The Midnight Band of Mercy

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The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 34

by Michael Blaine


  “No, no, I’m not upset. Just surprised. Never mind. I can hardly make it out.” The more he stared, the less he was able to decipher the other woman’s features. Black smudges for eyes, black dashes for nostrils, an almost invisible mouth. He would have to ask Faye, damn her! When was she going on tour? In a few days? If he didn’t grab her right away, she’d be on the train to New Haven with Danny. The Credenzas. Ecch. How long would that act last?

  Fayefaye, that well-worn groove in his brain—she insinuated herself into his life at the worst possible times. How did she do it?

  “They were just chatting. Nothing special. Who is she?” She moved closer to get a better look at the snapshot. Reaching out, she steadied the picture in his hand.

  He raised the photo, their fingers brushed, and he blanched. A tiny muscle twitched in his cheek. “Nobody. I’m getting buggy, that’s all. Can I show it to Faye?” For so long, he had held back with Gretta. He had lectured himself on taste and timing. He had offered her comfort and nurtured their bond. Now he ruined everything by blurting, “I love seeing you.”

  Eyes widening, she drew her head back and withdrew her hand. His declaration filled her with terror. With this man, she could never have a moment’s peace; he’d never leave her alone. He would stuff every room with words. “If you got to know me, you’d find me dull, Max. I’m very narrow.”

  With nothing to lose, he took her cool hand. His temples were pounding. She didn’t resist. “I doubt that.”

  “All I can think about is taking pictures. My dreams are the stupidest things. I dream about tripods. I waste my time playing tennis for hours and hours. I don’t read. I sit there mindlessly watching the harbor; I just want to be.”

  Her mother had been a great beauty too; but after Gretta’s father disappeared into thin air, she had refused to see another man. Nothing could go wrong if you saw no one. Not a thing went wrong in her mother’s life. Solitude was the perfect state, pristine and perfectly empty. Yet she struggled to give him a chance.

  “There’s less of you than meets the eye?” He had a mad vision—Gretta on his arm at Holy Trinity. He could shed his skin in the airy church. The Reverend Weems would preside. What sweet revenge.

  She returned his satirical glance. “Definitely.”

  “All I can think about is chasing stories. I’m a monomaniac.” What sleight of hand. He could become agnostic in two religions at once, and escape the ancient stain in one fell swoop. Why did the impulse fill him with such shame?

  “We’d never see each other.”

  “Isn’t that perfect? Who else would leave us alone like that?”

  She laughed ruefully. “If it were only that easy. People pick at you with their stupid ideas.” She wasn’t going to say anything about his Hebrew origins, she wouldn’t lower herself. Max wasn’t the only clever foreigner she’d found amusing. There was that Italian engraver she’d met at the Art Students League, Arturo Natale. Of course, her uncle said the Mediterranean races would outbreed New England stock in a generation, and he knew all the mysteries of organic chemistry. It was such a confusing subject.

  Anxiously, he glanced at the doorway, expecting Belle to materialize in her nightgown. She might be at the top of the stairway, taking in his every double-crossing word. Then he remembered—she was still at Faye’s, keeping an eye on Leon—and he plunged ahead. “What about dinner in a real restaurant in a few days? Have you ever been to the Hoffman House?”

  “Where they have all those racy paintings?”

  “I didn’t think you’d object.”

  “Do you know they have separate viewing hours for the ladies? I can see naked bodies at the Art Students League every day of the week. So what?”

  The way she tossed off the word naked took, away his breath.

  “How about a lobster dinner? You can’t work day and night.”

  If she kept resisting, he would drive her insane. She looked at his eager expression, his crooked nose, his square chin. At least there was no ambiguity about his masculinity. “Only if we have champagne too.”

  “Done.”

  He slid closer to kiss her, but she held him at arm’s length. “Not now.” She heard the promise in her own husky voice. She felt drawn to him, but she couldn’t tell whether it was physical attraction or pure longing. Tentatively, she pressed his cheek with the flat of her palm. “I’m shy.”

  “I understand,” he said, covering her hand with his own.

  But that was what men never understood about her. They took her imperious expression, fear’s mask, for confidence. They didn’t know how the paws of strange men groped and poked and pinched her on packed trains, on horsecars, in shops, at proper dances, and on crowded streets, how these anonymous reptiles with their jiggling legs and hooded eyes terrified her, or how she secretly devoured penny dreadfuls that described, in horrific detail, the way pomaded brutes took women by force.

  “If I don’t get some rest….” She removed her hand from his cheek.

  He watched her take the stairs in her stately stride.

  Max was ecstatic. Apparendy she didn’t consider his advances out of bounds. On the other hand, she treated him with a light, sisterly touch. It was so hard to know how to behave with a woman so desirable and so untouchable at the same time. No wonder men spent their last dollar at the House of all Nations.

  Up in his room, he threw himself on top of the covers, hoping to take sleep by surprise. Flat on his back he lay there, his mind racing. Had she encouraged him, or kept him at bay? Did he feel guilty, or was he simply afraid of getting caught? Was he willing to cast Belle off? Not exactly. In fact, he was ready to lie through his teeth to get her into his bed again. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for her. She was quick, she was loyal, especially to Faye—and look at how he was going to pay her back. What a miserable weasel he was. And yet, and yet … Gretta opened another world. She was her Staten Island cottage, the shining bay, the sailing ships, a sanctuary from the sense-numbing city. Imagine unlacing her every night. How could he sleep now, or ever again?

  Gretta stared at the ceiling. She had once drawn a model at the Art Students League, a Hebrew like Max with whipcord muscles, solid thighs, and a penis with a drooping head that reminded her of a sunflower. Martin had had a soft hairless chest and arms like white sausages. If he had lived, she would have had to hide her repugnance while rubbing up against his slack body. Her whole soul had been tensed against this violation. Now his death had freed her from that duty, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t deny her sense of relief. Didn’t that make her a terrible person? Was she capable of forming any attachments at all?

  She couldn’t count the ways Max was unsuitable. For one thing, he didn’t have a dime, and she was determined to escape Gertrude’s studio before her hair turned gray. His low profession and his racial origins gave her pause too, she had to admit it. Her uncle said the Hebrew race was specialized for a parasitic existence. Max seemed like anything but a parasite, but her uncle had shown her a textbook thick with charts and graphs and talk of mutated germ plasma. How could she question Science?

  She wanted a calm life, a life in which worries about money and family and children didn’t intrude on her marriage to her camera. When she was framing a shot, she forgot she had a name or a sex or a body at all. That release into nothingness she craved more and more.

  Still, she was thinking about Max. Martin had been so pliant. Max was all sharp angles. She imagined his sinewy muscles stretched over his thin frame. Under her hot lights, his blue-white skin wouldn’t obscure its skeleton. Would he pose for her? From a clinical point of view, she wondered whether his circumcised penis looked like the Hebrew model’s and whether it was true that all Jews possessed overdeveloped organs.

  A vision of Martin’s face came to her, but the details looked subtly distorted. His hair had been receding, but how high had it retreated? He had that delicate nose, almost like a woman’s, but how small had it been? She knew his eyes, his cheekbones, his mouth, but not how they
fit together any more. His voice, so quick to laugh at the smallest absurdity, was still alive in her ear. She missed his kindness and his triviality too. With him she could make the rest of the world disappear. No one was doing anything about his miserable death. Not his father, not the police. Only Max. Of course he had his own reasons, but even if he was climbing over corpses to make his name, he was doing something. Anything was preferable to the paralysis she felt as she sat on the edge of her chair for hours, alone in her room.

  She changed into a black-and-white silk kimono her aunt had brought back from Japan. The smooth material soothed her senses, but she couldn’t sit still. Taking her brush, she ran it through her hair in long, slow strokes until she found herself staring at the polished bone handle in her hand.

  She could feel her mother’s loathing of the outside world running through her veins. What could be more perfect than the cottage on the harbor? Other human beings created a mess, they upset your routine, they contrived obligations with their little cries for attention. She hoarded her detachment. Indifference sang its seductive song in her ear, yet it filled her with dread.

  Her fist was tapping at his door. She barely knew how she’d arrived there. His eyes widening, he let her pass inside.

  “You’re not asleep either?” he asked.

  “I forgot to give you the picture.”

  He took the snapshot from her and tossed it on his dresser. “Great. Thanks for remembering. Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

  She never reached the chair. An inch too close to her, he couldn’t resist desire’s gravity. He told himself to step back, but his hands, falling lighdy on her hips, wouldn’t obey. She didn’t want to push him away, she didn’t want to think at all. Instead, she draped her arms around his neck and edged closer. All the blood drained from his face. She had never seen him look so afraid.

  When she kissed him, she gave her whole body, her full breasts, hips, thighs pressing against him. What was she doing? Was it possible? At first, dry lips met dry lips, but then she let her mouth grow loose.

  Tentatively, he touched the tip of his tongue to hers. The next kiss spiraled into another more intricate still, until he lost himself for a week or a month. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her throat and then her mouth again.

  When they fell onto the bed, she felt him shudder. It was an odd sensation, as if he were in the throes of a death rattle. On top of her, his lean body felt stronger than she had imagined. There was a certain pleasure in rolling around with him; but when he struck her knee a glancing blow, a buzzing sensation ran right down to her foot. Not pleasant at all. Rubbed raw by his whiskers, her cheeks burned. What a peculiar wrestling match. He was squeezing all the air out of her, getting much too carried away. Her dressing gown slipped off her shoulder. One of his busy hands cupped her breast. She had to bring an end to it. Gripping his wrists, she held him while he shivered against her.

  “No, not like this,” she whispered, sliding out from underneath him.

  He sat up, sweat plastering his hair to his skull, his face blotched pale and scarlet, his eyes half mad. Turning away, he gave her a moment to rearrange herself. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

  She almost laughed at the way his lap came to a point. Why had God arranged things in such a ridiculous way? She wondered what his penis would feel like, pulsing in the palm of her hand. She had no one to talk to about him, no one to tell her she was being a fool. She almost wept at her own isolation.

  “Are you still seeing Miss Rose?” she blurted. Now he’d think she was a jealous fool. Still, she wondered. Did Mrs. DeVogt’s gossip contain a shred of truth?

  Max’s blood froze. Of course she had to have picked up something. They were all living in the same fishbowl. The question was, how much did she actually know? “Oh, we went to see Faye and Danny’s act. She’s great friends with my sister.”

  “Miss Rose thinks I’m a lost cause.”

  Was she buying his white lie? Maybe she wanted to believe him, maybe she was interested in him after all. “Why do you say that?”

  “She thinks I’m a dangerous reactionary.”

  “Ahh. She passed judgment on me a long time ago.”

  Smoothing her wrinkled silk kimono, she rose to her feet. “You’ll need your sleep.” He went to kiss her again, but she turned away and his lips glanced off her cheek. “Don’t, please. I’m so … I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m sure.”

  She had come to him and fled, all in a matter of moments, leaving behind the perfumed smell of her hair, the taste of her lips, the impress of her luxuriant body against him. His longing for her felt more like a nervous condition than love.

  chapter thirty-five

  He waited for the newsie to cut open the fresh bundle of Heralds. A few earlybirds were climbing the covered stairs to the apple-green chalet of a station above. A giant soundingboard, the El’s under-girding boomed out the roar of an approaching steam engine. Max stuck his fingers in his ears until the Forney rumbled away. This time he didn’t wait for his hard-boiled egg at Fitzgerald and Ives. Standing on the sidewalk, he snapped the pages one after another, scanning every headline.

  MAYNARD HISSED, DEPEW CHEERED. Chauncey Depew Calls Candidate a Criminal. WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? Madison Square Bank Was Plundered of Half a Million. WHIPPED IN THE STREET. Then at the Police Station Young Mrs. Neville Punched Janitor Farrar Between the Eyes. MISERIES FOR FLOATERS. Robert Stewart Says Warrants Are Ready for Tenth Ward Repeaters.

  Not a word about Holy Trinity, Colonel Fisk, the Reverend Weems, or the church’s property. Disgusted, he shoved the paper under his arm and stalked up to the train. In a stew, he almost missed his stop. Lunging, he threw his body between the closing doors, the car started rolling again, and for a moment he feared he was going to lose a leg. Then the train lurched to a halt and spat him, dazed and rubber-legged, out onto the platform.

  What was the point of all his backbreaking, meticulous research? He would be better off inventing dogs with extra toes or giraffes in love triangles. Still steaming, he practically bowled Biddle over in the newspaper’s lobby.

  “Hey, Greengrass. Where’s the fire?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m burning up, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I’d avoid the premises if I were you. You look like murder.” Biddle threw an avuncular arm over his shoulder and led him outside. The presses in the basement blew warm air through the sidewalk grates. “Parnell’s sitting on your story, eh?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Why don’t you take the morning off? Cool off.”

  “Who told you? Spill it, Biddle, c’mon. I broke my keister on this one.”

  Biddle looked around and over his shoulder, his love of conspiracy imprinted in his corner-of-the-mouth smile. “There’s blood on the floor up there. Off the record, Garvey says he’s resigning unless Bennett cuts off Stan’s head.”

  “What’s Parnell saying?”

  “They’ll need siege engines to pry him out.”

  “So Parnell’s still fighting for the piece?”

  “He’s fighting for his life, if you ask me. And Bennett, you know where Our Savior is?”

  “Yeah, somewhere near Corfu.”

  “Not yet. Steamships can’t fly. It’ll take him two weeks to get to Greece, maybe more. You and your little story seem to have caused this civil war, so if I were you, I’d dig a trench and put a pot over my head,” he added. As the soul of altruism, Nick Biddle roused Max’s suspicions, but his advice had the ring of truth.

  “You didn’t mention your sources.”

  “When I’m on my deathbed, Greengrass. When I hear the trumpets. Maybe.”

  “You dirty dog. Too early for a quick one?”

  “Sorry. Some Bulgarian nobility put a bullet in his head at the Windsor. From what I hear, he kissed his wife and then he ruined some very expensive drapes.”

  Max could feel his self-immolating anger receding, but he still didn’t trust himself to keep his trap shut. “Thanks,
Nick. I’ll take a hike. Keep me posted.”

  Biddle looked both ways, licked his finger and held it up to the wind.

  Faye’s trunk was flung open, her things tossed helter-skelter all over her room. A scarlet shirtwaist hung on a nail. A lacy chemise, a mound of stockings, costume jewelry, and a boned corset were piled high on her dresser. The trunk lid held crinolines, a hat featuring an entire bird of paradise, a majolica rooster, and several pots of cold cream. He had to talk to her back, but he could see her rouging her cheeks in the vanity mirror.

  “Take a load off. I’m fixing my face.”

  She was laying it on with a trowel. “You slap on any more of that stuff, you’ll get a reputation.”

  “I already have a reputation, sweetie. Did you see the Clipper? She yanked open a few drawers and groped around to no avail. “Anyway, the notices said ‘Miss Greengrass practices a kind of lunch-counter art, but art is vague and Miss Greengrass is quite real.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you think I’m fat?”

  She twirled around to face him. For a young woman, her incipient jowls were striking. He wished she wouldn’t paint herself up like that either, but he had more important business with her. “Nah, you look fine.”

  “Yeah, well, listen to what else the Clipper said. ‘She has the roly-poly appearance of all successful comediennes.’ I have to oink to make them laugh?” Pouting, she tilted her head and flattened her nose with her index finger.

  “Don’t do that one in public.”

  “Too piggy for my own good, huh? Oh, well, it pays the rent. Did I tell you we got our first check from Keith? Thirty-five for the week, and forty when we go on the road. You know how much that tight bastard Simon on Avenue B was paying? Twenty! For five shows a day.” She frowned. “Danny says Keith’s turning into an octopus.”

  “I’ll leave that to him. Hey, where’s Leon?”

  “Oh, my roommate Joanne got him out of my hair. They’re over in Tompkins Square.”

 

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