Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  Eva gaped at her with disbelief. “Jerome? He’s a poet, not a fighter. And he’s colored, Julia. If he’d raised so much as a finger in there, he’d be dead now, shot from three directions. He loves me, but he can’t help with this.” She squirmed. “Now Mr. Goldsmith’s hopping mad too.”

  At least that was simply a business problem. Authors reneged on contracts all the time. “If you return his money,” Julia suggested, “he’ll just have to accept that the book’s no longer available.”

  “I’ve already spent it. I bought our tickets to Paris. We’re sailing next Thursday.” Eva wiped her eyes. “One or two more days. I was going to give Pablo the manuscript on Monday, just as soon as I made a new dedication page. It’s still dedicated to Jerome, but I want to change the wording, add something. I can’t tell you what. Not yet.”

  Julia bit back a groan. Had the wording on one page cost Eva everything? If she’d simply given the manuscript to Duveen the moment the money was deposited, Timson would never have found it, never have read the passage that sent him into a rage. It was terrible to think of the small differences that could ripple out into massive consequences, but Julia kept this thought to herself. Eva would have to live with this particular regret all her life.

  Eva’s foot thumped against Julia’s shin. “Why did he have to do that? I thought he’d never know. Now he thinks I betrayed him.” She pressed both hands over her mouth. “Oh Lord.”

  “He might return it if you promise to take out that rape scene,” Julia said. The book was still only in manuscript. If Timson feared readers would guess he was the novel’s rapist, he might not object if she deleted the most repugnant scenes.

  “What?” Another frown curdled Eva’s forehead. “It’s too late. I can’t, anyway. Pablo thinks it’s the most important part.” She took a powerful drag. “Damn damn damn damn. He’ll be so angry.”

  Who would be angry? Timson? Pablo? Goldsmith? Puzzled by the shifting pronouns, Julia watched Eva inhale the calming fumes. She remembered Eva’s fearful glances toward Jerome and the stony countenance that refused to meet them. Maybe it was Jerome’s anger she feared. Like so many women, Eva saw her lover’s brilliance, not his demons. Men like him always had demons.

  “It’s so unfair,” Eva said. “Jerome writes beautiful poems and gets a drawerful of fancy awards with ten-dollar prizes. But it’s nothing to what people pay to see my titties. That’s really what Pablo wants too. Only he wants it in writing. Even in books, they think Negroes are best for this.” She patted her crotch. “Not decent things, not fine, decent literature.” She pronounced the word with four syllables.

  “Then just go,” Julia urged. “Get away from this place. Worry about Goldsmith’s contract later, once you’re safely across the Atlantic. Maybe you could write another novel there. He’d have to wait, but at least he’d get what he paid for. Are you working on anything else?”

  Eva squeezed her lips together. Nothing. “I suppose I could try. But wouldn’t that be dishonest? Like stealing?”

  Julia felt a sting of surprise. Goldsmith had witnessed Timson’s crime; surely he’d understand Eva’s predicament, that she was the victim, not the thief. Eva’s concern for honesty seemed a dubious virtue in the circumstances, like patriotic honor to those soldiers flinging themselves over the trenches at Gallipoli. Didn’t protecting yourself come first? Wasn’t that more important, more morally imperative, than the harsh laws demanding all debts be paid?

  Eva took a quick, deep breath. “No, I’ll just have to ask him. Leonard’s not afraid of my book, not really. He only made that stink because he heard Mr. Goldsmith wants it, and he hates to think I might work for anyone else. Like he owns me or something. But I know what he likes. If I beg right, he’ll give it back.”

  She lifted her arm and touched the greenish thumb-shaped bruise emerging above her elbow, visible through her sheer chiffon sleeve. “This will help.”

  An image of that unspeakable rape in Eva’s novel swept unbidden into Julia’s mind. Was it true? Had that actually happened? “Does he . . . ?” Julia hesitated before choosing the least ridiculous euphemism she could think of: “Does he force himself on you?”

  Eva’s forehead puckered, the first harsh expression Julia had seen her make. But before she could answer, the toilet erupted in a noisy flush. Over its rush of water they heard Dolly’s muffled exclamation. “Jeesh!” And a moment later, “Doll, you’re a mess! Jeesh!”

  Eva pushed two fingers up from the bridge of her nose, smoothing the furrows in her forehead. “I can’t think about this now. I have to get ready.”

  She lowered her feet to the floor and watched the transfer of weight, as if uncertain they would hold her. Without a murmur of modesty she slipped off her gown and let it fall across the bed. She wore nothing beneath it but the gold loincloth. Where the halter had been were etched raw grooves across her collarbones and reddish slashes alongside her breasts. She crossed to the dressing table’s white padded bench. She switched on both lamps flanking the table and peered at her reflection in the huge mirror looming like a vacant halo before her.

  Julia was not new to public, even casual nudity. In London and Paris she’d frequented avant-garde theaters and cabarets. She’d observed models sitting for painters and had once briefly modeled herself. She saw beauty in the honest human form, freed from the sheer volume and poundage of Victorian modesty. But this was different.

  Eva’s body had a false pallor to it. Her skin looked waxy, dull, with the artificial sheen of something lifeless. Except for the chafed stripes, her torso was a single tone, molded by layers of stage paste as if she were a mannequin. In contrast the areolae of her breasts—stained or painted a garish dull black—seemed frightening, brutal. Onstage her body had looked elemental, a gilded Venus, but here was only the artifice. She’d become a kind of high-style Hottentot, a carnal exotic wrapped in chiffon, satin, and ruby lipstick: styled by men and for men. She’d been made into a caricature of everything female, effacing everything human. Eva the person was as submerged beneath this costume of sculpted flesh as she’d been by yards of chiffon and hollow chains.

  “I’ll get it back,” Eva said matter-of-factly, examining the pink welt beneath her cheekbone. “Even if Leonard’s a beast, I’ll get it back.” Raising her right arm, she peered at the bruise. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” She mouthed a silent Paris and smiled at Julia in the mirror.

  She shook lotion from a tall opaque jar onto her palm and feathered it over the red blotch on her cheek. A fine layer of face powder followed. She twisted to check the results from several angles, inhaled, and, apparently satisfied, arched her shoulders. Then she clapped her hands softly and poured more yellow lotion into her palm. With long circling strokes she smoothed it onto her shoulders, arms, breasts, and down over each hip, under the lip of her gold loincloth. Hidden beneath it was an odd pattern of five pea-size scars on her left hip. Eva covered them with extra lotion and a dusting of powder, rendering them almost invisible, and tugged her waistband back into place.

  “That’s a strange scar,” Julia said.

  Eva quickly covered it with her hand. “What? Oh no—”

  The lavatory door opened, and Dolly Clark pitched into the room, a white hand towel over her mouth. “Holy Toledo,” she said. “I feel better. But how do I look? Am I an absolute wreck? Max hates it when I’m sick.”

  She lowered the towel. Her dress was bunched at her waist, and her headpiece was askew, but her eyes had cleared. Fresh lipstick restored some color to her face.

  Julia offered to straighten her dress. Dolly lifted her arms as Julia did her best to tug down the fabric puddled above her hips. They were simply too wide for the cut of the frock. There was nothing Julia could do but sweep a hand across the back of the skirt and hope the seams survived the night.

  Dolly mumbled her thanks, staring unabashedly at Eva. “I guess you must be used to it, huh? I’d be bawling my eyes out if some guy pawed my boobs and stuck a gun in my face, but not you.”
Dolly leaned close as Eva outlined her eyes, painted her lips, and dusted more fine powder over her whole body. “You’re cool as custard.”

  She watched Eva massage her feet and legs with generous slatherings of the yellow lotion. The scent of lemons was powerful. “Hey, are you really colored?”

  Eva raised the stout jar. “I cheat a little. I’ll bleed lemon juice someday.”

  Dolly belched. “That’s a good one.”

  Julia steered the drunken woman toward the bed. “Try to rest, Mrs. Clark.” Dolly flopped down in a graceless heap, mugging to an imagined mirror.

  Eva slid to one side of the bench and patted for Julia to join her. From a small icebox under the table, she drew out a glass bowl filled with shaved ice. “I hate this part,” she whispered.

  She lifted her left breast and tucked the bowl around it, as if nursing a baby. Her head pitched back, and she inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. “Makes them hard,” she said through a grimace. She switched the bowl to the other breast and again recoiled from the painful shock. “A girl on the line showed him this trick. I could kick her.”

  “Sex-y,” Dolly sang, dimpling at herself. “Sex-ex-ex-y lemon sexy custard.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Eva said quietly, under the off-key drone. “My new publisher. My friend who doesn’t care stink about all this. You know, the other night at Pablo’s I felt like I recognized you, or that I would recognize you once we met. Now it feels like we’ve known each other for years.”

  Julia nodded. She remembered her own tingle of recognition when they met, her inkling that Eva and she shared some unspoken clarity, some kindred way of yearning to be in the world. She relished again the surprise, that thrill of discovering a rare new friend.

  Eva glanced at the clock. She nudged closer, resting her hip against Julia’s. Watching in the mirror, she threaded her fingers through Julia’s and lifted their linked hands. They made a bouquet, her pale, creamy fingers mingled with Julia’s faintly yellow ones above the slim stems of their wrists.

  “Ella and I used to braid our fingers together like this,” she said. “She said it was like stirring milk into roast yams. Do you know some say you can tell a colored person by their palms, their fingernails?”

  Three raps sounded on the door. Timson’s voice broke Eva’s reverie. “Showtime, punkin seed.”

  CHAPTER 11

  A sharp thump lifted Julia’s face from the pillow. She floundered up from sleep. It came again, three brisk raps.

  “Julia?” Philip’s voice pulled her upright.

  “What is it?” she croaked.

  “You have visitors.”

  A hulking shape loomed up from beyond the foot of her bed.

  “Of a constabulary sort.” Philip’s amusement wafted through the door. “They insist on speaking with you.”

  She stared as the shape resolved into a disheveled and blurry Austen Hurd, struggling to sit up from the small divan where he had, apparently, been sleeping.

  For heaven’s sake. “Ask them to wait. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

  She sat up. She was wearing last night’s chemise and step-ins. Both stockings and her evening frock lay in a shocking heap on the vanity chair. Everything came back to her in a rush. Harlem. Eva’s show. Her locked-away manuscript.

  They’d returned quite late (or early, judging by the orange gleam on the horizon) in a dizzy swirl of too much liquor and music. Austen had wobbled into the apartment with her, but when she’d offered him a harmless half of the bed, he’d mashed his lips against her forehead. With a muffled, “Thanks, but no. Night, bean,” he’d dropped—shoes, braces, and all—to the tufted divan under the window. Ten seconds later he’d been fast asleep, left arm and leg spilled over onto the carpet.

  Now abruptly she’d been pulled from sweet oblivion into two strange puzzles. The police visit was clearly ominous, but Austen on her divan? She felt equal parts bemused and annoyed. While she wanted nothing amorous from him, surely she warranted at least a glimmer of manly interest to rebuff. Did he fear for her virtue? Worse, did he fear for his own? It was vanity, she knew, but still his tumble straight to sleep rankled.

  “Fiddlesticks!” she sputtered. “What the blazes do they want?”

  She stumbled across the room to the wardrobe. Austen heaved himself toward the wall, shielding his eyes from the sight of her in crumpled scanties. For heaven’s sake. She gazed stupidly at the array of frocks, blouses, skirts, trousers. Dressing meant fresh underthings, stockings, shoes—altogether too much work after what felt like ten minutes of sleep. She pulled out her scarlet dressing gown and wrapped herself in its heavy satin. “If they insist on disturbing a lady at first crack on a Sunday morning, they must accept me en déshabillé.” Muttering bolstered her courage to face whatever calamity had brought policemen to her door.

  She slipped into her mules and nipped her cheeks. Her face in the vanity mirror was the color of chalk, tinted only by smudges of last night’s mascara. There wasn’t time for cold cream. She scrubbed with a tongue-moistened corner of a handkerchief and still looked ghastly.

  Two men stood peering at the two oil portraits above the mantel in Philip’s library. They turned when she entered. One was young, with unruly red hair, pale-blue eyes, and a pocked complexion. He wore a starched policeman’s uniform. The other was an indeterminate age with a bristly brown pompadour and a wide, florid face. He was dressed in a tweed jacket and ill-pressed white shirt, its collar straining to encircle his neck. “Miss Kydd? Miss Julia Kydd?”

  Philip entered bearing a tray with a full coffee service. Julia remembered that Christophine was out all day, no doubt beguiling Mr. Earl with her beautiful hat. Remarkable that Philip should step so ably into her shoes. She knew he could pour, but brew?

  He placed the tray on the low table in front of the sofa and wordlessly retreated to the far, shadowed corner of the room, to which he had apparently been banned. Twisting sideways in his chair to ensure he heard everything clearly—unbeknownst to all but his closest friends, he was deaf in his left ear—he shrugged and touched a finger to his lips. Consigned to silence as well?

  Julia offered the men coffee. When both refused, she poured herself a cup, hoping it might jolt her brain into clarity. “What brings you here, gentlemen?” she asked, bracing herself.

  “I’m Sergeant Millard Hannity of the New York Police Department,” the older man said, “and this is Officer O’Leary.” He jutted his thumb at his companion. “Homicide bureau.”

  Homicide. Julia sat carefully on the sofa. This might be bad. Possibly very bad. He hadn’t answered her question. She was desperate to know why he had come, and yet a small part of her was relieved, hoping to be spared bad news. His ominous manner might be a ruse to frighten her, though for what purpose she couldn’t imagine.

  “Are you ill, Miss Kydd?”

  “I’m well, thank you.” The cliché bred into her from childhood limped out. Of course she looked awful, but it was a ghastly question to ask a woman, whatever her appearance. He’d already knocked her off balance. Her vanity in shambles, she needed to preserve at least some semblance of dignity. She must concentrate, take better heed of whatever the man was here to say. He seemed determined to make her guess the trouble, which hardened her caution. Until she knew what had happened, she needed to speak with care.

  “My sister was fast asleep a few minutes ago, Sergeant,” Philip said from the corner. It was a mild rebuke for such an affront, but welcome.

  Hannity fingered his left cuff. “No offense, miss. It’s just, well, the time.” He turned to his assistant. “O’Leary here and I figure ladies are receiving visitors by now, that’s all. Don’t we, O’Leary?”

  The boy dragged watery eyes from Julia to his superior. “Right, sir. We do, sir.”

  Why was he fussing about the time? What did it matter if she was a dissolute layabout, as he clearly inferred? She tried again. “How can I help you, Sergeant?”

  “Did you go out last night, Miss Kyd
d?”

  Last night. Julia hoped her dismay did not show. Something terrible must have happened. Had Pablo’s bawdy tastes landed him in the soup? Had someone strangled poor Dolly Clark? Julia had seen Goldsmith’s hands twitching once or twice in her direction. But that was nothing compared to the real violence of the evening: all those guns. Particularly the one shoved hard into Eva’s cheek. Dear God. Had she gone back upstairs? Without Wallace there to intervene, anything could have happened. Had Timson made good on his threat? Had he shot her?

  Julia’s heart pounded as she waved her hand to convey a calm she couldn’t trust her voice to achieve. “Last night? As a matter of fact, I did go out.”

  “Mind telling me where?”

  “Harlem. With several others.” She swallowed. “Why do you ask?”

  “We’ll get to the others in a minute. Go any place in particular?”

  “A club called Carlotta’s. What’s this about, Sergeant?”

  “And after the show? What did you do then?”

  Julia took a hasty sip of coffee and burned her tongue. This was like watching disaster unfurl in slow motion and being powerless to intervene or look away. Hannity was determined to reveal nothing. She managed to answer somewhat steadily, “The club’s owner invited us up to his private rooms. Why?”

  Hannity roamed the room, stopping to study the brooding African tribal masks mounted on the crimson wall behind Philip’s piano. “And what happened there?”

  She risked another scalding swallow. “We chatted, as one does.” He couldn’t mulishly continue to ignore her questions and expect her to fully answer his own.

  Hannity sauntered back to the sofa, stopping behind her. He bent abruptly and whistled into her ear, startling Philip and O’Leary as much as Julia. “I wouldn’t advise you try that la-di-da with me, Miss Kydd,” he said. “Fact is, you’re mixed up in some nasty business.”