JRZDVLZ

by Lee Klein

  I followed the boy down another hallway to what must be the kitchen. I explored a staircase. At the top of the stairs was another room much like the one below, with large round tables, bare except for linen napkins, a room for private groups on busier nights, and along a wall of this room were a few doors. Like my first adventure through the endless passageways of Larner’s home, every step seemed fraught. As in Stearns’s house, or Daniel Leeds’s, to ever find comfort in such a shelter would be trickier than proving I was a man.

  Doors led to rooms, some with beds, others spare, their uses unknown, but no coats, no closets filled with what I needed. Sound from below filled the second level with an unseen presence. It’s what the room below will look like when all those there were gone, only pervading the tavern for those sensitive enough to see them.

  In a corner by the windows looking over the street, there was a black, formal top hat, tipped on its side as though to trap mice. I tried it on and concealed the veil beneath it, plus it made me seem a foot taller. Not what I had in mind but it worked. Its brim was wide and came down more than it should over eyebrows and ears, but it trapped some heat when stuffed with the veil.

  I descended toward a song that ended as I entered. Across the room, those doors must store all their coats, but how to get there? If I sat among them, maybe I’d blend in. The table was large and round, the conversations spirited enough. Sober women refreshed drinks. The men always wanted more, the lights too bright, squinting from glare and smoke. Here I was, seated at a table with reveling instrumentalists.

  The flute player whistled for me to inch closer. “Big day?”

  “Wearing this to pay a bet,” I said. “The chance of winning was worth the derision.”

  It was my stock excuse, something Larner had instructed me to say, but he never said what to say if asked what the bet was about, as the flutist now did.

  “Nothing special,” I said. “Fortune can be unfortunate, though I make the most of it.”

  The flutist relayed to the others what I’d said. “Lost a bet, but not a loser in love. Whatever money lost can be made up on the wedding night.”

  I did not quite catch the wave of humor that washed over them, some suggestion of salaciousness, but I smiled and bowed my head in embarrassment.

  “He blushes,” said another across the table. “A blushing bride.”

  Drink transformed their every utterance into a burst of cheer. Laughter spilled from them as though they were brimming vessels themselves.

  Was this what it meant to be a man? Someone who sat at a table and shared a laugh, exhaled humor with every breath, merry and easy, unaware of or at least uncaring about assorted seriousness that forever arose around them. I was pulled toward the door, sensing this was not my place, but first I needed warmth.

  “The hat is an excellent touch, my friend,” said the guitarist. “Bride and groom in one. How much easier it would have been had I married myself, my first true love.”

  More laughs. All then aired their marital woes. It seemed a hell, the way they described it, their wives more beastly than anything I’d ever been.

  “Something scratches at the windows behind the house, so she investigates and whatever’s there perches on the fence out back and she runs into the snow in the middle of the night, no more than a rolling pin in hand, ready to engage in unholy combat with, at least how she described it, this devil with wings and horns, not so large, but not a raccoon either, she insisted, and she insisted so much I was sure it was a raccoon yet there was a thrill to her retelling, an insistence, that made me wonder.”

  “Better than a watchdog,” said one of the men at the table.

  Speech and sounds and nips from glasses all seemed orchestrated, synchronized, harmonious. For a time they compared their wives to dogs, and then wolves, and then incomparable beasts, each outdoing the last until each woman became an abstraction only meant to amuse. This was what they did: sang and drank and smoked and demeaned the mothers of their children. Idealized Eve of mine, should I ever find her, I would never talk like that. So many years an abstraction I would respect her reality should she ever appear.

  “What do you lack, my love?”

  I had been aware of her presence. Now that she stood before me the room blurred.

  A waitress. Smiling. Able to look into eyes and play tricks on a soul.

  “I lack,” I said, “a coat, and if possible gloves and shoes.” I held a bare foot out from under the table.

  Everyone had an extraordinary laugh, as though I only existed to amuse.

  “Come with me,” she said, and I followed as the others at the table catcalled and whistled before serenading us with some bawdy song.

  She took me past the kitchen to where all the coats and hats were arranged as orderly as the tables now covered in ash and mess.

  “The hat I recognized but the dress was not familiar—and not unbecoming, I might add.” She spoke as she bustled through boxes of clothing, examining some and rejecting them as unworthy, extracting others and dropping them in a pile of possibles. “I could ask about the wedding but any man flushed from the honeymoon and forced to wear his new wife’s dress, unable to locate his own clothes, must be in desperate need. Something about you says you’re a fugitive, but not running from anyone apt to chase you down. If your wife sent you into the night, I doubt she’ll give chase.”

  Every once in a while she looked at me, measuring my size. “These’ll do. Try them,” she said.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You won’t be the first I’ve helped who helps me long after I forget him.”

  “I hope not to forget your kindness, Madame.”

  “Madame is too formal from a man in a wedding dress. Call me Renner. And you?”

  I stuttered and coughed. “Yes, my name ... It is ...” But she held her fingers lightly to my lips.

  “No name is necessary to receive clothes on a cold night. I can help you faster than you can select a false name. Your real one must relate to the trouble that sent you here.”

  “I wish no inconvenience.”

  She leaned over the box and found spats, dusted and creased by the weight of shoes that might fit me. Her chest was exposed and freckled. I admired the slope of her breasts. She shook her head to scold me for stealing a look. I blushed even more.

  “Shoes, coat, undershirt, ties if necessary, and here’s a less formal hat. Try this and if it’s not right we’ll see what else we have,” she said. “Shall I turn my head as you remove the dress?”

  “I need to keep her on to protect against the cold.”

  “Her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you expect to stay out all night?” she said.

  “I have no expectations.”

  At first when I wore the dress, I could feel my wings as though they were there. But then I would flex my shoulders and roll them forward, thinking I was missing something essential. If I removed the dress as Renner suggested and returned to original form, I feared I would be wingless.

  Had I mutated as a reflection of my changing mind, the kangaroo sacrifice a blow to it? If I removed the dress now, would I just be a naked man? Wharton had dreamed of pure water. Was my dream to stand naked as a man?

  “Listen,” said Renner. “Stick around until we close and then escort me home. I’ve room enough to keep you off the streets.”

  Here I was, wearing a stylish bowler now instead of a top hat, pants bunched at the waist and buttocks and thighs with the dress beneath it, all concealed by a navy blue coat with wide shoulders and golden buttons decorated with eagles, a sort of ceremonial military garment.

  “It would be an insult to refuse.”

  “I like how you say it,” she said. “Now let’s get back to it.”

  We returned and the room filled with catcalls, approving nods, knowing winks. In the improvised theater of the tavern, I was the sacrificial beast, the unexpected guest making the evening’s proceedings all the more memorable.
Rarely was anyone new there, I imagined. Their circle seemed rounded and reinforced with time and drink, the repeated processes of revelry, suffering, recovery, et cetera, forever.

  In the long window glass I saw myself and yet someone else was standing there. In the pines, without knowledge of how I had looked, unaware of anything other than what I experienced, one with the elements, here in this city now, separation from one’s surroundings seemed required to cast a reflection.

  I sat down at the table, in the same seat next to the flutist. Renner brought me a glass of golden liquid wheat topped with what resembled ocean foam. I dipped my lips into it and drank. It tasted the way straw smells, unexpectedly sweet and enticing, knowing its effects on others. I swallowed and everyone laughed again.

  “Dear friend, you’ve grown old so suddenly, just a sip and you’re elderly.”

  I had no idea what they meant until one made a show of wiping his lip.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “My first.”

  They seemed to have a storehouse of whoops at hand. As I began to speak they prepared to release them no matter what I said, for now I was guest of honor, priceless comedian, though I also wanted to say something humorless to test their reaction. I did not say, “I am the Leeds Devil” or anything of the sort, though the more I thought about it, the more it seemed impossible to state anything that might wipe the smiles from their faces like the mustache of foam across my upper lip.

  “You claim it’s your first beer,” one said, “and yet you lost a bet that required you enter this tavern in a wearing dress. Hardly sounds like someone who’s never had a beer.”

  I tipped my hat and smiled as, aglow, they awaited my response. All faces turned toward me, all flushed and beaming with many more sips than too many. I made the mistake of thinking before I spoke. Thoughts stalled the animal reaction needed to please.

  “Yes, my first beer, never much of a drinker, lost the bet, can’t explain it,” I said, or something like that, my words trailing off. Seamlessness between thoughts and tongue was disturbed. A polite chuckle nevertheless escaped, a generous response as though my flailing were a kind of sophisticated humor. Another blush warmed my cheeks. Whatever wave of embarrassment went through me deepened with another long sip, and no matter how strong its pull, the undertow inside me was far too weak to draw from their good time.

  “Another song,” said the guitarist, clearing the air. The rhythm he began removed our need to speak.

  The finest balm is music, and they seemed to play as though to forgive me. With each strum and rattle and effortless arpeggio, they restored my spirit with these repeated figures. Music to the rescue, everyone united, bewinged. The lights flickered and dimmed and extinguished, and just like that, lanterns and candles were lit. We glowed mysteriously, golden, the lights turned off so we either looked less flushed or to signal the late hour. By candlelight and lantern, men sang and stomped and spun as though with ideal partners, sometimes arm in arm with their neighbors or kicking like offended mules. Nothing needed to be sacrificed. There were no sins. The more I drank the more I was sure Renner herself, overseer of this unexpected paradise, was my one true Eve.

  V

  “Come on now, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes to see her beaming over me, hand on my shoulder, squeezing it like a melon at the market. Finding me sufficiently fresh, she helped me to my feet and led me out the door, which she locked behind her. My mouth dry, my head heavy, my eyes aflame, my nerves registered every distant clatter. She had asked me to escort her home but here I was being helped along uneven cobblestone streets. It smelled of smoke and hay and as we neared the river, a general fishiness unlike around the Mullica, more like a muddy reek, a riverbank exposed, pollutants best left underwater aired for all to smell. I hoped at first she’d pause along the way but as we moved into shanty areas so disordered they seemed somehow tangled, I hoped she’d keep moving. Some slept wrapped in coarse blankets surely stolen from horse stables or stood around fires, warming themselves, rehashing arguments they believed winnable if a perfect mix of repetition and volume were attained, the greater the emphasis the lower the chance of rebuttal, perhaps they thought, though it seemed likely no one thought much. They stood and moved their mouths, destined to recover their senses only after sleep.

  She set the scene in advance of our arrival at her home, not knowing that I had slept so many nights in trees and caves, and on beaches. I admit to not being the best listener, remembering only that she had lowered expectations so when we crossed the threshold whatever appeared would seem miraculous or at least a relief.

  How she made this walk alone each night I did not know, or maybe she knew everyone in town. No matter my natural abilities, there was something askew about these dense quarters, especially at night. Steam escaped from unseen sources. Shadows fell across potential assailants. The sky seemed fractured, starless, as thick, milky, winter clouds streamed low like the breath of Death. These narrow streets forced me to hunch shoulders and press tighter to my escort—the one I escorted—the one with whom I made my solitary way, arm in arm, maybe my Eve.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Not what you may have expected.”

  “I have no expectations other than spending continued time in your presence.”

  She touched my cheek and smiled.

  She pushed the door open with her rump. It led to a private alley, passing other gloomy doors before we came to hers. She keyed it open and led me into complete darkness. A sulfurous burst and the world returned around a match in her hand. She lit a wide candle scented with honey.

  “My sister and child are asleep, so we must control our voices.”

  Her child or her sister’s? Where did it say anything about Eve having a child?

  “They live with you?”

  “I said so as we walked.”

  What else had I not heard?

  “When I come in late, I sleep here. We do not have much, but it is warm, and you seem a willing guest.”

  She lit a lantern that filled out the contours of the place. A small bed in the corner, chairs, a Franklin stove, nothing more than what was needed.

  “It is not much but it is better than some, especially in this city.”

  “Could you not live elsewhere?”

  “We don’t choose to live here, and yet living here so long, beauties emerge, wonders within those rooms, or at least the remains of my youth. Every step releases memories.”

  All that Stearns had said about wiping these slates clean, about moving them to beautiful new compounds in the pines, how could all these streets transform into boulevards and parks? An American Paris, he had said. So tightly compressed the lives were here, the city would need to extract them by force.

  “If granted the opportunity to leave for a paradise nearer the sea,” I said, “a river community in the middle of the pines where the cleanest water were everywhere and conditions were serene and sanitary, would you consider it, especially considering the child?”

  “How do you know of this?” she whispered, closer to me, guiding me to the edge of her bed.

  “Know what?” I said. “Only I hear you speak of the conditions here and despite sentimental connections I wonder if another habitat may be preferred.”

  “But,” she started, and then conflicted thoughts forced chin and cheeks in alternate directions. “What you said makes me believe you have heard what’s been said about this.”

  “Is it so uncommon, to move somewhere more natural, if granted a wish?”

  “You refer to something else. I see it in your face. Your eyes turn inward as though to have nothing more to do with what you speak.”

  My dear Eve, let us not argue, lie down beside me, let me feel your warmth on this cold night. Your eyes are alight. Use that heat otherwise.

  “Then perhaps I should ask what you know?” I said.

  “Who sent you, what sort of spy, on whose side?”

  “I am baffled, my dear.”

  “What do you know ab
out the recent bit of open-air theater?”

  “Who does not know of it? But I cannot begin to retell the horror I saw tonight.”

  As soon as the words escaped I knew I was in trouble. But still I told her about the sacrificed kangaroo. My story, whatever it had been, was assailable now from all sides.

  “And so what of the wedding?”

  “At most I attended the marriage of an innocent animal to the infinite,” I said, fearing she might open the door, indicating steps I should take through it.

  “Who are you?” she said. “I thought you were someone in need, yet now I feel you are part of some larger plan. I hear so much. Every night I am told one confession and overhear another. Those musicians are more than they seem. Those men enjoying themselves were not drunks.”

  “There is more to my story than a wedding that did or did not occur, a stream of stories in fact that have brought me to this spot, and I am therefore thankful for each. I have heard stories too but I am not much of an actor in them, and the dress I can explain perfectly well, but perhaps not at first.”

  “For now can you fit beside me?”

  We lay with hands at sides, as far as we could from each other. She did not ask me to remove clothes or shoes. The long coat I kept on. She lay beside me also fully clothed. We were models for a study of doomed lovers about to be entombed. The tension between us ran back and forth, related either to her suspicion or my attraction. We lay there, my chest rising and falling in time with hers, as the flame of a candle beside the bed made its way toward its own pooled wax.

  “Stearns?” I said. “Do you know him?”

  “Daley, his associate, is a regular patron. He questioned your bet.”

  Daley, henchman of Stearns, second in command, enjoyed himself in a city he wished to conquer. Young and old at once. His cheeks and eyes, his hair and build, suggested an incomplete possession of maturity but there was weight to him, jowls, a sagging lower lip, a slumpedness to how he sat that had doubled his age. Now some emanation of him occupied the space between us.