by Etta Faire
“If that means a person who doesn’t like seeing another person peeing, then yes. Both my shoes are goody.”
Just as he was opening the door to go out, I saw why he didn’t want to fast forward. Blanche was swaying in the doorway, waiting for us.
She took an unsteady step forward so her face was only an inch from Feldman’s. Her breath smelled a lot like gin and throw up. More like throw up. “Doc talks a lot… about you a lot,” she said, right next to Feldman’s nose. Up close I could tell she was probably in her early thirties, my age. Her makeup was thick, coats of mascara over false lashes. Powder that settled into her creases but made her face almost look like ivory.
“Oh yeah? What does he say?” Feldman said.
She ran an unsteady finger across his cheek and down his back. He did not discourage her by stepping away or mentioning Drew. She went on. “He says you are a very good businessman. He says you always gets what you wants.” She grabbed Feldman’s hands and placed them on her boobs. He gently squeezed them and pulled her in closer. “I wonder whats you wants now,” she said, as she bit her finger.
I interjected. “I think you probably wants to fast forward this part if it goes any further,” I said. “Just sayin.’”
She smiled and pressed her mouth over ours, simultaneously skimming her hand along the back part of our thigh.
At first Feldman didn’t kiss her back, but that didn’t last too long. He pulled her into the darkened bathroom with him, toward the toilet, kissing her long and hard as he ran his hands along the back of her head and down the small of her back.
Then Feldman turned her around and went out the door, leaving her there. “I’ll tell Doc you wanna see him as soon as he’s done with the next hand,” he said.
He shut the door and backed away.
“That ended a lot differently than I thought it was going to,” I said as we headed back down the hall, the unfortunate taste of Blanche’s lipstick and throw-up sitting on our lips. “You’re still an ass, though.”
Backing away, he tripped over something at his feet, making his already hurt ankle hurt even more. He fell to the floor, landing right on his rear this time. A quick scan of the area gave him the reason. The horse again. It was right by the opening to the bar, staring at him with those dead eyes like it was mocking him, laughing at him, already telling him what a loser he was.
Feldman grabbed the horse and chucked it as hard as he could across the hall like a shot put. But it was metal and sturdy, not the breakable kind of piggy bank.
It landed with a crash that rocked the entire hall, making a huge dent in the wall before landing unscathed on the floor in front of it. Doc rushed to the hallway, followed by the rest of the group. “What the hell was that? You okay? Where’s Blanche?”
“In the bathroom,” she called.
Doc’s face relaxed until he looked down the opposite end of the hall and saw the bank and the hole in the wall. “You’re fixing that,” he yelled as he pointed at Feldman. “And while we’re at it, there are other things I think we should discuss.”
“What’s it to you if he fixes it or not,” Terry asked, pushing Doc against the wall of the hallway, causing his glasses to fall askew. “And there’s nothing to discuss. You’ve been getting on my nerves all night. This ain’t your bar. This ain’t your booze. And that ain’t your ugly horse bank neither. Tell ‘em, Feldman.”
“Yeah,” Richie said. “Stop being a dick, Doc.”
“Dick Dock. Dick Dock,” Blanche sang from the bathroom.
Richie ignored her and went on. “Even when we were in high school, he was a dick. I’m sick of this dick.”
“Who needs a drink?” Feldman said, pushing through the crowd in the doorway.
“We playing cards or what?” Chance asked. He was behind the bar, helping himself to another beer. He was sure eager to play cards for a man who was losing.
How had I missed someone bringing the horse into the hallway? I was going to be watching their every move now. Doc, Blanche, and Chance, especially. I tried to think back to the first time we saw the horse. Where were those three right before the horse had been discovered?
Was it a coincidence that the two people who didn’t quite belong at the reunion poker game came there with Doc, the guy about to buy the bar? And one of those three had just cornered Feldman in the bathroom while the horse had been placed in the hall?
“How were you cheating Doc in the deal?” I asked him as he sat back down at the poker table. “What did he want to discuss?”
He didn’t talk to me.
“And while we’re at it, I want to know everything there is to know about the man who couldn’t come, but lives in the same city the horse bank came from. You were right. This is an elaborate set up. Someone is taking the time to make you know it. Taunting you. I don’t think it’s Terry.”
“It could be.”
“Yes, it could be. But if Terry had been the one who murdered you, it would’ve been a crime of passion. Let’s say he found out you sold the Bear Bird and he wouldn’t be able to drink here anymore. Or he found out you slept with his girlfriend to prove to him just what a horrible person she was. He probably wouldn’t have had the foresight to buy a bank a while back and mail it here, then place it all over the bar to taunt you.”
He still didn’t say anything.
“And what about this guy Jeremy?” He didn’t answer, so I went on. “Could he be here, lurking?”
“He’s not. Leave it alone.”
“But I feel like I should investigate every angle. And you’re being evasive. If I’m going to help you…”
“Your timer’s going off,” he said, and just like that, I heard it.
How long had it been going off? And why wasn’t my boyfriend shaking my shoulders?
Chapter 20
Just a Dog and a Sparrow
The relief I felt when I opened my eyes left as quickly as it came. My living room seemed different. The lamps were in their exact spots along the end tables, the dogwood rug was centered under my feet by the settee.
But it was darker than usual, making me wonder how long I’d been channeling. And the thick, velvet curtains were closed, even though I’d left them open.
I looked around. I didn’t see Justin or Rex. The smell of pipe smoke took over my senses and I coughed, outraged that Feldman was likely creating unwanted smells in my living room now. But something else seemed different too.
I no longer heard the soft ticking of my wall clock.
A door opened upstairs, and I rose from the settee to listen in on whoever was there. Was it Justin?
Wait a sec. Hadn’t I been on the couch?
And I was pretty sure I hadn’t willed my body to get up.
I looked up the stairs in time to see the door to the secret room close. I’d only discovered a few months ago that the door across from the nursery on the second floor that only led to a wall now had actually been a real room at some point in the house’s history.
And now, someone was coming out of it. Somehow, I was still in Feldman’s memories, channeling.
“What would you have me do?” the woman’s voice said from upstairs. I recognized it at once. Mrs. Harpton, my housekeeper.
“I have no idea if we should do anything, Theona,” another woman said. The voice sounded remarkably like my own. Eliza, maybe. “It’s his choice to be drunk, which is no way to start the treaty session. I’ve instructed the children,” she lowered her voice, “to remain quiet and in their altered states until further instruction. We can’t have anyone know they’re here. And if Henry Bowman is as drunk as I suspect, then he might just give everything away, the old fool.”
“He’s been smoking like a chimney too, whole house reeks of it. I don’t know if there’s any tobacco left in the house.”
“He’s nervous, and drunk. Mostly drunk.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” the woman who sounded like my housekeeper replied, scurrying down the stairs. It was Mrs. Harpton, al
l right. She looked younger, but that might’ve been because her face wasn’t in its usual wrinkly scowl. She also wasn’t nearly as fast as the last time I saw her.
She seemed to almost lumber down the stairs, slowly lifting the skirt of her stiff, black dress so she could take the steps one at a time. She looked over at me, staring directly in my eyes for a moment longer than I’d expected. “They’ll be down in a minute, Mr. Winehouse. Would you like some coffee?”
My gaze went to my shoes, and I saw my tattered suit, felt its scratchiness along my long, man arms.
Just like I thought, I was still channeling.
“Feldman,” I yelled in my head.
He didn’t answer and Jackson’s warning bounced off every cell in my brain. Just don’t forget you’re in control.
Problem was, I had no idea what that meant or how to gain control again. Instead of taking me home, Feldman must’ve taken me to the day of the photo in the first scrapbook, the one where Eliza was dancing naked on Henry Bowman’s desk in 1904.
Although this was exactly the memory he promised to take me to, and I should have been happy he was being true to his word, I was also channeling much longer than I should have been.
And I had no control over anything.
The curly-haired blonde in the knee-length black dress sitting on the couch next to Henry Bowman wasn’t me. I knew this. I wasn’t around in the early 1900s. But still, she was my “spitting image,” as my grandmother would say. And it was very strange to watch myself from someone else’s perspective.
Shortly after Mrs. Harpton started the coffee, two other men had arrived, one by one. A short, balding man I knew as James Hind (the suffragette’s father) and the other man in the photo, making five of us sitting around the living room. I studied the unknown man’s face. His beady eyes and sunken cheeks. The cruel way he laughed.
It hit me. Richard Mulch, twenty years younger than he was in Feldman’s memories of the speakeasy in 1923, and 50 years younger than his awful demise when he was split in two in 1954.
He was a thin man with bad teeth and a nervous laugh who kept looking over at the suffragette’s father and curling his lip at him. James Hind glared back.
“This is very delicious coffee,” Feldman said, his hand so unsteady his coffee almost spilled.
“Thank you,” Henry replied, leaning over, his words slurred. “It’s better with whiskey.” He winked.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Feldman held his cup out so fast it splashed a little along his hand, stinging our skin.
“Theona,” Henry yelled and she hurried into the room from the kitchen, standing like a soldier at the side of his chair.
“Yes sir.”
“Please make sure our guests are kept well hydrated.” He motioned toward the whiskey bottle sitting on the coffee table next to a stack of papers.
“But Henry, it’s barely afternoon and we have business to conduct,” Eliza gently reminded him. She and Mrs. Harpton exchanged knowing glances.
“My dear lady, if you haven’t figured out by now that business is always better when everyone is properly hydrated, then God help us all.”
Mrs. Harpton poured a little whiskey into each of the men’s coffee cups. Richard and Feldman sat together on the couch. Henry and James both sat in the living room’s only chairs, and Eliza was on the settee.
James Hind tugged on his graying mustache, watching the housekeeper’s every move, his eyes darting around the room. He was about the same age as Henry, a good 30 years older than Richard and Feldman. He shook his head “no” to Mrs. Harpton when she offered to pour some whiskey into his cup, then as she was turning away added, “I guess a bit wouldn’t hurt.”
Henry laughed again. “Hurt? Just a bit will make us a bit more hospitable toward each other.”
Feldman took a sip of his coffee. It burned his bottom lip and tasted kind of like the way I pictured Windex tasting. But he didn’t seem to mind either problem. “A little more, my dear, and I don’t mean the coffee” he said as Mrs. Harpton poured more whiskey into his cup.
Twenty minutes later and no one was asking for coffee any longer. “I’ll just have a spot more of the hydration, please,” Richard said, making everyone laugh.
“So, tell us again why your nanny is sitting in on the proceedings today?” Feldman asked.
Eliza rolled her eyes and sifted through the papers, grabbing a blank piece from the stack.
Henry unbuttoned his vest and let himself take a deep breath. He looked a lot like Theodore Roosevelt. Same round glasses and thick belly. “She was my nanny in New York back when Marjorie and I had our first daughter, Henriette. I was away tending to business quite frequently, so Marjorie was thrilled to have her. In addition to being a very fine nanny…”
“A fine nanny that no one sees with any kids,” Feldman chimed in, making the others chuckle, which at this point in the hydration-cycle was pretty easy to do. I could feel the burn in Feldman’s eyes, the same stinging sensation I felt at the bar when he’d had too much to drink there as well. “Where are Marjorie and the kids, anyway?”
Henry tugged on the stiff hairs of his light brown mustache. “Visiting relatives in New York…”
“You would think Marjorie would’ve wanted her nanny with her for that,” Feldman said.
Henry went on like he hadn’t heard the comment. “Eliza stayed behind because she is also a very good secretary. And this is a very important meeting.”
“Shall we begin?” she asked, pen and paper ready.
“A nanny is going to take notes on this meeting?” Feldman said. He was slurring his words now. And the room had long grown foggy for us. “You don’t have to lie, Henry. We’re all here cause we know each other, straight down to the core. You’re James’s witness to the signing. Him being a bird and all, no bear’s gonna believe a word he says without having a human witness. And vice versa for my boy over here, the bear.” He motioned to Richard. “So why don’t you cut the crap.” He paused like he might be losing his train of thought, but managed to pick it back up again. “And tell us the truth.”
Eliza cut him off. “As the only sober person in the room, I am here to make sure all the conditions of this treaty are spelled out on paper and signed by all.” She licked a finger and sifted through the notes in front of her, finally pulling out a couple identical maps of Potter Grove. Her posture was much better than mine. She sat straight as a pin, legs properly crossed at the bottom. “This is the proposed splitting of the parcel known as Potter Grove. There is a copy for both parties. As you can see, it’s really quite fair. The main concern for the birds is that their Sacred Grounds be preserved. And the main concern for the bears is that all other terms of the past also be preserved. They won the war, fair and square so it would be good to avoid another one…”
“She’s pretty high falutin’ for a nanny,” Richard said, looking her over from head to toe, making me want to punch the man out.
“I think she looks like she’d be a fun girl. I like fun girls,” Feldman said, reaching across the coffee table to grab Eliza’s skirt.
She smacked his hand. “And I like respectful men with dignity.”
“Then what are you doing hanging around Henry Bowman?” Richie said. The way he said “hanging around” implied more than hanging around, and he elbowed Feldman to make sure he’d caught on.
“I’m sure you gentlemen are the top of your clans,” she said.
“They wouldn’t have sent us if we weren’t,” Richie replied. “Huh, James? Best and brightest.”
James shook his head at Richie and Feldman, obviously annoyed with the young “riffraffs” in the group. “Let’s sign this treaty and get this over with.”
“Of course a bird would be interested in getting this over with, but what about the bears? We are in a better position, my friend. So much so, I was sent here with one question. Why on God’s green earth would we want to sign a piece of crap?”
“Please stop being so obtuse. If we don’t sign, we
risk another war,” James said, matter-of-factly.
“We ain’t the ones worried about that,” Richie said.
“With larger birds this time,” James went on.
“We destroyed some pretty large ones last time.” Richie lit a cigarette without asking if it was okay to do so, and Mrs. Harpton quickly came into the room, not to tell him to put it out, but to bring him an ashtray. Nowadays, she would have thrown both cigarette and smoker out the front door.
“And some more hooch too,” he said, motioning toward the bottle. Mrs. Harpton obliged without changing her expression, even though I could tell the woman was thoroughly annoyed.
“And Henry,” Richie said. “I heard through the grapevine that you weren’t exactly the upstanding businessman you claim to have been when you were back in New York.”
Henry steeled his eyes on the man and Eliza shook her head at Henry.
“She calls the shots a lot for a nanny. You know what I think? I think she was one of your girls.”
“What girls?” James asked, suddenly interested in something more than leaving.
“Oh you didn’t hear, huh?” Richie went on. “I heard Henry Bowman owned a lot of brothels in New York, houses of ill-repute, working girls that were worked to the bones, so to speak.” He got up from his spot on the couch and sat down next to Eliza on the settee. He scooted in closer, and she looked away. “But she don’t look so bony. She your favorite? I heard they used to dance too.”
Henry stood. “That’s enough. I have no idea where you got your information from but I can assure you, it is far from the truth.”
Richie looked to Feldman and James. “We know what’s what. And we want to see a dance. Don’t we, fellas? Right now. And if we don’t get it, we ain’t signing.”
“I think you’re pretty far from signing now,” Eliza said. She bent forward, gathered the papers together into a neat stack on the coffee table. “Perhaps another time when you’re not so well hydrated.”