Passing Strange

by Ellen Klages

  “Not like this. I feel like I’m Dorothy, and that must be Oz.” She stared, her mouth open. “Only it’s not just the Emerald City—it’s sapphire and ruby and—”

  Haskel laughed and put an arm around Emily, pulling her close. “Let’s go there, you and I. Let’s take a journey to the Magic City and have drinks beside a sparkling fountain.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No, you have to sing, and I have a painting to finish. Next—” She thought for a moment. “Next Wednesday. We’ll take my cover downtown to Railway Express and catch the ferry, make a day of it.”

  Emily looked out at the island, a block of color afloat in a featureless sea. “I’d like that. Wednesday’s a slow night.”

  “So it’s a date.” Haskel leaned over and kissed her, their lips tingling from wine and peppers.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Emily said a few minutes later.

  “What?”

  “We’ve done this wrong way round. A first date after we—well, you know.” She felt suddenly shy, not wanting to name their day, to make it vulgar, or coy and coded. At a loss for words. That was unsettling. Words were her refuge.

  “I told you I’ve never cared much for rules.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “So am I.” Haskel kissed her again, on the cheek this time. She stood and stretched. “If you want to rescue anything from your flat before work, we should get moving.”

  Emily got to her feet and leaned on the railing, gazing out at the fairyland across the water, then turned to link her arm in Haskel’s. They retraced their steps through the patches of yellow lamplight from the houses that lined the moon-shadowed stairs.

  The Magic City

  Haskel finished the gargoyle painting late Monday night and misted it with eau de pêche before she and Emily went to bed, giving it a second spraying the next afternoon.

  She was surprised how easy it was to make room for Emily—in the studio, in her life. That had unfolded as naturally as a newly hatched moth; now she couldn’t imagine the space without her.

  When they’d returned to the flat on Green Street, they found it a shambles—overflowing ashtrays, greasy cardboard containers of chow mein, clothes strewn about—with men on the stairs and in the small kitchenette, drinking and waiting their turn with sweet Nancy.

  Emily packed her things and scrawled her notice, leaving a week’s rent; wolf whistles and ungentlemanly offers followed them down the dingy hall and out onto the street.

  “I can store my suitcase backstage,” Emily said, a block down Montgomery Street. “Not my typewriter, though. I’d hate to lose that.” She spoke bravely, but her mouth was pinched and her grip on the case was white-knuckled.

  “We’ll take it all to my place.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” It was the right thing to say; Haskel had not been sure at all. It was one thing to spend an afternoon in bed with a beautiful woman, and quite another to set up housekeeping the same day. She’d been on her own for more than five years, and it had suited her. But Emily’s pinched look had vanished, replaced by her now-endearing impish grin.

  Haskel rose early. She made coffee and painted until midmorning. Emily padded in to kiss the back of her neck and admire her progress. She curled up on the couch, writing in a leather-bound journal with a blue marbled fountain pen or reading with the intensity of a schoolgirl cramming for exams, working her way through the pulps on Haskel’s shelf, pausing now and then to comment.

  “Your madman was much better than the one in the story.”

  “Why would she go down the stairs with an evil scientist in the first place?”

  “Most of these are awful.”

  “No one buys them as literature,” Haskel said without turning around.

  They had a light supper each night before Emily dressed and walked over to Mona’s. Haskel stayed in. She put on a record—symphonies, not singers—and sketched, trying to keep herself from thinking about all the women salivating over “Spike.”

  She was not a possessive person, thought of herself as a free thinker. This was different. Fragile and new and more precious than she would have imagined. That both warmed and unsettled her.

  Early Wednesday, Haskel pinned the corners of the heavy art paper to a sheet of corrugated cardboard and set it into a shallow wooden crate, then screwed down the lid. Early on, she had used tacks, but the vibrations from the hammer blows had ruined the edge of one painting where the fixative had not quite settled.

  She stenciled GLASS FRAGILE GLASS in red paint, the only way to insure the box was handled with even a minimum of care. She changed into a plaid Viyella shirt and wool slacks. “You ready?” she called.

  “Almost.” Emily buttoned a yellow silk blouse over a pair of brown trousers, a sweater draped over one shoulder. Haskel had noticed that although her clothes were few, they had once been expensive, high-end labels that now showed signs of having been worn and laundered many times over. “I have sunglasses, sturdy shoes, and last year’s guidebook.”

  “That ought to do it.”

  They left the painting for shipment at the Railway Express office on Folsom Street. Unencumbered, they strolled east to the Ferry Building, whose tower anchored the end of Market Street.

  The line for tickets was long. They paid their dimes and boarded the ferry, crowded on all sides by men in suits and hats, women in daytime dresses, a few with furs draped around their shoulders. They made their way to the railing of the upper deck just as the steam whistle sounded, loud and shrill, and the three-hundred-foot boat moved out into the open waters of the bay.

  “I never get tired of the view from here,” Haskel said as the city receded, its stone towers square and solid against blue sky. “I see patterns—lines of streets and contours in the hills—that aren’t visible when I’m walking.” She curled an arm around Emily’s shoulder, realized what she was doing, and pulled away, looking around. No one had noticed, and there were other girls whose hands or arms were linked in friendship, so she slipped hers into the crook of Emily’s elbow, and felt a reassuring squeeze in return.

  They stared back at the city until the babble of voices around them changed and, like a tennis match, everyone’s head swiveled to look the other way. Treasure Island loomed two hundred yards ahead, close enough to see the carvings on the art-deco towers and pastel walls, gleaming and beckoning in the noonday sun, as if this routine ferry crossing had taken them to another world in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.

  The crowd rushed to disembark, jostling and pushing toward the wonders that awaited. Haskel was glad she was so tall; she could see over most of the hats, and guided Emily through seams in the fabric of humanity until they could pay the fifty-cent admission and were allowed to enter the walled city. They stopped in the lee of a building, and Emily unfolded the map from her guidebook.

  “I want to go to the Fine Arts Palace and look in on a friend,” Haskel said. “But that’s all the way over in the far corner, half a mile’s walk.” She pointed. “If we went here first, we could cut through the—”

  “Haskel?” a voice called, interrupting her proposed itinerary.

  She turned. It was Franny, dressed in her usual tunic and slacks, a pair of round celluloid sunglasses obscuring her eyes. With her was an unfamiliar young girl in a sprigged cotton dress, the strap of a battered leather satchel slung across her chest like a crossing guard.

  “Franny!” Haskel gave the older woman a hug. “What are the odds? Must be fifty thousand people here today.”

  “Kismet,” she replied. “We were destined to meet in this unusual—” She stopped abruptly when she noticed Emily behind the flapping map. Franny smiled. “Well. I see my nefarious plan worked.”

  “What plan?”

  “I thought the two of you would hit it off. Hello, Emily.”

  “Hullo, Franny. Who’s your friend?”

  “Ah—where are my manners? Ladies, may I present Miss Polly Wardlow, late of London.” She p
ut an arm around the girl; Polly was half a head taller. She had pale blue eyes and wore her brown hair in two stubby braids. “Polly, these are my friends Emily Netterfield and Loretta Haskel.”

  “Just Haskel is fine.”

  Polly shook hands all around.

  “Are you here on vacation?” Emily asked.

  “No,” Polly said. “I’m a sort of war refugee. With France fallen, my father didn’t think England safe for me on my own. The army needed his expertise and he’s overseas somewhere.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a magician.” She smiled at their startled looks. “It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. Magicians deal in deception and illusion, and camouflage of a sort. Useful against the enemy. I’m only guessing, of course. It’s all very hush-hush.”

  Haskel felt a bit ashamed that she’d forgotten a lot of the world was actually at war. It seemed so unlikely on a clear summer day, here in the midst of cloud-cuckoo-land.

  “We’re distant relatives, on her mother’s side. Great-aunts or some such,” Franny said. “She’ll stay with us until she starts Stanford in the fall.”

  “Stanford? How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Is it? I’d hoped to go to Oxford, but the war—” She faltered. “I queried Harvard and Yale, but did you know neither of them accepts women?”

  “I’d heard.” Emily laughed. “My father’s a dean at Yale—classics.” She looked around and turned to Franny. “Where’s Babs?”

  “Off entertaining her sister and her niece at the carnival rides. The child turned seven a few weeks ago, and this is her birthday treat. We’re meeting up with them for drinks and a bite at five. Why don’t you join us?”

  Haskel and Emily exchanged glances. “Thanks,” said Haskel. “Where are you headed now?”

  “The science exhibits,” Polly said. “I’m going to study chemistry and physics at university, and I want to see your newest technology.”

  “Not following in your father’s footsteps,” Haskel observed.

  “Performing, no. Although I do enjoy his workroom. That’s where Father says the real magic happens.”

  “Science is on our way to the arts.” Emily refolded the map. “We’ll walk through with you.”

  One of the least decorative structures at the fair, the Hall of Science was an L-shaped building where several dozen exhibits demonstrated the latest in tooth powders, disinfectants, and tuberculosis prevention, none of which interested them. At the atom-smashing cyclotron, Polly pulled a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from her satchel and began taking copious notes.

  “That’s what Babs’s sister Terry does,” Franny said.

  “Smashes atoms?”

  “More or less. She’s a nuclear chemist—think Madame Curie. Radium, radiation, energy from atoms, that sort of thing.”

  “Those pesky glowing rocks,” Emily said wryly.

  “Indeed.”

  Haskel whistled. “And Babs does that high-level math? Wonder what it was like, growing up with those two?”

  “Challenging, I’d imagine,” Franny replied.

  The adjoining building, the Palace of Electricity, was much more entertaining. They stood in a huge crowd to listen to Pedro the Vodor, a machine that could “talk” when its pert young operator pressed a sequence of keys and pedals.

  “Patience is nec-ess-ary,” it said in a modulated monotone. “So is ex-peer-ee-ence.”

  Further on, Polly sputtered at the marquee of the General Electric pavilion—HOUSE OF MAGIC. “It’s science, not bloody magic.”

  “Maybe they thought it would sound—friendlier—to Mr. and Mrs. America,” Emily said. “Your average Joe doesn’t understand science. Makes him feel stupid.”

  “Bollocks,” Polly said with a snort. “Science is how we understand the world. It doesn’t need to be difficult. Making it mystical and hocus-pocus just muddies the waters.”

  “Franny. You must invite her to your next dinner party,” Haskel said.

  They gave short shrift to the newest marvels in vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, typewriters, and mimeographs but gaped when they saw Westinghouse’s seven-foot robot—Willie Vocalite. He moved, nodded his head, and smoked cigarettes. None of them was sure how that would be useful.

  “Have you done covers for any science-fiction titles?” Emily asked Haskel.

  “No. I tried, but I can’t draw ray guns or rockets to save my skin. They all looked like they were made from kitchen appliances. Not very thrilling.”

  The group parted ways at the exit. “It’s almost one now,” Franny said. “Meet us in the Gayway at Threlkeld’s?”

  “Scones,” Polly said with a dreamy smile. She pronounced the word as if it rhymed with bronze.

  “A crumbly English biscuit,” Franny explained. “I promised her a little taste of home. Two weeks of travel forced her to consume all manner of barbaric American food.” She winked at Polly.

  “I did take a fancy to your tomato pie.”

  “Lupo’s,” Emily and Haskel said together. Then, “Jinx,” in one voice. Haskel wanted to kiss her, right there in front of everyone, but—

  “And with that, we’re off to view the arts,” she said instead. “See you at five.”

  “Give my best to Diego,” Franny called after them.

  “Will do.” Haskel waved over her shoulder as she and Emily walked toward the Tower of the Sun. The whole fair was on a grand scale, an imaginary ancient civilization, a Biblical epic come to life: the Court of Reflections, the Arch of Triumph, the Court of Flowers.

  The fine arts building was round-roofed and low-slung. They paid the twenty-five-cent admission and found the cavernous space marked ART IN ACTION. The floor was divided by partitions and low walls into a series of ateliers—lithographers, weavers, ceramicists. At each tiny studio, people gaped at real artists at work.

  “Beats staring at old masters,” Emily said as a muscular man pulled a print off a flat, inked stone. “It’s like watching you paint.”

  “You owe me a few quarters, then.” She pointed to the far wall, where scaffolding extended from floor to ceiling, partially concealing a vast mural in bright, intense colors. “We’re headed over there.”

  “Wait. You mean to tell me that the Diego you’re going to say ‘hi’ to is Diego Rivera?” Emily’s mouth dropped open. “He’s famous. He was in LIFE magazine. You know him?”

  “He was painting the mural at the Art Institute when I was a student. He’d invite a few of us over to his place, after classes. That opened the door to another world for me. Art and culture, a way of life I’d never imagined—with a side of debauchery.” She gave a rueful smile.

  The upper portions of the wall were finished, bright with colors, alive with figures that wove around each other like a tapestry. The bottom three feet had penciled shapes incised into still-white plaster. Haskel pointed to a rotund giant with unruly black hair, standing on a platform halfway up. He wore paint-spattered dungarees and a chambray work shirt, the sleeves rolled up over dark arms.

  “Diego!” Haskel called.

  Heads turned to see who was so casual with the master. But the man continued painting with small, precise strokes of blue. When he finished, he set the brush down, wiped his hands, and finally turned.

  Haskel held up a hand. “Diego!”

  He spotted her and smiled. “Lorita! Uno momento.” He gestured to an assistant, pointed to the area he’d painted, and tapped on the man’s watch. The man nodded twice, and Diego Rivera, rather nimbly for a man of his bulk, climbed down one of the ladders that descended to the floor.

  “Lorita.” He took both her hands in his own. He was only a bit taller than Haskel, but would have made two of her in girth. “What a nice surprise.” He kissed her once on each cheek. “And you have brought me another beauty?” he said. His protruding eyes twinkled behind round gold-framed glasses, like an avuncular bullfrog.

  “Diego River
a, my friend Emily Netterfield.”

  He bowed and kissed Emily’s hand. “Lorita still has a fine eye for women, I see. You are also a painter?”

  “No, I sing.”

  “In the city? Where? I will come and bring my friends and they will buy many drinks.”

  “You probably don’t know it—Mona’s Club 440?”

  “Mona’s! Of course. I have not been there myself, but others speak of it. When my—” he paused, “—my Frida, when she arrives next month, I will take her. She can wear her suit, and that she will enjoy.”

  “How is she?” Haskel asked.

  “Not well,” he said with a frown. “She is never well, but this year—madre de dios! Her kidneys, her spine again. She takes many drugs and drinks too much. I worry, but—” He held up his hands. “I divorced her last year. Did you know?”

  “No. What—?” Haskel stopped herself. With the two of them, it could be anything: his mistresses, her affairs—with men and women—his temper, her outbursts.

  “It was a mistake,” he said sadly. “She is lost without me. When she is here, we will reconcile, I think.” He mopped his brow with a crumpled handkerchief. “But what of you, Lorita? You are still with—?”

  “Len? Only legally.”

  “Ah. But you are happy? You are working?”

  “Both.” She lit a cigarette, offered him one. He accepted and indicated that they should step away from the open cans of varnish and turpentine.

  “Still painting for those horrid stories?” When she nodded, he shook his head. “Such talent, this one. Does she make art? No. She entertains teenage boys with their hands down their trousers.”

  “It’s a living, Diego.”

  “So is this.” He swept his arm around to the mural. It was more than twenty feet tall and ran the full width of the building, at least seventy-five feet. “Unión de la Expresión Artistica del Norte y Sur de este Continente. The critics call it ‘Pan American Unity.’ Que chingados?” He looked around, found an empty tin, and dropped his cigarette into it with a quick hiss. “At least this one, they let me finish it, eh? Not like that pinche idiota, Rockefeller. Cabrón.”