Curious Toys

by Elizabeth Hand

  A tall figure sat beside the table, smoking. He wore a dress, a mobcap, and high-button boots that must have been a size 15. This was the comic actor Wallace Beery, in character as Sweedie, the Swedish housemaid who was the star of a popular series of slapstick films. Pin tried to recall if Lionel had written this scenario. Sometimes he made up ridiculous scenarios on the fly, or stole them from the Saturday Evening Post or Cosmopolitan.

  And, like Pin, Lionel read adventure tales avidly. He loved gruesome accounts of true events—the cannibals of the Donner Party, the recent Eastland tragedy here in Chicago.

  “That’s what people want to see,” he told her one morning when she’d met him at a vacant lot near the studio. He’d given her the money for Max, hidden as always in an Omar cigarette box—Lionel smoked Omars, Max Helmars, that was how she could tell which box held the dope cigarettes and which the money for them. Then he lit one of the hashish cigarettes, right there in broad daylight.

  “Dead bodies,” he went on languidly. “Not those idiotic Sweedie flickers. Dead bodies and blood. Want some?”

  He held out the cigarette, but she shook her head. “Max’d kill me.”

  “Max doesn’t have to know.”

  She glanced around nervously, then grabbed the cigarette and took a puff. It smelled like perfume but burned her throat and gave her the spins. When she handed it back to Lionel, he pinched it out and put it into his cigarette case, slid his hand into his breast pocket, and withdrew a small book. “Look at this.”

  It was a flip-book—photographs of a naked woman, bound and blindfolded. Pin gazed at them, both repelled and curious. Another time, he showed her a small volume with a cover drawing of a woman tied up with so much rope she resembled a parcel with hair. Once he’d passed her a book with pictures of naked men and appeared to wait a bit nervously for her response. Pin thumbed through the pages, but the words were in another language. She looked up at Lionel.

  “Is it French?”

  “Of course,” he said. “What d’you think?”

  She stared at the photographs, recalling the two men she’d seen at the Comique. At last she handed the book back to him. “They must’ve been cold, standing there with no clothes on.”

  Lionel had laughed. He claimed Max’s hashish helped him think.

  But if this toy-shop flicker was his scenario, Pin didn’t believe he’d thought much. She watched as Beery grabbed a hammer and tapped at a doll head so hard it broke. Everyone in the studio laughed, and she took advantage of the moment to search the crowd for Lionel.

  She sighted him on the far side of the crowded room. Slipping past several actors dressed as policemen, she hopped over coils of wires and other equipment until she reached him.

  Lionel looked down and elbowed her. “Hiya, kid. This is one of mine.”

  Pin furtively dug the box of hashish cigarettes from her pocket and gave it to him.

  “Thanks, kid,” Lionel murmured, and slid the box into his pocket. He was old, almost thirty, medium tall, but he slouched. Even though he only wrote photoplays, he dressed like an actor: beautifully pressed trousers and shirts, his dark hair beneath his boater slicked back and smelling of Lilac Vegetal. He looked rich, which Pin figured he was, if he could afford to spend three dollars a week on hashish.

  He nudged her again. “See who that is?”

  Lionel cocked his head to indicate a man in the near corner, posing for a publicity photo with two girls. The girls were maybe twelve years old but costumed to look younger, in matching buttercup-yellow dresses embroidered with white daisies. Enormous yellow bows perched on their dark curls like butterflies. Close by stood several cameramen and a man in a business suit—Mr. Spoor, the S of the S and A in Essanay Studios, like Bronco Billy Anderson was the A.

  Chaplin draped an arm around the shoulders of each girl, lowered his head, and pulled them close to him, grinning for the photographer.

  “Charlie Chaplin?” marveled Pin. “He came back?”

  “Just for a visit. Too cold here, he says.”

  “It’s not cold now.”

  “Wait a few months. He asked your gal Glory to lunch with him at the canteen. She turned him down, so he asked her pal Valerie.”

  Pin watched Chaplin mug for the camera, playing with his hat, a boater, not the bowler he wore in the movies. He was much smaller than he looked on screen, and much younger, slender and tan, with tousled black hair, his face clean shaven. Of course she knew the mustache was only greasepaint, but it was still surprising how boyish he looked without it; also to see the color of his eyes, a brilliant lake blue.

  The photographer lifted his head from his camera to adjust the tripod and signaled Chaplin with a finger: One more shot. Chaplin dropped his arms and hugged the prettier of the two girls, burying his face in her ringlets.

  “Smile, Maria!” yelled the photographer.

  The girl squealed—Chaplin must have goosed her. He kissed her on the mouth, slid his hand across her rump, and pushed her away, laughing. He lit a cigarette and turned to Spoor, said something to him as he gestured at the girl. The two men laughed.

  “Maria and whatever your name is!” Carrera yelled impatiently. “The door, girls, the door!”

  The two girls scampered to the back of the set. Maria, the one Chaplin had kissed, fell. She pushed herself back to her feet, examined her dress, and cried, “Now it’s torn!”

  “Nobody cares!” yelled Carrera. “Keep going!”

  Both girls disappeared behind the painted plywood walls as Chaplin was hustled from the room.

  “Here you go, kid.” Pin started as Lionel handed her the Omar cigarette box containing Max’s money. “I’m heading home. Don’t stick around,” he added, and walked off.

  She peeked inside the box with its image of a pharaoh and saw three rolled-up dollar bills. No nickel. He’d stiffed her for the streetcar fare back to Riverview again. Pin swore under her breath. “Goddamned piker,” she said.

  Chapter 10

  SHE RETURNED TO Riverview, sweaty and out of sorts. The truss she wore beneath her shirt chafed at her painfully in the heat. She ducked into the shadows behind Max’s tent to adjust the elastic, then stepped over to lift a canvas flap and peer inside.

  A dozen men stood at the foot of a makeshift stage—to judge by their yeasty smell and unsteady balance, most of them already drunk. They watched as Max turned, displaying first a man’s profile, then a woman’s. Electrical bulbs with pink gel shades bathed the room in sunset light, an effect heightened by the haze of cigar smoke that hung above the small audience.

  “Cat got your tongue?” one of them yelled. “Say something!”

  “A lady doesn’t speak until spoken to,” purred Maxene.

  Pin was always amazed at how the illusion persisted. She knew Max was a man dressed—half dressed—as a woman, yet the combination of pink lights and shadows, and Max’s own peculiar magic, really did summon a woman up there on the stack of wooden crates covered with a muslin sheet.

  Maxene lifted a delicate hand to adjust the limp ostrich feather sewn to a saggy lump of felt that served as both derby and cloche. “And a gentleman always says please.”

  Maxene arched her neck, turning so that Max regarded the onlookers. “Please,” he repeated in Max’s own deeper voice, “or else.”

  He tapped the waxed curl of mustache held on with spirit gum, and the men laughed. At that moment, Pin glimpsed a strange flicker in Max’s green-glass gaze. He stood with his eyes half closed, as though recalling some distant memory, and for a fraction of a second she could imagine that he once really might have played Romeo. Then he turned his head slightly sideways again, displaying Maxene’s face, and his expression shifted once more: no longer a woman’s disdain, but violent hatred for the crowd of men.

  She quickly dropped the canvas flap, unnerved, and hurried around back to Max’s dressing room. She let herself in, noticing that the photographs of the wasp-waisted girl had been tossed back on the barrel, alongside a glass of some m
urky liquid and a dead mouse, its head crushed.

  Averting her eyes, she brushed aside a shawl, opened the drawer where Max kept the Omar and Helmar cigarette boxes, and added the Omar box that Lionel had given her. Later Max would check for it and count the dollar bills inside. She knew better than to steal from him. She’d seen him deck a would-be pickpocket outside the Casino and leave him moaning in the dirt.

  And Clyde told her that, back in New York, Max had knifed a man who’d propositioned him. “Never mistake a fella dressed as a lady on the stage for a fairy” had been the moral of that story. “Not if he’s bigger’n you.”

  She left the trunk and went to Max’s dressing table, where a glass ashtray held spare change. She picked out two quarters—her arrangement with Max, if he wasn’t around to pay her. As always, she considered pocketing a nickel to cover her fare back, but decided against it.

  She grabbed the silver flask that stood beside a bottle of laudanum syrup. She’d tried it once, but it made her sick to her stomach. She preferred beer, or schnapps. She gulped a mouthful of whatever Max’s silver flask contained, something so harsh it brought tears to her eyes. Turning to leave, she saw Max in the doorway.

  “Checking the wares?” He cuffed her head, but lightly. He sounded more amused than angry. “You make the drop?”

  She nodded, one eye on the door in case he came at her. But he just pulled off the blond wig and tossed it onto the dressing table.

  “That stuff’ll give you the willies.” He reached under the table for a bottle, poured a small amount into a glass. “Here, take a snootful of this.”

  Pin drank it, grimacing. Max laughed. “Well, you’ll learn.”

  He took the glass from her, filled it, and downed it. “‘Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain; drinking largely sobers us again.’” He lit a Helmar and glanced at the ashtray. “You take your pay?”

  Pin nodded. She was working on an empty stomach: the whiskey, on top of whatever had been in the silver flask, made her woozy.

  Max regarded her through eyes slitted like a cat’s. “How much?”

  “Two bits.” She shifted uneasily.

  “Ever take more when I’m not here?” She shook her head. “Why not?”

  “Scared to,” she admitted.

  “Good answer.” He picked up a dime and flipped it to her. “Go buy yourself a meal. I’m hungry just looking at you.”

  Chapter 11

  CHAPLIN HAD TO sweet talk the girl, Valerie, into joining him for lunch at a hash house a few blocks from the studio. He’d asked her friend Glory first, but she’d just looked him up and down, her nose wrinkling as she pronounced, “You’re too old for me.”

  Even with Valerie, it took a bit of doing—she wanted to eat at the canteen, where everyone would see her with him.

  Out in the street, he was just another young dude smoking a cigarette, boater tipped jauntily as he took her arm and steered her through the restaurant to a table in the back. But she was amiable enough once he poured her a glass of beer, and even friendlier after she’d drunk two and he ordered her ice cream. He slid his hand beneath the white tablecloth, found her knee and pushed aside the folds of cotton, ran his fingers along her cheap silk stockings up to the warm skin plumped up between her garters and her cotton bloomers. She clicked the long spoon against her teeth as she stared, expressionless, at the strawberry ice melting in its metal bowl. He closed his eyes and thought of the buttercup-yellow-clad girl on the Essanay set, that sweet yellow bow on her dark ringlets and her smooth skin, no rouge save a dab on her lower lip so she’d resemble the large dolls in the toy shop.

  “How old are you?” he’d asked her.

  “Twelve,” she’d replied. “I was twelve in June.”

  “When you’re sixteen I’ll marry you,” he’d whispered, and she giggled.

  He moved Valerie’s free hand beneath the tablecloth and squeezed his eyes shut, as though the light hurt them. When he opened them again, all the ice cream had melted, so he ordered another dish for Valerie and one for himself. After they finished eating, he paid, walked her outside, and turned to go.

  “You’re not coming back to the studio?” she asked, disappointed.

  “I have an early train tomorrow.”

  “Are you going back East?”

  “Nope. California. I’m done with New York. Done with Chicago.” He lit another cigarette, tipped his hat, and strolled off in the afternoon sun.

  Chapter 12

  PIN FELT WOBBLY along the Pike. She’d been thinking about food all morning. An ice-cream cone or a slice of pie, maybe a wienie. Or she could go to the canteen where the park employees had their meals, brown bread and some sort of German stew. The sixty cents in her pocket could last her till tomorrow—longer, if she was frugal, and still leave her enough to visit the Comique.

  But now the air shimmered with heat, and her stomach churned at the thought of food. As the house-sized German cuckoo clock near the Blue Streak chimed, Pin strained to count the hours above Ballmann’s band playing “The Washington Post March.”

  Three-fifteen. Day halfway gone.

  She yawned and wandered toward a stand of rhododendrons, lay on the grass, and closed her eyes, waiting for the world to slow down.

  She felt better after a few minutes. She got up and walked to the water fountain by the Infant Incubators, stood in line, and, when it was her turn, drank until her stomach felt like a balloon. She stuck her face in the spray, soaked her cap, and clapped it, dripping, back on her head. An old man gave her a disapproving look.

  “Whatcha gawking at, Mister?” Pin sneered and shoved past him, right into Fatty Bacon.

  “Hiya, Pin. Where’s your friends?”

  Pin swiped water from her face. “Dunno. I been gone all morning.”

  Fatty Bacon gazed down at her from beneath the brim of his helmet. “Lady said her reticule got stolen, over by the incubators.”

  She started to sprint off, but Fatty grabbed her shoulder. “A reticule, and two stolen wallets,” he continued. “Captain Hickey says there’s been a rash of ’em. You seen any pickpockets, Pin? Or any other bunco?”

  “Nope.” She yanked her arm, and he let go of her. “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “What about your friends? Anyone got more spending money than usual? Mugsy?”

  “Ask him yourself. Everyone’s broke.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Fatty removed his helmet and blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. “Heat makes people nutty. Seen anything funny?”

  Pin puffed her cheeks out, pretending to think. “Yeah,” she said at last. “A feller by the incubators. Short feller with a mustache. He looks suspicious.”

  “Yeah? What’s he look like?”

  “I told you. Short. He wore a boater.”

  “That’ll make him stand out in the crowd.”

  “I seen him before. He watches the kids going in and out. I think he went off to the Tickler,” she added, lying.

  “Really?” Fatty turned to gaze at the long line in front of the Tickler’s entrance. He sighed, glanced down, and adjusted Pin’s cap. “Regards to your mother.”

  She waited until he was out of sight, then spat and walked in the opposite direction.

  Chapter 13

  THE LITTLE GIRL’S Sewing Book. Pink dress and matching bow on her pretty pretty head, dark ringlets, sewing a lace handkerchief as her dolls looked on. Three of the dolls were naked, that was naughty, and he looked away but only for an instant.

  One doll had three smaller dolls of her own. A toy bear, too, but he snipped that out and squashed it in between his fingers and threw it away dirty paper. He cut very carefully around the girl, very carefully don’t slice her hand, the one that held a needle so tiny it could not be seen. There were daffodils in the window and he cut them out, too, and got the paste and pasted them onto the girl’s hair so soft such pretty pretty hair such

  Goddamn it oh goddamn it oh fuck the filthy bastard white paste on her face and i
n her little eyes and it was ruint now all ruint oh fuck he didn’t mean to

  Chapter 14

  PIN WANDERED ALONG the Pike, hoping she might run into Ikie or Joe Bean or even Mugsy Morrissey, who was dumb as a switch but could recite the alphabet while burping. She wanted to tell someone she’d seen Charlie Chaplin. Her only currency with the boys she ran with was the stories she told them. Stuff she read in the papers or stories she made up, based on the movies she watched in the Comique.

  But everyone she knew was at work. The boys all had fathers employed by the park, men who repaired the merry-go-round when it broke down, repainted the flames on its dragons and swans, recalibrated the gears if it ran too fast or slow. They operated the roller coasters and dark rides, took money for the rigged games of chance, chanted the bally for Clyde’s magic show and the High Striker, the Casino Restaurant and Palace Ballroom and Woodland Cabaret. Mugsy’s father ran the Velvet Coaster, and Mugsy worked with him, a job Pin coveted—people riding the coasters lost coins, wallets, eyeglasses, jewelry, false teeth. When he wasn’t sniping, Louie cleaned the stables at the racetrack. Ikie worked backstage at the Sunny South minstrel show and helped out as a ticket taker for Clyde, who was his uncle.

  Pin stared at the crowds, remembering her mother’s words back in their tenement room. You have to stay safe…In the fall it will be different. Till then, you need to stay safe.

  Yet here were all these people, all of them paying to be not safe, to pretend they’d fall off a cliff or drown, or be snatched at by ghouls in the dark.

  She stopped to watch the Velvet Coaster begin its ascent, riders already screaming with anticipation. Pin could follow the cars’ progress with her eyes closed: with every clank and shudder the screams grew louder, until they became a single terrified howl that died into relieved laughter as the cars returned to the shed to be unloaded.

  “Move it!”

  Someone knocked into her, a beefy man in work clothes, his face puffed with drink. Pin kicked him and watched as he staggered, then fell. Before he could stumble back to his feet, she was gone.