Glimmer As You Can

by Danielle Martin

  Insignificant near the towering beams.

  The metal frames rose above her head. Liquid concrete was spinning in trucks and being poured into massive blocks in front of her, and she was a nothing.

  All around was dirt, muck, and the strong scent of heavy work.

  Billy worked in the distance, a piece of metal hoisted over his shoulder. He didn’t see her.

  She called out his name and approached.

  He coughed and spat, startled a little.

  “Hi,” she said. Her hand was behind her back, without the ring. “Sorry for interrupting.”

  “No, babe. I’m just about done. Rough day.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wait a second.” He pulled her aside, behind a temporary trailer, spitting into the muck, and whispered, “Mack got the can today.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess he snuck some crap off the site.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff around the site. Every guy sometimes takes things for a little side project—he wasn’t doing anything unusual.”

  “What did he take?”

  “Scrap metal, tools, whatever. There’s plenty of stuff floating around that nobody’s using.”

  “So, taxpayers are paying for people to steal stuff for their side projects?”

  “It’s not a big deal.” He lowered his voice. “Listen, let’s get out of here. I told Mack I’d meet him at the bar after my shift.”

  “Why do you want to see him?”

  Billy didn’t answer. He threw his piece of metal in a pile of other metal.

  She followed him helplessly, like a puppy. He gave a hand signal to the other guys that he was leaving.

  The air around him was charged. He didn’t look at her as she tailed behind him. He walked at full speed down blocks and blocks, pausing only occasionally to smoke a cigarette in the hot evening air, without a word.

  They arrived at the bar. It was packed. Mack and some other guys clustered together at a side table, throwing drinks down their throats and slamming empty glasses on the table in bursts of hyena laughter.

  Mack’s eyes were red and veiny, and he gesticulated his points in quick, chaotic motions.

  Billy ordered another round of beer. Lisa squeezed herself on a stool to the side of the table. It was dark outside. If she left the bar, she would be catcalled in this neighborhood. She would be safe next to Billy, at least.

  “Then the mobster said to the policeman, I bet you did!” Mack grew louder, his jokes more screechy.

  Billy and the others laughed their heads off, and one of the guys tossed a pack of cards out from his pocket. Suddenly coins flew across the table, and even Mack emptied his pockets. Lisa did a double take; Mack had been fired only a few hours prior.

  Billy won the card game. “Burgers on me!”

  They left the bar, so Lisa had to follow them. The guys formed a loose huddle on the sidewalk, which was almost abandoned at this hour of the night. They were drunk in plain sight, with few people around.

  They moved block by block, and Billy put his arm around Lisa’s waist. His breath was sour and she gagged a little, quietly. They were near his car.

  “I don’t think you should drive. You had a lot.”

  “I don’t think you should drive. You had a lot.” Billy mimicked her, and the guys laughed.

  Tears smarted in Lisa’s eyes, and she walked away into the desolate neighborhood.

  She would leave, no matter the darkness.

  Billy chased after her and tapped her arm. “Saw-wee.” His baby voice.

  He was extremely intoxicated, his eyes glassy. He said he was fine, but Lisa grabbed his keys from his hand. The guys teased him, but he got in the passenger seat, his lids half-closed.

  She drove carefully to the burger joint. The four other guys were crammed into the back seat, and Billy twisted the radio dials. Their howls heightened some difficulty with parallel parking in a tight spot, but soon she did it, and then she shut off the engine.

  The guys sprinted into the burger place to grab a booth. Their food came out quickly. The bill arrived quickly too. They didn’t notice the hand signal the manager had given their waitress.

  Lisa slunk down in her seat as they grew louder and louder.

  Billy said he had to piss; he left Lisa at the table with the four of them. They crumpled their grease-stained burger wrappers into little balls, blowing them across the table at each other.

  “So, Mack, do you think you’d like to still work in construction?” Lisa spoke, disconnected, as everyone in the burger joint stared at their booth.

  “I’m just gonna work for Billy’s pops, like I been doin’.”

  “You’re working for him already?”

  “A little campaign work for Mr. Abbott, you know? Helping out Billy’s pops.” A wrapper flicked against Mack’s dirty shirt.

  “Campaign work?”

  Mack laughed and pitched the wrapper across the table. He didn’t answer Lisa; instead, he screeched at a guy hoarding the wrappers.

  Billy emerged from the bathroom; he threw money on the table, ready to go. “Hey, let’s split this joint!”

  They piled out of the restaurant, and Lisa jumped back into the driver’s seat before he could do it. The guys crowded in as before, slapping each another and singing off-key.

  It was almost midnight.

  She asked the guys where they lived, but they didn’t answer, distracted. She repeated her question. One lived in Greenpoint, one was out in Williamsburg, and the other lived in Bay Ridge, a few streets down from Billy.

  As she drove, Lisa kept the windows wide open. It was still warm in the car, with fumes of beer and body odor.

  She kept her eyes open. It would all be done soon.

  One more big haul, and their relationship would be over.

  She headed north, past industrial yards and housing complexes—skirting past Greenwood, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens. The guys were a little more subdued; their speech was slowed and slurred. But after someone made a comment about the Dodgers, they all started to yell at each other, and Lisa made a wrong turn down a side street.

  She ended up in Brooklyn Heights, not too far from Livingston Street.

  They were near the empty shell of the Starlite.

  “Could you believe what happened with that dame? She must have just flipped!”

  Lisa’s throat started to react; at first it was a tickle. Then it became an unbearable cough.

  “You gotta be a little less crazy next time, Mack.”

  “She must have just wanted to get out of there, pronto!”

  “Well, could you blame her?”

  “And all over the papers, too.”

  “Cool it, gentlemen.” Billy cleared his drunken throat and hissed.

  They became strangely quiet, and Lisa could barely speak above her own coughs. She managed to summon her words.

  “What are you guys talking about?” She scanned the streets for a turnoff point to Greenpoint or Williamsburg. She was lost.

  “It’s none of your concern what we’re talking about.” Billy spoke in a deep voice. He didn’t sound drunk anymore, and Lisa shook, barely able to turn the steering wheel with two hands.

  She closed her eyes for a split second at a stop sign.

  “What was her name again? Marilyn?” Mack asked. They were all smoking little stumps. A thick cloud of smoke wafted up to the front seat, suffocating her, and her coughing fit returned.

  Lisa looked for a place to pull over; she flicked the turn signal. “Do you mean Madeline?” Billy raised the volume on the radio dial, covering her voice.

  “You’ve heard of her? You know, it’s not like we killed the dame. We just scared her a little, on Freddy’s orders. It’s a shame that dame had to go and die, to keep her mouth shut.”

  It was black as night as Lisa turned off her headlights.

  * * *

  “What happened to you?” They were in the parking lot of an abandoned wa
rehouse. Billy stood over her, yelling. “You almost ran us off the road! Good thing I got the wheel, or we’d be smashed! You must have been the one who drank too much! I should’ve just drove!”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  52

  Elaine

  October 1962

  The president had informed the nation that there were missiles in Cuba.

  Elaine and the other fact-checkers worked into the evening, making phone calls to see if the missiles could reach New York.

  Elaine was the first one to speak to a ballistics expert, who said yes.

  At nine PM, she was back in her boardinghouse room, flipping through a book, small in a small room, which could easily be wiped out. Her life was tenuous and tiny again, like when she had been evacuated from London as a child, not knowing if the bombs would hit.

  David was staying at the Chronicle until the morning hours as the staff argued over which stories to publish and which usual sections to do away with.

  Radioactive smoke could consume them all. Just when she had David.

  He was a different sort of man. Warm, caring, and intelligent. There wasn’t an arrogant bone in his body. She had met his family. He lived with his parents so that his mother could watch his daughter. His mother was interesting and elegant, a sculptor of some kind.

  It had been a different sort of experience to visit David’s house. A good one.

  But it too could go up in a giant puff, then fade to ash.

  53

  Lisa

  It was Lisa’s fourth week at the boardinghouse.

  At home, she couldn’t escape, with her mother always asking about the wedding and Billy. She had moved out without explaining too much. She’d said she was growing up; she had to learn to be on her own before she married. She’d left some money on the table for their groceries.

  She hadn’t told anybody about Mack—about what he’d said that night. Nobody would believe her. And she didn’t have any proof.

  They could try to silence her next—if she talked.

  Her mouth would stay closed.

  She would be silent.

  She kept playing along as Billy’s girl. But she was getting a little distance, going back to the boardinghouse every night.

  It was a plain boardinghouse, and strict. But it was clean and safe.

  It was nice to be near a friend. Elaine was right upstairs, and sometimes they chatted well into the evening over cups of weak tea. Sometimes Lisa could forget, for a few moments, in this new place—before it all came back to her.

  She struggled to keep her own small room clean. She vomited almost every day, within five minutes of walking through the door.

  When she saw Billy, she put on her diamond and she wore her nice clothes. She was quiet, mainly, but he didn’t seem to notice. Sometimes she would erupt in shakes. She kept the spasms hidden underneath tables and extra layers of clothing. She would hold her pocketbook close to her chest and push it in to create a heavy, dampening pressure. Sometimes Mack would join them. Her tongue would swell and her words would come out thickly.

  Billy never said anything about Mack’s confession, but his chiseled face grew more rounded, cheeks puffy and red. The whites of his eyes were cast in pink whenever she saw him.

  Sometimes she threw up morning and evening.

  Tonight she shampooed her hair in the sink, trying to get out the filth and grease of the luncheonette and her own sickness. She set it in waves, trying to get the curls just right, though eventually she gave up and made herself horizontal, on her pillow, so she could lie on the hard rollers and apply pressure to her damp hair.

  Someone knocked at her door as she was securing loose strands in the front with bobby pins.

  She got up from the bed; she could use some company.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting.” Elaine was polite as usual, though incongruously disarrayed in an old nightgown, her hair out of place.

  “You’re not interrupting.”

  The two of them sat on Lisa’s bed, cross-legged in their nightgowns, like two girls at a slumber party.

  Elaine spoke slowly and cleared her throat in her delicate way. “You heard about all of this business with the missiles pointed at the United States. Cuba has got them square and centered.”

  “My God, are you serious!”

  “They might even reach New York.”

  “New York?” Lisa pulled a curler from her hair, and a number of hairs came out along with it.

  Her eyes widened and her neck jolted; she was small, one of a number of targets.

  She might dissolve, along with everything else, along with her secret. She would perish without even taking in all the punishment, all the loathing, from everyone. Or she would absorb it all and take it with her to the beyond; she would fester quickly in their pile of hate.

  They could turn their hatred onto her, at the end.

  Elaine talked more about the missiles and the political crisis; it was life-and-death for everyone in the country now.

  Lisa’s life was tiny.

  She ripped out more curlers, fast and hard, exposing a small spot of scalp. Billy saw her as someone else. Elaine didn’t know her reality. She herself was hidden from her truth.

  Nobody would believe her.

  Someone would have to catch Mack and the others in an act of malfeasance. Have a cop see the evidence. Otherwise it would be her word against his.

  Obvious who would win.

  Lisa’s body shook uncontrollably, and she pulled her nightgown tight around her legs as she spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m terrified,” she admitted.

  “Me too,” Elaine agreed, though they were talking about different things.

  Elaine was quiet, bolt upright on the bed. She told Lisa that she had been evacuated from London as a child. Now the missiles were pointed at her again, on the other side of the world.

  Lisa turned the radio on, to the news station. They were talking about the missiles, about duck and cover—about what to do if something happened.

  The two of them listened, wide-eyed, until Elaine shut it off.

  “Nothing we can do now, right?”

  “Right.”

  The secret was crawling its way up Lisa’s throat, like an itchy insect. She coughed and laid her head down.

  “What do you think the end would be like?” she asked, from her pillow.

  “Who knows? We won’t remember it,” Elaine said. It was gallows humor. The scratchy pestilence in Lisa’s throat rose further upward. “You know, I used to work at that radio station you just had on. I actually met Tommy there.”

  “Oh.” It was yet another mistake she had made, flipping to just the station that would remind Elaine of Tommy.

  Elaine paused. “I was wondering, thinking—”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you think Madeline would have done about all this?”

  Lisa was short. “Done about what? She couldn’t stop a missile.”

  “I don’t mean that. Do you think she would have gathered us together? Like a going-away party, just in case?”

  “For herself, or us?”

  “Either one.”

  “Yeah.” She pressed her face down and hid her eyes.

  Elaine was twisted to face the wall. She got up to go to Lisa’s dresser and silently moved the radio antennae, in a hard swallow, a sick choke.

  “I miss her.”

  Lisa was a mass of heat and chills. She raised herself.

  “Me too.”

  “I can’t still believe she’s gone.”

  “She was a beautiful person.” Lisa stared, without blinking.

  The election was coming up very soon. Fred Abbott was in the lead. He would probably get reelected.

  Madeline’s truth would be hidden, as Fred Abbott would get to continue as if nothing ever happened.

  “She was like a glimmering light, snuffed out.” Elaine’s lip trembled.

  Lisa’s eyes closed in a rapid blink.

  He
r trance was condensing and reaching a critical mass.

  They could do something to her too.

  After all, she knew.

  She rose to her feet.

  “Hey, Elaine, I was wondering—about your job? About what it’s like …?”

  “Bloody hell—it’s crazy at the newspaper right now.”

  “What I mean to say is, well—how does it work with reporters? I mean, do you have certain people who are like investigative reporters?”

  “We have a few investigative types. I’m not particularly involved with their day-to-day. Why do you ask, love?”

  “I have a situation.” Lisa was on her feet now, hand on her head.

  About to vomit for the third time that day.

  “Oh?”

  “Someone I know—” Lisa paused, as her tongue wouldn’t form sentences. “Well, there’s a situation—”

  Elaine looked at her strangely. Lisa’s hair stuck up at odd angles, and she was stammering. Elaine glanced out the window, as if at any moment the bomb would explode. With one eye focused outside, she raised her lip, prompting Lisa to speak. “Yes, do go on.”

  “My fiancé, you know. Billy? Well—”

  “What’s going on, dear? Are you about to break off the engagement? I keep seeing you without that ring.”

  “It’s not that. Well, I guess it is, but—” She paused. None of it would make sense. “I need someone to tag along with me, a reporter. Do you know anyone like that?”

  She was doing it; they would come after her next.

  It was inevitable. She was doomed—by an attack from an outside force, or an attack of someone she knew. She would report on the truth to the press and be made to run. Another woman made to run. Another casualty in the headlines.

  “You want someone to tag along with you? I don’t quite get your meaning, dear.”

  “It’s just—well, you know Billy—well, you never met him, but …”

  “Yes?”

  Things could go up in smoke. The itchy insect had crawled to the tip of her tongue.

  Finally it flattened itself out, rolling into a smooth truth, shedding its skin. Then it released at once, converting to a metamorphic fluid, and the words flew from her mouth.

  “Well, Billy’s friend—Mack—is working for Billy’s father, on the campaign for Fred Abbott, and—” She coughed out bits of spit. “Well, a few months ago, Mack was talking about that night with Madeline …” Her limbs were frozen, but she went on. “Well, that night with Madeline … Mack was trying to scare her. He admitted he was at her window with fire, and she ran out onto the street.”