The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  36

  I expected Frankie to lead me to the two-story graystone where he rented a room. Instead, we steered clear of the old residential neighborhoods bordering the Levee and headed deeper into the vice district’s underbelly.

  The sun sank lower in the sky, filling the world with a lukewarm golden light. Our shadows toppled over the sidewalk’s wooden slates, long and black, like soot marks.

  I thought I should say something, but there was no proper response for what Frankie had told me. I tried to imagine him at the age of thirteen, and I realized he had probably looked a lot like I had when he found me.

  I just know a lamb to slaughter when I see one, he had said. Of course he had.

  Anger boiled inside me. I curled my fingers inward, digging my nails into my palms. If Mr. Katz hadn’t already been dead, I would have liked to kill him. I wished I had.

  As the sun descended below the horizon, we reached the hideaway. Frankie unlocked the door and showed me inside. In the year that had passed, not much had changed, except that the building had fallen into even greater ruin. Roaches scattered at the sound of our approach. Beneath our feet, the floor was a death trap of broken boards and splinter-lined holes. Curls of gray paper hung down the walls like an old man’s payos.

  “One day when I own this place, we could turn these into offices and rent them out,” Frankie said as we passed two doorless chambers. Thin threads of light entered through their boarded windows. In one room, pots and pans were scattered next to a straw-stuffed mattress. In another, heaps of stained cloth, bent nails, and bones had been sorted into even piles. I knew that the items must belong to a ragman, but there was something eerie about the way they were sorted, as though they were pagan offerings.

  “Does someone else live here now?” I asked.

  “A few people, but the attic is still all ours, of course. The others aren’t bad. They keep to themselves and don’t say a word.”

  We climbed the narrow stairwell. Though it was past supper, the attic was deserted. Frankie retrieved the medical kit from amid the scatter of jars and tincture bottles piled on an overturned apple crate in the corner. “Sit down. Let me take a look at that scratch on your face.”

  As he cleaned the wound and applied disinfectant, I struggled to find the words to dismiss how I felt about him.

  “Frankie, what I said back there about love, I—” Oy gevalt, why wouldn’t the words come out? “—I meant it like the way you look up to older boys. How brave and strong they are. It’s admiration.”

  He finished bandaging my cheek and tipped my chin up so he could look me in the eye. “Alter, I love you, too.”

  The words evaporated on my tongue. I swallowed hard. “Wh-what?”

  A small smile touched his lips as he sat down beside me. “I mean it, and I don’t use that phrase lightly.”

  “But what you said about our kiss... About how it was just harmless fun...”

  “Oy, you can be so dense sometimes.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I just wanted you to feel comfortable, like you didn’t have to commit or admit to anything. Look, I know we have our differences, but you’ve always made me feel safe and listened to. No matter what happens next, I hope we could still be friends. And if you’re willing, and when you’re ready, I’d like to be more than that.”

  I curled my fingers through his. “I’d like that, too.”

  Our bodies turned to each other as inevitable as sunflowers following the rising sun. Frankie must have sensed my desire, because his hand slid down my arm. His touch electrified me. When I looked into his eyes, I felt dizzy and exhilarated, as though I was balancing at the edge of a cliff, one step away from falling or flying.

  “May I kiss you, Alter?” he murmured.

  “Please.”

  Cradling my cheek in his hand, Frankie brushed his lips against mine. At first, our kisses were sweet and tender, but with each one, an urgency welled inside me. I wanted to distance myself from what had happened back at the slaughterhouse. I needed to feel something more than this. I needed to feel alive.

  Frankie and I sank onto the bed, the bedsprings groaning beneath our combined weight. Leaning over me, he tipped my chin up and grazed his teeth against my lower lip, his kisses becoming deep and hungry. His mouth’s tart sweetness was a dark wine, muddling my senses. A shudder of pleasure rose from deep inside me, rolling slow and languid through my body.

  “Am I going too fast?” he panted, breaking our kiss.

  “No. More. I want more.” I tangled my fingers in his hair and raised my mouth to meet his. The hands that gripped my waist were bruised and calloused, but his lips were soft as velvet, yielding against my own.

  Panting, we clung to each other as though gravity itself might yank us apart if we weren’t careful. My hands traveled over him, frantic with a desperation I couldn’t name. The violent curves of his cheekbones, the coarse linen of his secondhand shirt, then skin over hard muscle and the hot pulse of his heart.

  At the sudden creak of footsteps above our heads, we broke away from each other, panting and flushed. I rose to my feet just as Bailey descended the ladder, holding a roll between her teeth. Harry followed close behind her, his Star of David necklace swinging across his chest like a pendulum.

  Bailey blinked at the sight of me. After tearing off a chunk of bread, she said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Alter’s joining the crew again,” Frankie said, a bit breathless. He shoved his hair out of his face and picked up his broadcloth jacket from the floor, draping it strategically over his arm.

  “I’m not sharing a bed with him,” Harry declared. “Give him Joe’s bed. Joe is the smallest. No offense, Alter.”

  “Don’t worry, I have no plans to steal your bed. I’m just visiting.” I shoved Frankie’s elbow to get him to shut up, grateful for the darkness.

  “You’re no fun,” Frankie teased, then turned to Bailey and Harry. “Wipe that schmutz off your face, you two. The four of us are having a night on the town!”

  37

  At night, the White City was nearly as jaw-dropping as it had been during the day, an endless expanse of electrical lights that shone on the water. As with the gushing fountains and towering ivory walls, the lamps themselves seemed to be the product of a dream.

  In the distance, the Ferris wheel towered over it all. Thousands of blinking bulbs lined the wheel’s axle and spokes, so that its shape glowed like a beacon across the fairgrounds.

  We began our night in the Midway Plaisance. On the train ride over, Frankie had promised Bailey a camel ride. For that reason, our first stop was the Street of Cairo.

  As with the teahouse at the Java Village, no expense had been spared to give the Street of Cairo a glamour of authenticity. Bearded men strode by in robes that reminded me of the silk tish bekishes worn by Hasidic men on Shabbos. The buildings were painted in shades of pale limestone and sand, adorned with colorful hieroglyphics and a menagerie of statues depicting gods and creatures.

  Yet in its very portrayal, and in the lavish detail paid to its design, there was a certain false glitz, as though the entire exhibit were under a limelight. This place had been created to evoke a reaction, and everything hinted to that. Beyond the crowded storefronts were dark spaces and empty shelves. The Egyptian men and women milled about, some just sitting at their stalls, seeming awfully bored of it all. The only real sense of movement came from the crowds of fairgoers who bustled through the streets, endowing it with the vigor and lively mood I associated with village market days.

  As for Frankie, he seemed even more energetic than normal, barreling from building to building as though nothing had happened today. I thought this must be his way of healing.

  Along with the stifling crowds, there were jugglers and swordsmen and curio sellers and camels lumbering under the weight of tourists in starched suits and petticoats. There was a theate
r for performances and a Sabil-Kuttab, which Frankie explained was used both as a communal water source and an elementary school similar to our cheders. There was even a mosque, although I doubted that any worship actually occurred behind those walls.

  As Frankie and Bailey rushed on ahead, Harry tugged me by the sleeve.

  “Is Frankie all right?” he asked. “He seems rather...off tonight.”

  “Off?”

  “You know, excited. More than usual. And tense.”

  I didn’t want to lie to Harry, but it wasn’t my place to speak. What had happened today didn’t belong to me, not really. It belonged to Frankie. I saw it as no different than tending to the dead. Some things must live in silence.

  I tugged my shirt collar. “Frankie’s always been tense.”

  “Not like this.” He studied me, a glint of suspicion reflecting in his keen gaze. “What happened between you two?”

  I had no answer to that.

  While Harry paused to examine the wares in the bazaar, Bailey rushed ahead to squeal in delight at a procession of saddled camels.

  “Don’t you want to ride the camels?” I asked Harry.

  “And end up with a broken neck? I’ll pass.” He studied a small ceramic figurine of a pharaoh or god. “Do you think these are real artifacts?”

  Considering the crate half concealed by the fringed curtain at the back of the store, I highly doubted it.

  Frankie took me by the shoulder. “Hey, Alter, I think I see a camel with your name on it.”

  I looked back at Harry. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

  He shook his head. “Camels are boring. You know, I heard there’s a cowboy show somewhere around here. Now, that’d be worth going to.”

  “What’s with you and cowboys?” Frankie chuckled. “Hate to break it to you, Harry, but it’s Buffalo Bill’s you’re thinking of, and you’ll have to leave the fairgrounds just to get inside. Come on, Alter. Bailey’s looking like she’s going to plotz if we don’t get her on a camel this instant.”

  I followed beside him, feeling a bit dreamy. Despite everything that had happened today, it felt so good to share the secret I had kept buried deep inside me for far too long, and to know that I was not alone.

  The camel ride was terrifying. Each time the animal stepped forward, I gritted my teeth and gripped onto the saddle’s wooden horn with white-knuckled fists, certain it meant to buck me off.

  “Camels don’t buck,” Frankie said, always eager to share his knowledge. “At least, I don’t think they do.”

  Once the ride ended, Bailey wanted to do it again. Frankie walked along beside her while I retraced my steps back to the bazaar. The crowd had died down to a few stragglers. Harry was nowhere to be found.

  Several dark alleys twisted off from the main street, leading to deserted storefronts. I peeked down them to see if he was relieving his bladder. The fabric awnings rippled in the breeze, producing a sound like the flapping of many wings. No sign of him.

  I returned to the end of the camel ride in time to watch Frankie offer Bailey his hand as she dismounted the camel. A small smile touched my lips. Why hadn’t I seen it before? He had always prided himself as a protector.

  “I think Harry ran off,” I said as they came over.

  “Sounds like him,” Frankie said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s go to the Ferris wheel next.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for him?” Bailey asked.

  Frankie snorted. “He’s sixteen. He can take care of himself.”

  We followed the midway east toward the White City’s dazzling courts. Now that I had an opportunity to admire the Fair’s layout, I realized that there was an intentional structure to the midway. The closer to the viaduct and the women’s building, which were the threshold to the White City’s grand expanse, the more Westernized the exhibits became. It disturbed me to realize how the builders had treated the other locations. If their placement had been designed to symbolize a separation from the Court of Honor’s technological advances, then what messages were their actual content meant to send? What was being said here, and by whom?

  The Ferris wheel was even more overwhelming up close than at a distance. It loomed over us as precariously as the Tower of Babel, a marvel of glass and steel. We waited in line until we were ushered into one of the glass-enclosed cabins, each wide enough to hold sixty people. Elegant chairs of wire filigree sat on rotating platforms. As the low thrum of steam-powered engines resonated through the metal beneath my feet, I shifted uneasily.

  “Are you certain this is safe?” I asked as the wheel began to turn. I gripped onto the edge of my seat, curling my fingers into the gaps between the wires. Was it just my imagination, or was the carriage swaying?

  “Of course it’s safe,” Frankie said. “What, you expect it to roll off?”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  “I have to agree with Alter,” Bailey said, looking rather ill. As the carriage hoisted in the air, the room darkened. The only light came from the electrical bulbs attached to the wheel’s spokes.

  The Ferris wheel’s speed increased. Frankie reached between the seats and squeezed my hand. “Just keep your eyes on the window.”

  The darkness emboldened me. I linked my finger through his as we rose higher, higher. The fairgrounds stretched below, a wealth of glittering lamps flanked by the endless black expanse of Lake Michigan. I leaned forward in breathless awe, thrilled by our dizzying height. I had never been so close to the sky. I had never seen so many lights.

  It was so beautiful. I wished Yakov could have seen this, that we could have gone here together when he was still alive. He must have had regrets and parts of himself he was afraid to acknowledge or share. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t live in fear or silence anymore. I would live the future he had been deprived of, and I wouldn’t look back.

  38

  The next morning, I was roused by the sound of Haskel’s groaning. He had been discharged last night, and Dovid had brought him home. For a wound like his, which hadn’t damaged any organs or blood vessels, the risk of infection in the hospital’s crowded poor ward was more dangerous than remaining in bedrest at home.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, shifting out from under the sheets.

  Dovid was still asleep under his covers. He could sleep through anything.

  “The laudanum’s wearing off,” Haskel muttered through clenched teeth.

  I measured out a spoonful and brought him a glass of water when he downed the drug with a grimace. Once he had settled down some, I checked his wound. The sutures were neat and tidy. No pus or swelling.

  “Will you be all right on your own today?” I asked as I cleaned the wound.

  “I doubt Mrs. Brenner has any intention of leaving me alone.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed with a small smile. When I finished dressing the gash in clean gauze, I looked up and was startled to find tears beading in his lashes.

  “I just don’t understand,” Haskel muttered, closing his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Why is this happening to us?”

  “It’s over now. Whoever that was who stabbed you, he’s not coming back.”

  “You say that, but you can’t know it.”

  “I do.”

  At work, it came as bittersweet to sit down at the Linotype machine and copy articles. Now that Mr. Katz was dead and Yakov was avenged, everything would return to as it had been. My article, of course, would have to be buried. The risk of implicating ourselves in Katz’s death was too great. Still, at least justice had been served. That felt like enough.

  I finished an article about a Torah dedication and began another about a play at the Maxwell Street theater. My eyes ached from the strain of typing. I started on the third article. My fingers froze halfway through the headline:

  DROWNING OR MURDER? JEWISH IMMIGRANT, 18, FOUND AT FAIR.

 
Stunned, I lowered the paper from the tray and read it. Then, not trusting my own eyes, I read it over again. And a third time.

  Although it was written in Mr. Lewin’s words, my notes formed the article’s heart. By focusing solely on Yakov’s death yet hinting at the disappearances of other boys, he had left the article open-ended like a penny dreadful. He transformed Yakov’s death into cheap, pulpy entertainment with his lurid descriptions. He never once touched on the fact that Yakov had been an actual person, someone with history and dreams. It was a good thing I hadn’t had a chance to tell Lewin about Haskel or Mr. Katz.

  “Alter, where are you going?” Mr. Weiss asked as I rose to my feet.

  I drew the papers against my chest, my hands trembling. I felt as though I was burning up inside. “I’ll be right back, sir. I need to talk to Mr. Lewin. There’s a page missing from his article.”

  Mr. Lewin sat at his desk on the third floor, crouched over his typewriter like a vulture dining on carrion. When he saw me coming, he gestured to the cabinet in the corner. “Fetch me another ream of paper, will you, Alter?”

  “Are you going to tell me what this is?” I held up the leaflet.

  “That, my boy, is the front-page article for tomorrow’s paper. Or at least it will be if I can butter up the head editor.”

  “No, it’s not.” I shook my head, hurling the papers onto his desk. “You stole my story!”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”