The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties

by Beatriz Williams

  Now the hair is prickling on the nape of my neck and the skin of my arms. Now the electricity tingles my scalp. Damp and nervy. Air seems fit to burst all around us, like some kind of fireworks contained in the atoms and molecules striking against me. The angry pressure between the blades of my shoulders just squeezes away my breath. I’m afraid to turn my head back to that mirror. Back to that open enamel box.

  I move my hand a little, thinking I might shut the lid again, push all this mad energy back in its place, and you know how it feels when a bee stings you out of nowhere?

  Well, a bee stings me, right out of nowhere, right on the back of my hand.

  “Something the matter, baby girl?” asks Duke.

  “Nothing’s the matter.”

  “You need to sit down?”

  “No, I don’t need to sit down. I need some peace and quiet, that’s all. I am mourning my mama.”

  Duke regards me a minute. He lifts his head from his knuckles and rises from his chair. “That’s true.”

  “Haven’t slept in days.”

  “Ain’t you? Then I reckon you best get some rest.”

  “I best.”

  “But you think about what I said, all right? You just think on it. I ain’t a-talking about no heavy work. I ain’t a-talking about carrying in moonshine up the Lincoln Highway and that kind-a thing. I got plenty-a men for that, Geneva Rose, plenty-a men for that kind-a work. Just require you to deliver a package or two, from time to time, to some gentlemen I know in the city. That’s all. You and your pretty face, you can do that easy as winking. And I’d pay you good.”

  “You could pay me the moon, Duke Kelly, and I wouldn’t take it.”

  “I ain’t a-talking about the moon. Who needs a dang moon? I mean real money. Money you can buy things with.” He takes a few steps toward me, so I can smell his teeth and his hair oil and his cigarette burning from his left hand. See the ripple of his skin as he talks. “Hundred dollars a time, Geneva Rose. Give up that job-a yours, a-typing all day long. Give up them dirty photographs you do. So you just think on it. You think on it and let me know.”

  Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Heart’s racing like a Thoroughbred. I gasp out something or other. Tell him I will surely think on it and let him know. He takes his hand and places it on my cheek, covering my bones, covering my ear and my jaw, and he leans close and kisses my hot, electric forehead.

  “Now, I just knowed you’d come around, Geneva Rose. Just like the good, sweet daughter you always been.”

  16

  THREE AND a half years have passed since I ran away from Duke Kelly into the hot blue morning, toward the fishing hole, not thinking straight, and I reckon I have been trying to atone for my folly ever since. To cleanse my skin of the stain of his touch. The good, sweet daughter you always been. My God, I want to scrub myself raw. Peel myself bloody all over again.

  I don’t remember what happened all that well, you understand. There are times I think, Lord Almighty, I must have dreamt it. The memory has that quality of dreams, all impression and emotion, such that you only really recall an instant or two, a sharp encounter, and you have to piece everything else together, and that’s when you realize the whole thing doesn’t make any sense. That maybe you imagined it after all.

  I do recall running from that henhouse. Skin burning from the slice of the chicken wire. I recall that I reached the creek and fell down on my knees and washed my face and hands and neck in the cool, clear water; disturbed the long-legged bugs that skated on the surface, smelt the good smell of mud and creek rot. My heart banged against my eardrums. My breath hurt my throat. I recall that I crawled all the way into the water, hands and legs sinking in the silt, until I was almost submerged, until I began to float in the lazy, wide pool where the creek spread itself out under the shade. Until I felt a pair of cold eyes on my skin and I turned, arms flailing, to find Duke sitting on a boulder near the water’s edge, lighting himself a cigarette.

  Now, Duke can’t swim, any more than he can read the words in a book. Least I never saw him inside of the water, that I can recollect. But you wouldn’t have known this fact to look at him right then. No, sir. He just sat there on that boulder, smoking his cigarette, staring at me while I shivered and paddled in that pool of creek water, keeping myself afloat, considering my options. Or so I must have done, because I don’t remember that part. Just him staring and the smell of his cigarette, and the way I felt like a naked she-rabbit trapped in a snare. Couldn’t swim downstream, on account of the footbridge. Couldn’t swim upstream, on account of the springhouse sitting right there atop the narrowing of the creek bed. Water was mountain-fed and already my skin was turning numb, my brain icing over. I recall that very well—how my head hurt with cold. And then I must have made my choice, because I remember darting for the opposite bank, swimming as fast as ever I could, but I could not swim faster than Duke crossed that bridge, because as soon as I lurched ashore, dripping and gasping, he did take me by the shoulders and pull me into the tall summer grass. Pinned me down with his knees while he fixed our clothes, I don’t remember how, don’t remember whether he first yanked up my skirt or undid his trousers, whether he ripped my blouse open or whether it was already loose. I recall his paws on my breasts, the purple sight of his organ bursting free from all that nest of black hair. Some kind of pain on my thighs, where he held me down somehow. White panic laying down on my brain, my arms and legs too stunned to move, just my fingers twitching and twitching while he spread me apart and then the sharp edge of a rock meeting the tips of the fingers of my left hand, like the Lord God saying in my ear, Take this in remembrance of Me.

  I don’t remember exactly what happened then. I just remember running all the way up that hill from the fishing hole, shuddering and bloodstained, and the way Duke’s face looked that last and final morning, heavy and handsome, blocking out the sky, before he obtained that scar now spearing out white from beneath the hair near his right temple.

  And I recall thinking I had better leave town before he woke up, and never ever return, because he surely would kill me. He would surely to God find a way to kill me for whatever it was I had done to him.

  17

  WHEN DUKE leaves Mama’s bedroom, when the door closes boom behind his black-suited body, I sink on down to the rose-patterned carpet and I sit there for some time, while all that electromagnetism settles down around me, sizzling into nothing, the way a coal fire goes to sleep during the night. Wrap my arms around my legs and rest my forehead on my knees. Eyes shut tight.

  I whisper, Mama? You there?

  No answer. No words, nor even the sense of words, inside my head or outside. Just a clean, cool silence. Pressure on my back has gone. Sting on my hand soothes away. The dark, sweet air fills the cracks between my ribs. I untangle my arms and legs and slowly rise, bracing my hands on the gilded edges of the drawer chest, and by the time I’ve reached my full five feet seven inches of unruly height, the terror has left me entirely, though my every muscle is sapped of strength. I turn to face the mirror. The open box. I grasp it between my fingers and tilt it forward, so I can see the contents, and what I find there is not jewels or trinkets or anything a lady might hold dear, but buttons. Big, solid, round, expensive buttons of a masculine type, some gold and some silver and some horn, about a dozen in all, enough to line the bottom of the box and no more.

  I close the lid and crawl back in my mama’s bed and fall straight to sleep, and this time I stay that way, deep and heavy, until hunger wakes me at suppertime.

  18

  EVERYBODY IN River Junction goes to Mama’s funeral. You’d think she was their patron saint, martyred in some kind of modern auto-da-fé, the way they weep and carry on. I just stand there in my black dress and black coat and black hat, tall lump of white-faced New York City coal, watching them lower her flower-strewn coffin into the frosted earth. Duke paid a dozen men to dig that hole in the ground, to clear away the snow and pour boiling water on the ground to make it thaw. A big to-do.
Church full of hothouse lilies, which were Mama’s favorite flower, thousands and thousands of them hanging in wreaths and stuck in bouquets, such that you almost felt drunk on the scent of them.

  And now we are standing here in the ancient church cemetery, cold as blue blazes, near to freezing the hair on our behinds, while they pile dirt on Mama’s coffin and everybody weeps except me and Johnnie and Patsy, who stands between us clutching our two hands, shocked into stillness. Preacher’s preaching something pitiable and comforting. I look up suddenly and gaze across the graveyard to the edge of the trees, where a man stands in a long, dark coat, gazing back, maybe just at me, maybe at the whole group of us, Angus’s wife sobbing in great theatrical gusts of melancholy. When I lower my head again, I catch the corner of Duke’s stare, but I don’t acknowledge it. Already given him all the satisfaction he’s going to get.

  19

  THE GATHERING afterward is fixing to be a long one, and I don’t stay above a half hour. Just a glass of milk punch and a neat triangle of a ham sandwich, trimmed of its crust. I’ve got a train to catch, after all. That’s what I tell Johnnie when he stops me, suitcase in hand, in the hallway near the door.

  “You oughta stay another day,” he says. “It ain’t respectful, leaving in the middle like this.”

  “I’ve already done my mourning. Anyway, those old cats’d be disappointed to see me stay, don’t you think? Can’t gossip about me if I’m standing right there in front of them, drinking milk punch and dabbing my eyes.”

  “Still.”

  I set down the suitcase. “Say, Johnnie-boy. I do have a question for you, before I go. I was hoping to catch sight of Laura Ann Green here today. You didn’t happen to see her about, did you?”

  “Laura Ann Green? You mean Ruth Mary’s sister, out in Hagerstown? She’s married now, Geneva Rose. Fellow named Benwick. Had herself a brand-new baby, couple-a weeks ago. She can’t come to no funerals.”

  “No, I mean her mama.”

  Johnnie’s face goes a little heavy. “Mrs. Green?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Aw, Geneva Rose, poor old Mrs. Green passed on two years back. Didn’t you know? Some kind-a ’flu, it was.”

  “Passed on?”

  “Awful thing. Near enough broke poor Mama’s heart. Like sisters, them two.”

  “Those two. For the Lord’s own sake, Johnnie.”

  “Those two. What kind-a business you got with Laura Ann Green?”

  “Nothing.” I pick up the suitcase. “You keep a good eye on Patsy for me, you hear? You don’t let a thing happen to her. Not a damn thing.”

  His eyes sit tight on mine. He nods. “I surely will, Geneva Rose. I can promise you that.”

  “Good.” Rise on tiptoe. Kiss his cheek. “Good-bye, then, Johnnie. You need anything, a place to stay or whatever else, you and Patsy, you come right to me.”

  “That I will, sis.” He takes my shoulders and squeezes them good. “The Lord watch over you, now. Don’t you do nothing stupid, back there in the wicked city.”

  “Would I ever?”

  He swears a little and kisses my forehead and lets me go. Offers to walk me to the station. I tell him no, he needs to get back to the party. Back to our Patsy. Watch over her innocent wee self, the way the good Lord God tends to His lambs in their pastures.

  20

  TRAIN’S A half hour late, so I wait inside the station house, wrapping my hands around a cup of hot, sweet coffee, trying not to cast my eyes toward either the clock or the doorway. Each little noise sets my nerves to jump. Next to my feet sits my old leather satchel, containing my two skirts and blouses and my underthings, which have been washed and pressed by the diligent new laundry maid who now finds employment at the Kelly abode. Also contains Mama’s enamel box and the buttons inside it, all wrapped up in tissue, but the laundry maid doesn’t know anything about that. It’s my little secret. My one small inheritance. Square box half-full of buttons.

  Whistle screams softly through the windows. I set down my coffee on the little table and leave a dime for the stationmaster’s wife who served it to me. (Real sorry about your poor mama, Geneva Rose. You fixing to leave so soon?) An old potbellied stove warms the air in the station house, so that when I step through the doors to the new concrete platform, the shock of cold makes my chest tighten. Sucks the air tight and safe inside my lungs. I hunker down into my muffler and my coat and stare beneath my lashes at the white clapboard buildings opposite. Cathy’s Café. The five and dime, all shut up, CLOSED sign propped in the window out of respect for Duke Kelly’s dead wife.

  Whistle screams again. Rails sing. Steam engine chugs and sighs and stops in a grand squeal of brakes. A single door flings open at the front of the second car (there are but two altogether) and I grasp the handle of my suitcase and trudge down the platform to meet it.

  I spare no glance for the sturdy, navy-suited conductor as I bang my way down the aisle to the end of the empty car. Not another soul on board except him and me, and he closes the door and disappears into the first car as soon as I’m up the step. Smells of sour things, sweat and soiled leather and God knows. Tobacco. Train lurches forward just as I slide into the next-to-last bench on the right, setting my satchel upon the seat between me and the aisle, and I turn my head to the window and watch everything slide away, the new platform and the white clapboard buildings and the neat-painted sign that says RIVER JUNCTION. Gaining speed now. Past the crossing and the church and the graveyard where Mama lies buried—a clutch of men still hard at work, filling that hole—and then the manse, big and square and gabled, grandest house in town until Duke Kelly started making his fortune. Now it’s a dollhouse by comparison. Not even the Lord God takes precedence over Duke in River Junction, these days.

  At the front end of the car, the door opens. Conductor appears, wearing a cap trimmed in tarnished braid. I open my pocketbook and ready my ticket. His shoulders are burly and his cap pitched low, so I can’t see his face. I look away, heart going thud, and stare out the window at the thinning buildings, the gathering white fields. The heavy tread of his feet makes my blood whir. He stops beside me and says Ticket, please, and I look up in surprise, because the voice is too high and twangy, not the right voice at all, and now I perceive that his belly is round and his chin pointed, his height too short by a couple of inches. I hand over the ticket. He nicks it and hands it back and treads slowly up the aisle, and when he’s gone I rummage back in my pocketbook until I find the note placed in my hand on the River Junction train platform a week ago.

  B&O

  last carriage

  2nd row from rear

  right side

  There’s no signature. No mark of any kind. Handwriting brusque and sharp, in the fine purple-black ink of an expensive fountain pen. I tuck it back inside my pocketbook and lean my head against the seat and close my eyes to the rhythmic clackety-clack of the wheels on the rails, the faint vibrating chug of the engine, the whoosh of my own blood in my ears. Feel as if I’m crushed under the pressure of a massive hand, smashing right there into the center of my chest, ribs creaking and bending, breath thinning, thick fingers curled around my left shoulder with such insistent warmth that I startle upward and realize that I must have fallen asleep, because a man stands next to me, staring down in deep concern from a pair of dark blue eyes.

  “May I join you, Miss Kelly?”

  “Suit yourself, Tarzan.”

  He moves the satchel to the floor and sits down beside me. I imagine he’s going to offer his condolences, the usual platitudes, and I will answer him in kind. But he doesn’t speak. Just sits there next to me, one leg crossed over the other, holding a folded newspaper between his two hands at such a still, lifeless angle that I don’t believe he’s actually reading it. After a while, the heat from his body leaks into mine, and I stare out the window until my eyelids fall and my thoughts soften. The train stops and starts, picking up passengers as it makes its way into Baltimore, and still he doesn’t speak. His body is like
a barricade, holding back the chattering world outside.

  The train begins its long, staggering approach into Union Station, where I will transfer to the Pennsy, carrying me back into the safe embrace of Pennsylvania Station in New York City, my hustle and bustle, my wicked chaos, my Billy-boy. The sun is settling a cloth of late gold on the dirty rooftops of Baltimore. The electric lamps inside the car flicker and dim.

  I turn to the man beside me and say, “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  New York City, 1998

  ELLA HAD been investigating the municipal bond department at Sterling Bates for six days (not including the weekend, during which she’d also worked) when she finally ran into Patrick. She was walking into the marble lobby at a quarter past eight in the morning, towering vanilla latte gripped in her left hand, and he was walking out. They saw each other’s amazed faces through the glass of the revolving door. Ella tried to make it to the elevator, but he caught up.

  “Ella! Ella, please!”

  She turned. “I have to be at work, Patrick.”

  “Work? Are you kidding me?”

  He looked the same. Wasn’t that strange? Somehow it didn’t make sense that this was the same Patrick she’d known for six years: the same square, regular, dependable face and fine brown hair, brushed back with the same styling cream (she could see it on the bathroom counter) into the same short, corporate silhouette. The same features she’d seen a million times, a million expressions, sharing her home and her life, as recognizably hers as the furniture. The art on the walls. The Patrick she thought she knew, who was in fact an entirely different Patrick, containing a whole segment (like an orange, she thought) that didn’t belong to her, and was in fact completely unknown to her.

  So how in God’s name did this new Patrick manage to look exactly like the old one? It wasn’t fair. Because she was trained to love that face. To look on that face always with forgiveness and compassion. To share the burdens on those sharp navy shoulders. That was what she’d vowed, after all, on the beach at Granny’s place on Cumberland Island, in front of an unsettlingly mixed crowd of friends and family and strangers. For better or worse.