Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Sit,” he said, guiding me with both hands on my hips, to a wooden piling sticking up as high as a chair.

  He sat next to me, and pointed in the direction we came in. “Now look.”

  His arm around me, we looked back where we had begun. It was a city of fire, a city of lights that danced across the velvet sky, with atop the tall tower the sign, “Dreamland,” blinking. A truly astonishing sight. It wasn’t just the sign. Thousands of electric lights shimmered atop castles and towers and more modern peaks.

  “What are you thinking, Peggy?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered. “Like something from another planet.”

  “It’s future,” he said, his arm tightening around me. “Everything I seek. No more thoughts of past.”

  I peered at his profile and sensed the sadness returning. “You don’t like the past,” I said softly.

  He didn’t answer for a long time. Stefan gestured at the dark ocean and said, “I never was near sea growing up, but twice to see grandmother. My father took me when I was child. She lived in village on coast of Dalmatia. The second time we went it was day of sacred holiday. Everyone in village puts on clothes of long ago, walks on path on the sea, but most important, carries weapons used to fight Turks in front of them as they walk. It’s – how you say – procession. Every year on that day.”

  Thanks to my indifferent grades in history and geography, I wasn’t sure where Dalmatia was in Europe, and I knew little about the Turks except they weren’t supposed to be at all nice. Some response to this seemed necessary, so I offered, “They have a deep respect for the past.”

  “Respect?” he said, with a ferocity I’d not heard in him. “Yes – they respect!” His laugh was bitter.

  I had a sense that I was sitting very close to someone I didn’t understand whatsoever. But before my feelings for Stefan had a chance to chill, he cupped my face in his hands. “You Americans don’t know of such things,” he said, and kissed my forehead with exquisite gentleness. Time on the beach came to a lurching stop. I wanted more than anything else for Stefan to kiss me on the lips. For a few delicious seconds, it seemed he would, but instead he pulled away and helped me to my feet.

  We walked for a while, the crowd thinning, but I couldn’t see too far ahead on the promenade because of a large group of young women directly in front of us. That is why I didn’t see the man in the Pinkerton’s uniform until we were almost upon him.

  “It’s guests of the hotels only, after this point,” he said sternly. We were a couple that didn’t necessarily look like we belonged at the Oriental.

  “I am a guest,” I said.

  “And you?” said the Pinkerton guard to Stefan.

  “Her escort,” he said, and with that voice he seemed to arouse suspicion. The guard stared at him, and Stefan glared back.

  After a few seconds of this, the Pinkerton guard said, “I’ll need your names, and then it will have to be confirmed that you are hotel guests before you can proceed.”

  Stefan dropped my hand; I could feel his mounting anger. But to me, there seemed no other option but to tell the truth.

  I said, “I am a guest at the Oriental Hotel, my name is Peggy Batternberg, and my party includes Mr. David Batternberg, Mrs. Jonathan Batternberg, and others. This man” – I realized with a start I had no idea of his last name – “is my friend, seeing me safely to the door of the hotel.” I paused a few seconds and said, “I wouldn’t want to have to complain to the owner, Mr. Frank Lancet, that we were treated with any lack of respect.”

  The Pinkerton guard stepped aside and conferred with another, who’d hurried over when he saw a confrontation brewing. The minutes ticked by, during which Stefan said nothing but stared off toward the ocean, tense. I was filled with nervousness myself, certain that now he knew my last name, Stefan would feel deceived.

  The guard returned and said, “Very well, Miss Batternberg. We will send word to the hotel that you and your escort are on your way.”

  We were waved through, but I waited, in dread, for a reaction. When it came, Stefan said only, “You handled him well. American women so bold.”

  Was it possible that Stefan had never heard the name Batternberg – or Vanderbilt or Rockefeller or Astor? What a sublime feeling it was, to not be judged because of my name. It was very freeing. But I couldn’t fully enjoy it, for Stefan still seemed angry.

  “You didn’t care for that Pinkerton guard,” I said.

  “He is police, and no, I am not fond police, with good reason.” He took my hand again. “I will put aside for you.”

  We passed the Brighton Beach Hotel and kept walking as I mulled over the contradictions of this talented, sensitive man. But I had a more immediate problem. We approached the Manhattan Beach Hotel in all its massive grandeur – and the Oriental was more elegant still. How would I explain that Peggy the shop girl was staying there?

  Desperate to delay this moment, I tugged on Stefan’s hand. “Come, let’s find a spot to look at Dreamland one more time,” I said. He smiled in agreement.

  After we passed a line of bathing pavilions and the Manhattan Hotel itself, there was a stretch of open beach and another of those long snaking pilings. We hopped off the boardwalk and once again found a place to sit near the water.

  “It’s a little smaller in size now, but not faint at all,” I said. This time, I was the one who pointed to Dreamland, shimmering in the distance.

  Tentatively, hopefully, I lay my head on his shoulder.

  I wanted Stefan to kiss me, and when he did, his lips searching for mine, I felt as if my heart were hammering so loudly he’d have to hear it, have to know it. I had never been kissed like this. His fingers were caressing the side of my face, running through my hair, and I was holding him tightly, certain that in our fumbling, ecstatic excitement, we were in danger of collapsing into the sand.

  Suddenly his arms dropped; he rose and took a few steps back toward the boardwalk.

  “What is it?” I asked, starting to follow.

  “A man – watching,” Stefan said. “He may have been following us.”

  I turned to see what Stefan saw, but I couldn’t make out any man at all. I did see a couple walking past us, higher up the beach. Coming from the boardwalk, I heard the sounds of a group of people talking, of laughter.

  “He is gone,” Stefan said, peering across the sand. “But for moment, he was there.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “It’s my fault,” said Stefan, shaking his head as he turned back to me.

  “What is?”

  “To behave so in public place—” He reached out and took both my hands in his and swung them back and forth. “You are too beautiful.” He pulled me toward him, but his kiss was for my cheek, and I knew that our dizzying embrace was over for the night.

  I said, “Well, thank you, but … I’m not beautiful.”

  Stefan laughed. “Again, you degrade! I sit near booth, nothing. No one stops for hours. And then – I cannot believe, but an angel appears, you, a gorgeous angel, so young but understands everything.”

  He put his arm around my waist and guided me up the beach as I tried, and failed, to think of something to say in response. We reached the top of the wood pilings, and he looked around one more time and, following his lead, I did too, but I didn’t see any man spying on us. There were people about, not a great many, but some, for it wasn’t all that late. No one seemed focused on Stefan and me, and I said as much to him.

  “I thought I saw someone before, too,” Stefan said. “But yes, gone now.”

  We found the steps that led to the boardwalk, a few grains of sand in my shoes. The irritation was the least of my problems. I felt a sickening dread, for there, rising on our left, was the colossal Oriental Hotel. The first two establishments had been set back farther from the pathway; of the trio, the Oriental stood nearest to the ocean. It seemed as if every light was on inside the hotel, and at least fifty glowing lamp posts surrounded it. There was some sort of musical per
formance inside; the sound of violins rolled across the dark, fragrant lawn. With the music, the lights, the exotic Moorish spires up top, the sheer size, it looked like a magical palace. This was where Shahrazad spun her tales for the King; or where Henry VIII wooed Anne Boleyn.

  Stefan had accepted without question my explanation of staying with my family at a hotel in Brooklyn. I had no idea what he was expecting – some clapboard three-story house with a “Rooms for Rent” sign in the window? – but it couldn’t be this. I had taken such joy in being nothing but a shop girl for a few hours, of escaping from my life as “the black sheep of the black sheep,” as Ben so memorably put it. A heavy burden had floated off my shoulders. I hadn’t looked ahead even a couple of hours, and now there could be a price to pay.

  I snuck a sideways glance at Stefan. I drank in his high cheekbones, the tousle of hair hanging over his forehead. He smiled and squeezed my hand.

  “You must tell me where you stay,” he said. “Are we close?”

  Wildly, I thought of picking a different building and pretending to go inside, but of course that wouldn’t work.

  I stopped walking and pointed up the lawn at the Oriental Hotel. “That’s the place.”

  Stefan glanced up, and started laughing, appreciatively, at my joke. I felt sick to my stomach as his laughter died down and he looked at me, sharply, and then the hotel.

  “You not worker at hotel?” he asked.

  “No, I’m staying there with my family.”

  He paused, and said, “What was name you gave that police?”

  “Batternberg.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been working at the bookstore for five months, but not for the salary. I didn’t have a salary. My family didn’t even want me to take a job at all. It wasn’t… necessary.”

  He was silent for what seemed like a good minute. I felt him withdrawing from me, as he stood tall on the boardwalk, no doubt thinking over our conversation throughout the purchase of the art and our dinner and our walking through Coney Island, all my evasions, the things I should have known how to do and didn’t. At last he said, “Your family, what they do to make living – not my business, Peggy.”

  My God, I should have left it at that. But to rectify my earlier dishonesty with complete openness, I stammered, “I want you to know, Stefan, because meeting you – our dinner – everything, it’s meant a great deal to me. My family, we, I, we… I don’t get on well with them. I’m here in Brooklyn because they pretty much forced me to. Not forced, but they said they had to have me with them.” The words were tumbling out in a pathetic rush. “I don’t want to say why – it’s too complicated. But here I am, all summer.”

  He shook his head, mystified. “All summer here?” he repeated.

  “My father’s family, the Batternbergs, we’re in mining.”

  “In mining?” he repeated my phrase again.

  If only this were just a matter of the language. My mouth dry, I said, “We own mines.”

  Stefan took a step back, then another. He said something, but it was not in English, nor Italian, but in a tongue of short, muffled vowels and consonants as sharp as knives. After a few sentences he returned to English. “There is name for this,” he said. “There is name. You are slumming with me, yes?”

  “No,” I said, horrified, coming toward him, my hands outstretched. “That’s not the case. Not at all. Not in the least.”

  He continued to retreat. It was night, but by the light of the lamps that surrounded the Oriental, I could see his eyes glittering strangely.

  “Let me explain,” I said, while realizing it was futile, for hadn’t I just tried to explain? I kept making things worse.

  He took a deep breath and said, “Peggy, I will say goodbye here, not take you inside. I think that best for you. I wish to say, thank you for pleasant evening. Good night.”

  With that, he turned and began walking, quickly, back toward Coney Island.

  “Stefan?” I called out.

  He did not turn around or stop.

  “Stefan!” It flew out, a loud, desperate cry. And still his pace did not falter. I was vaguely aware of a group of people standing between us, and that my shouting of his name had made their own conversation cease. I twirled around, my face hot, and hurried to find the pathway leading to the hotel entrance. Once I found it I stood there, the violin music in front of me and the soft lapping of water behind me, stunned. I had gambled that, in the end, being completely honest with Stefan was the best course to take, and I lost.

  I muttered, “Oh, pull yourself together, Peggy.” In a little while, I told myself, I wouldn’t think about Stefan any longer. After all, I didn’t even know his last name.

  Still holding the stringed package of his paintings, I moved through the lobby, past a few dozen couples dancing in a small ballroom to an orchestra. The men all wore dark suits and the women long, flowing dresses, jewels sparkling at their bosoms and feathers in their hair – yes, feathers. The heels of the men’s shoes clicked on the polished floor, and I thought about Stefan, and how it felt to waltz on that wooden platform, his fingers on the small of my back, guiding me with his own form of gallantry. Something inside me stirred, a sense of genuine grief, and I feared that what happened today was not something I’d forget about in a short while.

  Up on my floor, walking the silent, carpeted passageway, I braced myself for the confrontations with family, the demands to know where I’d been and how I could be so selfish and oblivious. I was in no mood for this. I certainly wouldn’t seek anyone out on the way to my room, but if they came to me, wagging their fingers, I’d react in a way not soon forgotten.

  I set down Stefan’s paintings next to the dresser; I’ d look at them tomorrow. Just now it felt like too much to cope with. Alice had thoughtfully left me a pitcher of cool water on the table. I poured a glass and gulped it quickly. I hadn’t had anything to drink since the beer with dinner; I could almost taste the salt in the air during our long walk. I poured another glass and glanced at the clock. It was ten thirty. How incredible that so much had happened to me in just a few hours.

  A gentle thump on the door made me slam the glass down on the maple-wood table. Whoever this was, he or she would be sorry.

  When I opened the door, though, it was to the last person I expected: Helen, my Uncle David’s wife.

  “So you came back alone,” she said.

  I reluctantly gestured for her to come in and then answered, “Yes. Yes, I did. And what does everyone else say about that?”

  “Nothing,” she said mildly. “How could they? Absolutely no one else is here in the hotel – just myself.”

  “They didn’t send you down to question me?”

  “No.” Aunt Helen took the chair by the open window, smoothing her brown hair gathered up in a tight bun. Evidently, she was in the mood to have a talk.

  “Where’s Uncle David?” I asked.

  “Oh, he left at eight o’clock, to find all of you in Coney Island. He was concerned.”

  I poured my aunt a glass of water. “About what?”

  “Not what, who. The same person he is always most concerned about – and who I think concerns you too, Peggy. It’s Ben.” She drank her water delicately.

  Aunt Helen was a second wife, coming from a family that, though of course respectable, was not anywhere as wealthy as the Batternbergs or as grand as my mother’s clan. Helen hadn’t given birth to any children, and her three stepchildren were not easy people. My uncle himself had his difficult moments, and there were those whispers I’d heard when I was a little girl about the unpleasant scandal Uncle David caused once upon a time. It probably didn’t matter, since it was long ago. Helen always spoke and behaved with a smiling blandness, so as not to risk giving anyone even a second of offense. I had thought of her as deeply boring. And yet now she seemed willing to dive into a discussion of the most dangerous Batternberg of all.

  Curious about where this would lead, I said, “I had a bit of a falling out with Ben tonight; that’s why I
parted ways from him and Paul and Lawrence and saw Coney Island on my own.”

  She studied me for a minute. “Hmmmm. You look different to me.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re rarely in a good mood, Peggy. I’m not saying that, all things considered, I blame you for being of a sullen disposition, and I hope you don’t mind my being so forthright?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” I said, dryly.

  “But you’re quite altered tonight, and it’s not just that your hair is everywhere. The look in your eye, your entire expression.”

  Was this change in me due to meeting Stefan? I wondered. But I didn’t want to tell my aunt about him. Stefan was a precious secret to me.

  “Why is Uncle David so concerned about Ben?” I asked. “He’s a grown man. Twenty-five years old.”

  “Oh, come now, Peggy. He’s worried about what Ben is doing, what he’s planning next. He is the one who knows what Ben is really capable of – though I have always suspected that if there were anyone else besides David and myself who knew something about that, it’d be you.”

  I looked away. This was no longer diverting – Aunt Helen was entering tricky territory.

  I said, “Whatever Ben’s character flaws, Coney Island is vast, I don’t know how Uncle David expects to find them. But I’m sure they’ll all return in one piece.”

  She nodded as if my deflecting her were no different than what she’d expected. “You know that tomorrow we’re planning a croquet game first thing in the morning?” she said. “Then there will be a picnic and other family activities before the Independence Day fireworks.”

  “Good God, how tedious.”

  “If you’re as worried about Ben pulling Lawrence into his camp as I believe you are, I suggest you be part of things tomorrow,” she said.

  Now I was impressed.

  I didn’t want to confide in my aunt by marriage – God, look how being forthright had mucked everything up just now on the boardwalk – but I was heartened to find this ally in the family. We were, in different ways, outsiders.