Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  “My boy, or if you prefer, my girl, I didn’t have to read the speech. I had dinner with Mr. Tesla the next week and he told me all about it.”

  “You had dinner with Nikola Tesla?” said Gene, awestruck.

  “He and I are dear friends,” said Mr. White. “I dined with him two nights ago at my club in Gramercy Park.”

  “You are friends with Nikola Tesla?” At the Astor Library, Gene had read scores of articles by and about Tesla and his electrical experiments and inventions. Next to Edison, Tesla was the most exciting scientist in the world. His alternating current motor and his Tesla coil were revolutionizing the field of electricity, and Gene was sitting next to a man who counted Tesla among his friends. “What is he like?”

  “He is focused,” said Mr. White. “Even when we are dining together after he has left his laboratory for the day, I can tell his thoughts are still there. He told me once that the thrill he feels when he imagines a new creation erases everything else from his mind—food, sleep, friends, love, everything. And yet he has a kind smile and a sweet disposition. One knows one is in the company of genius, but Mr. Tesla is always modest, never condescending. You will see.”

  “What do you mean I will see?” said Gene, leaning forward, his pulse rushing.

  “You must meet him if you are so interested in his work. His laboratory is just a few blocks from here on Houston Street.”

  “He works on Houston Street?”

  “Near Mulberry,” said Mr. White. “He’s been there for almost two years now, since the fire destroyed his old lab.”

  “I’ve been walking within two blocks of Nikola Tesla’s lab every day for the past two years and didn’t even know it?”

  “Come to think of it, he has an opening for a new assistant. It wouldn’t be much more than sweeping floors at first, but if you’re ready to trade in your lipstick for a chance to work with Tesla, I could put in a word for you.”

  A week later, Eugene Pinkney became the newest employee to climb the stairs of a seven-story building on Houston Street. Tesla’s laboratory occupied the top two floors, and Gene’s fellow employees consisted of a clerk and several mechanics. For the first few weeks, he rarely saw Tesla, as most of his responsibilities had to do with cleaning or organizing materials after the others had left for the day. But within a few months, Gene had demonstrated his scientific knowledge and joined the ranks of the mechanics. He would work for Tesla for the next eight years.

  Dame Pinky still made occasional appearances at Paresis Hall, and a block of rouge and a lipstick brush remained among the items Gene kept hidden under the floorboards beneath his bed. Every few weeks, Stanford White would invite him to dinner at Delmonico’s or to attend a Broadway show. The architect often had a young girl in tow, and Gene remembered well the night in 1901 when he met White’s latest obsession, Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl in the smash hit Floradora. Evelyn’s beauty was more radiant even than that of Eliza Fuller, and she did not tire with boredom or fall asleep at the dinner table. She was as magnetic as Mr. White, and if Gene had cared in the least about girls (for Evelyn was clearly still a girl, being no more than about sixteen) he would have fallen instantly in love with her.

  Now, as the chorus of Mamzelle Champagne made their way through another insipid number, Gene sat just a few tables away from Evelyn, whom Mr. White had eventually tired of, though not before, he had told Gene, “quite a bit of imaginative lovemaking.” She was now the wife of a Pittsburgh railroad heir, Harry Thaw. Gene nodded to Evelyn and they shared a look that said they agreed that this “musical bubble in two bottles,” as the program described the evening’s entertainment, would not run more than a week. Evelyn’s husband was curiously absent from her table for much of the first “bottle,” but Gene had not come to the theater to spy on Evelyn and Harry Thaw. He had, luckily, not come to be entertained. He had come to speak to Mr. White.

  Tesla had become more and more driven to investigate possibilities of wireless communication, and to this end had built a laboratory, designed by Mr. White, and a massive steel tower on the north shore of Long Island at a site he called Wardenclyffe. But when Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent wireless messages via radio transmission, funding for Wardenclyffe dried up. Tesla cut expenses and began laying off workers. Gene could see that despite his years of service to the inventor, his job could not possibly last much longer. He saved Tesla the discomfort of firing him by resigning.

  Mr. White had gotten Gene the job with Tesla back in 1898. Since then Gene had moved out of his parents’ apartment into a place of his own—two rooms in a rooming house on Carmine Street near Washington Square, easily accessible to both Tesla’s laboratory and the Bowery. As his work with Tesla became more demanding, he had visited the fairy resorts less and less often, especially after the infamous raid on the Black Rabbit in 1900. Now, those resorts had all been closed, and he hadn’t seen Princess Petunia or any of the other girls in several years. Occasionally he visited one of the public baths known to cater to men who enjoyed other men, but with his transfer to Tesla’s laboratory on Long Island, Gene didn’t get to Manhattan often. When he had moved back from Wardenclyffe, Gene was pleased to find rooms in the same house on Carmine Street, but he feared the rent would exhaust his savings if he didn’t find a job soon. Mr. White was the only person alive who had known both Dame Pinky the fairy and Eugene Pinkney the scientist. Both of those people felt far away to Gene at the moment, but Mr. White had promised to meet him here on the roof of Madison Square Garden at the end of the performance.

  “We’ll go have a drink and talk about your future,” he had said.

  Gene had never suspected those would be the last words he would hear Stanford White utter.

  Because White had designed Madison Square Garden, he seemed to have access to as many tickets for this opening night performance as he wanted. He had secured Gene a table about five rows back from the stage, where he sat alone, nursing a watered-down drink. Not until Mamzelle Champagne was winding toward its conclusion did Mr. White appear, but he did not sit with Gene, taking instead a table slightly closer to the stage. Gene watched as a man sat down with Mr. White and the two spoke for a few minutes. Then the man walked round to the back of the stage. Gene assumed he worked for the theater. Mr. White was not the only prominent citizen in the audience, but, here at his own Madison Square Garden, he was certainly the most prominent, and it was not surprising that people wanted to speak with him. Gene considered moving to Mr. White’s table, but he thought it best not to disturb the architect until after the performance, so he turned his attention back to the stage. A moment or two later Gene noticed another man approaching Mr. White.

  The man wore a dress coat over his evening clothes, its velvet collar turned up and pulled tightly about his neck as if it were not a warm summer evening, but a cold day in December. In contrast to Mr. White’s rugged good health and lively presence, this man looked pale and drawn, almost haunted. Gene glanced over toward Evelyn to see if she had noticed the odd man approaching her former lover. Evelyn sat by herself, watching the performance in which the chorus was just launching into a song about a duel. When Gene looked back at Mr. White, the pale man had reached the table and was holding a revolver level with White’s head. Gene drew in a breath to cry out a warning, but in that instant the gun cracked. He found he could not breathe as blue smoke curled from the barrel and another crack rent the air. Gene saw Mr. White’s head snap backward, but most of the audience seemed to think the gunshots were part of the duel being sung about on stage. The man fired a third time and Mr. White fell to the ground, his table and chair crashing over with him.

  Gene froze in his chair. He could not speak or move. He could just see Mr. White’s head through the crowd that separated their two tables. Blood had already begun to pool around him, and he did not move. Gene felt in his gut that White was dead. The gunman walked calmly up the aisle, his coat brushing Gene’s arm. Then the sho
uting began. First the people closest to Mr. White and gradually the entire audience grasped that a real murder had taken place. Although two of the dancers on stage had fainted when they realized what had happened, the rest of the performers labored on and the conductor waved frantically at the orchestra to keep playing. Gene looked behind him and saw a fireman taking the gun from the killer. The shooter looked calmly over the audience and Gene recognized him as the man who had spent only a small part of the evening sitting with Evelyn—her husband, Harry Thaw.

  “He deserved it,” shouted Thaw. “He ruined my wife, and now that goddamned bastard will never go out with another girl.”

  People were jumping to their feet, men shouting angrily and women screaming hysterically. Several women fainted away, and had to be revived or carried by their husbands. The orchestra finally staggered to a stop and the dancers rushed off the stage. A man came onstage and shouted over the pandemonium.

  “Ladies and gentlemen: Owing to a very serious accident, it will be impossible to continue the performance tonight. Will you please remove yourselves from the building as quickly and quietly as the elevators can take you.”

  As people pressed toward the elevators that would bear them two hundred feet down to Twenty-Sixth Street, the police arrived and took charge of Harry Thaw. From the side of the theater, Evelyn rushed to her husband, flinging her arms around him and crying, “Oh, Harry!” Gene still could not move. His mind could not process what had happened. He simply sat there wondering—did Harry Thaw say Stanford White had ruined his wife or his life?

  People crowded round the fallen figure of Stanford White, and Gene watched as one man took a tablecloth and draped it over the body. Clearly his instinct had been correct. Clearly Mr. White, who had done so much for Gene and who had promised to do more, lay dead. Gene had never given much thought to the consequences of Mr. White’s sexual peccadilloes. Having engaged in more than his fair share of socially frowned upon sexual activity, Gene felt he was not one to judge. But White’s treatment of Evelyn Nesbit, sexual and otherwise, had returned to haunt him in the person of a carefully armed Harry Thaw. There would be no more dinners at Delmonico’s or evenings at the theater, no quiet chats at Mr. White’s apartment among his art treasures. And there would be no job secured through Mr. White’s influence. In that moment, having cut off contact with his parents, left behind his colleagues at Wardenclyffe, and long ago lost touch with his truest friends, the fairies of Paresis Hall, Eugene Pinkney felt utterly alone.

  XI

  New York City,

  Midtown Manhattan, 2010

  The next morning Robert awoke stiff and sore. He had drifted off in front of the fire while reading Alice Gold, Girl Inventor. The book, with its illustration on the cloth cover of Alice facing down the out-of-control bicyclist, lay on the floor next to his chair.

  It had stopped snowing, but a foot or more had accumulated. Finding nothing but a moldy half-loaf of bread in the kitchen, Robert decided to pull on his coat and boots and walk the twelve blocks up to Barney Greengrass. He hadn’t had a fresh bagel covered in lox and cream cheese in ages and the famous deli offered the best in the world within walking distance of his home. Sitting at a table in the window sipping strong coffee, Robert wondered why he didn’t bring Rebecca here more often. Had he started to take New York for granted? He watched pedestrians making their way up Amsterdam on freshly shoveled sidewalks while he downed a second cup of coffee, ready to continue his pursuit of the Tremendous Trio. He felt invigorated, not just by the bagel and the coffee, but by a sense of purpose—something he had been lacking lately. He needed to tell his true story to Rebecca and to do that he needed to finish that story. That meant keeping his promise to his father and finding the end of the Tremendous Trio’s final adventure.

  Robert dug into his coat pocket, retrieved the piece of paper Elaine Corrigan had given him, and looked at what she had written:

  Julia Sanberg, General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 W. 44th

  Robert could not imagine why someone who worked for a society of mechanics and tradesmen would know the first thing about children’s series books, but he nonetheless began tromping through the snow toward Midtown.

  The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen occupied the first floors of a handsome building between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In a display window outside the building, Robert read that its library was the second oldest in New York City, founded in 1820 for the education of apprentices and tradesmen. The library had moved to its current location in 1899.

  Robert stepped inside, glad for the shelter from the icy wind that had whipped around him during his walk. A security guard directed him down a short flight of stairs to a pair of glass doors. He pushed his way through and drew a sudden breath. He loved this about New York—that you could walk into any one of thousands of unassuming buildings and find something within to strike awe. He stood in a three-story-high room, filled with natural light from a massive skylight. In front of him stretched a large reading room with tables and chairs surrounded by cases filled with books. Above this area towered three tiers of balconies that led to the stacks—row after row of bookcases crammed with old and tattered-looking volumes. To his left stood a circulation desk and something Robert hadn’t seen in years, a beautifully crafted wooden card catalogue. Above him curved another balcony, this one with an elaborate brass railing. A dozen readers scattered themselves around the quiet space, and a young man with a neatly trimmed beard and a pair of round eyeglasses sat on a stool behind the reception desk, reading a collection of Dorothy Parker short stories. Robert descended the three steps from the entrance and approached the desk.

  “Can I help you?” the man said in a friendly voice.

  “I’m looking for Julia Sanberg,” said Robert.

  “She should be here any minute,” the man said. “She texted she was running late. You can wait over there if you like.” He waved Robert to an area on the far side of the desk, separated from the rest of the library by a stack of card catalogue drawers. Robert was pleased to see that the bookcases on the outer walls were filled with modern fiction—hardcover books whose dust jackets glistened in their plastic library covers. Clearly this was more than just a technical library. He laid his messenger bag on a table and scanned the shelves, noticing a copy of Looking Forward. But he didn’t want to think about the world of contemporary fiction at the moment, so he turned to the card catalogue, pulling gently on one of the brass handles and sliding out a drawer.

  As Robert flipped idly through the cards, enjoying a tactile sensation lacking from any computer, the date 1906 caught his eye. He stopped and read the card for a book titled Eastman Johnson, Painting America. The subject line read “Johnson, Eastman (1824–1906) Co-founder Metropolitan Museum of Art.” It was ironic that Robbie and his father had abandoned his mother in the Met that December day so long ago when they went searching for Alice Gold’s house, because two months later, on a Saturday afternoon, Robbie’s father took him back to Manhattan and they mounted the wide steps to that massive museum. Robbie gripped a copy of Alice Gold and the Museum Mystery in his hand, their guidebook for the day. The book mentioned six different galleries and Robbie and his father were determined to see all of them. Robbie grinned as they pushed their way into the echoing lobby, thrilled to be spending a day in the city with his father, following in the footsteps of Alice Gold.

  “I understand you were looking for me,” said a voice behind him. Robert turned and saw a woman with tight black curls and thick glasses unwinding a knit scarf from around her neck. She reminded him of high school pictures he had seen of Rebecca.

  “Are you Julia Sanberg?”

  “That’s right,” said the woman, draping the scarf over a chair and slipping out of a ski jacket.

  “Robert Parrish,” said Robert. “Elaine Corrigan at the St. Agnes branch of the public library suggested I contact you.”

  “Right,” said
Julia, running her hands through her hair. “I had an e-mail from her yesterday, but she didn’t give your name. So, Mr. Robert Parrish, how is your day today?”

  He liked her already, at least in part because she didn’t seem to recognize his name, or at least she was willing to engage him independently of his literary reputation.

  “Better than some; worse than others,” said Robert. “I had breakfast at Barney Greengrass.”

  “Aren’t you the lucky one. I had a Kind bar on the nearly immobile Long Island Rail Road. So, how can I help you?” Julia motioned to a chair and Robert sat on one side of a small table as she sat across from him.

  “Elaine said you know a lot about children’s series books from the early twentieth century.”

  “I’ve done a couple of papers on the topic,” said Julia. “I was a children’s librarian at the public library before I came here.”

  “I’m trying to find out about three authors whose books I read as a child. They each did a series and then the three of them did a series together but there’s a book that seems to be missing.”

  “Hold on a second,” said Julia. “Who are these three authors?”

  “Neptune B. Smythe, Buck Larson, and Dexter Cornwall,” said Robert. “I mean, I suppose people know all about Victor Appleton and Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene because Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were such blockbusters. But I couldn’t find anything online about these three.”

  “Actually, no one knows anything about Victor Appleton or Franklin W. Dixon or Carolyn Keene,” said Julia, “for the simple reason that they didn’t exist.”

  “What do you mean they didn’t exist?” said Robert. “I’ve read their books—dozens of them. They had to exist.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Edward Stratemeyer?” said Julia.

  “No,” said Robert.