The Kingdom of Ohio

by Matthew Flaming

  He met Morgan’s gaze. “I hear,” he said, struggling to modulate his unheard voice, “that down at Tammany Hall there’s talk of building a new underground railroad.”

  For a moment the financier’s eyes widened and it seemed as if he was going to ask something further—but then stopped himself, glancing around as if the thick folds of the velvet curtains over the window, or one of the tall gilt cabinets, might contain some hidden threat. Through the doorway, the tinkle of glasses and the sound of laughter.

  “I do not wish to discuss such things now, Mr. Edison,” Morgan said. “But come by my offices, someday. I would enjoy the opportunity to speak with you further, at your earliest possible convenience.”

  The inventor realized that he was being dismissed and stood. “Certainly. Mr. Morgan, Mrs. Morgan.” He turned away, followed by his secretary and the reporter, wondering if Morgan actually believed what he’d said—whether he believed it himself, for that matter. Probably not, he decided. Just a bit of fun, a kind of parlor game. Still, thinking of the intensity that had appeared on the financier’s face, Edison couldn’t help feeling a thrill of unsettled excitement as he made his way across the living room toward the buffet.

  NOW, four years later, Edison recalls that conversation as he enters the financier’s office and seats himself before the expanse of Morgan’s desk. Briefly he pictures those moments, and the countless conversations he has had with the financier and his associates since then, like a current passing through a maze of electrical circuits. Each word a tiny fluctuation in amperage, individually insignificant but together causing unpredictable cascading voltage effects, aberrations in the behavior of the machine—

  Effects that, Edison still suspects, may be an exercise in craziness. The planning of the subway tunnels as a point of safe anchorage, leading to a few known exits that can be monitored for any incursion. The endless scheming—all of it is speculative in a way that causes deep misgivings in Edison’s practical nature. He toys with a loose bit of thread trailing from the chair’s upholstery and tries to meet the financier’s gaze.

  “Well, Mr. Edison. I expect you have some news for me . . . ?”

  “Sir . . . ?” The inventor inserts his ear trumpet: he remembered to bring it this time, and with its help, and by leaning close to the financier, some semblance of conversation is possible. Still better, Edison realizes, might be a device like a telephone speaker, worn over the ears—but before he can pursue this thought further, Morgan is repeating himself more loudly.

  “—some news for me!”

  Edison pauses, licking his lips. Not for the first time, he considers telling the financier that this whole adventure is a fool’s errand. But that itself would be another kind of craziness, he reminds himself, not to mention bad business: upsetting a man who could ruin his career with an offhand remark. Besides which, since those magical years of the lightbulb and the phonograph—Edison thinks with a sense of uncharacteristic despair—none of his other projects have come to fruition. Alongside the failure of his experiments in mining, motion photography, and a dozen other directions, their lack of results on this effort is just one more dead end among many.

  He clears his throat. “Well, yes, though it’s far from conclusive—”

  “I understand.”

  “In fact, it’s hardly anything.” Seeing Morgan’s scowl, the inventor hurries ahead. “Only, there seems to be a woman the police arrested for attacking Tesla.” He smiles briefly at the thought. “Apparently she claims that she traveled through time.”

  “Is that all?” The financier leans back in his chair, swiveling away from Edison.

  “Well, yes. And that she claims to be a woman who died seven years ago.”

  “I see,” Morgan rumbles. “So it is not certain.”

  “No.” Edison shakes his head quickly. “Like I said, only a small thing. But enough that we should maybe . . .”

  “Be cautious, yes,” the financier finishes for him, leaving the words that both of them are thinking unspoken—that the time travelers may already be here. Anywhere. Given the benefit of perfect understanding, insinuated where they know with the certainty born of some future perspective, that they will not be found . . .

  Morgan closes his eyes, massaging his temples. “And the subway tunnels? Has there been anything . . . ?”

  “No, nothing in the tunnels. But”—the inventor brightens, seizing at one of the few meager shreds of evidence that he hasn’t been completely mistaken—“apparently she told the police a certain subway worker could vouch for her.”

  “And do you believe we should pursue this matter?” Morgan presses.

  “Oh, well . . .” Edison glances up at the walrus, common sense and self-preservation battling inside him. “I wouldn’t know. Could be just a madwoman. Probably nothing, come to think of it.”

  “Perhaps so.” Morgan rises. “Thank you for the news. I will make the necessary arrangements and keep you apprised of any further information.”

  “Sir . . . ?”

  “—of any further information!”

  Edison stands, allows his hand to be solidly squeezed, then released. “I will, of course.”

  “My secretary will show you out.” Morgan ushers the other man to the door. When Edison is gone, he turns back to the wide bank of windows overlooking the street.

  “Damn,” he swears softly to himself—

  And closes his eyes, thinking of what this latest news might mean. All his life, Morgan has understood the moral authority of wealth: the burden of responsibility for the public good that is conferred by his unique position. He has worked patiently to cultivate the garden of mankind’s peace and prosperity: fertilizing here, encouraging there, judicious with his pruning shears when the need arises. But ever since damned Edison raised the possibility of time travel, the specter has haunted his nightmares. The vision of a world turned upside down, the orderly march of history and progress scattered to the wind, undermining the roots of everything he has struggled to accomplish.

  More than once, he has tried to convince himself that these are needless fears, that the inventor’s theories are nothing more than idle speculation. But although he does not have much faith in the wild daydreams of scientists—having been unimpressed by phrenology, psychophysics, mediumship, and similar cutting-edge intellectual fads—he knows by a hollow feeling in the pit of his formidable stomach that, on this subject at least, damned Edison is right. It is a gamble against the future: not a question of when a device that travels through time will be invented, but of whether it will ever be invented at all. And if there is one thing Morgan has learned, it is to avoid betting against the future. Which is why, more and more often, he finds himself unable to sleep, kept awake by the image of time turning back on itself, the serpent swallowing its own tail, of everything he has worked for unraveled and undone before it even began . . .

  If there were someone else, Morgan thinks, who could take responsibility—but of course, there is no one. And so he has not spoken to anyone about his nightmares, and has endured the unprofitable conspiracy surrounding the subway-works, the maps and messages, the tedious evenings spent listening to Edison prattle about his latest bifurcated ratcheting steam-screwdriver . . .

  In his gut he feels a pang: the same cramp that periodically throughout his life has stricken him with such agony that he has been confined to his bed for weeks. Silently he curses his decision to drink a second cup of coffee at Delmonico’s last night and removes a silver pill jar from his pocket, swallowing two of the tablets that Dr. Tyng promised would help. He washes down the pills with a sip of brandy, seats himself once more at the desk, and begins to consider what must now be done.

  PETER IS RECLINING in the shabby apartment’s single armchair, an overstuffed secondhand monstrosity that leaks sawdust across the floor. Next to him, an iron stove glows faintly in the late-afternoon light, its many-elbowed chimney circumnavigating the two small rooms of the flat, providing heat. He is trying to read, a folde
d copy of the Sun on his lap—apart from walking through the city, this has become one of his great pleasures on his days off, studying the news for articles about faraway places. But today nothing in the paper holds his attention. He looks out the window, between the ragged edges of the burlap curtain.

  Overhead the pale sky is hinging toward the early darkness of winter, the light thick and silvered as if permeated with dust. And she is out there somewhere, he thinks, in the vastness of the world. He remembers how they sat across from each other in the German restaurant, that first day: how she’d smiled tentatively at him. And now, he realizes, she might be smiling that way at someone else. This wounds him for reasons that he can’t really explain, as if the fact of her existence without him was a betrayal.

  He knows that she is only a stranger who took momentary advantage of him. And the newspaper article about her arrest is the final proof that she is deranged. But even with this conclusion, he can’t quite rest. It is not enough, a too-obvious answer that leaves him with the nagging feeling there must be something more. Some kind of hidden meaning that defies his efforts to pin it down. These thoughts circle through his head, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that won’t quite fit. Tobias being led away by the guards; Paolo’s gesture at the bridge; the shape of her back as she walked away—these fragments, and the memory of riding on horseback, his father in the lead, through the Idaho mountains along the edge of a wooded valley’s rim.

  A knock at the door startles Peter out of his recollections. He freezes for a second—apart from the landlord, no one ever visits, and rent for the week is already paid. He remembers stories of bandits who travel from room to room through the flophouse mazes of the Bowery, and his heart starts to pound. Another knock. Slowly, he gets up and grabs an iron poker from beside the stove, his knuckles whitening around the handle. Raising the weapon, he crosses the room and silently unbolts the door. Taking a breath, he jerks it open—and is greeted by the sight of a small man in a neat gray suit, a furled umbrella hooked over his arm, and pince-nez perched on his nose.

  For a moment the two stare at each other. Finally, the man in the hall clears his throat.

  “Mr. Peter Force?” If the visitor is perturbed by the still upraised poker in Peter’s hand, it doesn’t show.

  “Yes?” Peter lowers the weapon, feeling foolish.

  “May I come in?”

  Peter hesitates, glancing over his shoulder at the dim squalor of the apartment. “What do you want?”

  “There is a matter of some delicacy that I wish to discuss with you. I have a proposition which I believe you may find interesting.”

  Peter briefly considers the possibility this might be a trap, then dismisses the idea. The man in the doorway is the picture of civility. He nods, stepping aside. Inside the apartment Peter’s visitor looks around, taking in the bedraggled chair, the ratty cots along one wall, the rusting stove and half-filled rusty washbasin, with a single glance.

  “Here—” Peter points to the chair and, after the slightest hesitation, the other man sits. Peter leans against a table and waits. The visitor looks back at him in silence, seeming perfectly content.

  “So,” Peter says finally, “something you wanted to ask?”

  The other man nods. “Recently you were in the company of a certain lady—a lady who was taken into custody by the police in connection with an attempt on Mr. Tesla’s life. Is this correct?” It is barely a question.

  “Where’d you hear that?” Peter tries to keep his tone neutral.

  The visitor shrugs. “She told us.”

  Peter hesitates, trying and failing to read the other man’s face. The silence grows again. At length, Peter nods.

  “Excellent. My employers have expressed an interest in meeting this lady. For this reason, I have been asked to contact you in the hope that you might be persuaded to use your acquaintance with the lady in question to influence her toward this end.”

  Peter blinks, trying to unravel this statement.

  “If we arrange her release by the police,” the small man says, sighing and fingering the handle of his umbrella, “will you bring her to us?”

  “I—” Peter starts, then stops, feeling that he’s flailing in waters too deep and wide for him to comprehend. “What do you want with her?”

  “Conversation only, I assure you.” The other man’s expression is perfectly blank, an unreadable mask.

  Abruptly, Peter feels a surge of anger—at this stranger’s presumption in coming here, at his own powerlessness, at the fact that his life seems to be an open book. He suppresses the urge to seize this dandy by his neat mustaches and throw him out of the apartment. “If I say no?”

  “Then she will languish in jail and a judge will find her guilty of attempted murder.” The little man shrugs. “Or we will find someone else to escort her. However, she might find your presence more reassuring.”

  Neither says anything for a moment. Outside, engines cough and groan, traffic rattles past. Peter runs a hand through his hair. At length, the visitor reaches into his coat and withdraws an envelope from which he removes five ten-dollar bills, placing them on the arm of the chair. He returns the envelope to his pocket and takes off his pince-nez, polishing the small oval lenses with a very white handkerchief. Peter looks at the money, then away.

  Fifty dollars is more than he has ever seen in one place before. Fifty dollars is more than three months’ pay. Fifty dollars is enough to—

  “Who’s looking to meet her?”

  The visitor settles his glasses on his nose. “Mr. John Pierpont Morgan.” The name means almost nothing to Peter: some banker, he thinks, vaguely recalling a newspaper article he once read. The other man rises, leaving the bills on the chair. “Only consider,” he says. “Her release, a pleasant dinner, an evening’s conversation—not much to ask.”

  Peter opens his mouth, then closes it. Seeing this hesitation, the other man does not press his point. He crosses to the door. “I will return tomorrow for your answer.”

  Numbly, Peter nods.

  “Thank you for your time.” The small man executes a neat bow and is gone, the tapping of the umbrella’s ferrule echoing in counterpoint to his steps down the empty tenement hall.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE POINT OF NO RETURN

  DARKNESS, AND THE SOUND OF DRIPPING WATER.

  It may be morning, it may not. The tiny, grimed windows near the ceiling let in the memory of light: a vague suggestion of the fact that, somewhere outside these stone walls, a day unwinds. She hears a shuffling of bolts and comes back to herself as if from a great distance, the gloom and stench of her surroundings coalescing by unwilling degrees.

  For a moment she clings to the memory in which she has been taking refuge: the precise yellow rim of a teacup, on a table in the sitting room of her father’s house, on a summer afternoon. Then she registers the fact that two guards have entered the cell and are staring down at her, and with an effort forces herself to return to the horror of the present. One of the guards, a tall thin man with scarred cheeks, smiles at her and licks his lips.

  “We’ve a moment to spare, eh?” he asks his companion.

  The other guard, shorter and rounder, shrugs indifferently and says nothing.

  “After all, they don’t come much prettier around here, do they?” the tall guard continues. He takes a step toward her, loosening his belt.

  Looking up at the guard, she imagines lying back and simply spreading her legs for him. The weight of his body, sinking her teeth into his throat and feeling the hot gush of blood on her face—a vision that somehow both arouses her, and fills her with despair. But the foul thickness of the tall guard’s breath as he bends forward brings her back to her senses.

  “What”—she forces herself to meet and hold his eyes—“what is your name?”

  “Quiet!” He raises his hand but somehow she manages not to flinch. For an instant, their eyes remain terribly locked. Then he straightens, spits on the ground, and turns to the other man.
“Jesus, ye’re no fun ’tall. Come on, then.”

  The two men grip her arms and lift her to her feet. They march her down the corridor to an armored doorway, where the shorter guard raps twice. She sees another guard glance through the little window before swinging the door open. They step through and all three take gasping breaths of fresh air, trying to forget the stink of mildew and latrine buckets inside the jail. The guards pull her down a narrow hallway, around a corner, and down another hall, and she struggles to keep up with them, her legs stiff after hours of sitting motionless.

  And what will it be this time, she wonders? Most likely another interview, she thinks, sagging with fatigue. When they first brought her into the station, groggy with chloroform, she had answered their questions without thinking. During that muddled interval, she has since realized to her dismay, she told them a dangerous amount of the truth. At least enough, she suspects, for them to lock her up forever as a lunatic. And if they do . . . She shivers.

  Since then she has clung to the insistence that she simply cannot remember what brought her to Tesla’s chambers at the Waldorf. A story that, she guesses from these repeated interviews, doesn’t sound any more convincing to the police than it does to her.

  They turn another corner, and abruptly the yellow paraffin flames give way to a wash of silver brightness. She blinks, slowly focusing on the lobby of the police station and its doors opening to the outside world.

  “Please,” she asks the shorter of the two guards, “where are we going? What—”