“What do nine year old con women have to confess?” Duffey asked. He was tickled over the affair.
“Oh, robbing widows and orphans, things like that,” Charlotte said. “Whenever I get a likely gentleman, I ask him whether he's a widow or an orphan. If he is, I go easy on him. I fleece him, of course, but I leave a few tufts. But sometimes we get greedy. And then I always have a lot of carnality to confess; and there's a few of our badger games that go over the line. Mama Gloria will have a gentleman in at night, and I will come out of the bathroom toweling myself in the buff. “Oh my little girl, she never remembers,” Gloria says. “She is so artless. She is so guileless. She comes out of her bath at night just as natural as that. You'd think that a nine year old girl would begin to be aware of things.” And the man is very heated and he doesn't know why. Then he fondles me, and Gloria goes out of the room for a while. She comes back with witnesses. Oh, you can scare a lot of money out of a man when you catch him in something like that! This is a form of the badger game that always works. There are lots of laws to protect us little nine year old girls from evil men; and when Mama Gloria and a couple of friends start talking that prison-bar talk to a poor man, he'll shell out all the money he has.”
They were in the street now and going north towards the stone church. The sign said that it was St. Malachy's Church. Duffey knew about St. Malachy's in St. Louis where Bagby used to go, but he hadn't even known that there was a St. Malachy's in Chicago.
Wings! There were wings all over it. The stone itself was quivering with the beat of wings. The whole south front had three spread-winged archangels, and the east and west sides each had nine big-wingeed angels. Who could feel a moth winging through that great wingedness?
“There's a priest in his rose garden,” Charlotte said. “Oh they are red! But I'll have to call him away from them for redder things. I'll have to — ” and Charlotte was gone over there —
“ — to get myself straight before I do other things this day,” Charlotte was still jabbering. “And when I steal that stash at the opportune moment, I will steal it with a clean and pure heart. Oh there, father, come along now. You have some high absolving to do in a hurry.”
“You, little girl, you cannot have anything that requires a hurry.”
“Oh ‘Little Girl’ your reverend wrongheadedness! There are big-girl things that I have been about. Come along, servant of the servants!” Charlotte and the priest entered the church, and other people were beginning to arrive and enter.
Yes, the moth power was very heavy around there. Ruddy St. Malachy's on the northside was catching the morning sun on its rose and winged turrets, and all the holy and giant things were working for Duffey again. But why did the moth not define itself!
Oh, maybe sixty or seventy people went in, women and men and children. There was a stunningly beautiful Italian girl who elevated Duffey's soul. She was not the moth. Whatever her role, she was something else. If the moth must be female, why three quarters of the people who entered the church were so. These were the beautiful holy women of early morning. There was a rather chubby young woman with blonde hair under a black veil, and with half-shut, smiling eyes. Duffey loved her instantly. There was a regal lady with a high fling to her head. She was either a queen or a show girl. There were Polish ladies and German ladies, and Irish and Italians and Greeks. And the moth was among them.
Half an hour later, when mass was over with, Duffey still didn't know.
“Oh, you look so anticipating!” the beautiful Italian girl said to him then. “A happy thing will come to you today.”
“You will meet her today, will you?” a German lady asked him. “And you will be very happy together. Live so that you will deserve the happiness that comes to you.”
“You saw your wife for the first time a half hour ago,” a gypsy woman said to Duffey. “You saw her first over your left shoulder. All luck to you, red-headed man.”
“What is your father looking for so hard?” the chubby young woman with the smiling eyes asked Charlotte. “Nothing is worth looking that hard for.”
“He thinks she's worth it,” Charlotte said. “She's a moth. And he isn't my father.”
“Why how stuffy of him to be chasing moths!” the young woman said in a voice that had a familiar sound. “When you catch her, will you stick a pin through her head and hang her on the wall, man?”
“Only when she defies me,” Duffey said. The chubby young woman helped herself to a red rose from the rose patch then. So did the regal lady who was either a queen or a show girl. All the people were gone soon, and the moth presence was gone with their going. But which one has she been? Duffey and Charlotte went to eat breakfast at a little café twist the Church and the hotel.
“By the pink stone angels of St. Malachy's, I don't know which she is!” Duffey moaned.
“Whoops, whoops, my love and my boy, I'll help you no more,” Charlotte chortled. “I have brought you to her this morning and you have talked to her. I'll do no more for you. There are things that a man must do for himself.”
Charlotte fell asleep over breakfast. When she went to sleep, all the orneriness went out of her face and left it sheerly beautiful: as she was then, so should she be forever. She would be one of the supreme pieces in Duffey's Uncollectable Art Collection, along with that ivory figurine Beth Keegan, along with — well, with several others who are still to appear.
She woke up, and the orneriness came back into her face, but it could only partly displace her beauty. They made a date, to meet again at noon that day, at another little café that was across the street from a certain club. All the Mullenses were to be there, and Duffey was to bring the moth if he could find her by noon. Charlotte who was a mentalist assured him that he would have the moth by that time.
They kissed when they left the café. And there wasn't any way to take the orneriness out of Charlotte's kisses.
Duffey's phone was ringing when he got back to his hotel room. And the voice on the phone was now doubly familiar.
“Miss Lily Koch is in today,” said that half-haunting voice, “and she wonders if you would like to come by her shop at once. She is most anxious to see you.”
4
The voice gave Duffey the address of the shop. Duffey went out of his room and downstairs and out of the building, and tumbled into a cab to go there. He was excited, for he remembered Lily with almost total pleasure. He also found that the moth presence was strong as he came to the neighborhood of the shop. It wasn't far. Chicago is miles and miles, but all the places that one would want to go are within about six blocks of each other. Duffey would never find out what the rest of the city was good for. When he came to the ornate stoop and door of the shop (it was an Art-and-Elegance shop) Melchisedech knew absolutely that the evoking moth was inside it.Was Lily herself the moth? Duffey had always loved her a little when he used to see her during his school days. He loved her a bit more in memory when he didn't see her any more. And now in his expectation he loved her almost totally. Well, almost…
And it was Lily who met him in the doorway. She threw her arms wide for him and gave him the biggest kiss in town.
“Oh, it's my bashful schoolboy!” she cried. “Melky, Melky, I love you. I was always so fond of you, and I still am. Oh come in, cone in. I almost hate to give you up.”
“Don't ever give me up, Lily. I've just found you again.”
“Oh, I'm not the one, dumbhead. Our magic wouldn't mesh together, don't you remember? Letzy, look what a fine lout we have here! Ah c'mon Melky, why couldn't it have been me? Why do guys always have to go further and do better? Oh, you came all the way to Chicago on a signal that went out over the sly media, and now you don't know who she is! Don't you remember that one of your talismans was rib-shaped and that you gave it to me? Don't you remember that we said it might not work very well? Now you've even come to the right shop, and you still don't know it when you've found her. What do you think of him, Letzy?”
“Are you th
e moth, Lily?” Melchisedech asked her. There was a puzzle here.
“Me? A moth? Do you think it's a moth who's called you to Chicago? Oh, Duffey, she's a butterfly who's exploded into the next stage, Psyche herself. You really are, Letzy!”
Duffey had known that some laughing person was watching them there, someone with a half-haunting voice, someone who was chubby and had smiling eyes and a dazzling soul. He wouldn't look, but he felt the whole world enhanced by that watchful presence.
“What sort of moth were you looking for, Duffey my love?” Lily asked.
“Tinea evocata, the evoking moth,” he said as he had said once before. “Tinea indagatio, the seeking moth. Tinea letitia, the joyful moth. Where is she? Lily, why aren't you the moth?”
“Letitia!” Lily howled. “Oh, oh, what a name! Letzy, don't you think that Letitia is the silliest name in the world?”
“My name is Letitia Koch,” said that chubby girl Letzy who had been looking at them and laughing at them. “Why won't I do? Why can't I be your moth?”
And that is the way that Melchisedech Duffey met his wife.
Oh, all the details had been at hand for anyone to recognize them. Letitia was the chubby young woman with the smiling eyes who, that morning, had asked Charlotte “What is your father looking for so hard?” Charlotte had known who she was. Why hadn't Duffey known it? Letitia was the half-haunting voice that Duffey had spoken to on the telephone several times. Well, she was Lily's partner and sister. Why shouldn't she have answered the phone there?“Do you remember when you gave me that talisman when we were kids?” Lily was asking. “But I couldn't use it myself. It wouldn't work that way. We have things here in our elegant shop that people look at and see nothing to them. ‘Why is it priced so high when it's crooked?’ they ask me about that talisman. ‘Why is it priced even higher than the beautiful pieces?’ ‘It is because God will not allow me to put the PRICELESS tag on it,’ I say sometimes, but it is priceless. And it isn't crooked. It's rib-shaped. Oh Melky, Sebastian and I both used to try to awaken the art sense in you, and you already had it. How incredible of you to have selected Letzy a dozen years before you saw her! How discerning of you to know that she was really priceless!”
“Will we live over the bookstore?” Letitia asked Duffey.
“Yes. We can start moving things in today,” Duffey said. Things were going very fast for him, for them all. “Do you know about the bookstore?”
“Yes. It isn't a bookstore yet, but I used to walk by there often and I knew that it would be a bookstore. And last week I had Gabriel show me through all the shops and all those upstairs rooms where we will live. I've made sketches of how things should be arranged there, and I'm sure that they will fit in exactly with your plans. I felt your suggestions several times while I was making the sketches last week. We will be married the day after tomorrow. I've already made most of the arrangements at St. Malachy's.”
“It's magic,” said Lily Koch, “and it belongs to you dumb bums. It doesn't come to smarty people like me. You came five hundred miles to her, Duffey, and then you didn't know her when you were three feet from her. And Letzy won't be working for you. She'll still be working with me here. You can't afford her at your place. And she wouldn't be able to afford your inevitable follies if she didn't keep her half interest in Koch's Galleries.”
“Do you always shake like that, Duffey?” Letitia was asking. “It's the delayed action shakes that you have. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's only me, and you already love me. Now we must get to work. I've already hired a truck. You haven't much at your hotel, but we'll move in what there is, and then we'll move in the first loads from my place. Then it will be time to meet that mendacious midget of yours. Do you know that she is pulling grand robbery at this very moment and that it runs into several millions? Duffey has a mendacious midget, Lily.”
“I shouldn't wonder.”
Well, actually the whole thing was arranged by a couple of astute and invisible senescals. Royal persons can't be trusted to arrange marriages for themselves.
Duffey and Letitia left the shop then, and they began to move things into their new home up over the new book store that still hadn't any books. Letitia hadn't cut her hair as many had done in that year. She had great cascades of it, and it was somewhere between blonde and scarlet and walnut in color. She had a pleasant ruddiness of complexion and a really high comedy look to her. Her chubbiness was an asset, an extra-ness, a surpassing part of her perfection. Not chubby: she was full-bodied. She was priceless, yes, but only to the very deep-seeing would she appear so at first encounter. Her eyes were somewhere between sea-green and Melchisedech blue. She was younger than Lily, and she was taller than Duffey. They moved things for a couple of hours. Then they went to be keeping their noontime date.
It wasn't the little café they were really going to. It was the Colony Club across the street from it. The Mullens bunch was waiting, and Duffey arrived with the two beautiful Koch sisters. “You wouldn't have fooled me, Charlotte, not for a minute,” Lily said. “Nine year old girl, not you!”
“She fooled me for a moment this morning,” Letitia confessed.
The Colony was none of your little, dimly-lit clubs. It was sun-bright in the noontime with the curtains drawn back from the grand skylights. It had splendid vulgarity in everything. There was fast money that was as good as wealth at the Colony, and there was a cheap-shot artistry that spelled success. The Colony represented Chicago noon-time beef dinners and sly-boat Canadian whisky. There were gaming rooms, and drinking lounges with loaded sideboards. The Mullenses, except Manolo who must have been a pretty new son, were known in the Colony Club, but they were known as the Cavendishes; and they were known as show people. The Kochs were known there as art people. But the two families had not met before.
“I am a millionaire now, Duffey,” Charlotte told him as she enticed him into a corner away from the others. “I pulled it off, though I believe that there was one of those mind-alarms in the walk-in, and I triggered it. No matter: that mind-alarm couldn't have known me. Oh, I've been a millionaire before, for short times, but not this big a millionaire. I am a natural-born pirate. Now I've stolen and reburied a bigger loot than any Kidd or Blackbeard ever saw. But it's become quite dangerous. There was an alarm somewhere, given to someone. It wasn't a physical alarm, but still it was given. And now I'm followed, but they don't know what I look like. The mind-alarm picked up the name Mullens somehow, but that's only a throwaway name with me. This is the last day I'll use it anywhere.
“I love your affianced wife. How could you not have known who she was this morning, since she is at least partly of your making. Don't you even recognize your own handiwork and signature? Duffey, do you know that she does not count as one of your twelve prime creations? She is a bonus. The rib-shaped talisman is extra, the once-in-a-lifetime gift to a creating magician. You're still allowed the royal twelve.
“This place is full of psychics. Your affianced is a very good one, and the skinny Countess is one. That dark-and-secret-eyed Sebastian over there is one. But Lily isn't. We have never met your friend Sebastian, though we all come to this club when we are in town. He seems to have been abroad every time we have been in town. We understand that he is very rich and that he fancies himself as a gamer. Those are two things that we love in a man. He'll not miss what we take, Duffey.”
“But will you miss what he might take, Charlotte? I warn you: Sebastian is good at everything.”
“How enviable. And I and mine are only good at half a dozen things, but we are very, very good at them. Ah, we kiss here, and your new wife only chuckles. Can't I even make that one jealous? She knows I'm a midget. She knows that I'm not a little girl. Oh my God, either my sister or one of your ladies has ordered the Harvesters' Dinner for everyone. Oh, I suppose that's all right in the Colony Club. After all, this is Chicago.”
Roasting ears were central to the Harvesters' Dinner. There were mountains of them. And every kind of beef and potato and bread. O
h Lord save us, cabbage and kale and sauerkraut. Cheeses and sausages and Polish sausage, hot biscuits. No, that was only the beginning outline of the Harvesters' Dinner. They would keep bringing stuff in.
Sebastian Hilton was at table with them, though he was supposed to have dined earlier somewhere. He kissed the four ladies. He already knew Lily and Letitia well. Did he know that Charlotte Mullens or Cavendish was not really a nine year old girl? He must have known it from the way she kissed.
Sebastian still had the dark-and-secret-eyes and the not-long-for-this-world look. He still brought expertise and joy wherever he went. And nobody could remember, after he had dominated a conversation and after he was gone, what words he had used, though no one ever forgot the effect of him. He always spoke well and excitingly, but did he really speak in words?
Later, after the heavy Harvesters' Dinner had been put away, Sebastian came to Duffey and Letitia when they were on the roof observatory, and he added to their togetherness. He was of one mind with them both, as Duffey and Sebastian had been of one mind in their earlier years, as Duffey and Letitia were of one mind presently and forever hence.
Later still, Duffey and Sebastian were together in one of the private rooms of the club. Certainly Sebastian knew all about the wedding, more of the details than Duffey knew. Two days before this, Letitia had engaged him to be best man. Certainly he knew that Duffey was going into business with Gabriel Szymansky. It would be a good business. Oh, Duffey would lose his golden touch some day, but his money barns should be pretty well full by that time. And of course there would be disasters. It was good that he would have the priceless Letitia. Besides, she was rich. Duffey hadn't thought of that part. Lily Koch had had the name of being a very rich girl during her school days. And Letitia was her sister. It was not a main thing, but yes, it was a good thing. Sebastian and Duffey talked together for an hour. Theirs was an exceptional friendship.
More Than Melchisedech Page 11