Hers and my situations are somewhat similar. We’re both trying to coexist with the objects of our desires, avoiding them to save ourselves the grief of unrequited love. Although the puppeteer of my heartstrings is just a figment of the real thing, and we have never lived together, I wish said apparition would move back to Boston. There is nothing for him here—except maybe vengeance for his wife and baby’s possible killer. And thus, I’m torn between my quest for my professional versus emotional wellbeing.
This week is hard for me, as is another in January—the eleventh is mine and Reid’s birthday. It feels wrong to enjoy it, and still, I’ll admit time has dulled the hurt a little. So, along with the bittersweet memories of Dad and Reid, which now go together, thoughts of a certain auburn-haired doppelgänger, and the prospect of a rogue OB/GYN kept me up late. I suppose it’s a good thing today’s work is mindless. But still in need of a break, I strip the second skins off my icy hands and set the pile of peelings in a small porcelain bowl over the Bunsen burner. Mesmerized by the crackling, snapping, and hissing execution of countless disease-carrying critters, I warm my fingers by the tiny blue flame.
As I make my way into the antechamber, I become conscious that I’m shuffling my feet. I’ll take a cab home tonight, I decide, but maybe eating will give me a boost to get through the day. My second brain grumbles in response. I would ask Archer to join me—he’s particularly fond of the corned beef sandwich and cabbage soup at Lenny’s Deli—but sometimes, often, my brother is more work than I have the energy for. He’ll come looking for me in an hour or two if he remembers to eat at all and find I’ve abandoned him. A peace offering of favorites will smooth things over without requiring explanation.
Trading my frock coat for a lightweight wool jacket hanging on the peg, I unbolt the narrow side door. My first step outside plunges my foot in a puddle of yellowish water. “Aw, fudge!” Tucked between a windshield of trash cans are the remains of someone’s newspaper bedding from last night as well as a nearly fresh pile of excrement behind a pilaster. This person apparently has a love/hate relationship with the police and a decided aversion to the outhouse three yards away. Flinging malodorous droplets from my shoe, I extract the scented handkerchief from my pocket and cover my mouth and nose. My socks are dry, but my shoelaces will have to be burned. I tiptoe around the small pool of piss water, straddling it with caution to lock the door behind me.
Then for another twenty feet or so, I Nazi kick each step in hopes my foot will dry out, halting now and again to sniff the air, which continues to stink. I can’t tell if it’s the urine I smell or the usual noxious fumes. I’ll know soon enough; Lenny’s is just four short blocks away on Lake and La Salle.
Wells Street is pedestrian free except for a man in an ugly brown and tan checked tweed suit who walks purposefully just ahead on the other side of the street. Despite the still air, his head is tucked into his chin as though against the wind. The newspaper wedged under his arm reminds me I’d forgotten my thermos.
Before I cross Randolph, I take another whiff as a carriage rattles by and determine that my boots are dry. The driver bobs his head and clicks his tongue at the enormous chestnut steed, drawing forth a chattering whinny and a series of snorts followed by a great plume of soft-white breath from golfball-sized nostrils. The clip-clop, clip-clop of the horse’s hooves along with the jingling of the bridle, the driver’s mouth noises, the periodic slapping of the reins, and the carriage wheels rolling on the cobbled pavement comprise an oddly pleasant, if rambling, symphony.
After a year and a half, these olden sounds are still vastly different from what I consider normal city noises: sirens, traffic, public advertisements. It will take a while for the strangeness to sink in, but I’ve passed some kind of tolerance threshold because I can’t help thinking now that it’s not so bad. When I arrived, I was too preoccupied with other concerns to admire my surroundings. Not that I can now claim an appreciation for the many empty lots or the contrary cacophony of unending construction. Or the rancid odors. Even today, the air is thick with horse shite, coal fumes, and countless other contributors to the filth of the streets. There’s a lot to dislike. Yet, I survived by whatever miracle. … And Martin.
My sudden appearance in this world was traumatic to say the least, as were the few months following it. I recall only snippets of those early days. The most vivid image is of our house on fire and the man who’d brought me out of it. Three days later, I was in a narrow cot-like bed, in a room filled with other casualties of … of what?—I didn’t know at the time.
Not long afterward, I was moved to a private residence. Apart from a few minor injuries and an inability to speak, I didn’t need acute care, and the couple who took me in were somewhat medically trained. For a further two weeks, I remembered nothing of my former life. And yet, everything about my situation felt, well, the sights, sounds, even the smells were so much more disorienting than being plopped down in the middle of a really foreign land could ever be.
Then, my memories slowly started to permeate my sleep. I dreamed of a strange world and incredible experiences. Of a Chicago three centuries older than this one. Of a dozen other people who didn’t seem to be a part of my current life. I knew them only while unconscious, which I was often, their names evaporating off my tongue the moment I opened my eyes, morning or night. My identity was clear to my sleeping self as was the fact that my mind had been hijacked, like a person I knew once with eyes the color of the Aegean Sea.
Day after day, as I looked around my simple surroundings and the few people who I came into contact with, I was inundated with the incongruities all over again. More than anything, I was annoyed with myself to the point of hopelessness; I felt strong enough, but I kept failing to see the logic. Among my frustrations was the vague recollection of a man jogging down the street with a wooden pail of water, yelling at me, calling me a ‘daft boy.’ I had been mistaken for a boy at the hospital too. The Blackwells, the doctor and his wife in whose house I recuperated for a time, assumed the same.
Dr. Blackwell would ask from time to time, “And how are you faring today, young man?”
After about a week under their roof, I began eating meals with them at their table. And once, he looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Have you recollected even the smallest of details that might aid us in locating your family? A mother worries, lad, and I’d be most glad to deliver news of your wellbeing to her myself.”
The words, “boy,” “young man,” and “lad” rung in my ears over and over. At first, I was too exhausted to correct them. And I thought Philip Blackwell couldn’t be a very good doctor if he had trouble telling people’s genders apart. Instead, I’d shook my head as though they spoke a language I didn’t understand, stared confusedly from one to the other, and kept my mouth shut. Over the next couple of weeks, when I would venture out to stretch my legs, I came by the evidence to explain the common misunderstanding.
Every single female I saw was cinched, coiffed, flounced, and dolled up like Elizabeth Blackwell, whose appearance was tame by comparison. Although they wore piled-up hairdos, they all had lots of hair whereas mine was boyishly short. Not only that, but I was rather sickly looking and had been found in a filthy black pantsuit and ankle boots—my only possessions. While out, I observed that cropped trousers, what appeared to be a cotton undershirt under a three-quarter sleeve jacket, and comfortable leather shoes were not women’s or girl’s wear but street urchin clothes by today’s standards. I realized then that these people needed females to look a certain way, and I seemed just as wrong to them as they did to me. I also somehow knew that wherever my subconscious mind took me while I slept, didn’t have this problem, and that was where I belonged.
Despite many bad first impressions with others, I’m apt to give Mrs. Blackwell a little more credit. Although at the beginning she was just as obtuse as the rest with their “Hello, lads” and “Look here, boys” and “How do, sons” I recall several sympathetic glances cast my way over followin
g the weeks. And she took care to nurse me back to health personally, oftentimes shooing her husband away or instructing him to minister over my roommate instead, although he was the doctor.
It could have been that I was fairly self-sufficient that stopped her from offering to help with private ministrations—because she never did. Soon, however, I noticed a pile of cotton cloths stacked on a shelf under the washbasin next to the chamber pot, which I thought was an odd place for towels. When she came upon me scrubbing my face with one, she suggested the rags might serve a more “timely” purpose without detailing what that purpose could be. I would have put two and two together if my menses hadn’t been put off by the trauma. It wouldn’t return for another three months.
I owe Elizabeth Blackwell a debt; a debt I intend to repay someday. She kept my secret, even from her husband, which, granted, I didn’t know was one for quite a while. And I think now that that misunderstanding was not exactly a blessing but close enough. I had ended up with the Blackwells so I had time to see my new reality for what it was and my potential in it as well.
CHAPTER FOUR
I PUNT A pebble down the road and curb the urge to hop forward and kick it again. But following the path of the stone with my eyes, I see a familiar form running toward me, though in an outfit I’ve not seen him wear before.
Billy Pasternak sports an oversized pumpkin orange wool sweater tucked into baggy brown corduroys, which are hiked up ridiculously high with the help of cherry-red suspenders, leaving his scrawny ankles exposed to the wind.
“Where’s your coat, Billy?”
“It ain’t cold, sir,” he says, shrugging his thin shoulders. Pink fingertips peek out from his rolled-up sleeves to turn the bill of his cap.
“Hm. I beg to differ. There’s a bite in the air. And why is it your trousers are hiked up to your ribs?” I ask with a teasing smile.
“Aw, sir, it ain’t as bad as all that,” he defends, tugging his pants down, thumbs hooked into the corners of his side pockets. He looks down at his feet and then back up at me, cocking his head to see past the bill of his cap.
He is tall for his nine years, so not having to lean down much, I say, “Here,” handing him a few coins.
The shaggy dishwater-colored head bows over the change for a full minute. “One an’ fifty? That ain’t right.” He recounts, tapping on each coin with dirt-encrusted fingernails several times. “Well … sure ’nough, it’s a dollar an’ half. Here you go, sir,” he says, proffering the money back. “You gave me a half-dollar on Saturday. An’ another fifty cents the Thursday gone. An’ again last Tuesday an’ Monday too. An’ the week before the same. Today’s only Monday. Or is it that you’re going somewhere?”
I have been paying Billy two dollars over a week for almost a month now, a week’s wage for many grown men. For this sum, he brings me a paper or slices of fresh bread from the bakery or news from around town. Folding my hand over his, “Nope, and I’m well aware of what day it is,” I say, the timbre of my voice much too tender. A protective instinct nudges me to give him more, do more for him and his family. But I have to be careful about how I approach my goal. My well-meaning gesture could very well backfire. I’d experienced first-hand how dangerous base actions fueled by greed, desperation, or both could be. My life of squalor had been brief, whereas, for Billy, his sister, and his mother, there is no ready exit door from daily strife.
When I first spied him, he was skulking behind a pilaster in an alley, the handle of a pocket knife fisted against his thigh. I followed his more watchful than malevolent gaze to the opposite street corner where a girl of twelve or thirteen stood shifting her hips provocatively from side to side. She then leaned forward and shimmied her shoulders to draw the attention of a male passerby to her perky, still-developing breasts. I thought my lunch was going to join the rest of the sludge running into the gutters then and there.
A week or so later, I spotted him outside of a bakery nibbling on half a pretzel, the other half of which I’d observed him wrap in a rag and put into his pocket. As he was seemingly not on duty, I sent him on a menial errand, and thus began our partnership.
“I appreciate you checking, though. Sounds like you’ve got a head for numbers among your many other talents,” I contrive in a deeper tone. “And there’s more where that comes from, Billy. … As long as you stay true. I’m rather a stickler about honesty.”
“O’course. I know that, sir. My ma tells me the same oft’n enough. Says that’ll be the only way I’ll get on.”
I nod at the earnest boy with the profusely freckled round face. I know he will grow up to be a decent man so long as life’s hardships didn’t wear him down. The next ten years would decide which way he went. I can only hope that his virtues remained intact long enough to meld themselves to his character during these more impressionable years.
“So what’ll be my task for today, sir? Only, um, is it far?” He rushes to explain, “It’s okay if it is. I can run fast. I just haf to look in on Chaz b’forehand’ is all. He, uh, fell an’ broke his arm an’ my ma asked me to look in on him.” His expression clouds over, and suddenly, a substantial pit takes form in my belly. With an abusive alcoholic father and a despondent mother, I can only imagine what really happened to Chaz.
The parallels among people are uncanny and at once disarming. Billy and Lulu remind me of Allen and Selene in many ways, and Billy and Chaz’s relationship is not unlike that of two of the officers at Wells Street Station. Sergeants Theo Dent and Tanner Adams were friends from an early age too. And the latter would have probably turned out a ruffian like his estranged and criminally minded brothers were it not for Theo and his family.
“You’re off the hook for today, but how about we come to an arrangement?” I suggest, careful not to let the tenderness seep into my voice again. “Just so you know what your duties for me will be and can then squeeze them into the rest of your schedule.”
“You mean more regular-like work, sir?” he asks eagerly.
Too bad his other more questionable obligations prevent me from offering him a proper job. “Yes.”
“That’d be great!”
“Okay, then. How would you like to be my informant in addition to running the errands for me as you do now?”
“Oh, um, I think so, but my ma’s gonna ask what all I’ll haf to do as your … inform person. She’ll wanna make sure you ain’t tryna sell me a dog.”
“A what?”
“Pull one over, you know?”
“Ah. Well, tell your mother you’ll be my second pair of eyes around town, kind of like a junior detective.”
“Oh, neat! Like Sergeant Adams?”
“Not quite. You’ll have to go to school and pass the right exams to be an officer like him. And remember, you’re working for me, not Wells Street. So, don’t come to the Station expecting anyone to know anything about this.”
“Mm-hm. …Wait ’til I tell my pals! Chaz is gonna flip.”
“No, Billy. Let me make myself clear. Should word get out you’re spying on people, things could get dicey for you, Lulu, and your mom, if not Chaz too. And that’s saying nothing of how much less effective you’ll be at your job if everyone starts watching themselves around you. We have to keep this between us. That means just you, me, your mom, and Lulu. I mean it, Billy. Tell no one else. It’s of the utmost importance you stay undercover.”
He slumps a smidgen, but then pulls back his shoulders and straightens his spine. “’Kay, I won’t tell no one of my ’quainance. You’ve my word. Lu says a man’s word is really important. Would you agree that’s so, sir?”
“Absolutely,” I say with an open smile. “And last thing. If we’re to promote you, I’m afraid Billy won’t do.”
He scrunches his face in consternation. “Well, gosh, sir. First off, Ma ain’t gonna let me change my name … even if I was to become a spy. An’ besides, I ain’t answered to naught but Billy for as long as I can remember. How would I even know you was talking to me?”
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p; “You’re overcomplicating the matter, Billy, and I’m sure your mother won’t object. I simply thought Bill, Will, or William would be more appropriate for a budding detective.”
“Oh!” After another thoughtful pause, he says out with newfound self-importance, “Then it’ll haf to be Will. Ain’t nobody ever called me Will. Will Joseph Pasternak. Sound’s good, don’t it?”
“Yes, it’ll do nicely.” I give him a curt nod. “Now, explain this.” I skim a glance down his too lean frame and raise a questioning brow. Just looking at his reddened cheeks makes me feel as though the cold is soaking through the wool of my pants and my long underwear right into the marrow of my thighbones. I dig my hands further into my pockets, drawing them closer to my belly, and hunch my shoulders forward.
“Worst of all things is when it’s wet an’ chilly out an’ my cuffs gets soppy. That ever happen to you?”
“It has.”
“Never does it dry; I feel cold an’ feckin’ awful all day.”
My eyes widen. This may be the first time I’ve heard Billy curse, and yet he does it so casually. “It’s dry now, though. But go on, you’re not concerned about your socks and shoes then?”
He shrugs. “Ain’t like that can be helped. If they get wet, they’s gonna get wet, you know? Least I can do something about my hem. An’ Ma said it might be like that today. Though it don’t feel like rain, she’s usually right ’bout these things. Though it only just snowed, which is funny for April, don’t you think?”
I nod. The beginning of March was unseasonably warm, and its end would see the city covered in a six-inch-thick white blanket. Then it went frigid overnight, and the snow froze. The crisp weather the following week kept the ice from melting off completely; little mounds of the dirty, crusty stuff still dot the sides of the roads throughout the city.
No Time Like the Present Page 5
