In the City by the Lake

by Taylor Saracen

  “Glad to hear it,” I nodded, watching as he opened the door. I was surprised to find a handsome young redhead sitting in Abraham’s chair. Luckily, Abe was not taken aback by his presence.

  “Hey, Peach,” the older man greeted, resting his hand on the visitor’s freckled cheek. “I need to use the office.”

  “Okay,” he said easily, placing his pen atop his paper and sliding it to the side of Abraham’s desk.

  Though they didn’t exchange any more words or touches before the tall, well-muscled man walked out of the office, I could tell there was something between them. After all, Abraham made a habit of stockpiling the stunning for himself.

  When Abraham suggested that I come to The Gallery on State for its New Year’s celebration, I declined, but when he offered to pick up my tab, I obliged eagerly. Though I always had my hands on whiskey, I very rarely brought it to my mouth. It was only during my trips to the parlor that I allowed myself to indulge—in so many ways. Drinking the profits never sat well with me, but when it wasn’t dime, I was certainly into having a good time.

  Igor and Maks were going to a house party in Lincoln Park, and I could not think of anything more unappealing than watching them wag their tongues at chunks of lead who wouldn’t give them the time of day. They hadn’t asked me what I was doing instead, having grown used to my disappearing act over the years.

  The vast majority of my evening was spent sipping Canadian Club while avoiding conversation and dodging dance invitations. There was enough activity going on around me to keep my mind occupied. Between the constant stream of glittery queens performing on stage and the belles on the floor bouncing along with one another to the beat, there was always someone or something to catch my gaze. It seemed, however, that there was a particular target who consistently drew my eyes.

  The sweetness of the whiskey’s dark sugars lingered on my tongue, and I licked my lips, making them tingle under my taste buds. Glancing over my shoulder at Abe’s Peach, who was laughing with friends, I wondered how he could look so impossibly charming in a suit. Though his features had looked soft and delicate a couple of weeks before, I now noticed the strength of his jaw and the confidence of his smile. But he didn’t notice me, which wasn’t a surprise. While darkness often sought the light, light didn’t search for darkness; it shined on all it could reach, but didn’t stretch. I wanted to understand him, something about him, maybe everything. I wanted him to reach me.

  The small crowd of belles and chorus molls surrounding him made it obvious that I wasn’t the only person drawn to his energy. As they hung on his every word, my stomach twisted into a maelstrom of jealousy. I wasn’t sure if it was him I envied or those who basked in his radiance. It was unlike me to want attention, after all, I had spent a majority of my years avoiding it, but the way his admirers’ gazes illuminated his pale face and made him translucent, open—I wanted that. I wanted skin that seeped emotion from its pores and eyes that smiled when I did. I wanted to smile more, to have a reason to. I yearned to be that alive, and I hated him for being everything I knew I couldn’t.

  I signaled for another drink and rested my forehead on my palm, trying to gain control of a mind that seemed intent on giving me problems if I didn’t guide its interests. Four shots of Canadian Club had made my thoughts difficult to harness. The next time I looked at the redhead, it was with disdain. He didn’t fight himself like I did. He didn’t struggle like me. Shaking my head, I tried to keep it together. Why was I so affected by him? So angry?

  I averted my gaze when it caught his and expected he would do the same. He didn’t. Instead, his emerald eyes studied my face as though the blackness I was cloaked in made me opaque and impossible to see through. Shifting uncomfortably in my stool, I turned around and tried to find anything else to focus on.

  As I counted whiskey bottles lined up on the shelves of the bar, I felt his presence a few yards behind me. My ears struggled to home in on his voice, and my eyes begged to take a peek. But as my body staged a mutiny against reason, I clenched my fist, desperate not to let it win. The upbeat jazz performers letting loose on the stage forced my toes to tap in my boots and my tongue to click with the beat.

  Thanking the bartender for yet another shot, I threw it back and realized why The Gallery sucked down whiskey like it was oxygen—nerves. There was no denying I was on edge, so much so that I nearly jumped when I realized that the Peach had slid onto the stool next to me. His incredulous look told me he’d noticed my skittishness. Instead of saying anything, he held my gaze for a moment before returning his attention to the bartender, who smiled at him in a way he’d never smiled at me.

  Transfixed by his long fingers tapping on the mahogany of the bar, I signaled for another drink knowing it would push me over the edge from hazy buoyancy to heavily drunk, a state I had no reservations about visiting. I needed the Peach to go back to where he’d come from, either across the room or to another state. The lower my inhibitions dropped, the farther away I needed him to be. He was as intoxicating as the alcohol, and I didn’t trust myself under his influence. I was about to get up and leave the bar without my drink when I heard his voice for the first time.

  “Do you dance?” he asked, a slight southern drawl apparent in his warm voice. I feared his languid intonation would be the end of me, deadlier than Capone’s choppers.

  “Not with men,” I replied instinctively, surprised by the indulgent grin he gave me in return.

  “I wasn’t asking,” he said simply, taking a sip of his whiskey as he appraised me with curious jade-green eyes.

  “Like hell you weren’t,” I shot back, irritated by the laugh that escaped his perfect lips.

  “I wasn’t,” the Peach assured me so sincerely that I believed it, even though I didn’t want to. “You have good rhythm. I was wondering if you perform here.”

  Flabbergasted, I stared at him. He couldn’t possibly think I was a drag queen. While I was attempting to tear him apart with my glare, I noticed his hair wasn’t slicked back with Brilliantine like so many of the other men in attendance, including me. The Peach’s red locks were tangled atop his head in loose waves, a style that wasn’t popular but damn if it didn’t look right on him. “I’m not a belle.”

  “So you’re a blind?” he questioned, glancing at my ring finger, visibly surprised when he didn’t see a ring. “No ring.”

  “I’m not married,” I scoffed as though the idea was ludicrous, “and I don’t know why you think I’m like you …”

  I hated how the conversation made me feel compelled to answer questions about myself that I’d never had the wherewithal to ask. Every time I had engaged in an evening with a bitch from The Gallery on State it had been a silent night, the only discussions to be had being about logistics. They’d never asked me to define myself or reflect on my condition, not like the Peach was doing.

  “You know, in this day and age, it’s acceptable to be like me,” he said, discontent taking a hold of his melodic tone. “There are worse things to be.”

  “Like what?” I asked, my inquiry more genuine than I intended it to be.

  Throwing the remainder of his whiskey down his throat, he gritted his teeth, glared at me, and uttered, “Like you.” He slid his glass across the bar top and stood to make his way away from me.

  Instinctively, I grabbed his wrist and frowned when he shook me off. As he walked away, I could not help but notice he already looked dimmer. After five minutes with me, the Peach had become busted Christmas lights, shoveled snow, and the most formidable challenge I had ever known.

  And there’s a hand my trusty friend and give me a hand o’ thine. And we’ll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne.

  4

  April 1930

  Being that America was a land of immigrants, I shouldn’t have felt like such an outsider being one. While many came to the States with “My Country, Tis of Thee” on their lips and red, white, and blue blood pulsing through their veins, it was never that way for me. Instead,
I hummed the death lullabies my father sang to me as a child and yearned for Mother Russia, the only matriarch I knew. The move should have been easier for me. I was only five when my father, Igor, and I boarded a boat and made the voyage across the Atlantic, but I had left too much behind to look forward with idealism, even at my young age.

  I was born under a black veil of fear and sadness on a day when an explosion in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, destroyed thousands of kilometers of forest with no explanation why. The affected area of Siberia was nowhere near the bed where my mother had given birth to me that very same morning and subsequently died later in the afternoon, yet distance hadn’t stopped people from worrying about the Tunguska event and being wary of the mystery surrounding it. My father had greater concerns than the explosion and my mother’s death, for he was scared that, like a bird on a windowsill, I was bad luck, a human omen of death. With time, my dad accepted the common theory that the Tunguska event was caused by the airburst of a meteorite and also came to terms with the fact that my mother’s death was due to the hemorrhage the midwife had diagnosed, but his revelations came too late. His suspicions regarding the evil that might reside deep inside me had become ingrained, and I still wondered if I was the catalyst for the events simply by being born. Perhaps that’s why America and her dreams never appealed to me: I was more accustomed to nightmares.

  Still, one facet of American life had managed to endear itself to me from the start—baseball. I was eight years old when my father took me to my first Cubs game at Weeghman Park. Vlad’s mafia hadn’t found its legs yet, so my dad had picked up work as a day laborer whenever he could find an opening. Though he didn’t have two nickels to rub together, he’d somehow scored two tickets to the September 4, 1916, doubleheader. While I had thought it would be a given that he’d take Igor or my uncle Grygoriy, I was shocked when he chose to bring me. We had never done anything just the two of us before. It was also the first time my father looked at me with benevolence in his marble-blue eyes. It wasn’t as though Taros Mikhailov was known for his warmth, but he had always been exceptionally cold to the son who killed his wife.

  “You like it, don’t you, Viktor?” he asked, beaming with pride as I sat in the stands, happily eating peanuts. It was as if I had decisively given my old man faith that I could acclimate to the strange country I’d hated so vocally as soon as I had set foot on her soil.

  “Yes,” I confirmed, nodding eagerly to add emphasis to my reply. While I enjoyed the excursion, knowing my interest in the game pleased my father inspired me to like it even more.

  “You see the pitcher,” he said, gesturing to the big man on the mound. “His name is Mordecai ‘Three Finger’ Brown. Do you know how he got his nickname?”

  “Because he has three fingers?” I ventured, grinning when my father ruffled my hair.

  “Smart kid,” he praised. “He lost part of two fingers on his right hand in an accident with farm machines when he was a kid. Instead of moping around and feeling sorry for himself, he perfected his curve ball. Look at him now. If he’d had a hard time learning English like you are, do you think he would’ve acted out in school? Or do you think he’d have tried harder?”

  “I’ll do better this year,” I promised, and I did. I began school a few days later with a better attitude than I’d had in past years and something to talk to the other kids about that didn’t make me feel like such an outcast.

  Things had shifted between my father and me that day too. I realized I had the capacity to make him proud when all I thought I had been capable of prior was disappointing him. It started a pattern of pleasing that I still prioritize at present. When my father told me I should join the outfit, I joined. When he insisted that I continue to live with the family, even when I made enough money to branch out, I stayed. It was better that way in the end, I guess.

  Mordecai Brown retired after that game in 1916, but fourteen years later, I still thought of him every time I entered Wrigley Field, and I remembered that fateful day with my father, the day everything had changed.

  “Do you think we’ll be heading back to the World Series this year?” Maksim asked as we side stepped our way to our seats for the Cubs home opener against the St. Louis Cardinals.

  “It’s too early to talk about that,” I chided, still reeling from the ass-spanking my team had suffered at the hands of the Philadelphia Athletics in the Series the year before. “It depends on Hornsby. If he comes out and plays the way he did last season …” I clicked my tongue, trying not to get ahead of myself. “Anything could happen.”

  Maks grinned. “I love the start of things The beginning is always full of possibility, isn’t it? It’s untarnished by time or the cycles of reality.”

  “Your optimism exhausts me,” I teased, lighting a fag and taking a deep inhale.

  “I could say the same for your pessimism,” my cousin pointed out. “Between you and Ig, I’m tired.”

  I sighed at the mention of my brother. “I think he’s lost it. Everything is doom and gloom. He rants like we’re facing the end of days rather than a financial hiccup. My guys in Towertown aren’t worried, so I’m not either.”

  “Shit’s still good over there, huh?” Maks asked, raising a bushy eyebrow. “Are you looking to take on a protégé? Things aren’t going quite so well elsewhere on the North Side.”

  “I guess when the opportunity to do business with the marjories presented itself, you shouldn’t have been nervous you were going to catch the faggot if you took the territory,” I replied, blowing a plume of smoke into his face.

  He very dramatically waved the vapors toward his nose and markedly inhaled as I rolled my eyes at his showmanship.

  “You know they don’t bother me,” Maks tsked. “They’re everywhere now, not only in Towertown. I see normal guys on the street ducking into alleys with the working boys. It seems everyone’s doing it.”

  “Everyone?” I asked, examining my cousin’s face.

  “Well, not me, but a lot of guys,” he clarified. “It’s not as taboo as it once was. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “There are thirty-five pansy parlors in Towertown right now, and they’re all crowded every damn night,” I stated, tapping the paper to loosen ash at the end of my cigarette. “Night clubs are shutting down everywhere else, but the belles are building new places and packing them full of thirsty bitches. You wouldn’t believe how much juice I’m moving.”

  “Now you’re bragging,” Maks huffed, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “How many of those thirty-five are on your ledger?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “That’s too many,” he exclaimed. “There’s no way you can handle that volume on your own.”

  “I’m handling it fine. They don’t have any complaints and neither does Vlad or the rest of the big boys,” I assured, waving my hand as if his worries were irritating gnats. “You’re angling to come in for a cut.”

  “I’m not denying that,” Maks laughed. “I may look dumb, but I’m smart as a whip, Vik.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Smart folks don’t need to tell other people they’re bright. They just … are.”

  “Well, my intelligence isn’t even my best quality,” he began, tilting his head to grab my gaze.

  “Is this where I’m supposed to ask you what it is? As if I haven’t known you for most of our lives?”

  He nodded.

  I indulged him. “What’s your best quality?”

  “My discretion,” Maks answered, with weight behind his stare. “The city as a whole may have grown to have less of a problem with the homosexuals, but just as you do, I know Little Russia hasn’t come around with the times.”

  Though the wildness of desperation wasn’t present in his eyes, I didn’t rule out the fact that it could be soon. “I’ll think about it,” I promised, drawing a relieved smile from my cousin who held his popcorn out toward me.

  “Corn?”

  I took a handful and threw it into my mouth, focusing on the men jogging
onto the field, filling out their crisp, white uniforms so well.

  I wasn’t sure how much Maksim knew about my proclivities, though I was quite aware my cousin may have found it suspect that I didn’t lust over broads like he and Igor did. I hardly found it necessary to put on airs, especially when my father had advocated for us to live the bachelor life for as long as I could remember. Though I was never positive of his reasoning, and figured it was some type of mourning over my mother, it hadn’t mattered much to me. The mantra that Mikhailov men didn't settle down had benefited me, and I didn’t find it necessary to question it.

  While there was a revolution at our doorsteps and homosexuals were rising, I knew it wasn’t what my father wanted for me, and the last thing I was interested in was having my old man look at me the way he used to, before he softened and remembered I was his son. It made me wonder about the belles, if they worried about what their fathers thought. Though in the city working-class men were more comfortable having relations with other men, acceptance wasn’t so widespread. As with most things, the cities were more liberal than the rest of the country, and it would take time for everyone else to catch up. I didn’t need to be at the forefront of anything. I needed only to be quiet, and that’s what I intended to be. I planned to ensure Maks would be as well.

  “You can come along with me tomorrow night. I’m getting orders from five of the clubs,” I stated, chuckling when my cousin practically leapt onto my lap in excitement. “Five more on Saturday. If you do well—”

  “I’ll do well,” he interrupted, gleefully.

  “We’ll see. If you do well,” I continued, “I’ll give you three or four. You know, as long as it’s alright with Vlad.”

  “What did I do to deserve you?” Maks crooned, handing me his popcorn. “Here, you can have the rest.”