Regardless. At the moment, I’ve got a job to do, and I need the dough for purposes of my own. A hundred and eighty clams are worth any amount of personal humiliation, I reckon, when you need them badly enough. I slip off my dressing gown and arrange myself on the chaise longue, while Julie applies the wig with maybe a little more force than is absolutely necessary. Anatole’s busy with the lamps. That old skylight still exists, sure, but photography’s a different world from oil paint, it’s all trickery and make-believe, and generally speaking the more light the better. Above me, Redhead Under Skylight shifts under the changing beams, carroty hair against pale skin, and I think how plump that girl looks, compared to my present form, how pink and innocent. And yet while Anatole painted that portrait, while I sprawled my naked limbs upon this very article of furniture, I did imagine myself not bathed in white light but smeared with dirt: with the slick, rotting mud of a creek bottom. I remember that clearly, how dirty I felt, so that I was surprised to see the finished work hanging on the wall of the gallery a week later. That clean, lovely girl I didn’t recognize. When I confessed all this to Anatole, later that evening, two empty champagne bottles tottering between us on the sofa cushion, he explained about perspective, and how he had painted all these portraits of me from a certain point of view, his own point of view, and this ravishing painting perfectly described that vision. After making this very beautiful speech, he came close and pushed the champagne bottles to the floor and kissed me for the first time, and I was so drunk and grateful, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. For a short while, I thought this was love.
12
ANYWAY. JULIE arranges the scene and Anatole takes the photographs, and I hang around waiting while they process the film into negatives and that kind of thing, just in case there was a fly on the lens or whatever else. You’d be surprised what can ruin a good photograph of a naked woman.
By the time Julie’s satisfied, it’s past nine o’clock, and she’s got some engagement uptown, and Anatole and I find ourselves sharing a table at the Christopher Club. It’s the same table I used to share with sweet Billy-boy, right in front of the jazz orchestra, and I’m starting to develop that kind of restless itch in my middle that always leads to trouble. On top of that, I’ve got something to say to Anatole that requires a certain amount of lubrication.
“I’m done,” I say. Setting down the whiskey, kerthump.
“Done, my love? Done with what?” He’s sitting far too close, and I guess I’m letting him. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the absence of Billy, maybe it’s the presence of whiskey. Maybe because I haven’t received any parcels in a week, nor any kind of message from River Junction, and there’s a fellow nursing a lowball glass at the bar right now who followed us here all the way from Hudson Street.
“Why, done with posing for you. I’m turning a new leaf.”
Anatole frowns. “Does this concern that boy you are sleeping with?”
“In the first place, I’m not sleeping with him. In the second place, if I were, it’s none of your business. And thirdly, since you’re asking, no. It’s got nothing to do with him.” I turn my gaze to the bar and the fellow hunched over his drink. My old friend Millie the Vamp sits atop her usual stool, long legged and somber tonight in a fringed black dress, plucking a languid olive from her martini. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen the fellow since January.”
Anatole lays a hand over mine. “What a shame.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was nothing but a nuisance, really. A college kid.”
“No, I mean a shame that you want to stop posing for us.”
“Oh. Well, it’s served its purpose. I’ve got enough dough saved up, and the fact is …” My attention drifts to Bruno’s small jazz orchestra, ruminating some theme, Bruno on the bass and four others, drums and trombone and trumpet and a clarinet player I haven’t noticed before, running up and down a minor scale with all the mesmeric dexterity of a squirrel ferrying acorns to a hidden den.
“The fact is what, dear?”
“The fact is … the fact …”
There’s something about that clarinet player, isn’t there? Dressed in a neat dinner jacket and a hat slung low on his forehead. Bristling mustache a shade or two darker than the golden-brown hair shining forth below the crown of his hat. In the course of a complicated riff, he tilts his head back a bit, lifting the shadow of his hat brim from his eyes, and his midnight gaze meets mine. I believe my heart stops.
“Beloved? Is something the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, darling.” I turn back to my companion and draw one index finger along the back of his hand that covers mine, and I just pray nobody notices that my finger’s gone a mite wobbly. My voice a little breathless. “Just admiring the skill of that clarinet player. I can’t help wondering when he joined Bruno’s little band.”
“Who knows? These musicians, they come and go.”
“I’ll say. I don’t guess you could spare a cigarette for a girl in need?”
“But of course.”
He withdraws the hand to make busy with the cigarette, and I lean forward and link my hands together beneath my chin to stop the wobbling, and I surely do not look back at that clarinetist, though the left-hand side of my face does burn with his proximity. Anatole slips the cigarette between my lips and lights me up. I blow out a great deal of smoke in a long, elegant curl and lean forward to kiss his mouth tenderly. “Thank you,” I say.
“You are terribly welcome.” Anatole’s eyes go all bright and interested. He bends in to catch my drift, while my damn heart resumes its work at a wild, unnatural rhythm, flushing the blood right into my neck and cheeks and bosom. “Also terribly beautiful. Have I been such a great fool?”
“You’ve been an awful fool, and now you’re too late. I never do make the same mistake twice.”
“You will not offer me a second chance?”
I fiddle with his cuff. Insert my fingers along the skin of his wrist. “You don’t deserve one, Anatole, and anyway we both know you weren’t made for keeping to one woman.”
“And this is an obstacle for you?”
“I believe I made that clear enough.”
Anatole shakes his head and places his hand on my knee, underneath the table. “You pretend to be so modern, beloved, when really you are just a mere romantic. A quaint relic of an earlier age.”
“Maybe I am.”
“And we were so in love with each other once.”
“For about a minute and a half, as I recollect.”
“There’s no reason we might not have another minute or two, you and I. It was such a very great pleasure the first time.”
I lean forward to murmur in his ear, so close that my lips brush the cartilage at the tip. “Then let’s not spoil the memory with another attempt, hmm?”
Now, I’m no musician—least no more than a dash of piano at the boarding school, while the nuns rapped on my disobedient fingers—but I could swear that clarinet misses a note.
Mind you, I’ve been an awfully good girl, up until now. I have followed Agent Anson’s instructions to the letter. I’ve kept to my usual habits. I’ve kept to the hours of daylight, so much as I’m able. When I have craved a measure or two of something stronger, I’ve dutifully repaired to Christopher’s, under the benevolent gazes of the musicians and the regular patrons and Christopher himself, who lets no other man fill my glass or offer me a sandwich. And true to his word, Anson has ensured that the Bureau of Internal Revenue has run no more raids on the establishment. No more bulls charging inside, breaking all the glassware: just a quiet, friendly business minding its own, safe as could be. During this time, since Anson last disappeared through my bedroom window, I have delivered six more envelopes, sealed up snug in brown paper, much like my mama’s parcel she left to me, right up until a week ago, when the supply of said parcels shut off, like a spigot somebody’s closed, like a well that’s run dry.
And I have not seen Oliver Anson, not once. Not
a single blessed time. On the bureau three weeks ago, when he climbed out the window before I woke, he left behind a note that I was to telephone him at his office with any new instructions, any new names, as soon as I received a parcel and before I was to deliver it. Which I’ve done, obedient to a fault, except that it’s never Anson’s voice that greets me on the other end of that telephone wire. I’ve left my message with some doll or another, likely the doll in the navy suit who made us coffee that first night, calling from the telephone in the hallway of the boardinghouse and revealing no details, just names and places and that’s all, and the doll’s voice replies, all matter-of-fact and professional, like a New York Telephone operator, that she will ensure Agent Anson receives my message forthwith. When I last spoke to her, three days ago, I just said that I hadn’t had any news since last Saturday, and I would very much like to speak to Agent Anson personally, at his earliest convenience. She replied—calm as you please—that she would ensure Agent Anson received that message forthwith.
Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. Maybe she has and maybe she hasn’t delivered that one or any one of those messages. Until this exact moment, here in the smoky, drinky confines of the Christopher Club, I haven’t had the opportunity to discover the truth of the matter. Anson’s made himself scarce as a firefly in January. I haven’t talked to him. I haven’t even seen him, even though I’ve looked for him every time I’ve left my door, every time I’ve boarded a train, every time I’ve entered a shop or arrived at my place of employment or, most especially, made a delivery of one of those little brown envelopes. (About those deliveries, more later.) I have craved the sight of Anson all the way inside my bones, the way you crave water to drink and air to breathe, not because I am in any way besotted by the walking, talking block of mountain granite, but because I am otherwise alone. Otherwise unarmed against the mighty skein of spies and protectors watching over the interests of Duke Kelly.
So I tell myself, as Anatole’s hand inches up my leg, fingers climbing so nimbly as the notes of that damn clarinet: It’s not exhilaration, you dumb bunny, it’s not excitement or sexual arousal or any one of those things. It’s relief.
You’re just relieved, that’s all.
Anatole’s accent grows even more excruciatingly French. “And yet we might still make a better memory, don’t you think? Since we know each other so well. Since I have made you famous.”
“It’s not me that’s famous, it’s my anatomy.”
“For excellent reason. You don’t know how I have admired that anatomy, these past two years. What a torture it’s been, taking your photograph instead of your—”
“Tut, tut.” I press my finger over his lips. “What gives with you? Haven’t you got some other doll to keep you company these days?”
“Not a doll like you.”
“Ah, I see. You’ve been left high and dry. Poor Anatole.” I purr the words and lay my fingers atop Anatole’s hand, somewhere at the middle of my thigh, in order to keep said hand from wandering into dangerous territory. Although I suppose, to outside eyes—say, the eyes of some musician playing a clarinet nearby—this gesture might have all the appearance of a caress. Nothing I can do about appearances, can I?
In any case, I’d say the disappearing bastard deserves a little vinegar in his teacup.
Right on cue, a shadow falls over the environs—both our linked hands above the table and our linked hands below—except that the shadow comes from the opposite direction I might have expected, and the clarinet continues to carry nimbly onward.
“Why, if it isn’t my fellow jailbird,” comes a smoldering voice, layered with irony and fringed in black. “Mind if I join you?”
13
NATURALLY, ANATOLE’S delighted by the sight of our Millie. He jumps right up and pulls out a chair for her, and she styles herself upon it with all the customary grace, while a smile freezes hard upon my mouth.
“Ginger, darling,” Anatole says, “perhaps you would be so kind as to introduce me to your friend.”
“My friend?”
“This lovely young lady friend of yours.”
“Oh, you mean Millie? Anatole, may I present Millicent Merriwether, late of the Sixth Precinct jailhouse, otherwise permanent resident of the stool at the far corner of the bar, so far as I can tell.”
“You are serious?” He stares into Millie’s face, eyebrows all stretchy. “This is your name?”
“Sure it is,” I say. “To the same degree that you’re actually from France.”
The vamp shrugs effortlessly. Her shoulders are bare, and I’d swear they sparkle. “You can call me Millie, I guess. It’s close enough.”
“We got to know each other a few weeks ago, when the joint got raided by the Prohibition bureau. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you, Millie?”
She regards me witheringly. “Oh, sure. I always call in raids on myself. Just for kicks. Who’s the sheik? He’s not the swell you used to bring around here.”
“This? This is Anatole, an old lover of mine. We’re just getting reacquainted.”
“Anatole. Nice name. French?”
“It’s a funny story, really,” I say. “His mama named him Andrew. But you can call him Anatole, if you like. It’s what he answers to. Say, now that I think about it, the pair of you have a lot in common.”
“Anatole.” She smiles. “Have you got another cigarette? I’m all out.”
Anatole makes a sound like he would stop a freight train with his bare hands in order to obtain a cigarette for her. He would gather and bring to her all the cigarettes in the world. He snatches a gasper from his case and lights it with his own, like a kiss, and when the end flares orange he presents it into Millie’s glamorous red fingertips.
She rewards him with a cloud of smoke. “Thanks awfully. Old lovers, you say? How sweet.”
“This was quite some time ago,” says Anatole.
“Was it? Because you look real cozy, the two of you.”
“No, no. These days, we are business colleagues only.”
“Oh, business colleagues. Of course. Say, what’s your line of work, Anatole?”
“He’s an artist.” I tap my cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. To my left, the music ends abruptly on an upswing, and the musicians start breaking up. “You know the type.”
“You don’t say. An artist! And what? You mix his paints for him or something?”
“You could say that.”
Anatole shrugs. “At one time, she did some modeling for me, that is all.”
“Fascinating. I used to do that kind of thing. Artist’s model.”
“Perhaps,” says Anatole, shifting the angle of his body so that he’s entirely facing her instead of entirely facing me, “I could persuade you to do it again.”
I stub out my cigarette and rise from my chair. “If you’ll excuse me. I believe my nose needs powdering.”
14
AND SO I find myself once more in Christopher’s shabby powder room, gathering my nerves and my dignity. Staring at the reflection of my face in the mirror, which, as I’ve said before, is not a beautiful one. Certainly not now, cast into harsh, sallow shadow by the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, my nose somehow extraordinarily large and my eyes all pointy at the corners. Like a cat’s eyes, my brother Johnnie used to tease me, and that’s how Anatole always painted them, only exaggerated, so that they really did look like the eyes of a cat. And not the domesticated kind, either.
I open up my pocketbook and locate a compact and a tube of Helena Rubinstein. Touch up the old lips. Powder to the nose, if only for the sake of honesty. Fingers to the hair, tugging this and tucking that. When there’s nothing left to fix, nothing I can do to improve the appearance of what lies before me, no possible further excuse, I place my hand on the doorknob. God only knows what I’ll do on the other side of it. I reckon I’ll think of something. Ginger always thinks of something, doesn’t she? Ginger always makes a flaming exit.
As I stand there,
considering my options, weighing in favor of stalking right past Millie and Anatole and out the door, stiffing him with the bill, versus picking my way through the jazz orchestra and planting lips on the clarinet player, false mustache notwithstanding, the door opens beneath my hand.
And that’s when I realize, what with one thing and another, discoveries left and right, teacups full of vinegar, I’d forgotten all about that muscular fellow who followed us over from Hudson Street.
15
I GUESS IT’S fair to say that I never did discover much in common with the other girls at college. Maybe that’s as much my fault as theirs. The choice of establishment wasn’t mine; the nuns encouraged me to apply, but it was Mama—so Sister Esme told me later—who instructed them. Astonishing, isn’t it? Mama, so preoccupied with her own troubles, yet had the desire and the sheer will to decide that I should attend Bryn Mawr College with all the daughters of the best families, the Philadelphia families and the Washington families and the New York families, girls who never went out without gloves and hat, girls who rode horses and wrote thank-you notes, girls whose brothers sailed yachts and played football, girls who wore white and came out into this thing called Society in big parties at fancy hotels. I guess Mama reckoned I would transform into one of those girls, if I only went to college with them. That Bryn Mawr could scrub the remaining stains of Appalachia from my skin and hair and hands and voice, and some horse-riding girl would introduce me to her yacht-racing brother, and hallelujah, Geneva’s a lady. Poof presto. Poor Mama. I arrived at Bryn Mawr all by myself one hot morning at the end of August, nineteen hundred and nineteen, and the chip on my shoulder liketa gave me a hunchback. Inevitably one of those horsey girls decided she ought to knock it straight off.
The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties Page 19