FEMME FATALE

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “You see! You do have a taste for amusement. Tell me what about the shipboard panorama attracted you.”

  “Well, that was before I had traveled on a real ship across a real ocean,” I said ruefully.

  “Were you ill?” he asked with concern.

  “Er, no. Not very. A trifle dizzy. Were you ill on the Atlantic passage?”

  “I have been on far rougher seas in far smaller boats.”

  “Oh. I understand there will be a boat today.”

  “A steamship, but we will mostly move through sheltered waters. If you like, we could take one of the railroads across Brooklyn.”

  “No. I traveled by ferry recently. I wasn’t even dizzy.”

  “If you are dizzy on the steamship, I shall hold you up.”

  “Oh.” I was feeling dizzy already. “About the . . . attraction in Paris. The city has many of these panorama buildings and they are quite fascinating. From the outside they look like monuments. Paris is crammed with monuments; apparently sneezing is an achievement worth celebrating to Parisians.”

  Quentin laughed again. “And blowing one’s nose worth another monument?”

  “It is a lovely city in many ways,” I found myself admitting. “At any rate, the panorama buildings feature scenic paintings done in a huge interior circle, so you feel surrounded by the image until you are a part of it. One such building is populated with famous Frenchmen, but the panorama at the World’s Fair is quite unique. It’s moored at Seine side, and is shaped like a boat.” I frowned, for I never knew the difference: why was a large ferry a “boat” and a large steamer a “ship”? “A boat. Or a ship. And it rocks ever so gently on the water, and inside there’s a deck with wax figures of the captain and crew and passengers, and all around is a perfectly painted harbor filled with every kind of boat and ship. It’s like being right there.”

  “And now you have been ‘right there,’ only it’s here in America.” He patted my gloved hand on his arm. “It’s so brave of you, Nell, to remember what fascinated you about the building, rather than the awful things that happened to you there. And you were very clever to unfasten your lapel watch—” His hand left mine and lifted to the very same watch once more fastened to the bodice of my gown. His forefinger lifted the small gold-cased face. “—and let it fall behind you as a clue to your abduction site.”

  In that moment I relived the awful terror of eluding pursuers in the bowels of the panorama building and later in the exhibition area upstairs, my heart pounding like a pump during my scuffling, otherwise silent flight, then thundering in my ears when I felt hostile hands capture me and smother my breath. . . .

  I felt the very same way again, the moment Quentin mentioned unfastening something from my bosom.

  It probably didn’t help that Irene had insisted I wear the Liberty silk gown on this expedition, for its freedom of movement and lightness on a hot summer’s day, or that she barely tightened my corset strings, since the dress was so shapeless.

  The hansom jerked to a stop, and Quentin stepped out to help me alight. Soon we were waiting for a two-tiered ship, with a great wheel spewing water fixed to one side, to dock and load passengers.

  We stood on a Hudson River pier in the broad and benign daylight, I like a lady of the town, with a gentleman on one arm and a parasol on the other. Both were handsome. One, because I had borrowed it from Irene, and everything she owned was exquisite. The other, because he just was, and always would be so in my eyes.

  Quentin was dressed for a day of amusement, in light-colored suit and straw boater, purchased, he assured me, on the spur of the moment at Macy’s department store.

  “You are sure we are not too casually dressed?” I asked.

  “Not in the least.”

  “Paris is cluttered with department stores,” I mentioned for lack of anything else to say.

  “Paris is sublime, but Coney Island, I am told, is astounding.”

  “I have heard that it can be ‘rough,’ as the Americans say.”

  “Anywhere amusing has its rough side.”

  “What will we do there?”

  “What we feel like doing.”

  “And how will we know what we feel like doing?”

  He bent to gaze into my face under the shadow of my blue straw hat with the yellow daisies clustered on the brim.

  “You haven’t much done that, have you?”

  “Done what?”

  “What you feel like doing.”

  “I was never in a position to.”

  My words caused his expression to sober. He straightened and gazed at our arriving boat. “Today, Nell, if there is something you notice that you feel like doing, you must say so, and we will do it.”

  Still, it was an order, wasn’t it? I must do what I feel like doing. I did not point out the contradiction in his prescription to Quentin.

  The journey around the west end of Brooklyn was smooth and uneventful. Uneventful to me, on water, was not feeling ill. Good. I felt like not feeling ill, and I was doing it! Not exactly what Quentin had in mind, I feared.

  Still, we stood side by side at the railing, watching the empty green land glide by, and I daresay it was much better than the panorama building on the Seine. The huge wheel churned, the steam billowed from two big stacks above us like clouds, birds screeched and careened, the air smelled of fish and salt.

  As we rounded the bay, the ocean breeze made me hold down my hat brim. Quentin took my elbow.

  “There it is!” He pointed to an amazing sight.

  All along the ruffling waterline extended a long, wide, curving walkway of wooden planks. The island itself was as flat as an iron, but the constructions on it made up for the lack of geographical interest.

  These too were wooden buildings, but of the massive size of Orient palaces, replete with huge domed cores and fanciful cupolas, wrapped around by moats of wooden porches. I spied three of the vast, rambling structures, reminding me a bit of Brighton in England, but looking far cruder, like everything in America.

  Also evident were some amazing structures: railroads that ran up and down invisible Alps . . . an iron tower far more fragile than Eiffel’s Paris construction, a vertical frame of mere wire with the occasional supporting horizontal platform . . . a huge elephant with howdah on its back, big as a building, and apparently that was exactly what it was . . . a huge, moving blot of human forms edging the surf of the beach like swarming insects, people bathing in the sea and sunlight quite openly.

  “Gracious! What shall we do here?”

  “Mostly walk,” Quentin responded, his hazel eyes crinkling in a fine netting of wrinkles that reminded me that sunny climes were to his liking. “And what you wish.”

  “What are those huge, rambling buildings?”

  “Very elegant hotels . . . too elegant for us to dine there today, for formal dress is required.”

  “What shall we eat all day, then?”

  “What we find.”

  “And that elephant structure?”

  “We shall visit it and explore, if you like.”

  I overlooked the entire thronging scene, liking none of it, and especially the lack of all shade, save for my parasol. The one thing I did like stood beside me, and expected me to regard this outing as a treat. Well . . .

  I hoisted my parasol to rest upon my shoulder as a soldier on parade in the burning sun might brace his rifle. I would do my duty and “have fun,” as Irene had instructed me, and as Quentin wished.

  By my lapel watch—I lifted it to read the face and felt Quentin’s eyes follow my gesture—the time was just past noon. It would be a long, hot day.

  First we had to disembark on the New Iron Pier, a structure as long as a train, divided into two broad walks for people coming and going. Waves lapped on either side as the sidewheeler’s passengers thronged briskly through one lane—for the next debarking was expected in twenty minutes!—the men wearing light-colored straw boaters with their dark suits. (Quentin’s elegant light-colored suit made hi
m look like a very Parisian pigeon among a flock of less imaginative crows.) The women were dressed conventionally in tight corsets and dark gowns, which made my pink free-flowing Liberty silk gown seem as Parisian as Quentin’s garb.

  I was grateful for the lighter dress, though, by the time we reached end of the pier, where the vast turreted bulk of the Brighton Hotel greeted us.

  It transpired that this section of the island was named Brighton Beach! That was no doubt in honor of England’s older and more elegant seaside town popularized by the Prince Regent at the beginning of this century.

  However, nothing loomed ahead of the English Brighton visitor like the Iron Tower that confronted us now.

  “We can go up in it,” Quentin said, following my gaze and mistaking it for awe or interest instead of horror.

  “Up in it?”

  “There is a steam elevator,” he added enthusiastically.

  “It is not so tall nor so architecturally interesting as the Eiffel Tower, why on earth should we go up in it?”

  “To leave mother earth. From the top one sees all of Coney Island.”

  I really didn’t wish to see all of Coney Island, or even this portion of it, but despite Quentin’s encouragement to please myself, I was incapable of interfering with his wishes.

  So we walked another great length past the endless wooden bulk of the hotel to this structure, where he paid good American money for a trip to the top. I had neglected to mention to him that elevators made me uneasy.

  The car was crowded, another source of unease, but Quentin secured a post for us near the broad glass window (oh, dear!). Soon we were drawn upward like a bucket of spawning grunion in a well.

  I shut my parasol and my eyes.

  The top was indeed high, and the view sweeping. The flat sandy plain below was like a game board. The island constructions with their tented turrets sat on it like scattered pieces in some pattern only a chess master could decipher. Or Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know why I thought of him, except that I was sure that he would never permit himself to ascend to such a perilous height in such a bizarre place.

  However, Quentin stood behind me at the lookout’s fenced edge so I could see all there was not to see. I felt quite safe despite the height and the crowding. His hands on the railing bracketed me into a windblown pocket of protection. The expanse of blue water and the bright sun finally outshone the tawdry carnival constructions. It felt quite amazing to be as high as the birds and look down on people the size of ants.

  In fact, Quentin had to tap me on the shoulder to leave, as the platform was deserted and the elevator was waiting for us.

  I bustled back in and soon felt my boots on terra firma again, if shifting sands and gritty boardwalk can be considered firm.

  “Perhaps some lunch,” Quentin suggested.

  That sounded safe enough. I glanced at the gargantuan hotel.

  “Not there,” Quentin said. “Too stuffy. Here’s Feltman’s hot dog emporium.”

  Hot dog? I indeed hoped not!

  This was another wooden wedding cake of a building topped with the ubiquitous cupola, with the name FELTMANS in great man-high letters just under it.

  We joined the crowds funneling inside, and were soon seated in an airy, lattice-surrounded courtyard with a maple tree as its centerpiece. Japanese lanterns were strung like large fireflies on a high wire above us. The oom-pah-pah of German musicians blended with the noise of passing crowds and shrieks of happy bathers.

  “Why . . . this is a Bohemian beer garden!” I exclaimed, gazing around the small tables of men and women being served by an array of waiters.

  “So you shall feel at home,” Quentin said with some delight.

  No, I should not. I had certainly patronized Bohemian beer cellars with Godfrey a time or two, but purely in the pursuit of our mission, of course. So I imagined that sitting here in daylight with Quentin, not on any mission other than amusement, which I had yet to fulfill, would be respectable enough. Women’s hats dotted the area like butterflies on flowers, and no one appeared to remark on who was with whom.

  When Quentin ordered “Milwaukee beer” for us both, I did not demure. I was to do as I liked, I had been told by two persons close to me, and I suddenly decided, sitting there, seeing Quentin’s absurd straw hat on the table and the dappled shade of the tree falling on his earnest features, that what I would most like to do was anything that would make Quentin think that I was having “fun.”

  The beer was served in tall glasses with handles on one side, like a transparent stein. It shone golden in the daylight. I sipped it and almost sneezed at the foamy cap tickling my nose. I laughed instead.

  Quentin laughed with me. “They poured it too fast, given the press of customers.”

  I looked around. “I can’t believe so many people come all this way just to walk and take the sea air.”

  “Oh, there’s more to do than that,” he said, “if you are up to it.”

  I sipped more beer. Nellie Bly, I had been told, “was up to anything.” Why could I not be?

  We ordered food, and I decided to try the hot dog that the restaurant was noted for, although it served a full menu. When this item arrived, I was amazed to find it was merely sausage in bread, a common peasant lunch throughout Germany and Bohemia.

  All around me people plucked up this commonplace item and tucked into it as if it were a rare and hearty treat.

  “No tableware?” I asked.

  “None’s available in the desert,” Quentin said, lifting his bulky sandwich and biting.

  I nibbled a bit off, glad for my caution, for the hot meat had been slathered in spicy, messy mustard. Of course mustard is an English staple, and I must say it did much to elevate the humble sausage and bread into a tastier affair, although I found it dry and had to alternate dainty bites with sips of Milwaukee beer.

  “What does Milwaukee mean?” I asked Quentin when the first flush of hunger had ebbed.

  “It’s an Indian name adapted by a city in mid-America, the northern part.”

  “There’s certainly a lot of America,” I complained.

  “Indeed. The state of Wisconsin in which Milwaukee is found is probably as large as England, and is only one of forty-one American states thus far. I doubt they’re finished. It’s rumored that North and South Dakota, near Wisconsin, and Montana farther west, and even Washington on the Pacific coast, will be added this year.”

  “Only forty-one thus far!”

  “The Americans are always adding on, like grand hotels.”

  “We can’t do that; we’re surrounded by sea.”

  “The Americans are surrounded by sea, and by unclaimed or insufficiently claimed land mass. Their house permits many expansions.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “The world is my business. Yes, I’ve concentrated on, and love, the East best, but I can deal with the West if I have to.”

  “England is only a tiny isle! That’s why we have a far-flung empire,” I realized.

  “Thanks to our sea power in days of yore,” he said, “but those days passed with Nelson. We may not have an empire much longer.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  He sat back to consider the question, to consider me. “I don’t know. What do you think I might do?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t think you will . . . sell hot dogs.”

  He laughed and waved the waiter over, indicating our empty glasses. “Would you care for dessert?”

  “I don’t know. Do they serve baked Alaska here?”

  He blinked and drew away as if singed. “Touché. I suggest a cooling ice cream for Mademoiselle,” he turned to tell the waiter, and me indirectly. He regarded me again, a bit more gingerly. “Do you mind my ordering for you?”

  “Not when it is something I would like.”

  “Hmmm. We can make an appointment to have baked Alaska at Delmonico’s, which is the originator and only server of the delicacy in the world, so far.”

 
; “Did she have it?” I sipped the new glass tankard of Milwaukee beer the waiter had placed before me, thinking of my Paris acquaintances, Buffalo Bill. And Red Tomahawk.

  “No, only I. She had the tutti frutti. And my baked Alaska melted, because I had other urgent matters to attend to, so I didn’t really get to it in the peak condition.”

  “Oh. Melted. How unfortunate.”

  “So we could have it, together, at Delmonico’s, before you leave, if you like.”

  “I am supposed to do what I like. That sounds like something I would like.”

  “I will ask Irene if she can spare another day or two on these shores when we return.”

  “When do we return?” I asked casually. The day was pleasantly warm under the tree and the beer had lost its bitter, stinging taste and was quite . . . bracing and effervescent, like seltzer lemonade.

  He smiled. “When you like.”

  So we chatted, and invented ludicrous professions for him. My lime ice cream arrived and was completely refreshing. I finished my second beer and suddenly confronted the price of my carelessness.

  “I don’t suppose,” I finally was forced to lean inward and whisper to Quentin, “that Coney Island has . . .”

  He leaned inward to hear me. “Has what, Nell?”

  “Has . . . you know.”

  He did not know.

  “Comfort stations,” I finally mumbled.

  “Dozens and dozens.”

  “It does! How very American of it,” I sighed in relief. “Where?”

  “Here. All along the beach. There are bathhouses, too, where people change into bathing costumes.”

  “I don’t want one of those!” I then excused myself, left my parasol on the table under Quentin’s guard, and found a respectable-looking woman, who directed me where needed.

  The whole process was amazingly easy and even unembarrassing, perhaps aided by the strangely pleasant mood in which I felt myself, in which it seemed I could make no misstep or say anything the slightest bit wrong, and in which I need not trouble myself about all of the things I usually did.

  Perhaps this salutary condition was a result of being in such safe hands as Quentin’s. After all, a man who had fended off foreign and domestic spies in the wilds of Afghanistan could certainly handle any rowdy crowds on Coney Island.