by Graham Rawle
“Yes. Mr Green come with me in car. Send for other things later.”
“What will happen to the house?”
“My brother-in-law, he take care of it. Lawyers sort everything.”
For a moment, Kay was thinking about her own possessions. For now, she would make do with the few things she’d packed in her blue suitcase; she’d have to sneak back to the house when things had died down.
“This secret place where you are going?” said Mrs Ishi. “You will be safe there?”
“Yes. Queenie will know where to find me.”
“OK.” Mrs Ishi seemed satisfied. “I told Queenie she can stay here till she finds new home.”
“That’s kind of you, Mrs Ishi.” Kay bit her lip. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
Mrs Ishi nodded.
It was time to go. Mrs Ishi looked away, ushering Kay out onto the street. She tried to make light of their farewell, but as Kay headed down the path to the sidewalk, she glanced back and saw Mrs Ishi still standing there on the doorstep, looking sad, lost and alone.
TWENTY-SIX
QUEENIE STOOD NERVOUSLY to attention outside the Landmark movie theater. People passed by: shoppers darting in and out of traffic, workers returning from lunch. Nobody paid her any notice.
Behind her, a poster promoting a Universal Pictures flick, Back Street, featured an impassioned Charles Boyer nuzzling up to Margaret Sullavan’s ear. Though yielding to his affections, the faraway look in Sullavan’s eyes suggested she was troubled by deep inner turmoil.
A recent telephone conversation played in Queenie’s head.
Dr Young? I’ve got the money. Fifty dollars like you said.
Oh, yes. Eleven weeks wasn’t it?
And a bit.
Be outside the Landmark theater at two o’clock tomorrow with the money. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going.
OK. Two o’clock.
I’ll be in a black Studebaker Champion.
Queenie glanced up at the clock outside Jay’s Jewelry. Ten after two. She checked each passing car until finally a scruffy black Studebaker swung into the curb. She approached the open passenger window, her hand on the door handle.
“Are you Dr Young?”
“Get in the back.”
She did so, and he drove off before she barely had the door shut.
“Have you got the money?”
“Yes.”
Dr Young took a faded blue and white floral bandana folded into a blindfold and passed it back to her.
“Here. Cover your eyes with this. And sit in the middle of the seat.”
Queenie complied, sliding over so that her feet were either side of the central column of the car’s drive shaft. There was a slight gap under the blindfold; she could see her own hands resting nervously on her knees.
The car drove round for a while, seemingly making a series of unnecessary turns and doubling back on itself. Queenie tilted her head to increase her field of vision until she could see the back of the driver’s head. He wore a gray fedora and he could have used a haircut; thick black hairs sprouted from his neck like iron filings. There was an angry pink pimple just above the collar of his shirt, its pale green pus-filled center just waiting to pop. She nudged the blindfold a little higher with her knuckle hoping to see where she was, but instead caught sight of the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, staring back at her sternly. She quickly lowered her head again.
“My name’s Queenie.”
“I didn’t ask, did I?”
Queenie would have snapped right back at him with something smart, but she was feeling jumpy and a little off her game so she buttoned it.
The Studebaker turned off the road and pulled up. Dr Young got out and walked around the car to speak to her through the open window.
“You can take that off now. Get inside, quick.”
She removed the blindfold, blinking at the light, then opened the car door and slid out. They were parked by the side of an anonymous-looking house. It was modest in size with putty-colored siding in need of a lick of paint. The doctor ushered her quickly forward, looking about nervously. She climbed two steps up to a buckled screen door with a ragged tear in the mesh.
Beyond it was a small steamy kitchen with something cooking on the stove. A woman in her sixties stood over a black pot-bellied saucepan prodding the contents with a short, pointed knife. She looked up as Queenie entered, and dragged the lid on the pot with a clatter as if to keep whatever was in there private. She wiped her hands on her pinafore apron.
“Where’s the money?” She was giving Queenie the up and down, but her question was aimed at the doctor, who had followed Queenie inside and was shutting the door behind them.
“She’s got it.”
There was a moment before Queenie recognized her prompt. She nervously took the money from her purse and handed it over to the woman, who unfolded the bills and counted them quickly before stuffing them into a coffee can on the shelf above the stove.
Dr Young and the woman headed off into the hallway, telling Queenie to wait.
She stood, nervously taking in her surroundings. There was a wooden table covered in patterned oilcloth, held in place by thumbtacks along its edges. Its surface was laden with pots and pans. A mop and dull gray galvanized steel pail stood in the corner; a damp cloth had been draped over the end of the mop handle to dry. Looking round, Queenie made a mental note of each item as though she had been asked to take an inventory: a blackened kettle sitting on a footstool; two empty milk bottles; a grubby towel hanging from a rail on the back of the door; a calendar featuring the famous Dionne quintuplets, who were pictured standing in a field of daisies, wearing long Bo-Peep-style dresses and matching bonnets in a range of pastel colors. Below it, hanging from a fixture on the wall, was a mangled assortment of well-worn kitchen utensils.
Dr Young appeared in the doorway before she could take note of them all.
“This way,” he said.
MEANWHILE Lilium philadelphicum, or something resembling it, was among the blooms attached to a series of nets that had been bundled to form vibrant flower beds in the town square. The profusion of roses, hibiscus, chrysanthemums and begonias, all fashioned from waxed paper and plastic, provided a visual stimulus so strong that when the Residents were around to notice them they frequently commented on their pleasant fragrance. When told that the flowers were not real and therefore had no scent, passers-by had assumed that perfume had been added artificially or was somehow inherent in the plastic or paint. It wasn’t, but memory and imagination were sufficiently powerful to trigger a floral fragrance as distinct and as genuine as any they had ever experienced.
As the wind picked up, some of the flimsier paper petals became detached and were carried like confetti along the gutters of Hope Street.
Queenie followed him back down the hallway to another room.
He opened the door and snapped on the light. The curtains were drawn and the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling picked out the gloomy contents of the small room. Against one wall there was a large office desk with its drawers missing. A large sheet of waxed paper covered its top. Next to the desk was a table with a pitcher of water, a bowl and some paper cups. The woman entered and dumped a shallow stack of folded hand towels on the table next to the pitcher. Dr Young got down to business.
“Take your panties off and lie down on the desk with your legs apart.”
Startled by the bluntness of his request, Queenie hesitated. The woman saw that Queenie had failed to respond.
“It can’t be the first time a man’s asked you to do that.”
Dr Young chided her. “Ma!”
“Well, she wouldn’t be here if she’d learned to keep her knees together.”
“I’ll deal with this. You get back to the kitchen.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going. Got better things to do.”
Dr Young took off his coat and began to roll up his shirtsleeves.
Queenie was feeling apprehensive. “Are you a rea
l doctor?”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t you have a proper doctor’s office?”
“I do, but I can’t take you there, can I? Don’t worry, it’ll all be over in a few minutes.”
She quickly removed her underpants and stuffed them in her tartan purse on the side table.
“Will you give me something? To put me to sleep?”
“No need.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Now, I just need to explain a few things. Afterwards, you’ll bleed quite a bit. That’s normal. And you’ll feel some discomfort, naturally.” He handed her a small bottle of Aspro. “Take two of these if the cramps get too bad. Do you have the number to call me?”
“Yes.”
“You have it with you?”
“Yes.”
“Let me just check that.”
She handed him the card on which she originally noted down Dr Young’s number.
“Ah, yes. This number doesn’t work any more. Let me give you my new number.”
He took a letter from his pants pocket, tore off the triangular envelope flap and wrote something on it. He folded it in half, and then in half again. He opened her handbag and slipped the tiny triangle into her coin purse, then snapped it shut. The sight of the doctor’s hands rummaging uninvited in her purse painted a disconcerting picture of what was to come.
“Keep it safe. Don’t call unless it’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency? I’ll be all right, won’t I?”
“Fainting, fits, that sort of thing. They’re quite rare.”
“How will I know if everything’s all right? Afterwards?”
“Be at the Black Cat Cafe tomorrow. She’ll stop by to check you’re OK.” With a gesture of his head, he indicated “she” to be “Ma” in the next room.
“The Black Cat?”
“It’s right across the street from the Landmark theater where I picked you up.”
“What time?”
“Four o’clock.”
Queenie nodded. She took in a deep breath, letting it out in a long anxious sigh.
Ten minutes into the procedure, Dr Young was getting agitated, working some instrument deep inside her while trying to hold her still by pressing hard on her stomach. Queenie was begging him to stop. When he didn’t, she tried to pull away, to draw her knees together, but his elbows were forcing them apart.
“Quit moving. I can’t do what I need to do with you jumping around.”
The pain was like nothing she’d ever felt before: an excruciating, searing pain, intense and tight—a pinching, acid-burning, needle-scraping sting way up in the sharpest, uppermost register. Somewhere lower down, a darker, heavier aching, like a lead weight on a jagged hook dragging out her innards. Something warm and sticky was pooling on the wax paper under her. It threw her in a panic. She screamed.
“Hey! Hey! Pipe down,” Dr Young hissed.
Ma ran in the room in a flap. “What the devil are you doing to her? Do you want the neighbors round here?” She glanced between Queenie’s legs. “What happened?”
Dr Young was clearly distressed. “I don’t know. Something’s gone wrong. She wouldn’t keep still.”
Queenie tried to sit up on her elbows. She caught sight of the doctor’s gory hands and a rusty smear up one of his forearms before Ma pushed her firmly back down.
“Just lie still and let the doctor do what he’s gotta do.”
She couldn’t. “Stop. Please stop. Ow! Stop! Stop!”
Ma was getting panicky. “You’ll have to give her ether.”
“She’ll be here for hours if we do. I want her gone from here.”
“We’ve got to shut her up. Someone will send for the cops.”
It troubled Queenie that they were talking about her like she wasn’t there. She screamed again to prove that she was.
Ma had had enough. She turned to her son. “We have no choice.”
She grabbed a medicine bottle of clear liquid from a cake tray, unscrewed the top and spilled a big swig onto a hand towel. Queenie recoiled as the pungent odor caught her. She barely had time to react before Ma clamped the towel to her nose and mouth, turning her own face away from the suffocating fumes. Anxiety rising, Queenie was trying desperately to struggle free, to wrench the cloth from her face, but Dr Young stepped in to secure her flailing wrists while Ma overpowered her.
Queenie widened her eyes, fighting to remain conscious, but it was futile; she felt herself plummeting as the acrid-sweet vapor sent her into oblivion.
TWENTY-SEVEN
GEORGE STOOD WITH his fists in his pockets, staring hopefully into the middle of the lake. The daylight fell through evening into night, the passing hours seeming like brief seconds, and George was still waiting.
He couldn’t get used to the fact that there was no one else around. Even the stragglers had left; he was totally alone. Without its Residents, the days passed without incident. Overland felt strangely empty and depressed—not the place he had designed at all. He had not realized what an essential role they played.
The next morning, he was across the street from the Orpheum movie theater, trying to summon the courage to enter. The Orpheum was the one building that until now he had avoided, knowing it to hold, amongst the assorted props and costumes, the disquieting little portal to the “other” world; a place to which he had become increasingly reluctant to return. Though he was filled with an uneasy dread about embarking on the journey, he feared that if he did not, he would never find Kay.
Inside, he discovered that the trapdoor had been shut tight, presumably bolted from the other side. Looking around the room, he spotted a garden spade—the perfect prop for his needs. He stomped on the shoulder of the blade to wedge its cutting edge into the crack between the trapdoor and the frame, enabling him to lever the hatch free.
It opened with a splintering crack.
With the door now fully folded back, he leaned cautiously over, peering down through the gaping rectangular hole.
Beyond the short ladder, the staircase seemed to extend for a mile underground. Its perspective fell away into the cavernous world below, dimly lit and unforgiving. Noise of industrial commotion rose up: clattering hammers, whining drills and splattering rivet guns against the constant drone of machinery and the furious hiss of compressed air. The occasional flash from a welding torch or a spray of sparks from an angle grinder briefly cast an eerie blue glow onto the space below before it fell back into blackness. To George, it was like looking into the pit of hell.
Down below, the morning shift was in full swing: everywhere brisk efficiency and maximum effort. A pair of metalworkers slid a wobbly sheet of aluminum onto a pattern-cutting bed. A forklift carrying metal parts passed by. Busy workers swarmed round a half-constructed fuselage like insects feeding on an animal carcass. No one noticed George’s hesitant climb down the iron staircase to the factory floor.
He found the brutal cacophony of industry unnerving. He looked up at the massive machines, awed by the sheer scale of production. Some were as big as two-story houses, with complex mechanisms and indeterminable functions. Navigating a tentative path around the activity, he ventured into the depths of the factory.
A line of women in bib overalls and protective eyewear worked with single-minded focus at bench lathes, milling and drilling precision parts, their machines dribbling milky white lubricant. Behind them, intricately tooled metal shapes passed by on their conveyor-belt journey to some other part of the factory. One of the women glanced up from her work to take in the stranger, but her concentration remained unbroken. George scrutinized the goggled faces of her co-workers, in the hope of spotting Kay, but she did not appear to be among them.
Further on, George came upon a woman setting flat panel sections under a bench press. She had to position them just right before a huge weight clamped down on them, instantly shaping the two-dimensional sheet into a three-dimensional form. George edged over to her.
He raised his voice
above the hissing and whirring. “Hello.”
The woman looked up briefly—a little smile. “Hello.”
“I’m looking for Kay.”
She shrugged, uninterested.
“She works here with another girl, Queenie.”
The woman shook her head. “Sorry.”
A little further on, he approached an older woman.
“Do you know a girl called Kay? She works here in the factory.”
She too shook her head, indicating not so much that she didn’t know her, but that he was asking a futile question. “Which department is she in?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Gee, mister. There’s twenty-five thousand people work here and a third of them are women. She could be anywhere in the factory.”
“She must work round here someplace. She’s petite. Dark hair. Pretty. As a matter of fact she looks kind of Japanese.”
“Well if she’s Japanese, or even looks Japanese, she’s history.”
“History?”
“They came and took all the Japs away.”
“Who did?”
“The army. I saw a load of them being rounded last week. Sent to prison camps.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Most of them go to what they call assembly centers first. Probably the one in Pomona; they set up a camp there in what used to be the county fairground. Unless she’s a ‘disloyal,’ then she might have gone straight to one of the big concentration camps, like Manzanar—that’s two hundred miles north of here.”
A steamer trunk, three suitcases and a birdcage were lined up neatly by the door in Mrs Ishi’s hallway. The caged Mr Green edged nervously along his perch. He paused, craning his neck as if trying to identify some distant sound. Mrs Ishi sat on the hall chair beside him. She was wearing a dark two-piece suit with a white lace-edged collar and she had curled her hair in a kind of roll that framed her face. She straightened her necklace and then began fussing with her handkerchief, transferring it first from her sleeve to her purse; and then from one part of her purse to another. Satisfied, she checked her watch against the hall clock.