by Jill Zeller
“The passengers?” I gulped, nearly choking.
“One casualty. And two passengers and two crew captured by Mexican rebels.”
“Did she put in here, at San Pedro?” Milo’s voice was a mere whisper.
“Yes.” Mr. Sigismond checked his papers again. Getting up, he walked to a wall of bookcases lined with dark volumes and pulled one down. Standing, he leafed through the pages.
“She made port a week ago. She’s in dry dock at Wilmington, for repairs.”
Milo’s fingers dug into my shoulder. But he didn’t speak.
“What about the passengers, Mr. Sigismond.” I kept my voice steady. “The crew. Where are they now?”
He went back to the sheaf of papers, sat down at his desk again. “I don’t have the roster, but several passengers waited in Acapulco and took ship back through the Canal for the east. Others sailed here—” He squinted, blinked. “Such terrible handwriting, these clerks have. How do they even stay employed?”
Muttering this way, he read. “They arrived two weeks ago, on the San Juan, also of the Panama Railway Company line.” He looked up at me. “After that, it’s hard to tell.”
I heard Loretta sigh, but she stayed quiet. Could she be bored with all this already?
I asked, “What about the crew? Would they still be here?”
Mr. Sigismond shook his head. “I doubt it. They have to earn their money. Likely they signed on with other vessels.”
A silence filled the room, while Mr. Sigismond looked at myself and Milo. If he had guessed who we were, he was too polite to ask.
“Where would the ship’s surgeon have gone? Surely you can tell me this?” I kept my voice sure and steady, so unlike the way I felt as I asked the question.
“It may take some time, but I could enquire. What was his name?”
“Eugene Doors.” This from Milo, quickly, before I could answer.
Mr. Sigismond’s eyebrows drew down. “Ah, yes.” Getting up, he went to the door and called for one of the clerks. When he came, Mr. Sigismond gave him instructions that I couldn’t quite hear.
After the clerk left, Mr. Sigismond came back to his desk. We waited in silence, listening to the ticking clock. My heart still thudded, but if nothing else, it was a relief to hear that all the passengers and crew where safe. The one casualty, I suspected, was poor Hammer Schultz, who died trying to protect me. And now we will get word of Dr. Doors for Milo’s sake.
The clerk returned a moment later with a small portfolio. Mr. Sigismond took it and laid it on the desk, unopened.
He said gently, “Are you relatives of Dr. Door?”
I shook my head. A heavy stone hung under my ribs. “Why do you ask?”
“An unfortunate thing. Very unfortunate.” Mr. Sigismond sighed. “We keep track of the ships, rosters, sailings, but this sort of thing. Only word of mouth, and the newspapers.”
I touched Milo’s hand, still on my shoulder. It was cold as ice.
“Mr. Sigismond. Please tell us what happened.”
Beside me Loretta stirred, leaned forward to listen as Mr. Sigismond spoke. He spread his hands on the desk, sending his fingers into the piles of papers.
“Dr. Doors, we’re told, stayed behind in Acapulco. He was very concerned about the fate of the crew who were captured by the rebels. It seemed he inquired about the crew members to some dangerous people.” Mr. Sigismond blinked. “And was apparently murdered by them.”
“No.” Milo’s one word was barely heard by me before he slumped against me, falling into my lap. Rising, I propped him, and Loretta and I helped him gently to the floor.
“Oh, my goodness.” Mr. Sigismond rushed to the door, summoned the clerk. “Water, smelling salts. Anything. Hurry!”
Sitting on the floor beside Milo, I opened his collar, daubed his face with my handkerchief from a glass of water the clerk brought. I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Dr. Doors had been trying to find out about Milo. I was certain of it.
It seemed like hours, but was only a few minutes before Milo opened his eyes. His head in my lap, he looked up at me, and tears bloomed in his eyes. Quickly I brushed them away with my handkerchief, hoping no one saw.
Loretta and I helped Milo to his feet. Her face flushed, Loretta kissed Milo on the cheek. Between us, we started for the door.
“Wait, Miss Lynch. Wait. Let us help you. Miss Carré, please.” Mr. Sigismond ordered his clerk to take Milo’s arm.
Miss Lynch. I did not remember Loretta bothering to introduce us by name. Turning, I gazed at Mr. Sigismond, who, picking up the portfolio, brought it to me.
He touched my hand as I grasped the leather folder. “I’m told one of the crew saved these for you, from the ship. It got into the hands of one of the passengers who called here, on his way to San Francisco.”
His hands dropped to his sides. “I’m so sorry about Dr. Doors, for your friend, Mr. Dudek. You have both been through so much.”
I thanked him. He turned, walked quickly back to his desk and picked up a pile of papers. I was grateful he had said nothing more, asked no questions or pried.
Milo sat in the back of the car, looking toward the open bay. One of the clerks cranked the white auto, which seemed as fresh and quick as Loretta herself.
She said nothing, dark glasses concealing her eyes, mouth tight and straight, and began to drive.
I opened my portfolio, hands shaking, stomach in knots. Inside were what I hoped to find, did not believe I would ever see again. The top sketch was of Etienne as he leaned against the bulwark near the galley. So he was the one who had rescued them for me.
And the others were all there, everyone and everything, including Philip Picou, gazing placidly from the paper in charcoal. Even now his glance stabbed me, and my throat closed.
3
In my room after supper, my portfolio in my lap, trying to prepare myself for leafing through the drawings again, I could hear Dennis and Loretta's voices thudding through the walls from Loretta’s room across the hall, loud and sharp.
When we had arrived from San Pedro, Dennis met us at the door, a whiskey in his hand, and sharply asked Loretta where she had been all day.
It was only then I learned that Loretta had not finished her role in her latest moving picture. She had been fired a week ago.
Tears and a slammed bedroom door was Loretta’s response. Milo went straight to his room and shut his door before I could follow him. I found myself alone in the hallway with Dennis Purfoy.
“I don’t understand it.” He stood in shirt and trousers, strands of pomaded blond hair falling into his eyes. “She has the entire world at her feet. I give her everything she wants. And she acts like a stilly, stupid child.”
Perhaps that was the problem, I thought. With more than ten years between their ages, Dennis coddled and indulged her like a child. Loretta was very young and all this attention an unruly, harsh companion.
I looked at him, his chin and nose fine and chiseled. The whiskey had taken away his sharp edges.
“Wait a moment,” I said. I went into my room.
He followed, standing just inside the door. A spasm traveled through my stomach, and I had to inhale, worried he was going to seek a deeper level of comfort from me. My worry was not about his trying to seduce me, but that I would welcome it.
And I had become fond of Loretta. I didn’t want to betray her.
But he didn’t make a move. Grateful, I scooped up my sketchbook and pencils, took his arm, and guided him away, down the stairs to the patio and pool.
Persuading him to stretch out in one of the chairs, one arm draped, a leg extended, I drew him, a man lost in reverie. I got him to take off his shoes, and unbutton the top few buttons of his shirt.
When I was done, I showed him the drawings. A smile creased the skin around his lips.
Now you see why women like you. Why Loretta loves you.
“I’ve accepted a lot, marrying her.” Dennis poured me and himself a whiskey. “To love someone that beautiful,
and fragile—I knew what I was doing.”
He smiled, a little ruefully, I thought. He said, “Water and Power wasn’t happy about it, even though they prefer married men, just not men married to actresses. I’ve worked there ten years; I’m the youngest assistant director they have ever had. It’s not just Loretta’s money that pays for all this.”
He swept his hand dismissively over the pool and patio and endless view. “And the parties, all of it. It’s all for her. I don’t care about any of that social whirl. I came from a family of farmers. We lived never knowing if there would be enough water. Now I can ensure there’s enough water for everyone. We transform the desert into orchards. I can do all that, orderly and neat.”
He gulped down the last of his whiskey. “I guess I don’t want orderly and neat at home. I guess that’s why I married Loretta, because she’s anything but orderly and neat. But this—”
Putting down his glass, he ran his hand over the head of the ever-present Duke. “I don’t think I can put up with this. All the rest of it, the whims and emotions, the men, even, and those freaks from the studios, I can take, but not her failing at this, what she said she wanted more than anything in the world.”
Sighing, he turned, said to the sky, “More than me.”
Maybe there’s something else she wants more than that. I stared at him, the thought traveling through my brain and into my mouth. Should I tell him about Dr. Liu’s Health and Happiness Tonic? Or does he already know?
As if something warned me to keep silent, I noticed a dark figure at the French doors—Merlin, hands folded before him. I wondered how long he had been waiting there.
As if he sensed Merlin’s presence, even though he faced away, Dennis rose unsteadily from his chair. “Oh, I suppose it’s supper. Just you and me, Nola?”
No one had told him about Milo’s bad news, but he seemed to accept that Milo would not join us.
No guests tonight. I supposed Merlin turned them away at the door, giving them some sort of lie. They must have known the studio had fired Loretta. But still they came and played their part in her charade.
Now, as I sat in my room with only my drawings for company, I listened to them quarrel. I couldn’t hear the words, but the voices were of anger and pleading.
Sitting on the floor, I laid the envelope of my Leopardo sketches on my lap. I couldn’t open it.
Curled on my side, I wept, deep sobs and warm tears. I had never broken down so in my life but I couldn’t stop the crying. Pressing my mouth into my forearm I tried to be silent, but in spite of this, someone tapped at my door.
Sitting up, I watched as the door opened and Milo’s head appeared.
“Oh, Milo, look at me. I’m a mess.”
Wearing a silk robe, probably one of Dennis’s, without a word Milo sat on my chair. It still startled me to see Milo in anything other than his navy peacoat.
Getting up from the floor, I sat on my bed, leaned forward and took Milo’s hand. “I was so sorry to hear about Dr. Doors. That’s terrible.”
Milo gazed at me, his brown eyes sorrowful, a mournful tilt to his lips.
I said, “Maybe that’s why I’m so emotional. It brings it all back, those terrible days.” I tried to brush the dampness from my face, but only ended up smearing it on my hands. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no point, now, is it?” Milo’s voice scraped deeply through my head. I stared at him, never having heard this tone before.
“What do you mean? No point to what?”
“All the lies, the pretending. Everyone lies. Everyone pretends the world is different than it is. They spend their whole lives in a lie.”
A chill ran down my back. Milo’s face had changed, from his general wide-eyed pleasantness to narrow, dark and bleak. And he looked even younger, somehow. Strangely like a bitter, angry child.
“Well, yes.” My jaw shook with tension. “Everyone tells themselves little lies. About how they look, or how they are better—or worse—than everyone else.”
“No. Not like this. Not like me. I’m through lying. It’s no good anymore.”
Rising, he undid the tie of his robe and let it fall open. My breath caught in my throat, and a million words tried to filter through my brain, to stop him from making a horrible mistake.
But he just stood there looking at me. Under his robe he was not naked, but wore a pair of cotton undergarments, and his chest was tightly bound with straps of white bandage.
“Did you hurt yourself? Is something wrong?” I got to my feet, my hand reaching toward him.
Milo laughed. He shook his head from side to side and laughed.
“Milo, what can I do for you? I want to help.” My heart seemed to glide into my throat, and the tears came again, salty, bitter. Milo was my only friend in the world, I realized.
“Nothing’s wrong, dear Nola. Nothing that a rewrite of the book of society wouldn’t help.” Reaching to his side, Milo began to unwrap the dressing, tearing at it, hands shaking. I saw tears coursing down his face.
“Should you be doing that? If you’re hurt—”
“More than you know, Nola. But not a mortal wound.”
His fingers worked quickly, as he reached around his back and pulled another band away.
I froze, watching. As if a drape had fallen away from my eyes. All of Milo’s body changed, his face, shoulders, waist and hips, down to his small feet and long toes. It was not youth, or softness, or quiet about him. It was something far greater or lesser, but something nonetheless.
With the bands fallen away, Milo stood before me, his two small breasts globes like oranges, waist the curve of a slim girl. And below that, under his long johns, what was there really?
My fingers pressed against my mouth. The room began to tilt to one side, the house moving as if leaning forward to take a better look. The air began to whine.
Milo moved. I felt her arms around me, steering my body backward to the bed, where I sat with a thud of relief. He—she pressed my head to my knees.
“And you, Nola, you need to see a doctor.”
“I’m all right,” I said to my knees. My heart raced under my ribs.
Milo’s voice floated into my ears, not changed, not higher, but Milo’s voice. “That may be so, as there’s nothing really wrong with you.”
I pushed his—her arm away, lifted my head. Heat burst inside my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me? It was just you and me and we’d been through all that together—why didn’t you tell me before now?”
Sitting beside me on the bed, Milo clasped her hands together, opened and closed her fingers.
“Because some secrets you can never, ever tell.”
“Why tell me now?” My voice was sharp.
Milo’s eyes widened at my tone, and I felt a little guilty. But she answered me. “Because there’s no more point. Don’t you see? He’s dead, and he can’t help me anymore. No one can.”
I didn’t see. I wanted to slap her, and hold her, at the same time. But for the moment I couldn’t move.
We sat side by side on the bed for a few silent moments. The Purfoy’s argument had stopped—the house was silent, except for crickets singing in the dry grasses below my window.
Crazy thoughts ran through my brain, memories of Mexico, Milo tending Jesus’s wound, taking care of me when I was ill, always quiet and watchful. Always with me, every step of the long and dangerous way. All this time she had pretended to be a man and fooled every single one of us.
Milo, dear Milo. “What’s your name, then?” I heard myself ask. “Your real name?”
“Millicent. Millicent Dudek. Everything else about me is true. I grew up in Pittsburgh, my aunt left me some money so I was able to train as a nurse. But I wanted to be a doctor, and people laughed in my face.”
The rest, she didn’t need to say. She came to realize one day that the only way she could become a doctor, be accepted to a medical school, was to become a man.
“Dr. Doors knew. He was the only one, until now.” Mil
licent sighed beside me, a broken, wavering sigh. “He knew right away. He helped me be a better ‘man.’ We—we were very close.”
Before I realized it, I had taken her hand. It was cold and small in mine.
“What will you do now?”
Millicent shook her head. I saw her profile, small nose, narrow lips, eyes the color of black coffee, long lashes. She looked so young, and horribly sad.
“Loretta knows,” she said finally, and my heart thudded into my throat.
“How—?”
“She, she coaxed it out of me. She’s so—unexplainable. Irresistible. I can’t stop looking at her.”
I knew what Millicent meant. Loretta was like a dazzling jewel on a cloth of black velvet. You couldn’t stop staring—it was like appetite.
Millicent turned to me, her knees touching mine. “But there’s one more secret. And you’re the one with it.”
A chill froze me again as I looked at her. “What could that be?”
The solemn, grave face of Milo Dudek was back. “You need to go to a doctor. You should do it soon.”
“Why? I feel fine. A little tired, is all.”
Millicent pressed her lips together. “You’re fine, all right. Nola, you need to go.” She squeezed my hand. “I think you’re pregnant.”
4
Dr. Liu’s Health & Happiness Tonic laid a warm tingle on my throat. Staring at the ceiling of my room, flat on my back on my bed, I waited for the hour of dawn.
Sleep had come in fits and starts, tantalizing me with promises of dreamlessness, then withdrawing in a huff, arms folded, eyebrows lowered. Milo/Millicent had long gone to bed, but I considered that restlessness must be biting at her too.
Dr. Liu wiped off the edges of my fear, but didn’t do away with it. Millicent convinced me that I showed all the signs, obvious to her, as she had worked as a runner in a city hospital clinic, and had seen many working women in various stages of pregnancy.
The vague nausea, fatigue, emotional instability, all were neatly wrapped up in Millicent’s diagnosis. When I demanded that she examine me, to tell me it wasn’t true, she refused. She had never performed such an exam and never seen it done.