The Kingdom of Ohio

by Matthew Flaming

  “Thank you,” Morgan says. “We will serve ourselves.”

  “Will there be anything more, sir?”

  Morgan grunts and, taking this as a negative, the butler departs. The financier stands and takes a cup for himself, motioning for the others to do the same. Trying to seem at ease, Peter does, stirring in two generous spoonfuls of sugar before returning to his seat and deeply inhaling the aroma. The only coffee he has known is a harsh brew made from bark and grounds reused until they’ve nearly lost all flavor, and now he’s embarrassed to notice the financier watching him with an amused smile. She ignores the refreshment.

  “Miss Toledo,” Morgan continues after a moment, “I will explain my motives, as you requested. But first—”

  “Coffee?” Edison looks up from his journal, registering the presence of the two newcomers for the first time.

  “Thank you for joining us,” Morgan sighs.

  The inventor doesn’t react to this remark, but stands and holds out a chemical-stained hand to Peter, giving him an appraising look. “I understand you’re a mechanical man, like myself.” He nods. “Mr. Force, isn’t it?”

  Peter gapes at the proffered palm, dazed by the suddenness of his arrival in the presence of the man who invented the filament bulb, the talking machine, the bifurcated ratcheting screwdriver . . .

  “Are you”—he manages to ask—“are you Thomas Edison?”

  Edison shrugs noncommittally and crosses to pour himself a cup of coffee.

  “You’ll have to speak up, Mr. Force,” Morgan says, rubbing his temples wearily. “My associate is a little hard of hearing.”

  Peter realizes that he is still staring at the inventor and, self-conscious, looks away. There are a thousand questions that he wants to ask this man, but all of them seem suddenly foolish. Tongue-tied, he looks down at the table and feels his cheeks flush red.

  “Well, then.” The financier leans back in his chair and sips his coffee, the delicate cup nearly disappearing in his massive grip. “I will explain myself as you requested. But first, allow me to ask you a question.”

  Standing in the middle of the room, swaying with exhaustion, she waits. His tone is civil, she thinks, his manner beyond reproach. So why, she wonders, am I still afraid?

  “Where are you from, mademoiselle?”

  She blinks at Morgan, hesitating.

  “I read your story in the newspaper,” the financier continues, “and wondered what sort of woman might say these things. I believe our origins play a great role in the development of individuals. Which is why I ask now: Where are you from?” He peers at her, waiting—and when she says nothing, he abruptly raps on the table with his knuckles. Both she and Peter flinch at the gunshot sound.

  “In fact,” she begins, drawing a breath, “I—”

  “I’m from the Midwest myself,” Edison interrupts. “Why, for a while we were practically neighbors. I was born in a little town called Milan, about a hundred miles outside Toledo. Used to work as a telegraph man all over that region. I remember one night in Port Huron when the telegraph lines across the St. Clair River froze up, I had locomotives pull up to either bank so we could signal Morse back and forth with their whistles! Another time—” The inventor rattles on, an artificial grin plastered to his face, and she realizes this must be a set piece, prearranged with Morgan to make her feel at ease. She ignores the inventor, her eyes fixed on Morgan.

  At length, the financier stops the other man with a wave of his hand. “Very well, let me ask another question then. Mademoiselle, in what year were you born?”

  She opens her mouth, and then closes it. Among all the people she has met in New York, the financier is the first who seems prepared to accept her story. And surely he could help, she thinks. At the same time she remembers her resolve to leave this morass of danger and crippling doubt behind. And this recollection, along with a sudden intuition of peril, makes her hesitate. She glances over at the Pinkertons standing by the door, then back at Morgan. “Why do you ask?”

  “It says here”—the financier picks up the newspaper he was reading when they first entered—“that you told the police you have traveled through time. Is that true? I ask because if it were, that would be of great importance to me.”

  She tries to force her thoughts into some kind of order. The stillness of the room and the bloody hue of the walls, along with her own exhaustion, press down on her. Better to wait, she tells herself, remembering the men like Morgan who visited her father’s house: how they made themselves seem like forces of nature while her father shrank and nodded helplessly, practically giving away the Kingdom before their demands. Better to wait, she tells herself, to carefully consider—

  “To be honest,” she says, “at this moment, I do not know. I have been imprisoned, and can hardly think clearly. I will be happy to discuss these things with you, but now I am tired. I have answered your question. Now, I must ask you, as a gentleman, to let me depart.”

  Morgan sighs.

  “What was that?” Edison leans toward her, cupping his ear. “Didn’t quite catch what you said, miss.”

  “She said,” the financier says, “nothing.”

  The inventor nods and settles back in his chair, eyeing her doubtfully.

  Morgan turns to Peter. “What do you think? I understand that you have some acquaintance with Miss Toledo.”

  Peter finds himself caught and pinned by Morgan’s gaze. Seated at the table, he risks a glance in her direction but her eyes are closed. The other man’s stare drills into him, and he tries to imagine what she might want him to say. Finally, at a loss, he falls back on the truth.

  “Couldn’t really say.”

  “Say again?” Edison shakes his head, then suddenly frowns and digs in his pocket, producing a battered ear-trumpet, which he screws into his head.

  “Do you believe she is a madwoman?” the financier presses. “This appears to be the opinion of the authorities.”

  Peter shrugs again, painfully aware that he’s in the middle of some negotiation he doesn’t understand. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “She was sick. Nearly fainted when we were down in those subway-works.”

  “What’s that?” A calculating look appears on Edison’s face. “You were down in the tunnels?”

  Immediately she stiffens and Peter realizes that somehow he has made a mistake. “I only wanted to show her.” He tries to speak lightly. “I work there, you know. Didn’t disturb anything.”

  The financier nods, fingering his mustache. “Tell me,” he asks Peter, “what did she do while the two of you were in the subway excavations?”

  “Do?” Peter glances at Edison, then back at Morgan. “Didn’t do anything. Looked around a few minutes, then we left.”

  “And you say it was which tunnel, exactly, the two of you visited?” the inventor asks. Peter hears, or imagines, a sudden note of veiled excitement in his voice.

  “Well, let’s see—” he starts to stall, but she interrupts him.

  “It was the Canal Street tunnel, Mr. Morgan.” She draws a breath. “So I have answered your questions. Now you will have to excuse us.”

  The financier is silent, his brow furrowed. “Mademoiselle, I am sympathetic to your plea,” he says at length. “But I must refuse until we have discussed this further. Mr. Force, may I have a moment of privacy with Miss Toledo?”

  “I—” Peter hesitates. It dawns on him that Morgan and Edison might be serious about her story and all these questions. That something like this audience is what she has been looking for all along, and that she might actually want him gone. His impulse is to stay, both to help her and make sure that she doesn’t go back to her madwoman time-machine fantasies. But, again, she won’t meet his eyes. He feels only slightly comforted by the weight of the gun concealed in his coat.

  Beside the door, one of the Pinkertons coughs pointedly.

  Halfway across the room from Peter, she feels rooted to the spot. Despite his betrayal, she finds herself silently hoping that the mec
hanic will refuse to leave. But beneath the twin gazes of Morgan and Edison, she cannot find a way to express this. Instead she closes her eyes and silently prays—to who or what, she doesn’t know—please. And then hears the creak of leather upholstery as Peter stands.

  “You need me,” he says, “you just call.” And the door clicks shut behind him.

  “Now then, mademoiselle,” Morgan says. “Will you tell us your secret? One way or another, we shall have the truth.”

  She closes her eyes for a moment. “Perhaps,” she says, “I will have a coffee after all.”

  The financier nods and hands her a cup and saucer. She considers joining the two men at the table, but decides to remain standing, clutching to the small feeling of advantage it offers. She sips, trying to compose her thoughts.

  “Mr. Morgan,” she says at length, “earlier you told me that you would explain your motives. You have asked the details of my situation; now I would ask you in return why I was brought here.”

  The financier considers this. “Very well. That is reasonable.” Morgan gestures at Edison, who has been following the conversation, aiming his ear trumpet at each speaker in turn. “My colleague Mr. Edison and I have been interested for some years now in the possibility of travel through time.

  “Hell, more than interested!” Edison looks up at her, doubt and wonder visibly battling on his face.

  “It is not impossible, Mr. Edison informs me,” Morgan continues, “that men may someday find a way to journey to the past or the future. For a number of reasons, I believe that such knowledge would not be to the common good. Therefore I have taken it upon myself to follow cases such as yours.”

  She digests this statement, struck by its matter-of-fact nature. “How,” she asks carefully, “do you feel this knowledge would be contrary to the common good? And toward what end do you gather this information?”

  “Well, miss, personally it’s a little hard for me to believe your story.” The inventor answers first. “But the fact is, Mr. Morgan here has a pretty good nose. If he says we need to find out about you, I plan to take it serious. So we need to do tests, you see. Experiments, measurements, maybe look at how—” Edison abruptly falls silent beneath Morgan’s gaze.

  “In brief, my interest stems from the problems that would be created by travel through time,” the financier says, turning back to her. “If one could travel to the past, carrying knowledge of the future, conquering nations and breaking banks would be child’s play. One man might throw the world into chaos for his own gain. Similarly, if one could travel to the future, the foundations of history would be shattered.”

  As the significance of Morgan’s words sinks in, she shivers. Abruptly she imagines a landscape of bridges melting away underfoot and buildings changing shape, whole cities unmaking themselves as their past is rewritten. The vision of a destroyed world, populated with orphans like herself, each tormented by doubt and struggling to find a home in the alien present. And picturing this, with a sense of horror, she realizes that the financier may be right.

  Perhaps interpreting her silence as disagreement, he continues: “Of course we have, each of us, made mistakes that we would like to set right. Regrets that we imagine could be corrected.” The creases in Morgan’s forehead deepen and for a moment he glances at the portrait of a stuffy-looking young woman that hangs on the wall above the table—then shakes his head, as if banishing some private vision.

  “But these are, in the end, irresponsible fantasies.” The financier drains his coffee and returns cup to saucer with a faint chink of china. “Without regulation and careful study, we cannot risk the present for personal whim. Or notions of what might have been.”

  “Then what,” she murmurs, “what would you ask me to do?”

  “As Mr. Edison has mentioned, there are certain tests that must be performed and your story must be discussed at considerably greater length.” Morgan pushes his chair back and climbs to his feet. Beneath the red glow of the lamps overhead, his face looks like an ancient, grotesque statue. “Although the accommodations at Menlo Park are not luxurious, we will try to make you comfortable.”

  She stands there silently, overwhelmed by exhaustion and uncertainty, each of her convictions—along with her desire for escape and the pull of the past—having canceled the others out. She closes her eyes. From some distant part of the house she hears, or imagines, the faint tinkling notes of a piano.

  “Of course,” Edison is saying. “I’ll make sure. All my boys are trustworthy. . . .”

  With a feeling of abstract wonder, like waking from a dream, she opens her eyes to the ballroom of her father’s house. Around her a galaxy of candles glitter in crystal chandeliers, marble urns full of roses line the walls, and the sweep of music fills the space.

  It is a Chopin waltz, she realizes belatedly, and she is dancing. Her partner is a tall young man with ginger hair and freckles, dressed in a black tailcoat; she herself is wearing a long ruffled gown. He must be some visitor in Ohio, she muses, untroubled by the fact that she cannot remember his name. Another of the would-be suitors whose company her father foists upon her.

  They turn and glide to the measured notes. The young man says something and she nods. Over his shoulder she can see her father, Louis Toledo, chatting with two other men. As always, something strikes her as vaguely comical about his appearance. His dinner jacket is bunched and wrinkled on his stocky frame, and his protruding eyes, along with the wiry curls escaping from a gloss of pomade on his head, make her think of a friendly drunk, seized from his comfortable tavern and stuffed without warning into evening clothes. Seeing her glance, he waves timidly in her direction.

  Deciding that she has had enough of dancing, she moves to disengage herself from the young man’s arms. But when she does, the redhead’s face hardens and his grip tightens around her.

  “Sir!” she starts to protest. “Please—”

  “Don’t give me any trouble, eh?” The young man’s voice is thick and strange with an unidentifiable accent. He looks down at her with cold eyes. “You come with me.”

  He begins to pull her across the dance floor. Suddenly Tesla appears, calm and collected as always, interposing himself between her and the other man.

  She looks up at the inventor, relieved. “Nikola,” she murmurs, “thank you.”

  “Come on,” he says roughly. And with a start she realizes that it is the mechanic who is half dragging her out of the room. Peter pulls her roughly to his side. One of the Pinkertons rises from the floor, clutching his jaw, as the other guard circles toward them.

  “What—” she begins.

  “You were yelling,” Peter interrupts. “Come on now.” He backs toward the door, drawing her along with him. She feels as if she is floating in an eye of calm while around her feet a storm rages. The guards follow, crouched and sidling closer. Then suddenly Peter is holding a gun, its barrel aimed at where Morgan looms like a well-dressed monolith across the room. The two guards freeze where they stand.

  “Easy,” one of the Pinktertons wheezes. “Easy now, boy.”

  She sees these things as if remembering them long after the fact: as if on cue, the two guards beginning to reach into their jackets and the flicker of Peter’s palm across the pistol’s hammer as he fires. A cloud of shattered plaster blooming from the wall two feet from Morgan’s head. Edison diving for the floor, the financier unmoving. The guards raising their hands and backing away. Then running beside the mechanic, pounding down the mansion corridors, through the door and into the night.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE SUICIDE HALL

  AS OF THIS MORNING I’VE SOLD MY WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. A YOUNG homosexual couple is buying the antiques store: they will, I’m certain, do a better job of running the business than I ever did (their sheer enthusiasm leaves me exhausted). In an arrangement that my real estate agent calls “totally unusual,” most of the proceeds (minus her commission) will be given to charity. At first I had wanted to donate the money to an orphanage, but
since such places hardly exist anymore, it will be used to renovate the metal-shop classrooms for a number of local high schools.

  We settled the final terms of the transaction last night at the antiques store. Standing in that little space, surrounded by relics of the past, I poured four glasses of whiskey and we toasted the agreement.

  “So tell us,” my real estate agent warbled, draining her glass, “what will you do now?”

  “Take a cruise?” one of the new owners suggested. “Play some golf, maybe?”

  I looked around the half-lit shop, at the clutter of artifacts that were no longer mine, searching for an answer.

  Even though somewhere I’d always known it was a fantasy, the truth is that I spent years hoping some doorway might appear: a passage that would lead me back to you and the time we spent together. That if only I turned the right street corner, or wandered down a certain alleyway at the right moment, this portal would open.

  Of course, it never happened. Decades passed, and I slowly tried to resign myself to this fact, to stop searching. I tried to stop, but of course I never really could. And then one day, in a way I’d never imagined, I stumbled onto my pathway into the past.

  “Now?” I turned to my real estate agent with what I hoped was a smile. “Now I have a trip to take.”

  THE PHOTOGRAPH that I discovered one afternoon two years ago, tucked inside a magazine at the antiques store, is black-and-white, of course. It depicts three people, two men and a woman, sitting in McGurk’s Suicide Hall.39

  The two men in the picture could be a study in opposites. First there is Nikola Tesla, elegant in his sleek black suit with a bow tie and white gloves. His dark hair is neatly combed, an expression of faint surprise on his face. A leather document folio sits on the table in front of him, along with his pocket watch.40 Beside him, the impossibly young-looking subway mechanic is unshaven, his brown hair an unwashed mess, wearing a dirty shirt and a rough woolen coat. One of his hands, on the table, grasps a glass of beer; his other hand is out of sight, an angry look on his face. But of course, it’s the woman in the photograph (it’s you) that I can’t stop looking at.