by Ed Ifkovic
I expected drab, uneventful food, and was not disappointed. A steak so tough and fatty I judiciously ignored it, potatoes so gray I flattened them into a corner of the dish but they refused to disappear. I ate bread and butter, surprisingly tasty and crusty, obviously an accident of the kitchen, and managed to savor the martini, which was decent. I had two, in fact. The waitress wasn’t happy. Perhaps she thought I’d arrived in town to star in Ten Nights in a Barroom. But, of course, I doubted she’d heard of that venerable melodrama.
“Everything all right?” the waitress asked, staring at my untouched meal.
“Do you really expect an answer?”
She blinked wildly and turned away, disappearing into the kitchen. I expected an irate chef, cleaver wielded above a blood-red face, to sail through those swinging doors—and do me in.
Ready to leave, I heard a loud, booming voice. I recognized it—and suddenly realized whom I’d spotted running earlier in the street. A few feet from my table, through a wide archway, was the cocktail lounge. I observed a long mahogany bar, behind which a gigantic mirror reflected rows of liquor bottles arranged in tiers on glass shelves. The voice roared again, angry, metallic. Standing up and sitting back down in a chair on the other side of my table—at that moment the waitress emerged from the kitchen and regarded my version of musical chairs as an act of certifiable madness—I now had a direct view into the lounge.
Evan Street was thundering about something. Leaning against the bar, one elbow resting on it, he waved his other hand at someone, punctuating his words with a beer bottle. His presence startled me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, he was the new understudy in town. But it did bother me because his boisterous manner was ugly and mean—a spine-chilling rawness to his fury. He demonstrated nothing of the obsequious blather he’d displayed at Cheryl’s apartment.
He stepped forward, grunted, at one point pushing his index finger into the shoulder of the young man facing him. Dressed in a wrinkled summer suit, shopworn and faded at the elbows, Evan struck me as a blustery itinerant drummer who hadn’t made a sale in days and thus took out his frustrations on hapless waiters. I had no idea what the altercation was about, though the mumbled words of the other man seemed to precipitate another volley of thunder and fire from Evan.
The young man, dark and slender with a long melancholy face under a shaggy haircut, drew his lips into a thin line. He backed up against the bar but Evan pushed closer, jabbing the man in the chest, and calling him by name: Dak. Or at least it sounded like that, the name momentarily lost in the tinkle of glasses and a long laugh from some unseen drinker somewhere else in the lounge. Then, to my horror, the young man struck out his fist, connecting with Evan’s shoulder. Surprised, Evan jabbed at Dak’s chest and then a fist grazed his cheek. Another solid punch to Dak’s shoulder. Evan spat out, “Damn you.” I heard the bartender yell something, and, like that, they separated. Dak’s voice shook. “Damn you, Evan. You’ll pay.”
Dak turned to go but collided with a third man, suddenly in my line of sight: a smallish bull of a man, thickset, young but balding, his blond hair close-cropped and spotty. This new man flicked a stubby finger against Dak’s chest, dismissive, nasty. Dak maneuvered around this interloper, who now purposely blocked Dak’s path. Sweating, anxious, Dak twisted around him and disappeared from my sight.
An ugly scene, stunning. My hand gripped the edge of the table.
Evan arched his back and whistled triumphantly, but at that moment he looked into the dining room where he spotted me. Our eyes locked. An awful moment, truly, for I saw iciness there, a hard agate stare, unfriendly. The man scared me.
But then, shaking his head, he attempted an ah-shucks grin, a little-boy twist of his head as he bit his lip, and he moved away. Over his shoulder he said to an unseen Dak, “The drinks are on you, buddy. You got the bucks. I’m a parasite in this one-hoss town.” His fireplug friend let out a false laugh, but didn’t move.
In a cavalier, jaunty stride, Evan sailed into the dining room and paused at my table. “Miss Ferber, you do show up in strange places.” He chuckled. “But obviously so do I.” He looked back at Dak and the other man, both standing in the doorway watching him. Dak was absently rubbing a bruised shoulder, his eyes dark with anger. Evan leaned into me confidentially and said through clenched teeth, “No one believes that someday I’ll return to Hollywood and be the biggest star.” This bizarre remark, apropos of nothing I’d just heard, hung in the air like a threat.
I had no time to answer him because he tapped his finger on my table, a Morse code rat-a-tat-tat, and left the room.
When I looked back into the lounge, the other two men had gone. The bartender was dragging a rag across the surface but he was looking at me.
Back in my rooms, unsettled, unable to focus on my script, I glanced at the front page of the morning’s New York Times I’d carried with me on the train. A pit in the deep of my stomach: the grim news from Europe. Every day the same raw story, the bleak headlines. The horror of Hitler as that madman now readied an assault and possible invasion of England. The Luftwaffe over precious storied England? The brutal air strikes in Gibraltar. France, gone now, the wishy-washy Vichy government cracking down on Jews. Madness, all of it. Mussolini in North Africa. Buffoons and hucksters, now in control.
Frantic, I phoned George at his country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the retreat—a mansion of twelve rooms, with guesthouse and stagnant pond—he glibly called “cherchez La Farm.” Crickets on the hearth.
Bea answered the phone. “Edna, is there anything wrong?”
I hesitated. “No, I…” I had no idea why I was calling except for the queasiness inside me.
“An exciting time for you,” she went on.
I sucked in my breath. “Bea, dear, I watched your young friend Evan Street slug another man in a bar fight.” I suddenly found myself at a loss for words. Silence, my mind racing, then I went on. “You know him well?”
“Well, not well. But, Edna, he’s a rambunctious young man, filled with spirit. Dashing, wouldn’t you say?”
My silence was too long. “Is George there?”
I could hear him talking in the background. Bea said nothing more but obviously handed him the phone.
“Edna, what’s the matter?”
“George, tell me about Evan.”
The question surprised him. “Why?”
“I don’t like him.”
I could hear Bea in the background mumbling to him about Evan’s barroom brawl.
“Maybe he had too much to drink.” George was speaking to her.
The sound of her walking away, her faraway voice saying, “Tell Edna he’s all right. Just…pushy.”
“Edna, Edna. Perhaps he’ll grow on you—like a barnacle.” But George deliberated, lowering his voice. “I don’t like him either.”
“Then why…?”
“Talk to my wife who is standing in the kitchen doorway, frowning at me. Or, perhaps, at you. Evan’s her friend’s son. He flatters and charms women. Not you, of course. Loyalty to college friends and all that.”
“I don’t like him,” I repeated.
“I know, I know.” A deep sigh. “What little I know…I asked Bea about him after we met him at Cheryl’s…well…he loses every job he gets. That I know. He makes enemies. He’s too cocksure. Trouble follows him. I’m paraphrasing Bea’s laudatory description of him, or, better said, I’m reading between the lines.”
“Wonderful.” Now I sighed. “And he’ll ruin my week here.”
“Edna, I’ll be there in a couple days. I don’t think he’ll ruin anything. He won’t bother you. The worst he’ll do is give you some bad memories.”
George was the most notorious pessimist I knew—superstitious, a man who believed each new play or venture was doomed. So this burst of good cheer alarmed me. This wasn’t the George Kaufman I knew.
“Is he dangerous?” The question seemed appropriate, if odd.
Another long pause. “All men are in danger when they near your rocky shores, Edna. Men are…”
The line went dead because I’d hung up on George. Not for the first time, true, and doubtless not the last.
Chapter Three
No one paid me any attention as I strolled down the street the next morning, not the usual clipped, purposeful walk I always did in New York—my military stride up Park and down Lexington, one mile, brisk and steady. No, in the growing heat of nine o’clock Maplewood, I sauntered past the shops and homes in the Village, enjoying the laziness of it all, the occasional passing car, a few briefcase-toting businessmen tipping their fedoras to me as they scurried to the train station for a late commute into the city.
But already the day was becoming blistering, the temperature edging upward, perhaps ninety by noon, and the thermometer outside Pietz’s Deli already registered eighty-one. Perspiring, I stopped for a cherry soda at the Full Moon Café, just down from Foster’s Five and Dime, which also wooed me with a special on banana splits. Alone in the café, refreshed, I was served with aplomb by a wiry old woman in a hairnet who stood close to my table, arms folded.
“You’re Edna Ferber.” A tickle in her voice.
“I am.”
“You’re Show Boat.”
I nodded.
She walked away, though she glanced back over her shoulder, a sliver of a smile on her face.
When I went to pay, she shrugged my coins away. “A treat for me, ma’am.” Then she laughed. “When you come back for lunch later on—my tuna casserole is the special today, you’ll love it—I’ll charge you double.” She extended her hand. “Name’s Mamie Trout, owner.” She laughed at her own joke, and I joined in. A stringy old woman in a homemade embroidered apron, she moved with small, cat-like shuffling steps.
Of course, tempted, I did return later that afternoon, after the lunch crowd was gone, opening the front door so the overhead bell clanged. Only a couple of tables were occupied by single diners. I settled myself into a rickety wrought-iron ice-cream parlor chair by the window. A quiet room now, with Mamie Trout leaning against one of the dull gray walls under an old copper ceiling. Currier and Ives prints, much faded, in old wooden frames. “Knew you’d be back,” Mamie chortled. “I refused Rufus Griswold, himself the mayor, the last portion of my casserole. For you. The man was fit to be tied.”
She didn’t wait for my response but hurried into her kitchen, emerging with a heaping dish of her daily special, served with a generous chunk of warm pumpernickel bread. She stood over me, arms folded into her bony chest, eyes bright, as I tasted the food. Before I could say anything, she flicked her head and turned away. Of course, she’d sized up my expression: utter joy. For, indeed, the tuna casserole—that redundant church supper staple and never a favorite of mine—was a savory dish, a wonderful amalgam of chunky tuna, celery, onions, carrots, and raisins, a bit of mayonnaise—but something more, some aromatic spice, undefined, that gave it a vaguely Moroccan touch. I knew now where I’d be eating lunch during my stay in Maplewood.
“Good, wouldn’t you say?”
A voice from across the room. It was a line that should have been part of a conspiratorial smile or laugh, the desultory conversation of strangers in a restaurant who have made a culinary discovery. When I glanced over, the young woman repeated it—the same mechanical inflection, deadpan, the matter-of-fact rhythm of an announcer in a Pathé newsreel at the movies.
“Indeed.”
“You’re Edna Ferber.”
“Indeed, I am. So you’ve heard of me?”
“I’m Annika Tuttle. You haven’t heard of me.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“You would have if you lived here.”
“And why’s that?”
Now a smile, smug, large, a mouth full of perfect teeth.
“I preach at the Assembly of God over on Tuscan Road. I work with the celebrated evangelist, Clorinda Roberts Tyler. You’ve heard of her, of course.”
I hesitated. “I’m afraid I haven’t.”
That startled her, and for a moment she was silent, sipping her drink.
A small woman, given to girlish plumpness, with apple-red cheeks on a round, wide face that was somehow closed up. Long, puffy honey-blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, neatly combed but with none of the shellacked coiffure so many young girls effected these days. Her eyes were a faded hazel, set too close together so that she probably always looked puzzled. Perhaps early twenties, she looked…matronly, in fact, yet still pretty, a farm girl. Wholesome with a kind of laundry-day brightness. This look was also the result of her dress: a checkered pale blue-and-white smock, gingham most likely, and utterly decorous, with a ruff of lace around her neck, her long sleeves cuffed with lace. The merest hint of lipstick on her lips, so faint perhaps I imagined it. A Mennonite lass, transported into Jersey.
Now she announced, a little haughtily, “Clorinda Roberts Tyler was a disciple of Aimee Semple McPherson in California. The legendary Sister Aimee herself. We are God’s emissaries here. She is my teacher. I’m her lieutenant in God’s army. I—”
I held up my hand, impatient. “You talk as if we’re in a war.”
She stared at me, unblinking. “Well, we are. With Satan. With this.” Her hand pointed out the window as a rattletrap Ford jalopy sped by, horn blaring and tires squealing. Some hell-to-play Johnny out on the town, peals of laughter carrying into the café.
“Perfect timing.” I was grinning widely.
“There are worlds to conquer for Christ.” She half-rose from her seat, as though preparing to pontificate—or, worse, join me at my table.
“I wish you luck,” I said a little too snidely.
But she wasn’t listening to me. “You must come to hear Clorinda preach. Each week the crowds get larger and larger.”
“And you preach there at…at the Assembly?”
A rapid nod. “I’m an acolyte. In training. I love God…”
I smiled again. “And, I gather, Mamie Trout’s scrumptious tuna casserole.”
Still no smile. “True, I suppose. Food being…food. But I’m meeting my intended here, if he finishes his work early. Clorinda’s son, Dakota.”
“Dakota?” I squirmed. “Dak?”
She looked surprised and unhappy. “Everyone calls him that. I don’t. But you know him? How in the world?”
“Of course not. I happened to hear the name spoken last night…”
The bell over the door clanged. Evan Street shuffled in, spotted Annika immediately, and waved at her, saying her name loudly. She frowned as she dipped her head into her chest. Then, surveying the room, he spotted me, the ubiquitous bystander, sitting nearby. “Lord, Miss Ferber, we meet again.”
“Evan,” I said slowly. “You are a presence.” I looked away.
He chuckled and tried to catch my eye: the persistent charmer unused to disregard from the fair sex. Yet I detected a hint of nervousness in his words. He’d rather I not be there.
“Annika.” He turned back to the young woman, “Is Dak around?”
Annika was still frowning as she looked up. “No.” A pause. “He’ll be here in a bit. Maybe.” Her voice was brittle and shaky.
He grinned at her. “Hey, you still mad at me?” He puffed up his chest. “Dak tell you about our squabble last night? We actually pushed each other around.”
“No, we don’t talk about you.”
He grabbed a chair from her table, swiveled it around and straddled it, his long arms dropping over the back as he leaned into her. His mouth twisted into a sly grin.
“You’re cute when you try to be mean to me.” He glanced back at me, that grin still plastered across his handsome face. “Annika doesn’t like people telling her she’s pretty.”
She rolled her tongue into a flushed cheek. “Evan, Dakota already told you he don’t want you talking to me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Flattering…you know, flirting.”
“What’s he gonna do? Beat me up? He’s a little too scrawny for that. I used to knock him around when we were out in Hollywood. Did he tell you about that? One magnificent fistfight on Sunset Boulevard. Real Wild West stuff. I gave him a black eye. He cried like a baby.” A calculated pause. “He almost cried last night.”
Annika looked toward the doorway, as though fearful Dak would come in and find Evan at her table. She half-rose from her chair, deliberately, then settled back, circled her glass of iced tea with both hands. Suddenly, resolutely, she stared into Evan’s arrogant face and betrayed a cool dislike so fierce it would have withered a less cocky man. Yet she also looked as if she could crack at any moment because the corners of her mouth twitched. “You have to have every woman look at you with longing, don’t you, Evan?” Each word slowly spaced out, lethal. At the end she took a sip from her glass, her eyes still on him. “But it’s not even that, is it, Evan? Clorinda was right. She told me about men like you. It’s not even the…women. You just want to make all the men jealous. Or angry. Or fight you.” She bit her lip. “Satan has a place reserved for lost souls like you, Evan Street.”
Evan slapped the table, and roared. “Hear that, Miss Ferber? I got the attention of the big Evil One himself. Little Evan Street, heartthrob-in-training for the silver screen.”
“Your charms obviously don’t spread into the spiritual realm,” I told him.
Annika smiled at me, and I realized how pretty she was once she abandoned the severity she demanded of herself. Yes, a farm girl’s robust beauty, rosy and innocent. Her voice got stronger, more assured, fire at the edges. Like Evan, she was looking at me. “Evan’s a foolish man, made happy by the throwaway smile from any passing girl or the hostile clip on the shoulder by a cuckolded boyfriend.” She sat back, pleased with herself.