In the City by the Lake

by Taylor Saracen

  His smile returned. “I do. How about I buy you a drink to celebrate our shared success.”

  “You can afford it,” I smirked.

  We walked back to the main room, and Abe poured me a whiskey on the rocks. As I drank it, he disappeared into the crowd just like he usually did, ever the entertainer.

  When a diminutive drag queen took the stage, The Gallery grew so quiet that I could hear the ice in my drink clank against the side of the glass. Delicately, he wrapped his manicured fingers around the microphone, opened his rosebud mouth, and proceeded to sing a melancholy melody in his haunting alto tone.

  My thoughts go back to a heavenly dance. A moment of bliss we spent. Our hearts were filled with a song of romance. As into the night we went and sang to our hearts' content. The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. You and the song are gone, but the melody lingers on.

  Entranced by the beauty of the effeminate boy’s voice, I nearly missed the hand placed on the small of my back. A pair of vaguely familiar brown eyes focused on mine as a not-so-strange man made his intention known. Draining my glass, I slid it across the bar and followed him out to the alley.

  Gone.

  2

  October 1929

  Mikhailovs didn’t need women. At least, that was what I was brought up to believe. It had worked out for me, as my proclivities had me shunning the idea of finding a broad to settle down with. For as long as I could remember, it was just us men. Though my dad was attractive enough, he never dated after I killed my mother, deciding it would be better for Igor and me if he devoted his life to us and, eventually, the mob. He was probably right. A female influence would have no doubt smoothed our ragged edges, making us good but poor. Morality didn’t stop a stomach from rumbling in the middle of the night or keep a roof over a man’s head. While doing the “right thing” may have filled the mind with pride, it never paved a life path with gold. The only way for me to get ahead was to push past any preconceived notions I may have had about what would make me a righteous person. Good wasn’t worth anything if all a man possessed was shoestring ethics that allowed him to shift and change based on his own needs.

  Maybe a virtuous life wasn’t meant for me anyway. I often thought I was born bad. Who else but a damaged man could murder his mother as soon as he made his entry into the world? For most of my childhood, I thought something I did in the womb must have caused the complications she succumbed to, that perhaps the challenges she faced were because of my weaknesses. The fact that she survived Igor but died delivering me twisted my self-concept and made me question my worth, leaving me to wonder if I leaked my non-pious poison into her devoutly Jewish blood. I grew up sure her body rejected me when it recognized what I was, and for a while, I hated myself for it.

  Realistically, I knew it wasn’t uncommon for women in small Russian villages to die during childbirth, but reason had no place in self-flagellation. It was as though I believed that if I punished myself enough, her death would not have been in vain. I spent a good deal of time trying to blame myself for the circumstances of my life and an equal amount attempting to get the fuck over it. Most of the time, I didn’t know which tactic triumphed, so I kept my head down and continued to do both.

  The lack of feminine energy in our apartment had the checks and balances out of whack. We lived like bachelors who prioritized making a name for ourselves rather than participating in the greater good of the household, which was precisely who we were. A three-bedroom residence felt particularly small when there was an asshole behind every door. I had come to terms with the possibility long ago that perhaps I was the worst of us all.

  Though most of my business was conducted long after the sun made its descent for the day, I found it necessary for my health to get to sleep as soon as I could and wake at a reasonable hour. Having spent most of my teenage years as a nocturnal neophyte in organized crime, I knew I had the capacity to be a real prick when I didn’t get enough rest. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that a cantankerous disposition wasn’t acceptable for those who held a lowly position in the outfit. When my bosses were brash, it garnered them respect, but when the underlings were insolent, it earned us scars—like the seven-year-old remnant of a knife slash above my eyebrow. It had been Vlad’s way of reminding me that a boy’s skeptical expression wasn’t appreciated while in the presence of men.

  Though my indoctrination into Chicago’s Russian mafia wasn’t without its challenges, the licentious life of a mobster became markedly easier for me with time. Years after joining up, things continued to get better by the day, and it wasn’t improving only for me. With Al Capone locked up in a Philadelphia prison since May, business was booming for everyone who worked the underbelly, except Capone’s boys. While they were still going strong, they weren’t expanding, and the streets were quieter thanks to the hit to their bravado.

  Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I tried to decipher the words on the radio as it hummed just beyond my bedroom door. It was odd for Igor to be listening to anything but jazz with his breakfast, so strange in fact, that I pulled on my sweater and hurried to the kitchen to see what was going on.

  “The stock market’s still crashing,” my brother told me as I honed in on the news report on WLS.

  “Oh, that,” I said, uninterested in the development. The market had been suffering for the last few days, and it was all anyone seemed to want to talk about. Whether it was the clandestine nature of my business or a lack of understanding of by-the-book economics, there was something that made me believe I wouldn’t be affected. Making my way to the pantry, I grabbed the Rice Krispies and poured myself a bowl. “I can’t get over how much I love this stuff.”

  “How much you love the cereal?” Igor questioned, regarding me incredulously. “Is that what you can’t get over?”

  I nodded, knowing the gesture would aggravate him more.

  “They’re saying the Dow could be down as much as twenty-five percent by the end of the day. People are losing their shit, collapsing on the trading floor,” he continued, ever the alarmist.

  “Did someone go in there with an automatic and open fire?”

  “They’re emotionally distraught,” Igor chided, “the bottom’s about to fall out, Vik. Things will be bad.”

  “That’s awful for people on the bottom. We, my brother, are not on the bottom. Dad and I busted our asses so we wouldn’t be there, and while you sink back into academia, we’ll continue to hustle to keep it that way. Tell me why I should care about a bunch of entitled assholes crying over money they gave away in a scam of a system, assholes like you.”

  “Your blasé attitude tells me two things,” he stated, taking a bite of his bacon as I leaned against the countertop, regarding him impassively. “One, you skipped too many days of school. Two, you believe all the pieces of this machine can work independently when they’re useless on their own.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What I understand is Dad left one fractured country for another. He ran from Russia to dodge the Revolution and brought us here to the land of broken promises and thug rule.”

  “You enjoy the freedoms of this land, freedoms you would have never had in Russia. You remember it romantically because you were too young to know it realistically.”

  “You’re two years older than me. Did you know it so well at seven?” I laughed at the assertion. “And what freedoms do I enjoy, Ig? Is it answering to Vlad or to Dad? Which one is liberation?”

  “Liberation is making a mint selling whiskey to the ethels you don’t mind visiting,” Igor huffed.

  I laughed harder. “Oh, dry up, Mrs. Grundy. You were so worried about belles hitting on you that you backed your ass out of a ton of dough. The only people who give a shit about the fags being fags are people like us.”

  “What are we? What are we like?”

  “Outsiders, Ig,” I replied. “People who came through Ellis Island with backward minds. People who will always be behind the rest of them if we do things the way they’re supposed to be
done.”

  “You have a victim complex,” Igor chided, preparing to make the same argument he defaulted to every time we sparred.

  “You want the America you read about in fairy tales, not the dirty version we live in, that you pretend to be above,” I retorted, “with your college degree, living off mine and dad’s broken backs.”

  “And you don’t think my doctorate will be gainful for us when I earn it, that maybe you’ll be able to leave Vladimir and the outfit behind?”

  “All I think about is the fact that you ran the ultimate racket becoming a professional student.” Nothing enraged me more than Igor parlaying a couple of high test scores into a one-way ticket out of the mob’s hold. The smart fucker had somehow convinced the bosses that he’d be more valuable to them in the future if he walked the straight and narrow.

  “You should try expanding your mind then,” Igor suggested.

  I huffed as my cousin Maksim entered the kitchen. I hated how spontaneously he came and went. Though Maksim, my uncle Grygoriy and my aunt Yekaterina lived in the apartment next door to us, our setup was more like a commune than I liked. There was nothing worse than having people infringe on my space, even if those people were family. It had been that way for as long as I could remember, open doors and opportunities that only went to my brother—my America.

  “I came in at the right time,” Maks smiled. “Who better to discuss mind-altering substances with than me?”

  “And you’re going about your business like nothing is happening too?” Igor asked, taking Maks by surprise.

  “I came for bacon,” my cousin admitted, huffing when he didn’t see any frying in a pan. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Chicken Iggle says the sky is falling,” I told Maks, pulling a package of bacon out of the refrigerator and tossing it to him. “The American elite put their money into this hypothetical system, and now they’re shitting themselves because it’s not functioning well.”

  “It’s not a hypothetical system,” Igor sighed.

  “It’s a theory that hasn’t been proven,” I corrected. “But it looks like it’s a problem, right? Better to stuff money under the mattress.”

  “I think I left my jacket in your room the other night, Vik,” Maks joked, making a very exaggerated dash toward my bedroom door.

  “Good luck with that,” I smirked, taking a big bite of my cereal. “The dues aren’t cheap, and communism is a bitch.”

  “I don’t think it’s communism when Vlad takes most of our money,” Maks said, going back to his bacon sizzling on the stovetop.

  “That’s pretty damn close to communism in practice,” Igor confirmed.

  “Do you two ever exhaust yourself talking about all this bushwa first thing in the morning? Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace?”

  I stared at Maks, wondering if he purposely set himself up for my comebacks. “He sure can, in his own damn kitchen. You know, like the one down the hall.”

  “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t miss my mug if you didn’t get to see it every morning. Imagine how boring your life would be without my effervescent personality,” Maks reasoned, and though he grated on my easily inflamed nerves, he was probably onto something.

  I poured another helping of Rice Krispies into my bowl, making sure the ratio of cereal to remaining milk was perfect. I had managed to set up some daylight hour meetings, which meant my night would be less packed than seemed to be the pattern recently. All I wanted to do was sleep. With November right around the corner and December mere weeks away, business was booming. Every club I handled was planning ahead to ensure their holiday celebrations were merry and gay, and I was tired. At twenty-three, I should have been looking forward to participating in the fun, but it didn’t appeal to me. Instead of partying, I would continue to move through my life, fearing the moment it would end while wondering why it hadn’t yet. It wasn’t that I wanted to die; it was more that I didn’t see a purpose in living. I was just, kind of … there. Maybe everybody felt the same way and I didn’t converse with enough people, or dig deep enough in my existing relationships, to know.

  “Did you hear what they said?” Igor questioned. “They’re estimating investors have already traded ten million shares and the day isn’t close to over. The market could lose more money in ninety-six hours than we spent on the entirety of the war.”

  “How much is that?” Maks asked as he chomped on his bacon. He ate like he lived, in an irritatingly loud manner.

  “I don’t know, around ten billion, maybe more,” my brother answered, shaking his head at the figure. He ran his fingers through his dirty blond hair and closed his eyes.

  “Oh, close to what Vik’s going to make in Towertown next month,” Maks joked with a cheeky grin. “My man’s out there grabbing clams from every marjorie’s hand.”

  I smiled. Maks may have been annoying, but he was funny, especially when he said shit like that.

  “And what’s going to happen when Vik’s marjories lose their jobs and can’t afford to buy Canadian Club cocktails every night? Hmm?” Igor pressed. “What then?”

  “Leave my marjories alone,” I smirked, placing my lips on the ceramic to slurp down the rest of my cereal before discarding my bowl in the sink.

  As I crossed the kitchen and headed back to my bedroom, I heard Igor call, “Are you going to wash it or leave it sitting there for our maid to take care of?” A boisterous laugh from Maks told me that he found Igor much cleverer than I did. Either way, providing my brother with the opportunity to burn off an iota of his nervous energy by cleaning up after me was merciful in my eyes, and since my view was all I had to go by, I felt rather saintly. Despite Igor’s worries, it seemed today would be a good one. After all, I wasn’t always so charitable.

  3

  December 1929

  Winter cast the hue of ash over the city, dingy and dim, until the fateful day when the clouds covered the gray by erupting into sheets of glistening white. As with everything, the snow stayed pristine for only a short time before it was sullied by gravel, salt, and the boots of men. The heavy leather of my shoes didn’t prevent my toes from being nipped by the cold as I walked the crowded block in Towertown. While the news broadcasted a litany of fear regarding the state of the economy, the pansy parlors hadn’t gotten the memo. Business for the bitches was still booming, which was advantageous for me. Guys in the outfit who had balked at servicing Towertown months earlier were suddenly taking an interest in the queer clubs now that the establishments they serviced were struggling. Lucky for me, I was bringing in a lot of cash and the bosses had no interest in disrupting the flow.

  Christmas lights adorned the brick buildings, dispelling rumors that a lack of frivolous spending on excess electricity would minimize the merriment of the holidays. The traditional signs of the season never meant much to me, but I could not deny that the luminous orbs reflecting sparkling colors onto the dirty-in-the-daylight snow were beautiful. From time to time, I vowed that I would devote more energy into focusing on the many small wonders surrounding me, but then I’d come to my senses and remember that nothing, no matter how enchanting, remained untarnished forever. Eventually the filthy snow would melt, the lights would burn out, and the buildings would be empty. Decay was inevitable, trying to fight it was futile, yet the idealistic still did. I wasn’t like them, and I didn’t want to be. Blind confidence in beauty was a surefire way to live a life of disappointment.

  A warm dense humidity hit me as soon as I entered The Gallery on State, the thick air a result of gyrating bodies and mouths agape with laughter. I was barely through the door when the slight singing queen with the rosebud lips approached me.

  “You don’t come in here often, but I notice it when you do,” he told me in a way that was less a pick-up line and more a soft admission. “Your hair is as dark as squid ink, and your peepers are so light. It’s a nice combination.”

  “I have business with Abe,” I said, glancing around the congested room to avoid his
gaze. His dull cinder eyes were too sorrowful to regard.

  “Maybe we could have business together too? We could party in the tea room if you’d like,” he propositioned, his voice vulnerable in a way that made me terribly uneasy. “I would give you a good rate.”

  “I don’t come here to be solicited,” I huffed, tucking my hands deep into the pockets of my wool pants.

  He nodded as though he knew something but kept his lustful lips zipped.

  Relieved to see Abe waving me toward him, I walked past the chorus moll and shook my client’s hand.

  “He really looks like a broad,” I said, still astounded by how innately feminine the prostitute was.

  “My Rosie,” Abe sighed, looking affectionately toward the waif, who was engaged in conversation with another man.

  “You call him Rosie?” It made sense.

  “I do. He’s my broken boy,” Abe frowned. “I’ve never met a more sensitive soul.”

  “Then he acts like a broad, too?” I joked.

  Abe didn’t laugh; instead, he said, “Rosie’s been with me for half a year, and I don’t think I’ve seen him smile once.”

  “So, he’s one of your strays?”

  Abraham’s residence was directly above The Gallery, a large open loft he dubbed “The Studio.” With him lived a screwy gaggle of queens, artists, and otherwise eclectic individuals who had found Abraham when they had nowhere else to go.

  “Another runaway,” Abe confirmed. “The cities understand people like Rosie,” he paused and held an arm out to the patrons, “like all of us, but the small towns aren’t there yet.”

  “I guess that type of thing takes time,” I said, following Abe back to his office to discuss the excess liquor he needed for The Gallery’s New Year’s Eve party in a few weeks. “I take it drink sales are still going strong?”

  “Better than ever,” Abe assured. “I know many blind tigers in other parts of Chicago are suffering the ramifications of the crash, but Towertown is thriving, my friend.”