Curious Toys

by Elizabeth Hand

  MR PIN

  SORRY I SCARED YOU LAST NIGHT

  SINCERLY YRS, H DARGER

  Chapter 82

  SHE PUT THE card carefully into her back pocket and stood, feeling a flutter of the happiness she’d experienced with Glory. She’d go see if Max was in. If he wasn’t, she might just head up to the studio anyway. She’d wait by the Blue Streak and look for coins that had fallen from someone’s pocket on the coaster—as many people as were here today, surely someone would lose a few nickels for streetcar fare.

  Near Max’s tent, the ground was littered with cigarette butts and squashed stogies, the way it always was after a performance. The door to his dressing room hung open, and she could hear movement inside.

  “Hello?” She knocked hesitantly, ready to take off if Max wasn’t in the mood to be seen. “It’s me, Pin…”

  The sound of movement stopped, after a few seconds started up again. She knocked a second time. Still no reply. Not a good sign. She started to turn away when the door opened wider.

  “Pin.”

  For a moment she didn’t recognize him. His hair was black, not blond, his face damp and his upper lip raw, as though recently shaved. Patches of white covered his cheeks and forehead, as though she’d caught him removing his makeup, or just putting it on. He wore Maxene’s black kidskin gloves on both hands, not just one, and a clean white undershirt over dark trousers. Blood bloomed in the white of one eye, which resembled a spoiled plum.

  He said, “You’re early, boy.”

  Pin looked away, unnerved. “I can come back later.”

  “No, come in. Shut the door behind you.”

  Inside, the room had the same sense of calamity as Max. The big trunk was shut, some of its contents spilled across the dressing table alongside pots of cosmetics and shoe polish. Socks, another pair of black gloves. A glassine envelope containing the human hair Max used to make mustaches and eyebrows for his act. His seersucker jacket and pants dangled from a wooden hanger by the door.

  “I figured I’d head up to the studio,” Pin said awkwardly.

  Max sat back at his dressing table and dipped a comb into a jar containing black liquid. A fringe of false eyelashes curled beside it like a dead spider. He drew the comb through his hair, spattering his shirtfront with black. When he remained silent, Pin said, “I didn’t know if you wanted me to go down to the Stroll sometime.”

  “Not this week.” Max picked up a hand mirror and inspected his hair. He dabbed at a trickle of black with a frayed bit of gingham cloth, picked up the comb, and applied more dye. “Colored folks aren’t too happy about what happened to Clyde.”

  Pin swallowed and looked around, increasingly uneasy. French postcards lay across a side table: A girl on her stomach, wearing a corset trimmed with ribbons, head raised to smile at the camera. She had no arms or legs. Another girl, a midget, wearing only a chemise and straddling the lap of a man with a handlebar mustache and bowler hat, his stare vacant as a cat’s.

  “I wasn’t—it was a mistake,” Pin said. “All I said was I seen Clyde at Hell Gate.”

  “But that was enough, wasn’t it?” Max’s tone was low and insinuating. “I’ve seen them hang men for a lot less.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  He turned, his pupils pinpoints in the gaslight. There was a streak on one cheek; she’d thought it was hair dye, but now she saw it was a fresh scratch, oozing blood. She jumped as he snapped his fingers, and he laughed.

  “You stay away from the Stroll, kid. Here.”

  He reached into a macaroon tin and tossed her a Helmar cigarette packet. She stuck it in her pocket, waiting for instructions. He picked up the mirror again, turning it to reflect Pin’s own face.

  “Go now,” he whispered.

  Chapter 83

  SHE MADE IT as far as the park exit before she realized Max hadn’t given her streetcar fare. She turned and went back, a heaviness in her chest. He’d be mad that she returned for the money. Might refuse to give it to her, might even smack her. She’d poke her head inside, and if he seemed angry, she’d run.

  A cardboard sign hung under the drooping She-Male banner: NEXT PERFORMANCE 3 O’CLOCK. The door to his shack was closed. She stepped up to it and knocked softly.

  “Max?”

  She knocked again. “Max? It’s Pin. I, uh…”

  She let her voice drift into silence, pressed her ear against the door, and listened. She heard nothing. He might have hurried off to lunch, or for a drink at the Woodland Cabaret. Probably he just went for a smoke.

  She tried to calculate which would be worse: To wait for Max to return, which could take hours or minutes, and she might not get her nickel, either.

  Or she could go inside—easy if the door was unlocked, not much harder if it wasn’t. She grasped the doorknob and turned it. Locked.

  She knew what to do. Mugsy had shown her, when they broke into the building where the carved wooden carousel horses were stored all winter. Padlocks could be picked with a pin or nail: this wasn’t a padlock but a cheap tumbler of soft metal. She kept hold of the knob and wrenched it back and forth, not exerting too much pressure as the knob met resistance, until the tumbler gave way, and she slipped inside.

  The dim room was permeated by the rancid smell of old cold cream and kerosene from the lantern, now extinguished. Max’s makeup and the French postcards had been cleared away, along with the false eyelashes and other remnants of his stage act. The Hotel Buckminster ashtray where he tossed his change held a single quarter.

  She hesitated before taking it. She’d never seen the ashtray when it wasn’t full of coins. Maybe he’d taken them to the bank, the way her mother did. But why leave a quarter?

  It must have been intended as her streetcar fare. Max had set it aside, and they’d both forgotten about it.

  Yet a quarter was far too much money. What if it was a mistake, what if he hadn’t left it for her but only forgotten it?

  She rocked from one foot to the other, tormenting herself with indecision. A quarter would be enough to get there and back; she’d bring the change to Max. He’d understand; he’d know she hadn’t stolen it. Even if he didn’t, she was fast. She’d be gone before he could strike her. She grabbed the coin, stuck it in her pocket, and darted back to the door.

  A man stood there. When she ran into him, he fell, and she struck out wildly, her arms enfolded by something soft as she jerked backward, stumbling against a chair.

  It was not a man, but the seersucker suit that had been hanging by the door. Panicked, she replaced the trousers on the hanger, then fumbled with the jacket. Something dropped from one of its pockets, a large leather envelope that spilled its contents onto the floor. A deck of playing cards. She stooped and frantically gathered them up.

  Only when she got back to her feet did she see that they weren’t playing cards but photographs, like the ones you got at Riverview’s photo gallery, four poses for a quarter. She turned them, one by one, until they all faced the same way. She felt as though something sharp pressed against her from the inside, like an awl punching through her breast.

  They were photos of the girl from the movie studio. The girl in the yellow dress. The girl she’d found in Hell Gate. Lying on a bed, her arms and legs akimbo like those women in the naughty Mutoscopes. Oh! What She Did! She recognized the long-waisted dress with its rows of embroidered daisies, the girl’s long dark hair. No hair ribbon, no socks or shoes. Her eyes stared blankly at whoever was taking the picture. What She Couldn’t See.

  Only as she scrutinized the photos beneath the grimy window did she realize she wasn’t looking at a girl but a large doll. Its face gave it away: vacant eyes always staring in the same direction, mouth parted in the same almost-smile, as though it recognized the person behind the camera. The hem of its dress was uneven where part had been ripped away.

  She shuffled through the pictures again, checking the back of each one to see the same name written there in pencil.

  Maria.

  B
lack specks flew in front of her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. She pinched her nose, gulped deep breaths until the room stopped spinning. Stared at the floor where the oversize leather wallet lay, open so she could glimpse what was inside. She knelt, her fingers thick as sausages, her head one of those floppy balloons in Hell Gate. She picked up the wallet, so much heavier than it looked, so heavy she didn’t see how she could hold it.

  Photos were stuffed inside like wads of cash. Girls, dolls, she couldn’t tell which: no, not girls but dolls, not dolls but the same doll, its clothes different but its face always the same, those horrible staring eyes and long dark hair, sometimes tied with a ribbon, sometimes covered with a hat much too big for its head. A name written on the back of each photo.

  Alice. Katy. Christina. Iolanda. Dolly. Rachel. Irena. Deirdre. Faith. Daisy. Rose…

  Abriana.

  The black specks in her vision bloomed into faces lined up on an altar, burning candles. She felt as though she were back in the tunnel, the world’s true face revealed as she touched that of the dead girl. She heard a soft huh huh huh, realized it came from deep in her throat. From outside she heard voices, a man shouting.

  How could she have not known?

  She shoved the photos back into the wallet, began to thrust it into the jacket pocket, and stopped. She opened the wallet, fumbling for the photos on top, the photos that had first fallen out, of Maria Walewski, took one, and stuffed it in her pocket.

  She peered out the front window but saw no one. She locked the door, crossed to the back of the room, to the window. At first it wouldn’t budge, but finally she got it open and climbed back outside. Thunder cracked, the Blue Streak’s cars shrieked overhead as she ran past the coaster, past a man who cranked a hurdy-gurdy, past a child wailing for a lost balloon. How could she have not known?

  Chapter 84

  THE STREETCAR WAS only half full: people were pouring into Riverview, not away from it. She clutched her arms to her chest, shivering, pushed open the window beside her, and curled up on the wicker seat.

  She felt like she had a live wasp in her pocket, not a photograph. Maybe it wasn’t his. Maybe he’d bought the photos at one of those places in the arcade that sold pictures of naked women.

  She knew that wasn’t true. The photos belonged to Max. That was why he’d looked so crazy, that was why he’d dyed his hair black. He knew he was being hunted. He had killed Maria Walewski and Gilda Belascu; he’d killed the Gypsy girl. He’d killed her sister, Abriana, and all those others, and maybe Elsie Paroubek, too. Then he’d dressed a doll in their clothing and taken pictures of them, like…

  Like Henry, she thought, dizzied, it’s like what he does with those pictures of the dead girls.

  But Henry didn’t kill Maria. It was Max, it had been Max all along. She’d been in the same room with him, she’d taken the money he gave her…

  She wiped her hands on her knickerbockers. When Max returned to his dressing room, he’d see the quarter was gone. He’d realize she’d been there. And when he noticed that his photos had been disturbed, he’d know that she had seen them. He’d find her and kill her, snap her neck, then hide her body inside his dressing room. By the time it was discovered, Max would be long gone.

  She would have to give the photo to the police and tell them what she knew. They would question her. They would learn who she really was, not a boy but the sister of a murdered girl. She would be stripped of everything she was, everything she had made herself into.

  She felt in her pocket for her shiv. There was another way, there had to be another way. What?

  She stared out the window as the streetcar headed north, threading its way through old brickyards and tenements, beneath the L and far from the new canyons of towering brick and steel that loomed closer to the lake. She thought dully of the heroine of The House with the Closed Shutters, disguising herself as her cowardly brother only to be killed in battle. Pin had always loved that movie—but why did the girl have to die? Why hadn’t she been the one to kill that soldier, instead of some man?

  And why didn’t the girl have a name? She was known only as the sister.

  Something moved on the floor at her feet, a discarded newspaper. She picked it up and read a headline:

  $1,000 Reward to Any Man Who Captures the Hell Gate Killer

  The reward. She’d seen it on the flyer that morning, then completely forgotten about it.

  …to Any Man…

  Her thoughts began to wheel.

  Max wouldn’t know that she had seen his photos. He’d believe that Pin had seen them. A skinny kid in knickerbockers and beat-up boots. A skinny boy who’d betrayed him.

  But Max wouldn’t recognize her, not if she were dressed in her old clothing. Not if it were dark. He’d never be threatened by a girl. He sought them out. They were nothing but toys to him, like the cheap celluloid dolls given as prizes that broke if you tried to play with them. Her mouth went dry; she hardly dared to let her thoughts slow, lest she lose track of them. She’d need help, she couldn’t do it alone, but maybe she wouldn’t have to. She couldn’t tell Glory the truth; it would be far too dangerous for her to know about Max. And if Glory knew who Pin really was, what she was…

  Pin squeezed her eyes tight. She could do this. It was dangerous, but she’d have someone with her, someone who’d be in on her plan. Not Glory, it couldn’t be another girl. And she would never let Glory come to any harm. No: she knew who would help her.

  She reached in her back pocket for the homemade card she’d found in the poplar grove, the one with the pictures of a rolling pin, a murdered girl, a sweet grey rabbit.

  Sorry I scared you last night. I was a very dangerous boy. I killed a man, too, but nobody knew about that. We keep them safe. Girls. Because. I protect them. So we don’t forget.

  She would find Henry. He was crazy as a bedbug, but he wasn’t afraid. She got off at the stop for Essanay and walked to the studio, entered the enormous building, and hurried to Glory’s dressing room.

  Chapter 85

  VALERIE’S NAME HAD been removed from the door and only Glory’s remained. She could hear Glory singing to herself, moving around the tiny cubicle. She knocked and went inside.

  Glory looked up as she entered. She was wearing another silk teddy bare, blue and trimmed with tiny bows. When she saw Pin, she yanked a dressing gown from a hanger and pulled it on, her cheeks reddening.

  “Pin! You should’ve knocked!”

  “I did,” Pin said. She stared at the floor, but Glory had turned her attention to a pair of stockings. After a moment she looked up, beaming.

  “Pin, I’ve got my own dressing room! I mean, it’s the same room, but now I have it to myself. How’s that?”

  “That’s swell.” Pin cleared her throat. “Glory, listen. I—I need your help with something.”

  “Is it Lionel?” Glory examined one of the stockings for ladders. “Because he’s not here, I checked when I got back. Do you have his book?”

  “No. I couldn’t—there were too many people at the fortune-teller’s. And, well, no, it’s not about Lionel. It’s something else. It’s— I need to borrow some clothes.”

  “Clothes?” Glory set down the stocking to stare at her. “What clothes?”

  “Well, your clothes. Ladies’ clothes.”

  “Ladies’ clothes? What’re you talking about? For what?”

  “For a—for an act. At the park.”

  “An act? Like a minstrel show?”

  “Sort of. If it works out, I can make a lot of money. We could—if you’d like, we could go to the movies. Afterward. Tomorrow or whenever you’d like.”

  “So, you want to borrow ladies’ clothing for a show,” Glory repeated slowly. “Like what Wally does? When he dresses up as Sweedie?”

  Pin nodded. Her throat hurt, like the lie was stuck in there. “Yeah,” she croaked. “That’s what gave me the idea. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy…”

  “That’s good, because I’m not giving some bo
y anything fancy. Especially you—it’d just get ruined.” Glory continued to stare at Pin, bewildered. “They won’t give you a costume?”

  “No. They want you to bring your own. It’s just an audition. I swear, I won’t let anything happen to it.”

  “I’m still not giving you anything fancy.”

  Glory stepped over to the rack of dresses and began to examine them in a businesslike manner, glancing over her shoulder to size up Pin. As Pin watched, she felt again that tightness in her throat, though now it was a dry yearning, not the fear of being caught in a lie.

  Glory would never look at her again the same way. Her admiration for Pin’s recklessness, for her desire to work as a cameraman—all that would disappear the second she knew Pin wasn’t a boy. Girls didn’t deliver drugs; they didn’t grow up to become cameramen, or even want to. Girls didn’t trick other girls into kissing them by pretending to be a boy. Not even a thousand-dollar reward would change that.

  “Okay, how’s this?” Glory held up a middy dress, white blouse with navy-blue trim on its sailor collar and cuffs, attached navy-blue skirt. “It’s boyish, so it’ll suit you.”

  She tossed Pin the dress. Pin held it up in front of her, trying to measure its length.

  “It’ll fit,” said Glory. “We’re the same size, pretty much. But you’ll need different shoes,” she added, gazing at Pin’s battered black boots. “And your hair…”

  She reached to pluck at Pin’s tangled curls, and Pin tried not to flinch. She wanted to pull Glory to her and at the same time to push her away, to run and to kiss her, all at once.

  Instead she stood, mute and miserable, as Glory fussed with her hair. “I can borrow a pair of shoes,” Pin said, finding her voice. “Or just wear these.”

  “Maybe. But we still need to do something about this.” Glory tugged hard at a matted curl.

  “Ow!” Pin pulled away. Glory crossed her arms and regarded her with those scarily blue eyes, then passed a delicate hand across her own carefully arranged hair.