I’m not sure what the right idea would’ve been, but it certainly seemed like Gib had gotten the wrong idea about me and Odalie—much the way Dotty had gotten the wrong idea about my feelings for my friend Adele. Which is to say Gib had the wrong idea about me. I will admit, a certain loneliness existed in my life and it’s true enough to say these women helped alleviate that. Those trendy followers of Freud might say this neediness on my part has something to do with my mother, with how she abandoned me for no better reason than hateful spite. They might even imply there was something rather unnatural in my eagerness to be close to first Adele and later Odalie. But I don’t give a fig for these dirty-minded diagnoses. I enjoyed watching Odalie from afar more than anything else. I suppose I didn’t mind when she brushed my hair or traced light little circles on the palms of my hands. I didn’t mind the way she wet her lips and leaned in toward me whenever I spoke (as if I were about to say something absolutely riveting, only I didn’t know it). And I’ll admit I wanted to be within eyeshot of Odalie at all times. But who didn’t? It was simply a side effect of her beauty. Or perhaps beauty is too crude a word for it; rather, it was a side effect of the way Odalie’s beauty was uniquely animated, which was a phenomenon unto itself. It’s not as if I hadn’t caught Gib watching her out of the corner of his eye, keeping track of who she spoke to at the speakeasy, a voyeuristic hawk in his own right. I’m sure you’ve heard it said a hundred times: The most objectionable people are often the ones with whom you have the most in common.
Gib was all wrong for Odalie—I’m sure this much was plain to everyone who saw them together. They made an absurd pairing: Odalie was regal where Gib could only be described as sly-looking at best. Other than the speakeasy—the inner workings of which at the time I assumed were Gib’s affair and Odalie only attended for amusement—I could not see they had very much in common. I could hardly imagine Gib attending one of Odalie’s little bohemian gatherings, much less chatting at length about art or poetry. Neither could I imagine where they must’ve met. They were an odd couple to say the least, and I assumed it was only a matter of time before I saw the last of Gib. But in the weeks after moving in with Odalie, I began to see Gib had been a regular in her life for quite some time already, and planned to go on as such.
In any case, Gib and I were building up a slow tolerance for each other, the way some people slowly build a tolerance for a specific kind of poison. By the end of my first month at the apartment, we had learned to make the kind of civil conversation two people might make while waiting at the same streetcar stop. By the end of two months, I had learned to accept my somewhat subordinate position as a newer addition to Odalie’s apartment as a fact. After all, Gib did not need to be told which closet kept the spare linens for his shower and was no stranger to the bell-boys at our hotel, who greeted him by his first name (as opposed to the polite but generic miss they eternally lobbed in my direction). Accepting these things likewise meant accepting the fact there would be evenings when I’d listen for the sound of him letting himself out the front door but never hear it, and mornings when I’d wake up to see him grumpily slurping hot coffee from one of Odalie’s little white china mugs at our breakfast table. As with all things that are unstomachable, I tried my best not to think about what objectionable things might have passed in the night and always maintained a civil front.
It was on one such morning Gib began to leak out information about Odalie’s past. Or at least a certain version of Odalie’s past. There was a pair of French doors that led from the dining room onto a fairly generous-size terrace that hugged the corner of the hotel apartment. That morning Gib stared out the window and sipped his coffee, observing the large, lumpy mounds of snow as they melted and made a soggy mess out of the terrace. He frowned. “We ought to glass that in,” he said. “It’s a waste in the wintertime, and with a little glass it’d make a damned fine solarium.”
“Would Odalie’s father approve of that?” I asked, holding a piece of toast over the sink and scraping away the blackened char. Honeymoon toast, the nuns used to call it whenever I burned the toast in the orphanage kitchen. An ironic choice of phrase, I had always thought, for a group of women utterly uninitiated in the ways of matrimonial life.
Gib’s spine straightened. He looked up in surprise.
“Odalie’s father?”
“Sure,” I said, setting the plate of toast on the table and slipping into a chair. Despite my thorough scraping, the bread slices were still peppered with tiny black speckles. “Doesn’t her father pay the rent for this place? I just assumed we would need his approval.”
Gib cocked his head to the side, examining me closely with one eye as though he were a parrot taking in the sight of a new stranger. Suddenly an incredulous, somewhat sarcastic expression spread over his features.
“Oh. Is she calling him her father now?” Gib asked. “How interesting. I’d gotten so used to her referring to him as her uncle.” He turned in a matter-of-fact way to the newspaper lying in his lap and snapped it open.
I blinked. “What do you mean?” I stammered into the thin newsprint wall hovering between us. “Do you mean to say Odalie’s father is . . . is not . . .” I struggled to find the proper words, but there were none for this curious turn of events. “. . . not her father?”
Gib dropped the paper a few inches and studied my face. I cannot imagine what he found there, but after some minutes evidently he was able to plumb the depths of my ignorance enough to see greater explanation on his part was required. He gave a sigh and picked up a piece of toast, frowned at it as he turned it over for further inspection, then returned it to the serving plate. “If by father you mean the word in strictly the genealogical sense, then—no. The man who pays for this apartment is not Odalie’s father.” Gib paused and gave me an assessing once-over, as though deciding something. “Of course,” he finally proceeded, “a case could be made that you might refer to him as her daddy.” Upon pronouncing the word daddy he gave a disdainful, self-amused snort. A cool bar of early spring sunshine leaned in from the glass of the French doors and fell across his cheek, revealing the many pockmarks in his roughly shaven skin. Strangely, this defect rather enhanced Gib’s features, much the way the scar over the Lieutenant Detective’s eyebrow enhanced his. Gib looked at me again and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize . . . ,” he began, but trailed off. The newspaper floating before him sagged further, and finally with a sigh and a couple flicks of his wrist he folded it back up into a tidy rectangle.
“Hmm. I can see you’re confused,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t do to keep you completely in the dark.” And then he cleared his throat and began, in his stiff-jawed way, to tell me the story of Odalie’s “uncle.” As soon as Gib began speaking, the image of Odalie I had diligently conjured in my mind up to that point melted away faster than the rain-pecked lumps of snow on the balcony, and yet another new one formed to take its place.
I shall paraphrase here, because I’m not at all sure I can tell it quite as Gib told it. In the months since I’ve been seeing my doctor, I’ve retold this story so many times it feels as though somehow the tale has always belonged to me, that I have always been the one who told it.
According to Gib, the French-speaking, fashionably coiffed woman I knew as Odalie Lazare was born Odalie Mae Buford to some people who owned a drugstore just outside of Chicago. The store was a small family-run affair, and from a young age Odalie proved herself useful behind the till, able as she was to make sums in her head while at the same time shooting the customers looks of sly curiosity from under those preternaturally long, dark lashes. But the family fell on hard times when Odalie’s father suffered a sudden stroke and died, and Odalie’s mother—a wiry, thin-lipped woman named Cora-Sue—consequently fell down the long neck of a bottomless bottle. Odalie, barely ten at the time, tried her valiant but youthful hand at keeping the books, but every trace of profit was drunk away very efficiently and speedily by Co
ra-Sue, who was sinking deeper and deeper into what my doctor here at the institution might call a state of melancholia. Odalie and her mother were eventually prompted to forfeit the drugstore to the bank. Deepening poverty forced them from the outskirts of Chicago and into the city proper, where Cora-Sue found she had limited professional skills at her disposal and promptly became a professional of a different kind.
The house where Cora-Sue found employ was of the usual requisite ill-repute, yet had a good reputation for being very “traditional.” This meant it was a brothel in the old salon tradition, and most of the ladies who worked there, when not immediately engaged with a customer, spent their idle hours sitting in the parlor like proper ladies waiting to be called upon and courted. Well, perhaps ladies with coarser manners, for Gib informed me the “ladies” mostly occupied themselves with sitting around telling vulgar jokes and betting at cards. But despite the sailor’s language and the gambling, a sort of drawing room atmosphere nevertheless prevailed. Oftentimes a man named Lionel, a student over at the music academy looking for extra practice, would even sit and play the piano, alternately pounding and trilling out everything from the latest popular band music to lovely little Beethoven sonatas, lending the overall ambience a jovial yet genteel, dignified air.
The proprietress of the establishment, a shrill redheaded woman who went by the name Annabel (it was rumored her given Christian name was really Jane but had been changed to avoid some previous legal difficulties), was not keen on the idea of hiring employees who came with children in tow, but when little Odalie introduced herself to Annabel by giving a flirtatious curtsy and a wink, Annabel immediately identified the miniature coquette’s potential as a petite hostess who might amuse the customers by serving them drinks.
And so it was the two Buford women found employ and managed, for a time at least, to eke out a living Cora-Sue couldn’t drink up the very same day. Cora-Sue took dollars for performing her services upstairs, while downstairs the men lifted their lemonades and whiskeys from a silver tray and placed pennies or the occasional nickel into Odalie’s sticky palm, giving the tiny hand a small squeeze. Gib’s description of what a hit the tiny Odalie was with the customers came as no surprise to me. A born performer, she stamped out tenacious little dances whenever she thought it might delight someone and even learned to patter out a few tunes on the piano at Lionel’s instruction. The men delighted in her plucky nature, and it was not uncommon to find her seated at the card table, perched on some customer’s knee and playing a hand of poker on his very amused behalf. As Gib recounted this chapter of Odalie’s history, I formed the idea that this era must’ve marked a sort of early education for Odalie, as it was during her time at the brothel that she began to understand and hone her manipulative powers over people, and over men in particular.
There was one habitué (a term Gib said Odalie was fond of using—French, I’m told, for regular) who eventually took a more vigorous interest in Odalie. The man, one Mr. Istvan Czakó, was a dapper, middle-aged Hungarian of short stature but very deep pockets and an almost Baroque predilection for what one might call civilized perversions. Shortly after the Buford women began working and living at Annabel’s place, Czakó rarely found the time anymore to make the journey upstairs to the second floor of the brothel, satisfied as he was to watch his new little muse dance and sing and to have her sit in his lap whenever she would agree to it. At first, Annabel did not mind, as Czakó stayed for hours and always managed to spend just as much money on the drinks he consumed while in Odalie’s company as he would if he had engaged the private ministrations of one of the more mature ladies at the house. But when it was discovered Czakó was slipping money directly to Odalie on the side (and furthermore that it was a large enough sum to be paper money and not merely the kind that jingles), Annabel was outraged and demanded her proper commission. The police would certainly want to know about his preference for the younger set, Annabel suggested, with that telltale flinty gleam in her eye.
It cannot be said that Odalie was kidnapped exactly, for when Czakó elected to sail for France to avoid the persecution Annabel promised, Odalie packed her things and stole away quite willingly. There was perhaps a moment or two of remorse, of sorrow for the helpless alcohol-sodden mother she was leaving behind, but all such sentiments soon vaporized into a cloud of glamorous cigarette smoke once she and Czakó reached Paris. Czakó, who’d previously lived in Paris for many years, was only too happy to dazzle his young ingenue with the sights and sounds of the city. Together they took in museums, concerts, society salons, street cafés. It was during this time the myth of their familial relations first circulated. Required to explain the presence of a young girl in his company, Czakó was content to let strangers believe she was his daughter. For those old acquaintances who already knew him, he casually asserted she was his niece, born of a distant American relation and left in his charge for reasons that (I assume he very expertly and indirectly implied) were too sad to explain in any more than the vaguest detail.
They spent the better part of Odalie’s formative years in France, living leisurely off Czakó’s vast fortune. According to Gib, Odalie always maintained Czakó was a Hungarian aristocrat of some sort, which, from what I’ve read about aristocrats, might account in some part for his perversions. Eventually, Odalie was even enrolled in school and donned the ribboned cap, starched white sailor’s collar, navy pleats, and dark kneesocks of a proper little française (a uniform, it must be noted, Czakó sometimes requested she wear during nonschool hours). By her late teens, she had grown into a polished young lady of many accomplishments. She was fluent in French and English (she had also acquired a smattering of Hungarian by then, though it was probably not useful in polite company). She furthered the studies in piano she had long ago begun with Lionel, and although she was not terribly gifted, she could always be counted upon to crank out a jaunty little tune.
In the days of her suburban Chicago childhood, Odalie had always been something of a tomboy, and even after her “finishing” years in France she was still at her core an athlete, having never lost that lanky, careless grace that was hers from birth. Czakó often took her south for the summers, where she excelled at tennis and golf and made the other hotel guests murmur in admiration of her fearlessness as she swam farther out than anybody else into the gold-flecked azure horizon of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile a proud and possessive Czakó looked on from a steamer chair, the wiry carpet of iron-gray hair on his denuded barrel chest shining dully in the Riviera sunshine.
Those were—Gib ventured to guess as he told the story—probably the happiest days of the Hungarian’s life. Perhaps Czakó even allowed himself to believe Odalie would never grow up, and that the war—which by this time had begun in Europe—would never truly touch them. It wasn’t until the sinking of the Lusitania that they finally felt compelled to gain a greater physical distance from the action, and together they made the journey back across the Atlantic on a stomach of nerves. They arrived in New York, which had grown boisterous with the politics of the Great War. Men stood on soapboxes and yelled about the divided interests of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but for a time Czakó and Odalie were able to skirt around all the commotion and go up the elevator to the newly insulated oasis of an apartment Czakó had secured for them on Park Avenue.
But their respite was short-lived. The trouble the Black Hand had stirred up at the start of the war meant there were fissures beginning to show in the great castles of Hungary. The aristocrats had already seen their finest hours, and were now losing some of their popularity. The commotion caused by the tussle between the anarchists and monarchists allowed for Czakó’s private banker to reveal himself for what the fellow truly was: a capitalist. Czakó sent wire after wire, each one increasingly more desperate. But after three weeks it was evident the banker had no intention of ever being found. Oh, Czakó lamented regretfully for weeks after coming face-to-face with the realization that his banker would likely never
be reached, I should have seen it all coming and relocated my wealth into the hands of the Americans, or better still, the Swiss!
It’s not at all clear whether Odalie contemplated leaving Czakó at this point. Knowing her a little as I do now, it is likely she would have. But if she harbored seditious sentiments, she kept them to herself. Perhaps still feeling a little guilty for having left her mother at the nadir of their mutual misfortune, she remained with Czakó and convinced him they should live more frugally (he was inexperienced in such tactics and required instruction—though I found it difficult to believe Odalie was an expert in this practice), cutting back on their expenses and converting what was left of his fortune into Liberty Bonds.
With the end of the war and the rise of the Volstead Act, Odalie saw another opportunity for beneficial investment and suggested as much to Czakó. By this time, Odalie had long since left the greater traces of her childhood behind, and the dynamic that bound the two of them together had shifted. Czakó’s trips to her bed had decreased over the years in proportion to the number of birthdays she had accumulated, yet his heed of her financial advice increased. For the first time in her life, Odalie was allowed to keep a separate apartment. This was perhaps a secret gesture on Czakó’s part to protect himself. Czakó was aware their new business venture wasn’t exactly legal, but he probably figured the less he knew about that, the better.
“You see, she’s self-made in many ways,” Gib commented approvingly upon the conclusion of his story. “I mean, just as much as John D. Rockefeller is, or any of those other slobs, for that matter.”
I stared at Gib, my mouth agape, still trying to take in the deluge of information I had just been given. The notion that I’d been living with a woman who was quite possibly the nation’s premier female bootlegger came as a bit of a shock. A queer magnetic field had dropped around me, and my moral compass was spinning. It was one thing to sneak into the occasional speakeasy; it was quite another to supply it and clear a tidy profit. For months I had hovered at Odalie’s elbow sipping champagne, comforted by the assumption that if anyone’s hands were dirty, so to speak, it was only Gib’s hands and Gib’s alone. This revised version of my evenings with Odalie was difficult to wrap my mind around.
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