.”

  He grimaced. “I guess you know Sophie’s not a fan.”

  “She doesn’t really know her.”

  “Do you?”

  Did I? Well, I was beginning to, and I wasn’t going to let Quincy underestimate her. “She’s had a hard time. The Peabodys treat her like a cheap imitation of their dead daughter.”

  A smile crept onto his lips and said, “Maybe I’m being unfair.”

  “You think?”

  “You have a big heart, Phil.” He sat at the other end of my bed, putting his elbows on his knees. He hunched, breathed deeply, and ran his fingers through his thick black hair. He seemed weary. I took Mr. Fred, his limp body still curled in my lap, and propped him on his shoulder.

  “Who’s this?” he said, catching him before he tumbled off.

  “Monsieur Fred.”

  He held him up, regarded him, and demanded, “What are you?”

  “A bear-otter mix. Or a weasel. No one knows. His past is shrouded in mystery.”

  He sat Fred on his knee, my mother’s carnelian locket still buried deep in his stuffing, a kind of transplanted heart, and said, “He’s a blue blood. He has those regal cheekbones, that stately nose. His inheritance is out there waiting for him.”

  “Use your razor-sharp detective skills and help him claim his birthright,” I said with forced gusto. “It could be a rags-to-riches story.”

  “He does look like he could use a little food.”

  “Bonnie feeds him a whole honeyed ham every night, but he never grows an inch!”

  “She would, wouldn’t she?” He laughed, then grew quiet, turning something over in his mind. “You know,” he said softly, “they’re bringing Bogdan in.” He tucked Mr. Fred beside him. “He doesn’t have an alibi for the Closs kid’s time of death, and they found a 1947 Eastern High School yearbook in his trash. Cleve’s photo had been circled. Bogdan circled other photos, too. Girls and boys. But you didn’t hear that from me.”