by Lyndsay Faye
“’Course. The one with the hound kept me up like anything. But what do you mean?”
“Just that we’ve been looking for Davy under every rock, but we don’t know why he disappeared. Did he lose his way alone or did someone take him or did he wander off with a pal?”
“It’s the rottenest. But there’s no way to figure, is there?”
“Maybe not, but we can try. In the Dr. Watson yarns, they’d probably start with who the missing person knew best and then simply pepper everyone with questions. Who did Davy know?”
“He was . . . he kind of belonged to everyone.”
“Specificity, if you please.”
Wednesday Joe frowns. “He lived with Miss Christina. He followed Max like a puppy. Mavereen and Blossom. Dr. Pendleton was always better when he was around Davy. And we played together even though he was younger, ’specially after the white kids roughed him up.”
“No foes at the hotel to speak of, then?”
“Well, he didn’t like Rooster.”
This takes me aback. “Didn’t take to or didn’t like? They’re different, mind.”
“’Course they are. Didn’t like.”
“Whyever might that be?”
“Don’t know. Started maybe six months ago. But he’d never tell me why, only that he was mad. I figured maybe Rooster wanted to make Davy stay indoors and they had a scrap about it.”
Rooster. He seems a terribly sturdy fellow, in the way night seems darkish. Laconic. Gigantic. His grasp of facts is impeccable, and I think his grasp of boulders would probably lead to the pulverization of the rocks in question. I don’t find him personally menacing. Still, young striplings can sense a grub in the fruit from miles away.
“There’s not something wrong with Rooster, is there?” Joe inquires, brows slanting.
“Goodness, I hope not, the man could crush a Packard truck. Does he rub you funny?”
“Hell, no. I think Rooster’s a real pal. He taught me how to tie my uniform tie when I started working the elevator. And one time . . .” Joe’s arm tenses. “One time, a guest at the Paragon who lived in London tried to hail a cab outside. The driver got out, spit on his shoes. There was a real bloody dustup and Rooster pulled three men off the colored fellow and told everyone to scram. But Davy’s been gone two days and . . . Christ. It’d be just awful to think Rooster was crooked somehow.”
The shadows cast by monsters unseen gather in the overwrought boy’s eyes, which is my fault.
“What did the man say to the elevator operator?”
“Dunno,” he returns listlessly.
“Hello, I see you have your ups and downs.”
“Your Majesty,” he says in disbelief, “that is . . .” Stopping, he smiles. “That’s the dumbest joke I’ve ever heard.”
“You’re entirely welcome. So what about people outside the hotel? Little Davy cavorted with the neighborhood lads before they turned bruisers.”
“We both did.”
“Anything crummy ever happen?”
He shrugs. “It used to be stupid stuff. Fights over marbles, baseball. But when their parents said not to play with niggers, they started calling us names when we went into stores outside the hotel. Then last month I was trying to practice catch with Davy in the alley and they got us real bad with rotten eggs. That was before they started beating up on anyone.”
“Children are unmitigated turds,” I announce, knowing from experience.
“I’m used to people throwing things.” His eyes are hard and flat. “So’s Jenny. Eggs are better than rocks.”
“Sound science.”
“I like science. I did make a rocket once, at one of Mrs. Vaughan’s Weekly Betterment days,” he says, brightening. “She’s awfully nice. Lots of colored kids come to the hotel from all around just to work with her. And she always seems happy to see us. Not the pretend happy, when an adult would rather just be alone. Really happy. There’s the hostelry! I did odd jobs as a groom sometimes before the hotel took us in. Wait till you see—this horse is just about as white as they come.”
We cross the street too quickly for my taste, a gap in the line of glistening Model T’s making it easy to wing across the cobbles. I can’t smell sweet hay and dry manure without conjuring the rotting penny aroma of death. But the old girl gathers herself. The men mucking the stalls pay Wednesday Joe no mind, so I figure he’s left fruit offerings at this particular altar before. And the horse really is a picture, snow pale and a regular apple enthusiast.
Not a jolly enough sight to keep me in a stable, however. So I cut the ritual short.
We’re back in the dew-dappled world again and I’m loading more verbal ammo to fire at the unsuspecting youth when he gives a loud squawk. Whirling, I encounter an unexpected but not remotely unwelcome sight.
“What you’re gonna do now, Mr. Kiona, is deliver the straight dope on what you think you’re doing outta the hotel.” Maximilian Burton has Wednesday Joe by the ear. “Don’t give me any guff about being with Miss James here and that making it kosher. Christ knows she ain’t exactly the ideal escort. Well?”
“We had to fix the luck!” Joe protests. “Honest, we’re not looking for trouble!”
“Trouble arrived, kid.”
“I know that, don’t I? I’m not allowed to search for Davy, but I’ve got to try and help! Even Jenny’s working, writing all those letters to politicians and pieces for The Advocate. You want me to go crazy, or what?”
Sighing, Max releases his catch. “Okay. Yeah, I figured. It’s jake, kid, but run along home. That guy what you told to man the elevator? He’s chewing gum and buttering up the ladies, and I ain’t standing between you and Mavereen when she wakes up.”
Wednesday Joe mutters a scrambled farewell as he heads for the hills. Leaving me on a silver-lit downtown street with Max, who regards me as an object of distaste.
No, interest.
No . . . concern?
I can’t make sense of the expression. There’s no formula. But I’m dying to don coat and turn chemist.
“I need words with the likes of you,” he grates.
“Do they include good morning?”
“Not here.”
“Is there a better morning somewhere else? By all means, let’s chase it down.”
He quick-marches off, one fist thrust angrily in his pocket while the other swings, and I chase him back into the forested park. I need a machete for this. It’s a jungle, so much saturated color that I’m dizzy, and the air has shifted from a soft breath of cloud to a swarm of tiny silver needles. It’s too much, the tinsel falling and the sweet dank leaves, and then unexpectedly we break through the thicket.
We’re in a tiny circular clearing ringed with yellow rosebushes. They’re crowned with scores of tightly packed buds waiting to peel open, spread themselves wide, and burst. A pretty bronze sundial presides in the center of the secluded grove, which is ridiculous. Might as well put a birdbath in the Sahara.
Max and I are about as alone as we’ve ever been. Considering.
“Blossom woke up asking for you.” Max settles hands on hips. “Then she lit off to check on Mrs. Vaughan. I take it you pair was pretty much in the frying pan last night.”
Oh.
He’s worried about his friend Blossom.
Carry on, old girl, he might be unsentimental about your corpus, but here he stands in front of it, yes?
“And subsequently leaped into the fire, correct. We were at the Rose’s Thorn. Blossom asked me to keep it mum from all saving yourself. Not the safest of excursions, I grant. And I’m dreadfully sorry about the firearms business. But if you suppose I intentionally signed up for ravishment by Officer Overton—”
“Cut that shit out,” Max snaps.
This is unexpected. “Excuse me?”
“If you think I figure as a girl getting dol
led up to paint the town means she deserves a tussle with that pig, you’re cracked.” Max looks furious. “I done heard about Mavereen, that she was real sore, and she’s already sorry. I made sure of that. Ain’t a pretty skirt what ever deserved that sorta treatment just by being in the wrong place. I was in France, when plenty of ’em was in the wrong place. So don’t kid me about it.”
My heart patters rain fast and almost as lightly. “I’ll refrain.”
“Last night, that there was Overton all over. He’s scum.”
“Think lower. Less prepossessing.”
“But you and Blossom being in his sights and the son of a bitch getting that close, don’t make me play some kinda charades as says it sits right with me. It don’t.”
His concern sizzles, golden thunder sparks flying. Despite the damp, my cheeks flush. Max adjusts his fedora, takes a lap around the useless sundial.
“Look, ain’t no way is Mavereen gonna convince Blossom to go in for house arrest.” He rubs a palm over his mouth in frustration. “Back when we was in No Man’s Land living offa bully beef and rainwater, sometimes a guy would go a few days without any real sleep. Get a little cross-eyed. This here’s different. I gotta admit, I’m worn down, Alice. Just the notion of that kid out there . . .” Max stops, wincing.
“I know. Worriment is worse than Jerry fire,” I offer softly.
“Damn right it is. But ’scuse my saying so, worriment on this many fronts is just about as much as a fella can stand.”
I think of Blossom, and the near-sure fact that Max won’t have cause to be anxious over his friend for long, and my breastbone aches. “Blossom held her own. You needn’t worry on that account.”
“It ain’t just Blossom.”
He steps closer. I’m at the pictures suddenly, or would be if movies could show color, a trick of the rain making the image before me flicker like a celluloid reel.
“Bringing you here, Alice—I didn’t have no choice. You was on the way out and I seen that before, more than enough times. But now.” He bites his lip, shrugs. “This shit is getting too rough for my taste. S’posing you wants to skip town, I’ll put you on the train personal.”
This is unacceptable.
“Don’t make a girl blush.”
“I ain’t,” he says shrewdly. “I’m making a gun moll think.”
“As admiring as I am of my own hide, you’ll find I’m just about as loyal as a bad rash. And I’m terribly fond of you all. It isn’t in me to leave you in the lurch.”
Max scours me with soldierly eyes. “That’s real nice. But it ain’t regular. So. Wanna get started telling me why?”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” I answer.
Standing there with tiny gem drops decorating our coats, I briefly tell Max about Rye. That there was no protective barrier between him and the world. That when he listened to a ragtime riff, his soul seared on a griddle. That when he saw the Yiddisher kid who’d been blasted by polio begging on the corner of 123rd, her skin the thickness and complexion of eggshells, he tossed her change but never flinched away. That he hated himself more than he ever hated the planet that tormented him. I mention heroin tonic.
Every-colored lights in Rye’s eyes. The glimmers of good days remembered but long gone away.
“I don’t leave people,” I conclude. “Or cut my losses and depart simply because times get hard, and I don’t pull the butterfly stuff. I’ve lost too many old friends. So I’m not terribly anxious to misplace new ones.”
Max rubs a hand over his nape. “You’re gonna need to spell it out, ’cause I still don’t follow. You were pretty strong for this guy?”
“To distraction,” I agree. “So what?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“And yet, you’re perfectly audible. What?”
He coughs with Brooklyn reticence. “Just that you said as I reminded you of somebody. And here I is, a mixed black sorta fella with a fair amount of music in my bones. And we two been kinda close, proximity wise, ever since I boarded that Pullman coach in Chicago. And I made nice with you. And I ain’t blind.”
I stand speechless for an instant too long, and he continues.
“How do you figure I remind you of a jazz hound with a taste for forgetfulness?” Max shakes his head. “This guy you see standing here, he remembers things. No offense to your boy back home, I seen my share of poppy heads, there’s trench rats with chunks missing what suck it down in their orange juice. It happens. Not to the likes of me, though.”
A peal of laughter escapes me and I clap my trap shut. Dreadfully keen to snatch it back.
“All right, all right, you ain’t soft on me, Jesus,” Max protests, raising his palms. “Have it your way. But—”
I catch his hands in mine. “You don’t remind me of Rye. At all.”
“Then—”
“Blossom does,” I explain. “And I adore that about her. The sort of headlong way she has about needing to tell the truth, then regretting it when she sees a lie would have been ever so much kinder. I mean, Rye was kind. He certainly never hung out anyone’s foibles to dry in public. But they both . . . it’s the seeing too much, I think. She tries to make other people see it with her. And he tried to—to see less of it himself. So I understand her, in a way, and it’s easy to love her. Because of Rye.”
We both grow more urgently aware that our hands are loosely clasped.
“So I don’t remind you of him?” Max repeats.
“No, I assure you. But now it’s your turn. You said I remind you of someone and it isn’t your white sisters. What are they like, by the way?”
“What are my sisters like?” His eyebrows are battling his hat brim. “They’re like the genuine family what my dad lives with, and I’d be real keen to take them out on the town, on accounta they’s nice ladies and I’ve got the scratch for it, but instead they rides the train to Jersey and meets me at a Pullman stop before I get back to Brooklyn. In a nigger coffee joint, pretending to be Salvation Army. You don’t really want to know about them. You want to know who I thought of, seeing you.”
“I’m . . . terribly sorry, but yes,” I admit, blushing. “I’m really very selfish at heart, and you said you didn’t like that person. So.”
“Me.” Max breaks the slack grip, stepping back. “Not at the starting pistol when we was just jawing about jazz, and you was hurt so bad I couldn’t help but see it, but. Me.”
“How so?” I wonder, shocked.
“Running around getting shot at.” He smiles as if tasting something bitter. Takes one of my hands back into his. “I was in a Brooklyn gang, down by the waterfront. Got shot at. Hit, too. Wanted to be a part of something so bad I didn’t care what it was I was fighting for. When you done woke up, you sounded like me. Me back then. I hated that guy.”
“What changed your circumstances?”
“The army.” Max shakes his head. “Figured if I’m already sporting bullet holes, might as well be for a better reason, you savvy?”
“Better than I can express.”
Now he’s not two feet away from me, he’s barely an inch from me, and I can’t breathe for wanting him.
“Who’s it you’re thinking of, when you think of me, then?” he asks.
“I think if you don’t kiss me, this is about to have been an altogether tragic waste of time.”
Max does kiss me. His lips make uncomplicated movements, nothing like the jazz we both love, only like the raw ache we both feel. When he starts to pull away, I chase him, and he stops me, putting a hand to my shoulder.
“Nohow is this gonna work.” There’s a stony certainty in the words. “I got a case on you too, but I’m telling you, Alice. Nothing about this here is ever gonna work.”
“What if it worked just once? Or maybe six or seven times?” I whisper.
He laughs, tucking a wisp of hair back under
my head scarf. “Aw, for God’s sake. Maybe. Not at the Paragon, though. Mavereen gots her standards and she sticks to ’em like glue.”
“Another hotel, then?”
He regards me, and I reflect upon the depths of my own stupidity.
“You said you had a cabin.” I run my fingers along his shirt buttons and, wonder of wonders, he leans into the touch.
“We don’t got time for my cabin, not while looking for Davy.”
His words aren’t harsh, but they bring me back to myself. I’m cavorting with an awfully attractive colored man in a public park in a town being taken over by the KKK. I’m being a sap, in short.
“I never meant to say something so dreadful,” I assure him. “If there were any way in the world I might ease your mind just now, what would that be?”
“Wish I could tell you. Maybe if we knew as the Klan didn’t have nothing to do with Davy being missing. Maybe if we knew the first thing about this god-awful mess.”
I bump my brow against his shoulder. “Yes, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how Blossom is surviving the strain, to be honest.”
I am being honest. But then I do wonder, and wonder slightly more deeply. Blossom is ill. Probably terminally so. But even if she isn’t tromping through the thickets, why isn’t she interrogating everyone she can think of?
Come to that, why aren’t I?
“Back to work, then. C’mon,” Max orders, hooking my elbow. “I can’t be lamped touching you after we’re outta this here shrubbery. But for the meanwhile, I’m keeping it up.”
It sounds like a promise, even though it isn’t one. When we emerge from said shrubbery, I create a discreet distance whereby he can follow after. Some sort of porter or a servant, it doesn’t matter so long as he’s beneath me, he isn’t legally allowed to be in Oregon at all. Meanwhile, I’m still tasting him, and my lips are flushed and warm. We turn on Southwest Salmon Street. It’s a busy thoroughfare, muddying the slender drizzle with bustle and noise. For a little while the mere idea of Max behind me drowns out everything else. But then the cloud relents and it’s just air again, and I notice a building that looks much grander than most of the city hereabouts.