by Ellen Klages
“Jinx,” Haskel said.
Emily laughed. “My brother Ned and I used to do that.” She felt a sudden ease as the shared joke lifted any awkwardness, like a breeze parting the fog, revealing an unexpected glimpse of the sunlit hills.
Helen put the sodden parcel in the sink. “It’s not?”
“No. Reynolds hauled Big Jack in last night, and her sweetie, Nancy, was—entertaining—in my flat. Haskel let me stay here out of the goodness of her heart.”
“And I am Marie of Romania,” Helen said. “Scuttlebutt says Jack got ninety days.”
“Hell’s bells.”
“Got that right. Do I smell coffee?”
“Help yourself.” Haskel began to peel apart the newsprint and made a face. “Phew.”
“I know. Not terribly fresh. That’s why they aren’t soup today. For your purposes, I didn’t think it mattered.” Helen looked around. “Do you have cream?”
“She takes hers black,” Emily said in the serious tone of a newscaster.
“I see,” Helen said in an amused, knowing voice. “Well, in that case, seeing as I have a delicate stomach—and a noon rehearsal—I’m off to Fong Fong’s for a proper breakfast. You girls have fun.” She winked. “With the fish, of course.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” Haskel said. “Thanks.”
“Alley raider, at your service.” Helen put the empty mug down. “Abyssinia.” She gave a two-finger salute and shut the studio door behind her.
“Well, there goes my good name.” Emily wasn’t entirely sure she was joking. Or that she cared. She pointed to the sink. “I do hope that’s not our second course.”
“Fish glue,” Haskel said. She knelt down by the table and parted a striped curtain that concealed pots and pans, a carton of cleanser, a bottle of dish soap, and two cans of condensed soup. She set a big pot on the tabletop and began to toss in fish heads, bones, and skin. “Oh, good, she found some bladders after all.” She held up a yellowish sac, smiling as if she’d gotten a tin of candies for Christmas, and threw it into the pot.
“Fish glue?”
“It’s a fixative.” She set the percolator on the table and filled the metal pot with water, fish heads bobbing on the surface, their filmy eyes staring up disconcertingly, then turned the hot plate’s dial to Hi. The coils began to glow brighter. “You might want to open the window. It’s not exactly potpourri.”
Emily raised the frame half a foot. “What do you need to fix?”
“The painting.”
“Is it broken?”
“No, just very delicate. The chalk. I like its texture, and it’s essentially a powder, so the particles reflect light in a way that oil paint can’t. Gives the color wonderful depth.” She looked around for her cigarettes, lit one, and used it to gesture as she continued. “But that same—powderiness—means it’s so fragile that one strong puff of air—imagine blowing out a birthday candle—can make a day’s work just disappear.”
“Poof.”
“Poof. So I have to prepare the paper. Rough it up with a pumice stone and brush a coat of isinglass onto the back. It saturates the fibers, makes them more—receptive.”
“What’s isinglass?”
“Fish glue’s society name.”
“Why not use shellac? Or varnish?”
“They dull the colors, a sort of yellow haze, like cigar fug. This is a bit rank, but it’s cheap and it works.” She stirred the pot with a discolored wooden spoon. “It’ll look like ancient cellophane, once the liquid’s strained and it dries. Then I pulverize it with a mortar and pestle and add a bit of grain alcohol. Some goes in a jar, the rest in one of these.” She reached under the sink again and held up a perfume atomizer.
“Eau de pêche?”
“Attracts alley cats by the score,” Haskel said. “The mist settles without disturbing the surface. Two applications and the painting arrives at the publisher’s intact.” She looked into the pot, which had begun to bubble. “This is enough for half a dozen covers.”
“How on earth did you figure all that out?”
“Franny found some ancient recipe in one of her art books. She’s—you’re the English major—what’s the crossword answer for someone who learns a little about everything?”
“Hmm. Know-it-all?”
Haskel chuckled. “That sounds more like you.”
“Guilty as charged.” She thought for a moment. “Polymath.”
“That’s it. Franny’s a polymath. Among other things.” Haskel turned the hot plate down. “These need to simmer for a few hours.”
“I should go and let you work.” Emily slid off the windowsill and bent to gather her clothes. “I’ll turn this back into a sofa for you.”
“Hang on a sec.” Haskel looked at the half-finished painting, then back at the rumpled blanket. “I hadn’t noticed, when it was a couch, but it’s got just the right light from the window—” She tapped a finger to her lip. “You said that gave you a fright when you woke up?”
“I squealed like a girl.”
“Could you do it again?”
“What?”
“Crawl under the covers, try a few poses for me?”
“I guess. I owe you for breakfast.” She undid the robe’s sash, letting it slip off and puddle on top of her pants and jacket, then sat at the head of the bed and pulled the blanket up around her, holding it across her chest. “Like this?”
“Too awake.” Haskel picked up a pencil and sketch pad. “Try this. It’s the middle of the night. You’re sound asleep, woken by a sound at the window. You turn and see—well, just what you saw. The gargoyle.”
“Take two.” Emily scooched down and turned toward the drafting table, raising herself on one elbow and widening her eyes with as much horror as she could muster in broad daylight.
“Good. Hold that.” Haskel filled the page with swift, deft strokes, and turned to a fresh one. “Now sit halfway up, like you’re in the middle of a startle.”
“I thought you had dirty magazines for this sort of thing.”
“They’re art magazines, and I do, but the poses are never quite what I need. It’s easier if I have a model.” She swept the pencil across the page, frowned, turned to another and sketched in rapid, sweeping lines, brow furrowed, concentration complete.
Emily watched, initially fascinated by this glimpse into a real artist’s process, and then less so as it grew repetitious. Not a spectator sport. “My arm’s numb,” she said after another minute.
“Sorry. Just one more, and I’ll free you from artistic servitude.” Haskel flipped to a clean page. “Lie on your side. Rumple the covers a bit.”
“Yes, Mrs. DeMille,” Emily mock grumbled, although she was finding the playacting rather a lark. It reminded her of midnight games in the dorm, of Jilly, of— She winced, not at the memory, but at all that had come after, and covered it by resettling herself, tugging at her shirt. It had rucked up in the middle of her back, a twisted, uncomfortable lump. She pulled one arm out of a sleeve, then the other, and let it drop to the floor. “Like this?”
“Not quite. A little more—” Haskel set the sketch pad down and knelt by the bed. “—like this.” With one hand, she turned Emily’s head slightly to the side, her fingers entwined, for a moment, in auburn curls. Emily felt her arms go all goosebumps. Their faces were inches apart. She could feel the warmth of Haskel’s breath on her cheek, smell coffee and a drift of smoke.
A moment passed. Neither of them moved. Then she heard Haskel sigh and felt a tickle of hair against her neck, lips brushing her own, lightly at first, and then, when she offered no resistance—none at all—with unmistakable desire.
“Golly,” Emily said, when there was air again.
“Shh.” Haskel took off her own shirt and settled onto the bed, pushing the blankets down and away. Cupping a gentle hand on either side of Emily’s face, she kissed her again, lips full and soft and tasting of raspberries. The springs creaked as they shifted, arms and legs twining until they were snugged tog
ether like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, once jumbled and separate, but destined to fit exactly so.
* * *
Later, after, they lay with eyes half-closed against the midday sun. Emily’s head nestled in the angle of Haskel’s shoulder. Her thoughts tumbled, muddled, dulled with languor, tinged forever with the smell of eau de pêche, an odd but not unpleasant backdrop for the whole, surprising morning. Contentment and wonder, twined with translucent threads of melancholy that had so little to do with the woman in her arms.
She ran her fingers across a bare shoulder, trailing them down the chain of Haskel’s necklace to her lightly freckled back, then paused. “What’s that?” she asked, touching a shiny, flattened dimple the size of a pea. “And those,” discovering others.
Haskel flinched, but did not pull away. She lay silent, and Emily’s fingers stilled, unsure. Should she apologize? Say nothing? Pretend that—?
“Cigarette burns. Because I was a naughty girl.”
“Your father burned you?”
“My mother. Dear old Ma.” She took Emily’s hand and kissed the knuckles, then sat up against the back of the couch and reached for her cigarettes.
“That’s terrible.”
“Yes.” She drew her legs up, one arm around her knees. “I’ve never cared much for rules. Hers kept changing. What was conversation one day was somehow sass the next.” She blew a smoke ring out into the air. “She’s an angry, bitter woman. I learned to keep still. Drawing in the root cellar, in the garden shed, anywhere I was invisible.”
“She found you.”
“She hunted me.”
Emily leaned against Haskel’s shoulder again. “Is that why you paint monsters?”
“The monsters are easy. They come straight out of the stories I’m sent; they’re the writers’ nightmares, not mine. Although the good ones—” she shuddered. “I have slept with the lamp on a few times.”
“And the victims?”
“Always girls. Writers seem to think we’re interchangeable.” A small, mirthless chuckle. “I leave the faces for last. I have to have a drink or two first.” She got out of bed, paced to a shelf, picked out a magazine. A hunchback in a white lab coat leered at a girl covered only by a tendril of smoke, straining against thick leather straps that bound her to a gleaming table. Her hands were clenched, her mouth open in a silent scream.
“I know how that feels. Holding my breath. Making no sound. Sweating, heart racing, guts liquid—waiting for her to find me, knowing she was coming.” She tapped the ghastly cover. “But look at that girl. She hasn’t given up. The men who buy this won’t see it, but I know. Because I got away.” Haskel’s jaw was set, her eyes fierce and bright. “That fear is on the paper now, not eating away inside me. Bit by bit, scream by scream. Like emptying a bucket with a teaspoon.”
“How many paintings have you done?
“The first one of these was when I was still in art school. Spring of ’33. So seven years, one or two a month.” She counted, moving her fingers. “Close to a hundred by now.”
“Is the bucket empty?”
“It’s lighter.”
Haskel put the magazine down and stepped to the window, crossing her arms over her full breasts, the pendant between them flashing with the movement. She was a handsome, muscular woman, not an ounce of extra flesh. Emily watched as Haskel bit her lip, realizing how much she’d revealed. The silence in the room grew awkward again. Emily lay in the tangle of bedclothes, then pulled her knees to her chest and rolled, an athletic move that left her standing in her own birthday suit, on the far side of the bed.
Haskel turned. “Are you leaving?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you like a song first?”
“What?”
“Well, I thought, as long as we’re sharing.”
Haskel smiled, just a fraction. “Alright. Surprise me.”
“I like ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’” Emily’s knees felt rubbery. She put one hand on the bookcase for support. “And this afternoon.” She took a very deep breath to get the jitters out, and began to sing.
“Some day, when I’m awfully low, and the world is—” Her voice was smooth and deep and brave even as her hands shook. She had sung in the shower, and to countless audiences of strangers, but always with a costume or Spike’s cocky, hip-shot artifice. This was different.
When she finished, Haskel sat on the bed, her eyes bright but no longer fierce. “Jesus,” she said, part oath, part benediction. She leaned back and held out her arms. “No. I don’t think I want you to leave.”
* * *
The light was golden before they got out of bed again, laughing when Emily’s stomach grumbled loud enough to startle them both out of a languid drowse. They dressed, Haskel in clean slacks and shirt, Emily in Spike’s outfit.
“I’ll need food and some other clothes. In that order,” Emily said, watching Haskel strain the fish heads and pour the gelatinous result into an enameled pan.
“Where’s your flat?”
“Three blocks up from Mona’s.”
“There’s a deli on the way. We’ll have a picnic supper.” Haskel wrapped the remains of the fish in yesterday’s Chronicle and washed her hands. “This will make us friends with their tom.”
They got thick sandwiches of salami and smoked ham and salty cheese on crusty bread, with some sweet peppers and onions. A jug of homemade wine was only thirty-five cents, so they splurged. Haskel carried the bag of food, Emily swung the bottle by its neck as they walked up Montgomery, a street of cafés and low brick offices that rose steeply when it crossed Broadway. Now bow-windowed buildings and weathered frame houses clung to the precarious sides of Telegraph Hill like goats. From an open window came the sound of someone expertly practicing a trumpet.
“This is me,” Emily said when they reached Green Street. “Grey one.” The front porch sagged; by the doorbell were four gummed labels. “They sliced it into apartments in the ’20s,” Emily said. “No charm, but it’s cheap—five bucks a week—and it came furnished.”
“Horrible green or florals?”
“The sofa is both.” She gestured to a window. “My room must have been a pantry. Lots of shelves, not enough room to swing a cat.”
“Look.” Haskel turned toward the wall of a building across the street. The beige stucco was dappled with shadows and lit with butter-colored western light. “I love this time of day. Feels like anything is possible.”
Emily nodded. “It reminds me of the illustrations in a book I had as a girl—The Arabian Nights.”
“Maxfield Parrish?”
“Yes. Everything seemed magic.”
“Magic light is the best kind for a picnic, don’t you think?” Haskel started up the hill. “Come on. We’ll sit on the Greenwich Steps, come back for your worldly goods.”
“They’re not much. I left school rather abruptly.”
“Why?”
“My—friend—and I were caught one morning. The alarm hadn’t gone off.”
“They booted you for missing a class?”
“No, for being in Jilly’s bed.” She shifted the wine to her other arm. “I had enough money for a train ticket, so I came here. It’s where all the black sheep end up. New York was closer, but proximity to my family was, well—less than desirable. Besides, I’d had my fill of snow.”
“Me too.” Haskel linked her arm through Emily’s. Now the sidewalk was so steep that shallow steps were cut into the concrete. To their left, houses climbed in vertical tiers on winding streets and tiny lanes only half a block long. On the right, sheer rocky cliffs spilled down to the waterfront, two hundred feet below.
Greenwich Street, a paved thoroughfare for most of its length, became rickety-looking wooden steps that zigzagged down the sandstone face, passing under some stilt-raised houses. It flanked tiny nineteenth-century cottages, wound through gardens and grottoes and stretches of brush-dotted bare stone that looked more like a canyon f
rom the Wild West than a modern, cosmopolitan city.
Partway down was a landing, the boards laid horizontally across a large granite outcropping. “This is perfect,” Haskel said. She swung herself down to the weathered planks and dangled her legs over the precipice.
Emily sat next to her, settling the jug of wine with a muffled thump. “Jeepers.”
“You haven’t been up here before?” Haskel pulled the cork out with her teeth and took a swig.
“Didn’t know it existed.”
“San Francisco is full of secrets.” She unwrapped one of the sandwiches and handed it across.
“I’ll say.” Emily felt as if she had ventured much farther than a ten-minute walk. Below them were the flat-roofed meatpacking plants and warehouses that lined the waterfront, the wharves sticking into the bay like splayed fingers. The smell of salt water and mud, diesel fuel and roasting coffee wafted up to their perch, high above the world. Whistles and bells sounded from the busy port, shutting down for the evening. Off to the left, out of sight, a foghorn echoed.
The hill behind them blocked the sun. What had been a golden summer evening was transforming, moment by moment, into a world of shadows, a thousand shades of gray punctuated by the white globes of streetlights, a few piercing streaks of neon. The lights of the city winked on around them, reflecting out onto the water, a flat, dark void with the man-made paradise of Treasure Island in its center.
San Francisco was a beautiful city, but it was a city—brick and stone, grays and browns, vertical lines, right angles, and uniform patterns of windows repeated building by building, block by block, rectangular and regular.
Directly in front of them, two miles out, they watched as another city, made of lath and plaster, changed into its evening clothes. By day, it was a transient chimera of palaces and minarets, curving courts, and colonnaded temples. Now, bursting through the dusk, searchlights fanned out toward the stars like the hand of God, and ten thousand colored floodlights turned the stucco castles into glowing, glittering jewels.
Emily gasped. “Does that happen every night?”
“Every time I’ve come to watch.” Haskel passed the bottle. “You’ve seen the fair, right?”